Ask HN: Advice for finding an entry-level remote job?
I realize this isn't super on topic but I also feel like this is the best place I know of to ask for this advice, so here goes. I need some entry-level, remote-based work. What should I do? Help desk work seems the most promising / practical, but I haven't been able to find anything yet. The remote jobs I see posted are nearly all for higher-end positions.
I live in the poorest region of the United States, but I do the best with what I have. I’ve worked on my family’s farm and done a couple stints at retail beauty supply shops that friends own. I helped open two of those shops. That’s the extent of my non-existent resume. Given a chance to interview, I believe I would do ok. Maybe even exceed expectations for the sort of job I'm looking for.
I need to work remotely for family reasons. I have a special-needs sister and I look after my youngest brother. They are what's most important to me, which is why I don't want to relocate. I have another brother who was helping me, but he accepted a job offer far away. Now I am the only relative near who'll be able to care and look over them. I have time for a full-time job, though, and I need a way to support us.
I do have a job offer that would require me to move by March 13th. The problem is that it is far from my family, and with my brother gone, I would be leaving them on their own. The job is at is an auto body repair shop paying minimum wage. I would be stressed every day worrying about my family back home. What I want is a way to work that lets me stay at home, fulfill my family responsibilities, and make money to keep things afloat.
I am a techie at heart. I’m a Linux/MacOS person, but I easily adapt to other technologies. My first PC was a Compaq Presario that ran Windows 3.1. My father saw the ‘future’ in it, and he hoped I would be part of that future. To use it, you needed to enjoy torture to some extent. Still, it sucked me in. Something about that mysterious DOS prompt promised treasures if only I learned its magic. A few years later, I was dual-booting an ugly Dell machine (Windows 98 SE and Ubuntu). In between that time, my school still had an Apple IIe on which I loved playing Oregon Trail. I bought one a few years back for nostalgic reasons, but I had to leave it behind at my old residence. I miss it a lot. I hope it got a good home.
I am currently working through the freeCodeCamp course and intend to pick up Eloquent JavaScript by Marijn Haverbeke soon. I use VS Code and Spacemacs as my editors. I google like a madman. I have fun playing ukulele and guitar, and I’m teaching my youngest brother about the different parts of a Raspberry Pi. Oh, and I love to read. I am a habitual reader. There’s a lot more, but those are the kind of things that interest me.
I learn quickly, I am flexible, and due to working in customer service (beauty supply shops) I have a calm and understanding demeanor. I am a friendly person and I am always willing to find a solution, even when a solution seems impossible.
I would be grateful for any advice, and I am particularly thankful for dang's / Daniel's time in editing this to be a better Ask HN submission.
I can be contacted at AskHNremote2021@gmail.com and I can provide my GitHub as well, which is mostly documentation editing. I have been told I am a competent writer, if that counts for anything.
Edit: I know that this is an unusual Ask HN post and I am grateful to anyone who takes the time to read through it. I'm curious how others in my situation managed to find remote work. I feel lost in all of this. To say that this has been a stressful time would be an understatement, but I'm turning to HN in the small chance the right person sees this and can give me suitable advice or point me in the right direction. I have always found comfort in this community, so this is where I've turned. Thank you.
211 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 134 ms ] threadAlso, there's nothing stopping you from making things now, getting them online, and building on that experience. With not a lot of experience, I called up places and asked, "Do you need a website?" And got started that way.
Good luck!
Just my $0.02.
But if they're accepted by the repo owner, they're probably not nonsense. And projects need better documentation. If the OP was applying for a junior 'tech' role of some sort, and demonstrated that experience of revising documentation to be up to date and improved... it's a step up from some people I've seen over the years (who leave behind bad/broken docs, for example).
This is the kind of thing full time engineers typically don't enjoy doing, so docs stagnate and can quickly become out of date or inaccurate.
It's super useful if someone is used to a routine where they know how to dig into a project, find errors/inaccuracies, and work to improve them.
https://www.indeed.com/q-Technical-Writer-Editor-jobs.html
https://www.flexjobs.com/jobs/technical-writing
https://www.upwork.com/freelance-jobs/technical-editing/
https://www.fiverr.com/search/gigs?query=writing%2Bproof%2Br...
You can also contact agencies like Toptal and Robert Half.
