Ask HN: How to get back in employment market after working on side projects?
I've spent several years working on side projects and would like to return to remote work. I have a bit of management experience and a bit of coding experience. I think the employment gap is hard to explain for either role. What is the best way for me to start doing remote work?
184 comments
[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 200 ms ] threadYou could even put them on your CV and close the gap, work is work. Being able to show you can build something on your own is a big + in many ways.
Developers are in demand, so it would not surprise me if a gap doesn't matter in any way.
Maybe just try to apply to something. Even if you don't get hired it might give you some pointers what you need to focus on to get back to it.
I think you mean
"just repeatedly throw your resume into a black hole"
What percentage of each week was spent:
• designing, coding, or otherwise building the product • selling or marketing • researching the market and interviewing customers • other
Showing you have a passion for a field/tech. etc. will probably be a plus.
How would you explain all this work if you were hired by a small company to build them? You wouldn't hesitate to claim the years working on these interesting projects as valuable years and part of your career growth and progression.
We tend to downplay things we do or build ourselves, as if the very fact that another person (a boss) tells us to do something makes it immediately more valuable than if we choose to do that something ourselves.
It doesn't. The app you built because you chose to has just as much value as the app you built because someone paying you a monthly check told you to build it.
Wrap your 'side projects' inside a business and claim the credit for all that work.
But yeah they won't care about the crappy products since all the companies you interview with are doing the same, honestly the real followup question would be what do you do about references
If you have enough experience for a recruiter to respond at all, none of that extracurricular stuff matters
But that “extracurricular stuff” is exactly what op has been spending their time doing for the past years.
You don’t?
I never send my GitHub links either. If I am coding a side project and I think it has business potential I am unlikely to start with open source and if it doesn't have business potential, I wouldn't bother. Also if I am building something on the side, code is likely to be rushed and seemingly horrible.
I have no idea what in GitHub was written by the owner itself, what was copied, how long it took them etc.
Anyway, there is no reason to spend the time looking at what people have done on GitHub. Once you make the final five or ten candidates, we could honestly use sheer chance to decide and end up just fine. The only reason we don’t do that, is because it would be disrespectful to the applicants, but the interviews are as much an opportunity for them to figure out if they want to work with us once they’ve met us, as it is for us to do the same.
Hiring people once you move past a certain skill level is much more about finding a common fit, so that you can continue having the good culture that you have already established.
It’s not that I think you are wrong to look at github though. It’s just that I don’t feel it’s really ever worth the resources you need to allocate to get a proper picture. I feel the same way about the coding interview, it’s just a waste or everyone’s time. I mean, how can you tell if their GitHub profiles aren’t doctored? If it was too clean or too good, I’d personally be suspicious why they’d work for us.
It's just a little attitude thing that makes so much difference. The way salaries work, they probably don't get 5x salary so they are extremely valuable for the company and to find in general.
If you just look at general performance, resumes and things like that you might just get "rest and vest" types.
Really? Because that’s not what our data shows on it. It shows specifically that regardless of what we submit applicants to won’t matter. Maybe we’re just bad at hiring, but with 25 years of data from a very broad range of job types (public sector) we can at least be comfortable with the knowledge that everyone else sucks as much as us.
I get your point though. Some engineers are more valuable than others, but the thing is, that it’s not a constant and there are no real way to make sure you both attract and keep them.
We employ an engineer who just might be the countries leading techie on ADFS and how it plays into our national and EU vases strategies for NSIS certifiably authentication. With a background as a bouncer, I’m not sure how many places would have guess that when he was first hired.
I’m another such story though in a different manner. I used to be real rockstar developer, and a real workhorse. This was way before I got into management and long before I had children. Because when I did have children it turned out that may undiagnosed ADHD could no longer fit into the responsibilities of adult life and I worked myself into first a nice range of stress, then anxiety and then a depression. Now I never work more than 37 hours a week unless there is a big event, like elections, and when there is, I make sure to not-work the extra hours after wards. If you had hired me the year before my first daughter was born, you would have gotten the workhorse with a very high degree of both creativity and getting things to actually do something useful for the business end. A year later you would have been sitting with a depression stricken employee who was on partial sick-leave for 9 months.
I understand the dream of course, but unless you can show me some data on someone who figured out how to actually purposefully hire the dream employee, I’m personally going to consider it a dream. An unhealthy one even, because almost nobody is ever really irreplaceable in an enterprise organisation. Sure the loss of some employees are felt harder than others, but the truth is that IBM could stop selling consumer PCs and still trundle on. So in my opinion it’s much better to create a team of people who work well together and who have a good culture, because that means it’s also easier when someone moves on to other things. It also means that you’re not as effected by the life changes of your employees.
