Ask HN: How to survive as a homeless engineer?
I have been a web developer / software engineer for 15 years (fullstack, 5 languages).
I am living in Colorado with my wife -- I quit my job In Jan due to issues I had with the way our company was treating customer data. This turned out to be a foolish move as it has proven difficult to find a new job (I had something lined up when I quit, but it fell through).
I did land a contract between then and now, but in order to survive I had about 1.5 months to find a new job and that hasn't happened.
I was 3 days late on my rent this month and now have to appear in court to explain why i haven't paid. I fully expect that to lead to an eviction.
I've never had an issue finding a job prior to this so I'm quite frustrated with myself.
I don't own a good laptop (i use a desktop) and have about $400 to survive on. I've tried upwork but can't drum anything up quick enough / at all. I have multiple interviews lined up but I'm not hopeful at this point. I have things I can sell but I'm not sure how quick I can turn them around. My wife has a job but its only a couple days per week so not enough to survive on... she has another interview on monday but no clue how it will turn out of course. We own a car and are currently planning on a shelter (car is second plan).
The questions I have for HN are: what are my best options for survival? any pro tips on how to live on the streets and still land an engineering job?
Thanks in advance guys
191 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 184 ms ] thread- Get a membership to a cheap gym so you can use their shower (and potentially wifi) if the shelter doesn't work out. In many areas it's possible to get a membership for $10-20/month. Clean your clothes in the shower with you.
- Try really hard not to feel desperate during interviews. We make worse decisions when desperate. Easier said than done :(
- You may need to buy a laptop, which will suck, but hopefully you can find something good enough and very cheap on Craigslist? If you can't get a laptop, consider public library or internet cafes (if those exist there).
- Food is going to be tough. Canned beans will become a close friend. Also canned soups/stews. Peanut butter, cheap produce. You may be able to find edible plants nearby. Free samples at grocery stores? Bulk sunflower seeds are cheap. Lifted most of these food ideas from a thread on reddit btw.
Also, you have to get to the laundromat and spend over an hour there. Not a huge expense, but not really a few cents. On the positive side the best laundromats I've found supply WiFi, multi-game arcade emulators and free coffee.
Do you remember which thread it was?
Of course, lots of these suggestions assume that a reasonably equipped kitchen and storage is available, which may limit OPs options. Hope it helps anyway.
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/EatCheapAndHealthy/
[1]: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=34...
this right here is why i don't have a job yet -- suddenly being a good programmer isn't enough, you have to be a good algorithmic competitive programmer. Code challenges with intensely difficult algorithms (i'm talking 3 to 8 per interview) are making all of you employers pass over good devs, and making me homeless. This is the new brainteaser and 5 years from now people will look back and realize its a terrible judge of someone who will be programming a fucking website.
edit: i'm not going to post my resume or portfolio here, but if you saw what i'm capable of and where i worked in the past you would be shocked that i'm having issues finding employment.
also i should note: i'm 36... but i'm sharper and know more now than when i was being paid 96 to 105k in my 20s.
This is something the HN community should really start paying attention to. You may be employed now and it may be great but something rotten is happening in the industry and it's only getting worse.
I have a MacBook Pro from circa 2013 I can donate to you if you need it. I'll make sure my email is in my profile. Otherwise, if you'd just like to speak with someone who understands (some) of what you're going through, let me know.
How about just a "solid, hard-working senior developer"? When you say "brilliant", most good, competent developers think of a truly 1 in 1000 brilliant developer we know, and think of how short we fall from that.
In truth, unless you're doing some kind of advanced machine learning or cutting edge software work, you likely don't need a brilliant developer. And indeed, looking at your site, you probably aren't doing anything of the sort.
Instead, a company like yours requires a dependable, competent, team-player.
Why not ask for that?
Edit: Jesus H Christ, is this really that controversial to merit 4 downvotes in the first 5 minutes? OK, have at it all you brilliant devs. I remember being in my early 20s, too...
Also, have you geniuses considered that the job post above is addressing a man who's a bit down on his luck at the moment? Perhaps putting up a post asking for a "brilliant" developer isn't the best approach? Unless, of course, the OP isn't the actual target of the comment, but instead he's advertising to HN at large (which is my guess).
These people have a hard time because they might have started programming from a young age and have been learning and refining their skill nonstop for over a decade but they never got a lucky break in their careers.
no one thinks that because it's pr speak. i've never met anyone deterred by "brilliant" or "ninja" or "10x" or etc.