If you want a different type of job then you need to have evidence or a convincing story that you have literally done that job before, either as an intern or through training/education or as projects on your own. But the fact that you have literally done proofreading and documentation editing in a technical context and there is a record on Github seems to be concrete proof that should be possible to leverage into getting paid work doing the same thing.
https://github.com/malgamves/CommunityWriterPrograms
In the process of doing this type of work, you surely will learn new things and probably will help you figure out exactly what you might want to focus on / become an expert at / etc. You'll come to understand systems from a user's perspective which always good for developers.
Regarding finding work, I’d go on remote-focused job boards and look for any junior support or QA roles. Email the hiring team directly saying hi along with your CV to try beat any filtering systems. If you can’t find many of these, or work through all the ones you can find, try messaging small companies hiring onsite and see if they’re up for remote work anyway.
Persistence goes a long way, expect to be told no a load of times but I hope you’ll be able to land something. Good luck!
It's also important to do a bit of research and understand the huge variety of jobs which will come with titles like 'Remote Support' or 'Remote Support Analyst'. An IT Helpdesk job, a Software Application Support job, and a Zappos customer service job might all share the exact same generic title. So do some googling to figure out what is what, make yourself a list of titles that match the jobs you're looking for, then troll the job boards for roles with that title. Based on the post, I would target jobs with titles like "Application Support Analyst". If you search for remote only with no geographic constraints, you will find an absolute ton of jobs.
As a former recruiter, I think it's worth noting that job hunting in this way is absolutely a numbers game. When I was looking for IT work with little/no experience, I would generally get my first interview after ~50 applications. My point is that you shouldn't get your hopes up with each application, and you shouldn't feel let down if you don't hear back on a given job. If you go in knowing it will be a bit of grind, it will be much easier on you. Set yourself a goal of 2-3 applications a day, and get that many done, every single day. Given the huge number of fully remote roles out there, I'm confident that you would be hard pressed to apply for 100 of them without getting an offer.
With that in mind, get your resume all set, write out a couple of cover letter (your writing is solid, so this will help. But don't write an original letter for each application.) and then apply for everything that looks like a fit. Ignore experience requirements for roles that aren't "senior" or "manager" roles.
Best of luck!
Focus on achieving some initial level of “proof” that you can perform in an entry-level software (or help desk) role. If you can’t ever visit the office, you’re competing against a worldwide set of candidates, but you can still bring something that distinguishes you. That you work in US time zone and make it easy for someone to employ you are surprisingly strong benefits to an employer who has so far only employed US people.
If you want to break into programming, go after that rather than help desk or sanding body panels. If your next best alternative is moving far away, renting a place there, and doing auto body work for minimum wage, you can probably come out after-everything even by staying put and doing a mix of online learning and even terribly paying gigs on fiverr/ upwork/ etc.
Once you get to the point where you have the basics down and are the equivalent of a boot camp grad, you have more options for full-time employment. Even at bootcamp grad level, most companies are losing money on you for a year, so before that point, it’s a really tough sell.
Maybe consider Lambda School as well. They’ve got a repayment program that scales with income, so if you don’t manage to make the turn and break into coding somehow, you’re pretty much off the hook after some time. (Obviously read their terms, don’t rely on my summary.)
I applaud your focus on your family; I’d keep that out of the interview process. If I’m hiring an entry-level remote employee, I don’t want to worry that they’re taking care of a family member most of the time and trying to fit my work into the gaps. If that’s what is happening invisibly behind the scenes, great, but it’s irrelevant or negative to the interview.
“I have strong ties here and am only open to remote work” is all I need to know as an interviewer.
Best of luck; once you hit the “I am at a boot camp grad level or better”, we have remote-only positions available (as do many companies). Provided you’re in a state where we have the ability to hire, I’d be very happy to have you apply.
Best of luck on your journey!
This is really important. Don't think about employers "taking a chance" on you or having their hearts warmed by your story. (I mean, it might actually work when the OP is hitting the top of HN but in general...) They want non-risky choices.
Since a sibling comment already covered the other thing I was going to say, I'm going to focus on this part, as it's 100% correct.
Moving away to take a minimum wage job is most likely a trap. You will not be making enough money to both support yourself and do anything meaningful for your family, and you're going to be physically tired after working 8+ hours a day. It's definitely not a good long term solution, and it seems pretty terrible in the short term, too. Even taking a minimum wage job locally seems like a better solution to me, if at all possible (I did see you mentioned you live in the "poorest region of the United States.")
