Reverse Job Search: I will pay to work at your company

You shouldn't have to pay. Have you tried for volunteering? Perhaps working for free for a short term rather than paying to work? That sounds quite extreme.

Why don't you use that $10,000 to start your own company. You can then give all those HR people the finger, like they deserve.

Hi there. I am unfortunately based in Helsinki and so cannot offer you any opportunities - but I would like to offer some advice. You are (in my opinion) crazy to spend more money, especially to work for someone else - if you have 10K and 7 months and want to go full time.. take your laptop to a coffee shop, and build yourself an app.. start dirt simple, iterate... make yourself a website, put up sample pieces... even try to build a real MVP of some product... go to meetup.com or similar events for other IT dudes and see what they are working on. Volunteer to help. Get your hands dirty that way? Good luck!

On one hand, it's a sign of a dysfunctional job market and that's sad.

On the other hand, you dude may be taking the right approach here. Warren Buffett famously did pretty much the same - he offered to work for free for Ben Graham, his mentor cause experience and insight were much more valuable to him that money. Funnily enough, Graham turned him down initially, saying he was still too expensive :)

So good luck to you !

Coincidentally, a few pages back, some just offered to teach people react: https://assim.me/init_blog/

I agree with other people in this thread - this is an incredibly inefficient way to spend this time and money.

Spend these 7 months and $10k learning more and building a portfolio, you'll get much more out of it than you could from a job.

Go to udemy, pickup a few good node/react courses(google a coupon to get them for $10-$15), and you will have expert engineers, who are also expert teachers, spending hundreds of hours guiding you through the process of building projects for your portfolio.

What can you possibly get out of "real work experience" that would be more valuable than that?

Build a kickass portfolio, have a github account you can use to showoff your code. It will make you way more hireable than "work experience".

Here are my recommendations on where to start:

https://startuplab.io/post/fullstack-web-development-roadmap

Specifically, I highly recommend courses by Stephen Grider and Andrew Mead. They are absolutely incredible in quality, will teach you everything you need, and are based on real practical projects.

Hi there,

I completely disagree with these other developers. I made it the hard way doing what they are suggesting - taught myself how to program, what SQL was, then JS, php, java, finally rails and ruby, scrounged for work, struggled on my own for years to figure out how to actually build robust software. And now a decade later, I'm an expert, confident and finally doing what I want to do all the time.

So sure there are some benefits that come with that approach - but if I had to do it over again, and had the funds to do so, I would have just done what you are wanting to do. Find a good senior developer/mentor, in an area that I'm really interested in, pay them to train me and give me the work to build an excellent portfolio and get the necessary real world work experience to land the exact job I want to do. Heck 10k for 7 months isn't bad at all, that's a great deal for you. You learn the whole development process, gain the work experience and will get a job making bank in less than a year - that's a nice ROI, much better than most CS degrees.

Also the superhuman discipline it requires to teach yourself everything from scratch while building an extensive portfolio is tough.

Anyway, If you'd like I'd be glad to talk to you and help you out with anything you need, so just reach out my email is in my profile.

>> I can pay who is willing to let me learn on the job.

Nope, please do not do that, as other say.

You have 10K and 7 months.

- Find some part time gig (may be teach HTML, CSS) at local community college - 2, 3 hours: pays you something and you are not completely using up your funds. You have some knowledge and we always underestimate our knowledge to be poor and useless to the rest of all. Ironical in that, we go try and find a job with the same knowledge! So be confident that you can make some income with what knowledge you have right know.

- Write 6 apps in 6 months, extremely scoped, solving simple problems, I will offer one example:

   -- Write an app, that teaches 2000 most commonly used English words. There is a photo for that word, the spelling and sound. The user is shown the photo, he picks the correct word. If app shows the word, pick the right photo. The user starts a session, selects number of words to learn/review, show the words randomly. Next upgrade: you can talk about expanding this to use Retention algorithms in the interview.
   -- Rinse, lather, repeat 5 more apps

- Once your 1st app is ready, go to meet ups, local groups etc where you can do some self marketing with your portfolio, every month 1 more app is getting added to your portfolio. Upload your resume and portfolio on job boards, keep applying.