Ask yourself this when hiring: you genuinely have a series of actually-actionable tasks ready to go for the new hire? Do you have the right resources on hand who understand that a part of their job is to answer questions about those projects from the new hire (and it will probably be a whole lot of stuff)?
The answer is going to be that you probably don't, and so whoever you hire, no matter how good they are, your company will just never know.
In my experience, it's pretty simple. Pay them lots of $$$. My circle of friends is in their 40s now, and the ones we all generally consider really good make boatloads. It's hard for them to switch jobs because most places aren't willing to pay a "regular developer" nearly as much.
Now I get some people don't have time for open-source after work but it's way way easier to ace an interview when it can be based on something you build yourself, can show and can talk about the ins, the outs and the design constraints and your architecture choices.
If you were at five places for 9-18 months at a time with several six month gaps interspersed? Not evidence of absence, but that’s absence of evidence to me. (Immediately, I’m assuming several of those gaps might be flameouts.)
I'm curious, what about this situation but no gaps?
None of these are signals that I rely on as binary go/no-go gates; the main point was “just because you got other employers to pay you for a short while, that’s not standalone evidence that you can deliver business value through working software”.
I don’t believe in jobs-for-life, “putting in your time”, “paying your dues”, “never quit before 2 years”, or other nonsense advice, but if you’ve never had a long stint at a place, at minimum you’ve never seen the pain from your decisions 24 months prior play out and the maximum negative case is far worse.
For most of the folks I've worked with, it's the case that if they take a job and they're not learning something, they're not going to stay long. And if they take a job and the choices are "stay here, even if they enjoy it" and "take a 15% compensation bump that will ripple through the rest of their career", it would be foolish not to go for the latter.
The places that understand that retaining people takes effort are less rare than they used to be, but they don't grow on trees. If you want to hire someone longer term, I hope you're putting the money, and the investment in that worker, on the table.
To be clear, I'm talking about a persistent pattern. Even those of us with fairly long-term employment (~10 year stints) in general often have one or two short stints for various reasons. E.g. dot-bomb in my case although the job wasn't a great fit anyway.
Also, the vast majority of developers don't have open source contributions or projects worth pointing to. Further, it strikes me that the ones that do have such projects can be much more selective about which company they work for than companies can be about them.
Furthermore you're making an assumption that anyone who has code on their github produced it for no compensation, as if that was their sole motivation.
Maybe it was a previous project, maybe they open sourced a side project that at one point made income, or maybe it was something they did as an experiment or for purely personal reasons and compensation had zero relevant bearing.
This is true about a majority of small/medium (and sometimes even big) startups.
> We tend to downplay things we do or build ourselves, as if the very fact that another person (a boss) tells us to do something makes it immediately more valuable than if we choose to do that something ourselves. It doesn't.
It does, in the sense that it's actually a pretty high bar to get to a point where you can afford employees with management and have directed product growth. It doesn't mean it's better in an absolute sense -- sometimes the very opposite! -- but you might be setting yourself up for disappointment if you don't acknowledge the differences.
I like the failed internet billionaire. It's clever, obviously tongue-in-cheek, and implies one shot for the moon, but landed among the stars.
I recommend against attempts at humor front and center like this on a resume. It’s too early.
I’m in a serious mood trying to solve a serious problem when I’m reviewing resumes. This would fall very flat with me. I would not think you were serious about finding work.
Sneak in some humor later and it might work. If I’m interested enough to read the details of your resume, something humorous later on might get a chuckle out of me.
Now, if in the course of a phone screen, you described yourself as such, you'd probably get a chuckle from me.
Then why are they interviewing? Taking people at face value until you know you shouldn't is an important interpersonal skill. Second guessing what people tell you is pointless. This would be one item in a list of his experience, not what you see first.
I would think it's fun little icebreaker if you are applying for a position making cute iOS games.
However if you are applying for a position developing power-plant control systems it's a bit inappropriate.
The goal should be to build a great product, company and reputation. If that makes you a billionaire, that’s fine. Most likely you will achieve this goal but not the billionaire status.
In general: always be extra nice to HR. They are underpaid, under-appreciated, under-loved, put in the middle of every dispute, and told to make the impossible possible. Like IT, but with squishy meat bags.