I think I would start by focusing on what the minimum amount of money you need to make to support your family, then seeing how you can make that much remotely. That can be whatever, because it's just a stepping stone allowing you to move on to finding a remote job that not only lets you take care of your family, but also lets you get ahead.
You've got a hard road ahead of you, OP, but it's one I've been down myself. For the longest time, I never had more than a few hundred bucks to my name. My net worth was deeply negative due to student loans until very recently. Even though I'm in a much better place than that now, it's still been 3 steps forward, 2 steps back for me. At the minimum, you will need a lot of perseverance, a little luck, a dash of chutzpah, and a willingness to keep improving yourself.
Feel free to shoot me an email with your resume or Github/LinkedIn, and I'll send back a few openings I know of right now if it seems a good fit. My email is in my profile.
Wishing you well on your job hunt!
Obviously you didn't lay out all the reasons why you couldn't move, and I don't expect you to, but I'd also REALLY strongly consider the implications of what a steady, well paying job can do for a family. Relocation opens up a world of opportunities for you, which opens up support and services for your family (paid and otherwise) that just aren't available in the poorest places. You don't have to be away from the people you care for if you can bring them along. I understand that leaving a support structure, even a flawed one, may not be possible, but think about that REALLY hard before you rule it out, especially if you're young. Some initial pain may transform lives. There's a reason so may people move away from the places they grow up. Plus, if you move for your first job, you always have the option of moving back after a year or two if it doesn't work out once you've established yourself in the career, which would make finding remote work much easier.
That being said, the reality of job market these days might be that entry level positions are too competitive and this just isn't practical in which case getting your foot in the door with a QA role is still a much better option than nothing. But I would say it is a fairly indirect route to where you want to go.
Sharing from my anecdotal experience, if you’d prefer an environment where you can grow beyond manual testing (QA Engineer) and automated testing (SDET), look for positive cues: “QA as a role” or cross-functional teams or embedded QA within development teams. Ask for stories (examples) about a team member who made a lateral move, how leadership looks for this potential and supports the transition.
I know a guy who's a senior QA and has been writing automated tests in Python for over 10 years. He can't get hired as a developer because of this "pigeonhole effect." It's nothing to do with his personality, either. He gets hired in QA with no issues.
I've done development and testing, and I would characterize QA as "same job, less pay". In both roles you struggle with vague requirements, lots of edge cases, and unrealistic deadlines. It is surprisingly difficult to get out of the QA pigeonhole. People assume the job is easier, and that you're not as capable as a developer.
I have the misfortune of working at a place where some "bright" person got the bright idea of "eliminating" the QA budget because "developers should be able to do everything a QA can". QA was dissolved and existing QA specialists were told that they had to learn how to program, or get lost. The product quality went down the tube and the place got grief from (Fortune-500) customers who write fat checks that run into the millions for support alone. That has been a train wreck in slow motion.
The simple fact is that you can maybe get away without separate QA staff for a something like an internal website, but for anything else, assuming that developers will test their work and put enough thought into even the most common use-cases and certify that the system as a whole works is delusional.
But I question this bit: "QA Requires a pretty different mindset, one which developers lack entirely."
I don't think that's true. I've done both roles, successfully, at various times. The key, I've found, is that a developer can't test their own work. Developers of a project should also not be put in charge of testing each-others' work if they are working in close capacities. A QA strategy that begins and ends with "test your own stuff", "code/peer reviews" and "write unit tests" is going to reach a quality cliff as the complexity of the software increases. You can get away with it, sometimes, but it doesn't scale.
I'm not sure what the cause of this is, or if it can be improved (it can, but can it be completed eliminated?). It's a similar phenomenon to proof-reading your own work. You mentally add words that aren't there. You follow happy-paths in your software because you know what they are; you don't "misuse" your UI enough[0].
[0] One I think of often was when I wrote a UI for a desk conferencing device. I tested every aspect of it and it was returned to me shortly thereafter when the QA guy joined/exited about 15 "on demand" meetings as rapidly as possible throwing the UI into a state that couldn't be recovered from without rebooting the device.
Developers can be reasonably objective when it comes to writing small, self-contained unit tests and some amount of test automation, but beyond that, where serious QA begins, developers are generally too much in love with their creations to distance themselves from them and view them objectively.