With some thoughtful planning of a part time gig, 6 portfolio apps, self marketing should keep you busy. Yes, don't forget to sleep, eat correct and exercise.

Hope this helps, this is just what I would probably do. Best.

This is stupidly ridiculous, and probably not only illegal, but unprofitable for a company to do.

As others have suggested - take more courses, try to do some contracting, and volunteer for a non-profit.

- Buy a ticket to Nigeria $1.5k

- Buy $5k worth of raspberry pi’s

- Spend a month there teaching everyone the basics of what you learned

- Blog and video blog about it.

Come back to NY and get hired right away.

Does anyone see a flaw in any of this?

ps - what’s your race got to do with anything?

I have perhaps a controversial opinion:

If you want a position where you will be working on real things and want lots of input from a senior person, then that probably means them spending at least 1 hour per day working with you directly. That’s about 140 hours over 7 months. At a company cost of $200/hour (minimum in NYC) for a senior developer, this translates to $28,000 of company cost.

Why would a company agree to $18000 out of pocket cost in your scenario vs $28000 in an unpaid intern position? I posit that, perhaps, the type of company that would cover $18k cost but not $28k may not be the type of company you want to intern with.

Personally I wouldn’t want to hire someone in this way. I’d rather real internship or no internship because I’d be concerned about mixed messages.

Have you considered a change of location and finding a real internship?

Also remember all this is free internet advice. You have no obligation to agree with any of it.

If you’re having issues getting hired, lack of skills is not your problem. Anyone that takes you up on this offer is exploiting you and don’t expect to be respected when co workers find out your arrangement.

Send me an email! moura at oko dot ai

We use React+Redux on the front-end and nodejs+Python on the back end. I think you will be a great fit.

Go door to door to small businesses to build them a webpage for free.

Under no circumstances should you pay to work. You'll be taken advantage of. No company that has anything positive to give you would consider such an arrangement.

CTO of an edtech startup here. I'd love to talk to you! Shoot me an email at jaydev at mathbrix dot com

What you're looking for isn't legal AFAIK, so you're probably not going to find any real business that would agree to it.

If a business treats someone like an employee, then they are an employee, regardless of what labels you each use or what agreements you may make. If you want to be treated like any other dev in the company, have tasks assigned to you, etc, then you are an employee. Unpaid interns, for example, can't have tasks that primarily benefit the employer assigned to them; they can't do employee work or they will be treated as an employee in the eyes of the law.

Employees have to be put on a regular payroll schedule, paid at least minimum wage, have payroll taxes filed and paid, be provided with health insurance if they're not exempt, etc. Failing to do so would be a violation of federal and state labor laws, regardless of whether you're OK with it or not.

In NYC specifically, if someone agreed to have you work at their business as a developer, and collected your "tuition" without putting you on payroll, they would end up owing at least $10,000 in fines plus 2x minimum wage for every hour you worked (actual plus liquidated damages), plus back taxes and interest, should anyone tip off the state or IRS about it.

We as a society rely too heavily on resume / CV signals. Social media amplifies our dependence on this reliance.

The real innovators, the people who changed the world, were almost never optimizing for their resume.

Have you contacted any recruiters? There are a ton of entry level jobs in NYC through a good recruiter. Ad agencies are always looking for new coders, try that if you want.

I think you're far better off taking the classes. I was basically in your position 4 years ago, I had some coding skills but not enough to get my foot in the door anywhere. I chose to take a 2 year course (with a 6 months guaranteed internship) and it was invaluable for my career. You'll make connections to people who will soon also be working in the industry, you'll have time to develop your skills and build projects. I don't know how it works in the US, I know you don't get paid to study but maybe there's some free colleges/courses. You could look at alternatives to keep costs down and live on the money you have for a few months while you're focused on studying and networking.

If you don't want to go to school, get an internship but you should definitely not be paying since you're going to do valuable work even while learning on the job. Because the reality is that no devs actually have time to hold your hand, you will get a task and have to figure it out. They'll be able to point you in the right direction but don't expect much more than that.