"Good thing nothing is up to you, then"
This is invaluable advice. I had a similar problem when returning to the market after years doing my own things. Someone here suggested leaning into the failed startup I’d attempted with a colleague rather than downplaying it. Despite that, I still had a tough time getting initial calls.
I eventually landed a three-month contract job. That rehabilitated my resume and I had no trouble getting callbacks once I had some recent work history. Don’t be above taking a short term gig if you find that the phone isn’t ringing. It might be the thing that turns that around.
Oh wow this just clicked something for me. I need to do that for me too so that I actually work on the damn things instead of thinking of them as projects on the side
I disagree, if you built something that involved collaborating with others thats inherently more valuable than what you build on your own. The reason is simple -- external assessment is ALWAYS preferred to self assessment of skill.
It's the difference between you saying you're a good programmer and someone else saying you're a good programmer. That small bit of indirection is very important.
To recruiters it's as if it was a waste of their time to even listen to me mentioning it.
Do I need to clone Instagram to allow myself a line on a resume
To me, it's more of a "yes, this is dumb, but it's a mistake that someone could make out of naivete or lack of confidence". It doesn't strike me as something particularly misleading (since, as you say, you see right through it). In fact, given all the outright lying that already happens in hiring, I would say this is one of the more innocuous annoyances. (And it does annoy me, but I'm annoyed at how people use the phrase, not at the one particular candidate.)
Founder seems to be the other good one, but it says much less about your scope of responsibilities. Founder can be tech or sales related too. I just try to make it clear what the size of the company is.
What you're saying is that you don't want to hire former entrepreneurs. That's fine, but you're also inflating it to imply that your preferences are universal, which is as much of an outright lie as someone working on independent projects calling themselves CEO.
One entails actually making a go at running a business, with all the activities that entails. The other is more of an individual contributor thing which can result in useful experience for that role, but is nothing like being a CEO. To mislabel the latter activity is just lying.
I've worked for several companies that were basically just a "CEO" and (sometimes other people) messing around. For whatever reason, investors seem happy to give them millions of dollars to do so.
OP, have you considered making a pitch deck?
Also there's a huge difference between being a CEO of a one person company (don't have to deal with another human being) and a > 1 person team. As the team size increases, the title becomes increasingly more meaningful. You are free to draw the line wherever you want, but allowing it to rest on a 1 person team is pretty close to lying.
Of course, the role CEO is usually associated with large companies but is a valid role in smaller ones. It shows who is ultimately responsible.
Even a sole proprietor is legally an executive officer.
You should dig those CVs out of your trashcan. We all try and choose an appropriate term, founder, owner, CEO, etc., but there's no rulebook and you're just making up a meaning for CEO that it doesn't actually have.
CEO implies you are the chief of a group of people. At the minimum > 1. If you are the chief of yourself and a question pops up, "Who were you managing?" or "Talk about a conflict with your team and how you resolved it" it can get embarrassing pretty quickly.
Think about it a bit more. How many employees before you can call yourself a CEO in your opinion? 1, 2, 10? Do they have to be employees or do freelancers count? Do free interns? Does your company have to have made a profit, or does it count if you just blew a bunch of seed cash and never made a dime?
And what term do you want to use if they fall out of your personal guidelines? As you haven't actually suggested one, nor has the GP. FlibbleFlobble? Pertankywank? PersonWhoDidSomething?
You setup your own company, you're a CEO.
By your logic my example of the top 3 finisher in a race of 3 clearly illustrates why your view is very misleading.
- for a side project that didn’t really take off, they can call their self its “founder”;
- for open an source project, they can call their self its “creator” or “author”.
If you are applying for a programmer job then that is the part of your activities you should emphasise.
Don’t look for a job, instead look for the person you can help.
There is a senior executive out there, a line manager who you can serve and solve problems for.
Get clarity around who this person could be. What kind of organization? Where do they sit? (LinkedIn is a great resource for this). * I’ve found smaller companies, less than 100 people easier to work with.
Now, reach out to them for a discovery conversation. See if your circles overlap.
Essentially, avoid the common trap of filling out job applications, hoping to pass the HR filter.
I am decent with computers built gaming rigs, overclocked, built servers, set up home labs and networks, built html sites, wordpress sites and was doing extremely well in school. We often talked about how I always was working on different projects.
I have been IC at this company for 4 years now with minimal supervision delivering apps. I did not have an interview.