You can see this pattern with authors who become (commercially) successful. The publisher, whose most valuable service is editing the author's work, starts becoming too deferential, causing the author's work to become muddled and flabby. A good editor is often the only one standing between mediocrity and greatness...
This place cracks me up sometimes :)
Yep, QA is a must for complex systems.
I write for an OS that runs on a service provider router and can assure you that no dev team can come close to understanding how to approach testing the entire product. So QA becomes invaluable when it’s time to run system-level (integration) tests that tie multiple features together.
Of course, there is always a lot of stuff you can automate at the system level. I think the QA and test teams do a good job of identifying these areas, though.
QA is “the system should do this; does it do it?”
Dev is “the system should do this; make it do it.”
I’m not putting one above the other as both functions are needed for most successful companies. I am saying they’re not the same job.
More seriously there is a lot of differences between the two tracks but a QA person who can write clear and repeatable reproduction steps will save a company a whole bunch of dev hours and doing so usually requires a pretty good understanding of why the system is actually breaking.
It’s already assumed that the product has certain features. And that those features work a certain way. But what if you did something else, that was unexpected. Then does it break the system?
As a QA Engineer, your job is to find that fault, and break it. Because you are possibly the last line of defense, before that software goes out into the real world.
However it's been a sad reality from my experience in the industry that the average QA engineer is a less capable coder than the average developer. There could be many self-reinforcing reasons for that which includes lower pay. There are few things good developers wish for more than equal or superior QA engineers who make developers' job writing quality code much easier.
With that in mind, I think OP immediately has a shot on job boards for such a position if priced correctly — especially with the added perk of great written English / better communication.
EDIT: that’s not to say they should not learn to code; agree with your general sentiment, but I think growing in that sense shouldn’t be a barrier to entry.
Producing good work in your current position and having great communication skills can get you very far relatively fast in my personal experience.
Finding jobs through HN has worked for me in the past, in the search just type {month} {year} and look through the whos hiring threads ctrl-f for remote, look through the companies listings and see if they got anything new even if the post is a couple months old! HN can be a cheatcode to getting an interview rather than cold applying through monster.com or some shit like that.
Good luck!
https://weworkremotely.com/
https://www.tecla.io/
https://remote.co/
https://www.flexjobs.com/
And if you're up for it, I highly encourage trying to try Zapier which is an amazing company and has terrific remote recruitment. Even if you don't get the job, great experience.
https://zapier.com/jobs/
I've just check their job openings. In their application form they are asking questions about race, ethnicity, gender,... Is it legal to ask such questions and what is the relevance of such questions?
So the way we are trying to solve this problem is by requiring all companies to collect demographic information on their candidates, and store it somewhere. No one involved with the hiring (theoretically) will see your answers, they just go into a drawer somewhere.
Down the road, the government will ask the company to pull out all the records they collected and look at them in aggregate. If the company is not hiring a diverse enough workforce, there are supposed to be some kind of consequences.
So essentially, companies are required to ask, but you are not required to answer. There will always be an option to say "I prefer not to answer" or something.
I started writing paid articles on medium on developing mobile apps: 1. My first 2 weeks doing articles daily has given me: - 90% of my articles curated by medium staff for inclusion in people's feeds that do not follow me. - inclusion the weekly FlutterForce Newsletter every week. Yes at this point pay is low at about $5 total but it gets interesting in that it's the same ratio of free value and small paid value as you would do with free features in a mobile and paid features in the same app.
If you already have a small audience to grab somewhere which for you seems to be the case AND if you can make the stimulus checks yet coming stretch IT MIGHT BE THE PERFECT REMOTE FIT.
In my case I know it will even though I have reddit karma of several K in the flutterdev subeddit that it will take me 6 months to get the 500k monthly views on medium that generate on average $25k and so that plus me self publishing my book in 6 months is what is allow me to leverage to other things.
I cannot promise that you will also have the 500k monthly views on medium in 6 months and $25k monthly but I think you could get close.
As I get to the 500k monthly I also plan to start developing video course which will put me at the million in views and revenues.
Oh yeah, the best writing tool for dev notes and articles and books is a tool that has been highlighted on HackerNews before namely Zettlr.
If you feel the need to reach out my email is in my HN profile.