I'm deterred from such job ads. But in fact you're right, it's not because of what I wrote above. Instead, it's because I've found a high correlation between those job ad keywords and dev work doing nothing but CRUD apps under the micromanaging eye of dysfunctional management.
But I tried to explain that in a more rational, diplomatic way, rather than just assume his company sucks.
Yes, such terms in a job description - or in my case, in initial contract meetings - are red flags for me. Red enough to either never apply or show myself out with some excuse. Because my definition of "brilliant" may not match their definition of "brilliant" in terms of capability or efficiency, and I don't want to find out how high the expectations are after the agreement's signed.
1. I asked the OP to apply - I assume he is really good.
2. I use the brilliant as a shorthand to say we need people that are very talented.
3. We need very talented people because the code we have, while it looks simple, is very challenging. I was on the Win95 core team at Microsoft - our code is more challenging.
4. We don't do brain teasers in our interviews, they are not an indicator of how effective you'll be (read Word Rules). We mostly have you walk us through your code. And we'll ask you to walk us through how you would approach certain problems.
5. Any workplace is not for everyone. We try to be upfront with applicants as to what they'll be doing here and what the culture is like here. This includes a final "interview" where I go through what they'll be facing here and answer any question of theirs I legally/ethically can. So they come in knowing what to expect.
And hey, if we're not the right place for you that just means you're looking for something different. Never let a job interview define you. And never let a series of no's get you down.
if true, this helps explain why you have a hard time finding an IT related job.
if true, this insight may help you find a job by selectively applying for IT work at civil right-ish places (EFF, small civil right-ish law firms, etc ...) as they may be less prone to discriminate on your past "offences", with the upshot that you might feel more at home in such a job than elsewhere?
Have you tried https://www.gun.io/ ?
If I recall, the last few leases I signed had clauses like a $25 late fee for up to a week overdue. And as a landlord, at least here in NH, if somebody doesn't pay immediately, and you want to get rid of them, you have to deliver a written demand for rent, which allows X number of days for response, before you can commence eviction proceedings.
OP- if this is nothing but 3 days late on rent, check your lease and your local laws. I can't imagine many places in the western world allow eviction from an actual residence over something like this.
Then you’ve never experienced the true freedom we have in the United States.
- If you don't mind camping, its an extremely cheap way to live, and a gym / YMCA will help before interviews.
- If you have any friends / family, ask them if you can crash. Have a friend who lived this way for ages.
- If it comes to it, there are often abandoned structures that are reasonable for keeping rain off. Lived in an abandoned office building for a month at one point. That one was really lucky. Had a gym, water, and electricity still!
- Apply, apply, apply. Set a goal. X applications a day, where X is probably 3+. Beat that goal every day.
- Be humble, but not desperate. If its reasonable and will pay bills, worth it.
- Be willing to move. Frankly, CO is really expensive. People scoff at AL (cur. loc.), but it has NASA, Army, most 3 letter agencies, and every gov't contractor known to man. Also, rent is $400-600 and a house can be found for $30000-40000 if you're not picky.
- Sell all your stuff. Flea markets, craigslist, ebay, whatever works.
- If you get a job - save. There is no reason to lose a job and then only have $400.
- Send me a msg (email in profile) if the AL thing sounds reasonable. Used to be in software and a contract mgr., can at least look at whats around. Can't promise, as I left to walk the earth a while back.
FYI, your email is not displayed in your profile. The "email" field in your profile is only visible to the moderators. If you want to publicly share your email address, it needs to be included in the "about" field.
In HSV case, several significant divots. NASA MSFC, Army Materiel Command (Logistics), and the Missile Defense Agency. Caveat on living here, if WWIII happens, we will get nuked.
What is the life like there? Professionally and outside of work?
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/facebook/facebook-build-7...
Average rent for a 2br is somewhere around $800, and about 3 hours from Nashville and Atlanta.
If it were me, I'd probably have both myself and my wife take whatever 'second' jobs we could (Wal-Mart, fast food, etc.) for nights/weekend income. I'd reserve my 9-5 hours for a full-press job search.
Good luck to you. Your skills are in demand, so hopefully this won't last long.
Do you have anyone you can borrow money from to cover you for a while? Family or friends? That would be the first option I would suggest.
Do you have family or friends who have a spare area you can crash to sleep at least?