I'm a CTO of a cryptocurrency business.

Due to the nature of what we do we require access to blockchains for various currencies. We have a mechanism in place for this but I'm thinking of splitting it off into another company.

i.e. Crypto curreny blockchain API service for wallets, exchanges etc.

So here's what I'm offering.

* You will be CTO and sole developer of a new Startup and your 10K would be seed capital.

* I will show you what is required and how to go about it.

* We will be your first customer.

* We will take a 50% stake.

Technologies

* Ruby on Rails

* node.js

* Kotlin (possibly)

* Elm

If this is intesting to you let me know.

Your worst case scenario is the business doesn't take off but you learn a shit load of skills including how to run a crypto business.

If you're interested in trying your hand at short-term projects, I may have some work for you in the coming months.

I am a software freelancer and so my work is project based. I also teach web development workshops at the local college.

The way I see this working is to section off chunks of work for you from my contracts. You would perform the work and pay me for mentorship and code review. Of course, your code would then be incorporated into the project so you could claim the experience on your resume.

I wouldn't be able to promise full-time work as mentorship is quite time intensive and I will have to balance it with my own work. Likewise I tend to have some downtime between projects so there isn't always work that needs to be done.

If this is something that interests you, let me know. My email is e@ericwaldman.ca

At the moment, I am on hiatus until February so unfortunately I don't have anything to offer until at least then.

Sure you got a ton of offers but check me out.

As a side project I'm building a thing to help devs like you get some experience and make it easier to find jobs later. I'm rewriting everything in react as an open source project.

If you want we can pair a couple hours a week or so and I'll help you get better at react. I don't need or want your money but is more valuable to me your feedback and meeting more people in your position to better understand what I'm doing

Hit me up at david(at)codecorgi.com

If you're considering another bootcamp, don't bother. You don't mention if you have a degree or not (even one in an unrelated field is valuable), but if you're considering further education/training, I'd suggest doing so at an accredited institution and earning a degree for your efforts.

Otherwise, leverage your free time to work on your skills/portfolio. Structure your time; get disciplined. Read: http://calnewport.com/blog/2015/09/29/deep-habits-three-rece...

And as others have said: do not to work for free under any circumstances. Don't sell yourself short.

Best of luck.

I don't think it's wise to pay a company to let you work for them. I'm a rather skeptical person, and I'd be leary of anyone taking my money in such a scenario. Seems like a good way to lose $10K and wind up in the same place a few months later.

You haven't said what you've done to try to get a job. You should talk about that before people can give you advice. I have nothing to go on there, so take this with a grain of salt.

Did your bootcamp give you a promise of any assistance in finding a job? Have you kept in touch with any of your cohort? Reach out to them for help (explain the problem, ask if they have ideas that could help). These are two things that I'd try, right off the bat.

As someone else mentioned, talk to several recruiters. Present your resume and see what kind of feedback you get. If they tell you that they will be unable to place you, ask them if they think you don't have enough experience, and what they think you are missing. Recruiters are not your friend, but they are in the business of making money by placing people in jobs. If they think that they can make money by putting you in a job, they will try to do so.

Next: NYC has a smorgasbord of tech meetups with free or low-fee entry costs. Go to as many as you can. Most such meetups have an initial 30-minute period when you can stand around and talk to people about their jobs. Take notes, then go home and use the Internet to find out more about the parts of these discussions that you didn't understand. This should help to make you more technically competent.

Next, you want to do some "informational interviews": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informational_interview If you have friends, friends-of-friends, relatives, etc. who are working in an area that interests you, tell them you'd like to spend 30 minutes or an hour to ask about what they do at their jobs. Keep in mind you're not going to ask them for a job. You're just asking for information. Take good notes, bring them home, and again research the parts that confuse you. You can do phone informational interviews if needed, too.

The informational interviews and tech meetups are intended to help you build a network of people who know you, know that you are looking for a job, and may be able to refer you to an open position. They will also be a goldmine for learning more about the field that you want to break into.

It may help to build a small side project, and have some code samples in github. I can't speak to that, since those things never helped me.

Good luck!