Have you considered they might benefit from moving to a new location as well? Better schools and services for instance.
I took the first job I could get as a programmer in 2010 at the first place that would accept me... making 21k right after getting my 2 year degree. I now work for a major bank as a Senior Programmer with 10+ years of experience.
If you can afford getting paid under market (minimum wage job you're taking? sounds like thats a yes)? Getting that first job can be worth it in the long run.
Put out a hundred applications and expect 2 interviews. Success is consistency and expectations that you'll have to work that much harder to get that first job.
I learned javascript + basic web development stuff like everyone else, because that's where the most beginner resources are. But the job offers I actually got were due to my learning Java (with some Java enterprise edition mixed in) and having some book knowledge about it. There are vast swaths of industries that will help you enter the middle class, and then some, by working on their old Java or C# applications. A ton of career advice out there is targeted towards the 1% who are shooting for Silicon Valley. We don't need that.
Also try to get proficient at Leetcode and come off as intelligent. A lot of your competition is computer science majors.
Lastly, and this might involve some conscious or unconscious deception: Make it sound like you intend to move to wherever the job location is, post-COVID. This works better if you are already in that state. Once you land the first job, maybe they'll offer the remote option eventually; otherwise keep applying to a couple jobs per day; this job search will be slightly easier and you will actually have the leverage to ask for a remote option when it comes up.
The second job I landed in tech was a FAANG. I completely agree that you shouldn't target FAANG type jobs for your first job. Not because of the other applicants. I could care less about the other applicants.
Where I work and do tech interviews (AWS), it's not about the other applicants. We don't look for the best person out of a pool of applicants. There's one question and one question only: Is this person better than half of the people currently doing this job.
If you're better than half of the people currently doing the job, you're hired. If not, you're not. And the issue is that it's really hard to have the breadth of knowledge necessary to meet that bar without previous experience.
I work in premium support for security. To be better than half the people already here you have to know the following really well: Linux or Windows; Networking; DNS; Encryption; SSL/TLS; Network/OS Troubleshooting; Web App Vulnerabilities; DDoS attacks and mitigation; and more. It'd be very hard for anyone who hasn't done this professionally to be exposed to enough tech to have that sort of depth.
1) not be an asshole; look at their leadership principles and figure out how you resonate with them; answer honestly if you never did that
2) beat the technical questions. they are a proxy for skills and experiences
I used and recommend Leetcode for #2... for entry level I don't think you should need the paid tier.
If there were a Leetcode for not being an asshole, I would recommend the paid tier.
100% agree with everything you said, although depending on the Org 'entry level' can mean 'just graduated from college'. In Premium Support, at least, they're always tinkering with their recruiting models.
I was hired as entry level with 1 year experience at a startup. These days, that entry level job is reserved for recent college graduates or people getting out of the military. They wouldn't slot me as entry level today for recruiting/interviewing purposes.
Not sure how AWS handles entry level software engineering positions.
I know it takes a lot of effort as well as luck in landing that first entry-level job so all I can say is to keep knocking, but also be prepared to show something tangible. Anyone can talk all day about their awesome work ethics but it's another thing to be able to prove it by presenting a polished (for a junior) software.
I've known several people – usually in their early 20s – who claim to be smart and motivated. Most of them are smart. But when it comes time to actually build something, they'd rather play video games. So how do you distinguish yourself from the video gamers? Build something. Anything.
If you want a full stack job, build a Twitter clone (with limited features) in React (or ReactNative) and Django. Even if you don't use those tools when getting hired, it'll show people that you have what it takes to do the work. Both React(Native) and Django have the added benefits of being in high demand, and extremely well documented.
There's actually quite a lot of piecemeal consulting relating to JS snippets on company websites that might be a better fit than support or more traditional development.
I mean things like e-commerce, SEO, form integrations, cookie consent forms, etc. If you talk to small businesses they will have a strong tendency to use wordpress with plugins to try to manage these things with as little coding as possible.
But often they end up needing a little JS/HTML debugging help and if you look at dev support of companies like Google, Stripe, MailChimp, etc, as you develop skills debugging JS, and try to debug websites then you'll actually be building skills that are normally farmed out by the larger orgs to consultants at pretty good rates.
