HN Explorer

Ask HN: Can I save my career?

17 points by wherearetheyhuh ↗ HN
I’ve had pretty much a failure of a career. For five years I was underpaid even when taking into consideration all the circumstances, stuck disorganized companies where tech was a cost center never in the sort of environment that let me grow, but I always said, next time I’ll be get there, but it seems that it’s too late at this point. A lot of it’s my fault, and I’m honestly really demotivated/jaded now, but at the same time I don’t want to give up.

This time around I tried to be pickier, to target companies that looked like they paid well and could provide good growth, or in domains that interest me, but it was not working. Front door applications are a crapshoot, as I’m sure many are aware, and I could never manage to grab an interview. The frustrating part is it makes sense.

My resume, my work history, is nearly irrelevant to what many of these companies are looking for. Cloud technologies and services? I’m familiarly enough to know what they are/how they’re used, but I’ve never worked anywhere where I’ve been exposed to them, so you won’t find them on my resume? Programming languages? I know enough about most of the ones that get used (and other that don’t) to be relatively productive very quickly, but I haven’t used them professionally so You won’t find them in my resume. Stories about me solving hard problems or taking leadership or managing large scale / designing systems to last under heavy load? I’ve barely had the opportunity to write much code in my current role thanks to the sluggishness of corporate bureaucracy and I never have worked in an environment that would give me anything to write about.

In the end, it makes perfect sense my applications get rejected or tossed to the void. Everything I’ve done has been unremarkable even compared to every day unremarkable development. Especially for how long I’ve been doing this. I can get interviews sure, I can even get offers if I want. Granted none of them are paying that great and almost of all of them are going to leave me in the same position as I am now X years down the road.

I admittedly don’t do as much in the side anymore, though I do have some really neat (at least IMHO) projects in the world, and some extremely trivial, but nonetheless useful contributions to OSS you’ve probably heard of. Nobody ever cares. It’s never brought up when I include it on my resume and if I bring it up, it doesn’t really seem to generate any interest. I’ve also been told straight up in some interviews that they’re less interested in my non-professional work (in the context of asking me about technical challenges/feats)

I’m not sure what do now. I’m sure if I dedicated my life to something (i.e. start making substantial contributions to Linux or something or start pumping content on every idea that pops in my head, or deep diving into some hot domain), I could generate enough interest to revive myself, but that’s a whole career on its own.

13 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 39.1 ms ] thread
ironmagma
The simple answer is to join an engineering-focused startup. The barrier to entry is lower, and you'll (be forced to) get productive with a lot of tools fast, and probably build a bunch of features.
aurizon
Your cutting edge tech has worn off. The side projects are a form of self study - once they stopped, your abilities stopped increasing/diversifying. In athletic terms = couch potato. As ironmagma suggested - a startup might help, but they might screen you out for the reasons you cite. The choice is re-invent yourself or manage others from your tech base - there is demand for managers who can not be snowed.
dudus
You should choose one field or tech on high demand and go for that. That may be a consumer application like powerBI or could be a framework like React. Then you create a personal project to use it. Doesn't have to make you money or even launch. Just keep you interested enough to work on for a few months and use that tech as much as possible, to the point you are now an expert in it. Just focus on one thing and learn it very well. Then look for jobs that value that specific skill.
luhego
When picking a job, optimize for growth and learning. Pick jobs with interesting work so your skills can grow. The skills and interesting projects will make you land a high paying job. Also try to learn popular technologies that are in demand in startups.
theoutcome
Go become a nurse or something totally different and stop caring about your career, it will give you soul cancer, have a rich life outside of your job.
DevKoala
Why don’t you build something that uses cloud technologies or other technologies that the roles you want to land are asking for? It will probably take you a year to learn the app_framework/docker/kubernetes/cloud stack of choice, but after a year of playing with it you will probably be more pro efficient than plenty of employed engineers who rely on a devops team.

Have some confidence too. A lot of people are faking it and don’t learn it until they run into the problem. At the end of the day it only matters that you deliver, so deliver on your personal project first.

wherearetheyhuh
I can build stuff sure, but the lack of interest of my non-professional stuff in the past leaves me a little jaded.
ffhhj
Then ask them what's interesting for them, or get in contact with other engineers at their company, read their blogs, and find out what they need that you can solve for them or contribute to.
readonthegoapp
if you can actually hack linux, and you can't get a job, or can't get a job you like, etc. -- something else is going on.

that i've seen, most programmers who can't find work are either not real programmers, or not interested in it anymore/burned out, or are applying to FAANG and thinking they should be shoe-ins when all they know is some javascript and didn't even go to an elite school nor have connections.

i think very small tech-focused startups often want/need legit stars, but once a company size is 200+, they'll take warm bodies who can code and occasionally show up to work sober.

wherearetheyhuh
> f you can actually hack linux, and you can't get a job, or can't get a job you like, etc. -- something else is going on

Well yeah that’s the thing. Can I at the current moment no? Could I with some time invested in it? Probably. But throwing together a kernel module that no one cares about and having an actual contribution are two different things.

> that i've seen, most programmers who can't find work are either not real programmers, or not interested in it anymore/burned out

If I had to guess, I’d say I’m a mix of the first two.

readonthegoapp
there are all sorts of coding-adjacent roles:

  * tech support/sustaining (active coding/patching)
  * tech support/api engineer
  * etc.
the 'etc.' can be anything that is generally more human-centric/consulting/etc. - where you might have to talk to other humans - solutions architect, technical account manager (one step up from tech support), pre-sales engineer, sales engineer, post-sales engineer, (on-site) consultant, etc.

shoot - EY just went remote. all those consulting companies need bodies.

of course, if you can invest in crypto and take 6 months off, that's prob best to start with.

i'd say again, if you can hack linux _at all_, some company is dying for your skills. even part-time.

if i was in your position, i might look at a job board like this one, which seems to have all sorts of flexible arrangements.

like if you can actually code a little, and can also tie your own shoelaces, not even at the same time, then you can get another coding job, imo.

https://remoteok.io/

just blast a few companies on there, tell them you want 20 hrs/week - maybe even sort by the part-time option if they have it - done.

f0e4c2f7
Don't focus too much on a few rejections. The hiring process is badly broken at most companies. You application may have never been seen by a human.

Nothing wrong with brushing up on your skills but it's very likely you could switch jobs now and learn while on the new job instead.

One way you can do this a little faster and with less rejection is on LinkedIn (I know, it has annoying problems of it's own.)

If you don't have a profile create one and set it to looking for work. When recruiters reach out you don't have to compromise on your original goal. Just explain to them that you're interested in working with xyz technology. There is a decent chance they'll come back with that job.

One more thing I'll mention it you're still having trouble after that. You mentioned Cloud, the cloud market is especially hot right now. One option would be to study for and pass one of the entry level Amazon cloud certs and list that in place of experience.

But in reality you probably don't even have to do that.

One of the hardest parts of switching jobs is the rejection and annoyances built into the process. Again I hope you can believe me that this is more representative of how broken the process is rather than any problem with you. There are thousands of companies paying millions of dollars to recruiters to try to find people like you, and yet they are clearly unsuccessful for you to feel like this.

In situations like this I personally find it better to try and shake my head and laugh at the situation. It's pretty absurd if you're able to step back from it a bit.

Good luck friend!

giantg2
This sounds a lot like me, except my changes and moves have all been internal.

The biggest thing that has helped me (depending on one's definition of help), is to acknowledge that I have a job, not a career. This removes some pressure and self imposed expectations.

I was also once told by a manager in my 1-on-1 that "not everyone has the potential to be more than a midlevel developer and that's ok". I'm working on accepting this.