Can your wife drive for uber/lyft while she is looking for a job, that can bring home some money and if you own a car that might work. That could help you get back on step 1 possibly. You might also look in Boulder, as there are a ton of jobs here she could get instantly and then quit once she finds something closer to Denver to avoid the commute.
There are some good resources here: https://www.denvergov.org/content/denvergov/en/denver-human-... *It might not hurt to call and see what options they have. There might be some city programs in this situation to get you in something for 30 to 90 days until you are back on your feet.
Another option is to camp and use the shower system someone mentioned. A tent is cheap and it is a warmer time of year to get away with that. I hope it doesn't come to that.
I salute your ethics in quitting the last job, but I would urge you next time to build a safety net and put ethics second to "survival". I can understand if they were killing or hurting people, but customer data is just a modern day problem we don't know what to do with as the definition of privacy evolves.
https://www.builtincolorado.com/jobs?f[0]=job-category_devel...
I worry their process will be slow but I want to throw that out there. I also would just mention that you quit your last job because your manager was bad, I would not mention you quit because of data privacy concerns as that can raise red flags I would imagine.
1. Food pantries will provide food. “I have a food emergency.”
2. Call the local homeless shelters, mental health clinics - anywhere that deals with indigent populations.
3. Recognize your bravery for putting ethics over money.
4. Work your way into a low-income housing situation. Many ethical thinkers live this way.
5. Don’t get paranoid or angry. You have dignity.
6. Join a church which is full of intelligent and relaxed people. I recommend Catholicism.
7. If you have to ask for something, ask for it with a smile. People want to help each other.
8. Family sticks together.
Sincerely, A programmer who lived homelessly for years
- Rent an apartment
- Don’t have a few laptops laying around
- Don’t have any savings while having no kids
Each item above, on its own, is normal but all together doesn’t make sense.
For the last 15 years you should have been making 60-200k and you obviously didn’t sink it into a house, computer hardware, or savings. Where did it all go?
That’s why this doesn’t add up, to me at least.
I’m not saying you’re lying, but that I can’t figure out how you got to this point.
None of which, I'm eager to add, are any of your goddamn business.
A cautionary tail could do a lot of good here.
Why not let something good come out of the discussion that could prevent others from ending up in this situation?
A postmortem of sorts.
I could have ended up like this guy, but I found personal finance religion when I was 28. After making six figures for six years all I had was monthly payments equal to my paycheck and not much to show for it.
It’s pathetic how many people here leap to pity. The OP wasn’t asking for it.
Also, I was not gunning for pity, nor was OP, true. Still, in such moments kind strangers on the internet who wish you well still feel good I believe.
Thanks for clearing it up!
I'm surprised you're surprised. We get similar stories on HN from time to time and they are almost always developers in America. I'm not passing judgement but it seems OP was not able to save much month to month. Earning doesn't automatically scale with years. As most here suggest, OP should resort to contacting everyone they can expect to care. If that support network falls through then they are really left alone. It is very rough to "fall off the tracks." Homeless aren't all drug abusers.
Personally I think programming is not necessarily a safe career choice here.
I remember when my now wife came to the UK for the first time "wow you have poor people too!". She had been brought up seeing postcard perfect depictions of quaint little village hamlets. But the misconception is both ways. Many people from the UK are shocked to find out that in the tropics you have rainy miserable grey overcast days - as we are brought up with postcard perfect Caribbean seas, palm tress, blue skies and full sun...
Anyway I digress, I can quite understand why someone from China would be surprised at homeless and poverty in the US
Step 2: Get your resume on linkedin, ziprecruiter, indeed.com and msg all the tech recruiters you can find on linkedin.
Step 3: Reach out to family if you have any to let you stay with them while you are doing a job search. If not see if a good friend would do that. If not see if you can at least put your wife up with one of her friends so she is safe while you look for a gig.
Also look on craigslist for part time programming jobs. Not great money but it is something. Ask for half up front so you don't get stiffed.
Apply to everything here: https://www.indeed.com/q-Computer-Programming-l-Colorado-job...
Number one reason why I don't use Go Fund me. Step 1 should be getting your shit together not relying on other people.
I am disgusted how selfish such a huge chunk of this country has become... half this country can't remember what empathy is, and they have slowly destroyed our social safety net. I want the government to do more to help people in this type of position get back on their feet so that they can live a good life, and contribute to our country and tax base. I want my taxes to go UP to pay for that, in conjunction with lowering the massive defense spending we have.
If you are lucky enough to have parents or family who can help you out awesome, but not everyone has that.