Therefore, I agree with this advice. Many companies are looking for developers who can develop apps for them as ICs, and OPs experience would be perfect.
If you applied to a job I have, I’d mostly interview you like a normal person, and then I’d say “If you’ve on your own for 9 years, are you sure you really want a normal job? I want to hire you. But this is a job, and that means sometimes you’re gonna have to put up with this company’s bullshit. Even though we do our best to keep the bullshit to a minimum, we still deal with crap we’d rather not do. Tell me why you’re interested and willing to put up with bullshit, and don’t just tell me you need the money.” If you have a good answer to that question, I think you’ll be fine for a job that matches your value proposition.
But I'd start by saying OP is fucked
It's a good market so you'll find something
Eventually
You're obviously smart because you could chill for a few years
(Or you got an inheritance)
The general genre of reading you are looking for is "why entrepreneurs can't get hired" -- something like that.
I would be honest-ish about the money
You, like 99% of people with 9 to 5s, need a job because you need money and/or healthcare
That is impolite to talk about often but it could actually work
There is a bit more honesty going on right now because of pandemic trauma
I'd look to pick up a contract by answering some of the 8 trillion spam emails you're getting
Perm jobs are going to be like fuck this guy
Imo
Yeah, the poster is not engaging with how the recruiting pipeline really works.
Concretely, to get back into the top of the funnel, you should pay for a compsci masters program at a respectable university. This is a good career reset opportunity and will nullify the need to investigate your past.
Another commenter mentioned leetcoding, which is essential.
It's really concerning you're focusing on remote work. If anything in-office work is super uncompetitive right now, which you can always turn into whatever arrangement you want. Don't start off by talking about stuff that makes people say, "fuck this guy."
This is probably the best way back in. Employers are less fussy if it looks like you can solve their immediate problem and once you have proved your worth they will probably offer a full time job anyway.
This is a bit unconstructive.
The only other motivations I can see as being viable as a response (other than working because you have to earn money to live a certain lifestyle) is "I really want to learn XYZ and I can't do that on my own without working in a team with more resources" or for NGOs hiring there could be further social good motivations.
I don't think there are many sane persons around, who honestly want to deal with company bullshit, if not for the money.
I mean, you can find a million fake answers, "I want the challenge", "I want to improve myself in difficult situations", blabla, - but this is exactly the kind of bullshit I am only willing to put up with, if I need the money. So why can he just be honest and say so?
I mean, it is a valid concern, if a person who was on his own for a long time, can fit back in into a coporation, and it needs some convincing that he actually can - but telling people to fake motivation, when all they actually want is the money - just increases company bullshit.
Even if the your knee jerk truthful answer is "I just want the money" it might be deeper than that. When I went from consulting full time for ~4 years to corporate work, I would have told you it was just for the money, but it was actually for the stability and peace of mind to not worry where my next rent check was coming from.
My point was, that I want honesty on both sides. Otherwise it is coporate bullshit to me.
"would have told you it was just for the money, but it was actually for the stability and peace of mind to not worry where my next rent check was coming from."
Yeah well, thats another way of saying you mainly want to work for the money.
And about the "real answer":
"I want to build great things in a team and I am aware that every organisation has problems it needs to overcome, to succeed, which usually require the ability to make compromises. And I am willing to make the necessary compromises, for a successful project."
Which is actually my honest opinion, but I don't need any hypocrite bullshit. I only would put up with it, if the pay is adequate. And starting by having to fake my motivation, would mean a higher expected compensation from my side.
Is it?
Years ago... I had a friend who was just getting in to dev work, but he was pretty good, even then. He was doing low-pay work someplace, not even dev work entirely, but he got to learn a bit on the job. But... was making around $37k (2007?). I offered to connect him with a recruiter who had a 6 month python gig lined up for him at ~$50/hr. That's... after his taxes... it's about $45k for 6 months of work.
"But... what would I do after that? I wouldn't have my health insurance! There's too much risk!"
I said "you'll be making more in 6 months than you do in a year... you can figure things out then, and very likely there will be more stuff after that, once you're 'in' there".
"Too risky..."
So... the 'stability/peace of mind' is, imo, not just another way of saying 'in it for the money'. I think stability with known lower pay is a stronger motivation for some folks.
Not to say that the other kind isn't a real thing people care about, but I don't think this is an example.
And there's sometimes this baked in assumption that you can call a recruiter on Monday and end up with three $300-400K offers by the following Monday. Which may be true for some people with very in-demand specific skills. But is utter fantasy for people in more specialized roles, older, etc. who actually are making a comfortable amount of money and like where they are. Why take a jump they don't really need to just for some extra cash?