Similarly, you can also do a lot in spreadsheets, i.e. in JavaScript in Google spreadsheets to do more business related tasks and it can be easier to find small businesses in your area that want to pay for projects to organize their inventory, integrate numbers scraped from different tools, etc.
At any rate, I just thought those might be some ideas that would be a bit different and might have some more local stepping stones even in a pretty small economy as well as remote consulting possibilities.
Documentation writing is something that can get you in the door at interesting places. It can also give you time with technology in a less pressured environment to learn it and switch to more technical jobs.
Bigger companies have roles like this, but they are obscured because documentation writer is not a sexy title, and the role is more than writing. It can be part testing features or providing product feedback ("I tried writing about this feature but it's so complicated. Will people even use it?")
To work out some places to try applying I started with Microsoft. I'd ignore locations, even when listed because companies haven't updated their tools to reflect remote or are stupidly optimistic. Even if you got fired because you wouldn't work onsite at the end of 2021, the experience would give you a serious boost. How I found the roles:
1. Searched for "Microsoft documentation". Found docs.microsoft.com. 2. Searched for docs.microsoft.com on jobs.microsoft.com. 3. Found "content developer" roles listed. This is the job title stuff I was talking about. At the core it's tech writing. 4. Pivoted to searching "content developer" - https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/search-results?keywords=...
Repeat that for other companies and you'll find different opportunities. There may also be contracting roles but it's harder to get into those initially. Writing docs for open source projects associated with these companies can help to make contacts. Red Hat is another place to consider for this reason.
It's important to have a portfolio of work. If you apply for a doc writer role you'd need to find examples that map onto what they produce. Also, look for opportunities to critique their work to some degree and be ready to suggest how you might improve their current work. Docs are becoming more interactive and interesting too, so any suggestions on how to make them more interesting will find more ears.
However, what you have going for you is that you can speak and write English well. You do not have to (and should not mention) where you live, or your own circumstance. Most people are looking for someone cheap to do short projects.
The goal here is to bootstrap your experience with paid projects, even if the pay is low. You use that to then get in front of larger projects or part time work.
Pick a tech platform or a platform family and stick with it, at least initially. You’re looking for projects that, after completing them, will get you in the door with stuff that pays well.
Anything that you develop that you can put into github, you should. Usuallly, contracts are done as work-for-hire. You might be able to negotiate keeping copyright. You might not. However, tools and scripts you write to assist with it should get posted. Your hobby projects should go there too.
Now, to talk specifically about your strengths. If you love teaching and you are good at writing, one thing you can do is to start blogging about your projects, or writing tutorials. It is a kind of psychological or marketing jujutsu. Teaching something implies expertise and authority, so long as the content is competent. You can even frame this as documenting your experience learning something. Just make sure that you brand this as you authoring the thing.
Last, give some thought to speciality. If you are known to be able to solve problems in specific areas, people come to you. Some people write web apps. Some people do devops/sre/infrastructure. Some people write low latency multiplayer game servers.
Take on a freelance contract and kick butt on it while simultaneously looking for the next contract. Eventually you will will either get offered a position by one of your clients, or you'll have enough of a resume to start applying in other places (or you'll like freelancing enough to stick with it).
A couple of years ago, I farmed out some small web design, programming, and proofreading jobs through Fiverr. The price competition among the people who bid for the jobs was brutal—people were bidding from some of the lowest-income countries in the world and seemed desperate for work—but it soon became clear that I would just be wasting my time if I went with the lowest bidders. Your writing skills will do a lot to attract jobs at decent pay. Good luck!
OP, you're trying to do 2 things here: (1) get a job, and (2) learn a trade. Those are different, though related pursuits.
The ideal is you can find a job that will teach you the trade; in other words, you're looking for an apprenticeship. There are often gov programs for tech apprenticeships (typically state level, so I can't link a definitely-relevant one), but [1] may be a place to start. Also just google "[state] IT Apprenticeship." There are also corporate programs at IBM and Accenture you should look at.
Second, even if you can't get the tech job immediately/this round, don't give up. Google needs IT support folks enough that they started a new education program to teach people enough to work for them [2]. If you have to get a different job, look at that. It is a bit pricey at $49/month, but Google says they'd consider completion to be equivalent to a bachelors.
Finally, every CV you submit should have a cover letter, consisting of the paragraphs you wrote in this post from "I am a techie at heart" to "solution seems impossible."
Good luck!