If you are lucky enough to never make a misstep so deep you can't recover on your own, awesome for you, not everyone has that.
What do you want him to do? Build a time machine, go back in time, and not make a series of mistakes that helped lead here?
Not that I disagree with your overall point, but while I might be being overly sensitive here, I think it's implicit that 9 times out of 10, when someone refers to "half the country", what they mean to say is "the half of the country not affiliated with the political party to which I am affiliated."
Yes, there are selfish people, but largely, that selfishness is not evenly divisible by party line, and the castigation of "the others" should be minimized, in my opinion, as most Americans, left, right, or center, are honestly trying to do what they feel is right.
As it sits, Republicans are statistically quite charitable[1][2], to the point that 9 of the 10 most charitable states are red states.
Yes, perhaps they see a different role for government than you do, and yes, I think that the parent to your comment was indeed acting selfishly, but that doesn't necessarily conflate to partisan beliefs, nor should we attempt to correlate individual behavior to partisan causation.
[1] - https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/19/giving-back-_n_378...
[2] - https://www.nationalreview.com/the-home-front/which-politica...
We absolutely should do more to castigate people by party line, especially when their beliefs are based on propaganda. The Republican party is destroying the future of this country. The Republican media and formal political party have convinced the majority of its members that people who need help are lazy welfare queens, and that government can't do anything efficiently. It is a great narrative, and it is not factually true.
Charity is ineffective, have you looked at how they spend their money and how much goes to fund-raising and operations? Very few charities actually do anything meaningful. Government is what does the hard work that keeps states and the country running. Not to mention the number of funds given to charities with dubious missions, such as convincing women not to have abortions, or megachurches trying to buy a jet so that Christ comes back and the world ends...
Charities are badly run band-aids that are trying to hold the country together. It isn't a good thing, it is another sign of how far we have sunk in taking care of our people. That is money that should have been collected via taxes and actually deployed to help educate people, help them afford health care, etc etc.
I would urge everyone to start castigating people by party line before it is too late.
There are Republicans who support charity, a strong social safety net, and taking care of their friends and neighbors.
Do you want to stand on the deck of the titanic pointing out all the little boats that are still floating or talk about the HUGE boat that is sinking under your feet?
Why don't you stick with the approach you took in your other top-level comment, which I thought was pretty great:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17317062
8 years of a president talking reasonably got us the rise of the alt-right.
I'm all for belligerence and not letting people weasel their way out of support for disgusting beliefs.
Actions speak a lot louder than words. If you vote republican you absolutely stand behind those things.
Extremely low.
The OP wasn’t asking for charity either.
>What do you want him to do?
Probably what I’d do. Go get ANY job. Landscaper, McDonald’s, whatever pays the bills.
There are a lot of lifestyle/travellers on there, but also people doing it out of necessity.
If they're not asking you to do something criminal (merely something that you find unethical), start looking for a new job and quit when you have a firm offer lined up.
Are you someplace you can drive for Uber or Lyft? It's not great money, but you can probably earn enough in the month you have left to buy a cheap laptop and pay for food, a cell phone, and a gym membership after you get evicted, which should improve your ability to keep applying for jobs.
but if you run out of other options, and can find your way to the Annapolis, Maryland area, I've at least got a relatively empty basement that you're welcome to occupy until you get back on your feet.
This would also put you in commuting range to Annapolis, Baltimore, or DC, which are all fairly ripe with job opportunities for talented engineers.
- Customer support and/or pc maintenaince or similar is seriously in need for a lot of small-medium companies. This can lead to coding very easily. See around where you live and note how many companies are. ALL OF THEM NEED SOMEONE LIKE YOU. Not all of them will say yes, but well, you could try!.
- Do you have other abilities san coding? Having any job look like is more important than having the job you want.
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I don't know how things are in USA but where I live (Colombia) is kind of easy to survive - and VERY well- selling street food. One time, I make a bit more than my prior jobs selling tasting meat (was not unemployed but wanna get a bit more). I know someone in California that sell spicy food in jars and live very well.
My mother is Chef and have helped some friends in bootstrap a food bussiness around easy-to-made food. One of them, sell Hogao (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogao) in jars and made to support his family just with this. Their situations was even more desperate, for sure.
You could put to advantage you/wife extra amount of time. As my naive understanding of the USA situation, nobody have time!. Can you provide a service like prepare lunch boxes, take care of pets, clean houses, or anything similar?