I have never had this illusion, but I think my wife has had that idea (for me, not for her), and I had to disabuse her of that notion :) We're not in a terribly HCOL area to begin with, nor in a major tech hub, so... traditional w2 9-5 jobs, even in tech, are, for most senior folks I know, topping out in the mid $100s. If you want to count 401k/insurance/etc in total comp, you're still generally going to be under $200k (probably even fully loaded cost). Not so say there aren't any higher paying jobs, but they're relatively limited, and are going to have higher competition, etc.
Running your own business still has bullshit too. It's just a different type of bullshit. You have to deal with paperwork, accountants, lawyers, marketing, sales, engineering, product, customer support and more. There are probably a few of those at least you'd consider bullshit.
People don't just work for companies because the money is more certain. Sometimes it's nice to be an individual contributor and yes you have a boss or two. It's more of a choose your bullshit adventure.
...but also the most rewarding. For me, no, the money would not be enough to put up with the bullshit, not by itself. Much more compelling is the idea that multiple people working together as an effective team can build things of greater scope, quality, and importance than one person can working alone.
Of course, if "people here can't work together as an effective team" - e.g. because the culture is overly cutthroat, or the environment is interruption-prone, or project teams are demotivated by a lack of trust / agency / autonomy, or impossible deadlines are the norm - well, if those things are part of the bullshit, no amount of money will make that enjoyable and rewarding.
In such an environment, what's a rational strategy? Probably to save up a bunch of money, to the point where the next job search can be motivated by things other than immediate financial need, and quit once that's achieved. (Hence "rest and vest" behaviour, which is often a huge red flag about the organization and not the individual person.)
Type 1 is characterized by broad policies and processes indiscriminately applied that may not always make sense at the ground level. This type is not only inevitable, but is actually necessary for a company to work at scale—once you get into the hundreds and thousands of employees it just doesn't work leave things to each individual manager's judgement as it won't be fair, and it will eat a lot of cycles.
Type 2 is characterized by the people problems you mention, including all manner of incompetent management, and other inefficiencies that prevent the essential work from being done properly. While some amount of this is also inevitable, it's generally avoidable by competent management as long as the org doesn't release a tipping point of dysfunction at which point all the competent folks start to leave for greener pastures.
Distinguishing between type 1 and type 2 can be very tricky, especially for low-level employees at a large company where they won't have the experience or the visibility to make an informed read. However making the distinction is super important if you want to be upwardly mobile in large companies. There is a level of bullshit you will need to put up with anywhere, you just need to be able to understand what is worth putting up with for the greater good and what is not.
I really don't think this is true. I know a fair number of people who don't really have to work but choose to. And far more who could do something else tomorrow, including self employment, without trouble.
One common factor is the desire to achieve something bigger than you can do as an individual. There is probably some selection bias at work here but I don't think it's so unusual.
I do agree that when considering hiring someone who has been working individually for a long time, you'll want to probe how they will fit into a team. That's not the same thing.
"I know a fair number of people who don't really have to work but choose to"
Because those people probably do not have to put up with lots of "coporate bullshit", otherwise they would indeed go find something more fitting, if they are not desperate for the money.
But also people who are mainly desperate for the money, can be good employes - and if they do not have to start by having to fake enthusiasm ("don't tell me its because of the money") - there is a good chance that they will stay, even when they are not desperate anymore. That was my main point.
It is possible to be motivated by both the money and other aspects of the job, and in my own experience this is the case for all of the best coworkers I've had over the years.
> telling people to fake motivation, when all they actually want is the money - just increases company bullshit.
With this perspective, anyone who chooses to see the glass half full instead of half empty is bullshitting. Anyone who says or does something kind to somebody else even though their own life is not perfect, is bullshitting. You could make that argument but that's not what most people would call bullshit.
Sure it is, but the question was about the motivation to put up with coporate bullshit, not the motivation in general.
- Get to work with and learn from other colleagues who are as motivated as you
- Greater economies of scale and budgets, probably a nice office and physical working environment
- Can focus on detail instead of having to do absolutely everything yourself and split your attention
- Consistent employment instead of volatile business income makes it easier to get a loan to buy a house
- Structured work environment and professional support network
Doesn't mean I'll never want to leave again, of course, but... working on your own is one type of challenge - working with a team, and losing some autonomy is another.