[1] https://www.apprenticeship.gov/apprenticeship-industries/inf...
[2] https://www.coursera.org/professional-certificates/google-it...
Upwork has been a place I use to get some gigs, some of my best clients actually.
Good luck!
Instructions on how to bootstrap a software portfolio:
Pick a language (sounds like you chose JS which would be my pick as well), buy a copy of cracking the coding interview, make a leetcode.com account, make a codepen.io account, and get to work.
If you’re smart and dedicated you can teach yourself this stuff and these are the best tools to help you in my opinion.
Spend your time solving problems on leetcode and then utilizing these techniques in codepen portfolio pieces.
In my opinion with serious dedication you can have a junior swe worthy resume and portfolio put together within a year.
[edit] since the question inevitably comes up with JS in my opinion you should not spend any time focusing on front end frameworks. Learn Vanilla JS, HTML and CSS, you will blow your interviewers away if you can solve their problems without a framework and it is overhead you don’t need as a beginner.
This is how I got my first job in the industry. I built software and websites to solve problems that I personally found useful. Though the solutions were (in retrospect) rather unpolished, they were good enough that a team saw some potential and were generous enough to take a chance on me.
In my opinion this is a pretty bad advice and I see a lot of entry level programmers struggling for a long time because of this. A basic algorithms and data struture book (something like Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen, and Data Structures by Mark A Weiss) is a must before jumping into leetcode/cracking the coding interview. One needs to have a foundation before diving straight to interview problems.
Learning JS would be my pick too. In fact, there are coding schools/bootcamps that also make this their #1 pick.
Learn JS, HTML, CSS. Play on codepen, make things. Once you've got that down then you're ready to tackle cracking the coding interview and get that job.
It's hard for us vets too you know. With ever increasing requirements, frameworks, tools to learn. We also practice this make stuff in order to stay relevant. Coding is a life-time of learning (new frameworks, new languages, new ways of doing things) and is very rewarding. Graphic Design is as well in the right brain category of work. Web needs both. Right brained people, left brained people, new coders to grow teams, old coders to mentor and lead those teams.
Either way, either path you choose - Backend or Frontend, there's never been a better time to learn this from online resources in the comfort of your PJs.
If you're applying to somewhere small it's less important to demonstrate you're already a good developer, and more important to demonstrate that you're interested in learning what the company can teach you, you're a decent human being who the company will want to be part of the team, and that you're not going to give up after a few weeks. Tools like leetcode won't teach you those things.
To be honest I don't know how without any prior experience or graduating from a top uni you would get an interview at a FAANG in the first place.
It’s irritating as fck that these FANG companies are so brain dead, that this is all that they can focus on.
Sure, algorithmic thinking is valuable, but linear programming and complexity theory has no bearing on 99% of all web development jobs that require JavaScript and in this context I think this fetishisation of Informatics Olympiad style puzzles is the wrong advice for someone trying to enter the field. You do not need an in-depth understanding of computer science to get started with programming or survive in the field, especially not in an enterprise environment. I met Java developers who I suspected didn't even know what class is to be honest. But people like this can thrive at big corps.
In the first year of university I had Prolog, EBNF and partial derivatives, theoretical foundations of computing, linear algebra and stochastics but how much of that stuff do you really need when programming a UI? The complexity lies elsewhere, understanding business requirements, talking to people, avoiding technical debt by talking PMs out of weird requirements, structuring your application in a modular fashion, staying up to date with the eco-system etc.
I agree that focusing on HTML, CSS and vanilla Javascript before jumping into React, Vue or whatever is a good idea tho. For frontend development job, the best thing in my view would be a solid understanding of the web fundamentals + experience in one of the big three frameworks. Outside of that, I think there are probably a lot of jobs where being able to just work with Wordpress templates is good enough tbh.
Anyways, when I'm hiring "juniors" or I'm looking for something that tells me the person a) actually likes programming b) has some demonstrated talent (problem solving, compositional thinking, whatever you want to call it) and is able and willing to learn and c) is able to work together with people (which is the biggest problem with self-taught solo-devs, not having worked in teams before) d) is not an asshole
It may be the perfect match for you -- but all I want to say is, if you get frustrated with it, you're not alone! Don't be afraid to try a different resource to get started.
However, I've revisited the book and I enjoy it a lot more after becoming more familiar with the language