How to get back into programming after not doing it professionally for a year?

4 points by Pooge 3y ago ↗ HN

I have 2.5 years of experience at well-known companies. I believe my CV is really going to put a high-value on me, but, truth is, I've never been good at technical interviews (normal interviews are the opposite). And this might diminish my chances quite a bit.

I've not coded professionally for more than a year because I've been in a language school abroad, but I did read technical books. It's not like I forgot everything, but I feel like it might be like taking my first swim in the middle of the ocean; how can I make sure this doesn't happen?

I plan on reading "Cracking the Coding Interview"; is that a good idea? I'm all ears for your suggestions.

2 comments

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matt_s 3y ago ↗

I assume you attended a language school for a reason. Leverage that to find development work where a company maybe has a presence of developers that use that language but the main company uses a diff language for primary communication, like English.

Two and half years isn't much experience so expect some employers thinking you would be like a fresh employee. Try to have your CV demonstrate it wasn't 2.5 years of repeating the same work pattern (aka 6mo experience 5 times).

You could also start coding by contributing to open source in whatever realm of software development you have experience in.

jesuscript 3y ago ↗

One year is not a lot to take off. Grab some courseras on the stack you were familiar with. Somewhere in the middle of the course I just realized “oh shit I remember all this”, and that was that.