"Tell me why you’re interested and willing to put up with bullshit".
This presumes someone working on their own isn't dealing with bullshit already. If you're solo, but doing any form of client work, you have a level of bullshit you're already handling. Invoicing/collections/payroll/legal/insurance - it's not necessarily overwhelming in most cases, but... it's another thing that many would happily give up in exchange for a different type of 'bullshit'.
Yes, getting to work on certain type of projects - there's things that only 'bigco X' can realistically tackle - I may be willing to put up with corporate bullshit to work with a certain class of projects (scale, industry focus, etc).
If I knew some of the folks on the team already, and wanted to work with them, that would also be a big factor. Perhaps they'd even want to work with me! :). I have a list of a handful of folks I've either worked with or watched work/progress over the years, and if the opportunity came up to work with them, in whatever capacity, I would probably consider putting up with whatever 'company X' wanted to make that happen.
Then provide a list of notable projects/clients that highlight what you completed during this time. If you don't have interesting clients/projects I would just say you consulted for various companies doing x when it comes up.
I just did this moving from consulting to a full time dev role and the various interviews were fine.
It's pretty typical for developers to do their own thing for periods of time.
I agree with the other posters that you shouldn't really term them side-projects if they were your main focus. Then they're just projects! :) Don't undersell yourself.
Thankfully, I have no intention of getting employed, so it's a reasonable stalemate; I just carry on working on my various projects.
You’re not missing out on anything. If something you’d be unpleasantly surprised how convoluted team work and new pipelines have become. Being independent is a healthy path to keep away from toxicity. But I agree about the unemployabiloty nagging feeling, it’s psychologically unpleasant to feel that but should you ever reenter the corp pool you’d hate it with all your guts.
You could probably just include all your projects under a "founder" role. It says a lot more than leaving it blank. Many people would be happy to hire someone with that kind of iterative experience.
I get the feeling you're just a little anxious about jumping back on the interview carousel. The market is super hot right now and employers will allow you to explain yourself.
When it comes to salary, answer the question of how much you want, not how much you were getting paid.
there is absolutely not enough info in the OP to provide meaningful advice. what kinds of side projects were they? what tech stacks? how technical the implementations? etc. etc.
there are plenty of well-paying software jobs that need neither leetcode nor a masters CS degree from MIT. telling someone that these are the current barrier to entry without any context is absurd.
my 65yo father went from being laid off a $100k php job due to covid to another $100k php job 6mo later. the first at a small mfg company with 3 devs; the other at 10 person front-office online retailer with 4 devs. he is not a 10x dev, still prefers jquery and no one he spoke with knew or cared about leetcode. he's probably never written a merge sort impl in his life, though i suspect he has sorted lists in production a time or two.
Anyway, best of luck to you in yours. Hope you find something fulfilling.
Also consider expanding your target to on-site roles in the short term. 6 months of that should be long enough to fill in the employment gap. And you can always keep applying for remote roles until you land one.
The employment gap is not an issue, and could be viewed as an advantage: Self-motivation, bias-to-action, drive. Of course it can also be viewed as a disadvantage: Not a team player, will they be onboard with the company goals/mission. You get to frame this, so when you present it ensure you do so in the former... "work was not stimulating and you had some tech itches to scratch so you applied yourself to those to support your own growth and learning and now wish to apply some of that to a role at a company".
On applying for roles... just apply. You don't mention where you are located but remote roles don't typically pay SF/tech hub salaries as they can opt for a far larger pool of people and don't have to prop up landlords in hot markets like SF. This too will be an advantage for you if you happen to be pretty much anywhere else so be sure to treat that as an advantage that you have, know that for remote your not being in SF is a plus.
TBH there's so little info in your post and nothing personally identifiable that it's hard to give specific and concrete advice, but the above comes to mind immediately.
Are you looking to just be a coder or are you willing to use your product dev experience?
If you want to be another coder in a seat, go for leetcode and apply to 200+ companies. Use LinkedIn religiously and pad those skills with obscure frameworks and references.
If you are serious about a job then you must position yourself as someone who can help, and that won't neccesarily mean "coder". Technical project management, business analyst someone who can understand what deployment to a kubernetes cluster means and the importance of a well structured support pipeline - is etremely valuable.
There must be a reason you are under-selling yourself but good luck.
As soon as somebody demands me to explain employment gap I consider the next offer. Because that is bullshit. Why do I have to explain my life? I'm not a slave for whom it would be a crime to live a life instead of always working when not sleeping.