Ask HN: Approaching 40 and trying to get a foothold into Software Engineering

Great looking portfolio atleast. Looks like you have been busy making alot of apps and "things". Interested in what the people here at Hacker News has to say about this.

Honestly I quite like your portfolio. Judging from it alone I'd give you an interview if I were a recruiter. However, I'm not, so I couldn't tell you what sort of secret sauce goes into that pre-interview pass. My experience is having worked in the industry for a few years (have I made it clear enough that my worldview is very narrow? I don't want to beat you over the head with this fact)

I hope you don't mind some constructive criticism about your site anyway:

List your languages/skills strongest-to-least-strongest left-to-right. I clicked C++ since it was the the first language I saw and it told me that you weren't actually that good at it. I would probably opt for more positive sounding language like "this was my first language and while I'm familiar with it I mostly program in X." (here's my naive take - C++ and Java are some of the "traditional" backend languages, so if you want to sell yourself as being fullstack it would especially behoove you to be more forward about your experience with them).

Load things quicker. At least on Firefox, it would take as much as a second for the animations to finish as I was scrolling down. I know that I might have no attention span, but surely any recruiter looking at your page has a legitimate reason to want to see your work easily and fast.

On that note, the top bar seemed to disappear unless I scroll up. IDK if this is like a common pattern, but I'd prefer to have it more easily accessible.

I'd recommend that you put yourself in the shoes of the recruiter who is giving your life story an 8 second glance when it comes to your website. Try and flush your mind (I know you're intimately familiar with it), open it, and decide within 30 seconds whether you'd give yourself an interview. Ask your friends to do the same if you can.

Regarding your resume, I think that for junior roles your stuff is good. Don't pad it and make sure that the recruiter's eyes go immediately to your most impressive projects/skills. I think you have more than enough stuff, so you'll have to be careful about what you pick and how you present it.

I want to say again, your page is seriously cool. I hope you don't take my criticism personally - I wish you the best of luck!

Going straight to 'software engineer' is hard IMO. Unless you graduate from a 4 year degree in CS or have an internship or some other real professional software design experience, I think it's a hard field to break into.

You might want to aim lower initially. Help desk or field rep for a tech company, etc. Ansible, terraform, linux automation, those kind of jobs are more widespread than straight software development jobs.

If you want to go straight software, there's lots of jobs in Java.

IMO, front-end javascript devs are disposable and that's what everyone tries to do because it's less abstract. Backend languages are where the money is.

I was in a similar situation as you, and found a software engineer job. But I also benefitted from timing, as I was able to find a job before the market starting turning down last year. Basically I was able to find a startup willing to take a chance on me, perhaps for lack of better options. Unfortunately that will be the case for those coming from non-traditional ways and entry level.

FWIW, the Who's Hiring and Who Wants to be Hired threads here on Hacker News had led me to a few interviews each month, when I was looking. That's all you need, plus maybe brush up on LeetCode.

Look into less "cool" industries and companies for getting that first job. The pay will be lower and your company won't be featured in TechCrunch or wherever, but the entry bar will be lower and the people generally less competitive and difficult to deal with.

Personally, I recommend the WordPress industry. There are a lot of themes, plugins, hosts, etc. that need developers.

> If anyone has any helpful advice, I would love to hear it.

Skip the Junior part, go for mid level and find a way to justify it. Somehow show that you already have 2 years of experience and you now qualify as mid.

I'm not saying "lie", but I'm also not saying not to.

When I look at your site, I can't tell what your bread & butter is. I think that needs to stand out... what is it?

Your site says to scroll down - how can you tweak it, so I don't have to read that to know what to do next?

It took me a while to figure out you had a live demo of each of your project. Make that button stand out. Add some color to your site - it's black, and depressing. You want the person going to your site to feel drawn in.

This may sound harsh, but it's not meant to be - but do you have a better photo for your site? It's a cool Facebook photo style... but it's not good for a portfolio/CV type photo. First impressions count for way more than people would like to admit. If your potential employers first impression of you is from the site - then you're starting a step behind.

You do have an interesting and good breadth of work on your portfolio. So you have that going for you.

I can see one potential improvement in your resume: BRAND YOU PROJECTS.

It would look so much better if you had something like "Built StoryFactory.io" with cool logo rather than a link to ec2 instance.

And that would be my advice in general - build something that looks professional and not like a project from a coding tutorial. It can be as simple as a to-do app at its core, with a few features, but make a killer landing page for it (you can obviously use a template), figure out a good name, buy a domain, etc.

Things that stand out in your resume: It doesn’t look like a developer resume because the skills are hidden at the bottom, job history doesn’t mention specific development skills. You say full stack but everything else indicates front end focus. Your education only shows 1 year (looks like you are trying to over represent you went to Berkeley). Your job history gaps stand out. If you applied for a full stack job, I would likely reject based on resume… for front end job would likely interview.

I’d contribute to open source projects and add that as a line in work history xxx-current and focus on front end for now.

Honestly, I would make the link to your well formatted, easy to read, resume much more prominent - https://jgarrettcorbin.com/pdf/resume.pdf

You seem like a cool person, and are working hard towards a transition - congrats on getting this far. I think with a bit of effort you can follow through. A few thoughts:

- Website makes you look like a front end developer, but you are applying to full stack.

Stepping back a bit, an employer is asking the question: is this person the best person for the job that I'm hiring for? As the job seeker, you need to think about what type of job you are going to be the ideal candidate for and really focus on communicating that.

- Bullet points on resume could be improved. For example, Content is easily added or removed using a JSON configuration file Its a given that you would do that. It is so basic that it raised a flag in my mind. Its like saying, I used numpy to do math computations in python. It would be better to not include that statement.

Full stack web developer who will help your company succeed by completing projects on time and under budget. This sentence comes off as pretty generic, and it is not clear that you have experience with that. It would be better to have an experience where you delivered a project under time constraints.

Anyways, sorry that I'm nitpicking a bit. It is hard to know exactly what is holding you back without knowing more about what jobs you are applying to, what is happening in the interviews, and so on.

I'd also think about if there is any company you can work at where having some background in industrial automation would be a plus.

First of all, I'm not currently a manager, but I think your website is great; it definitely demonstrates that you have real skills and could be productive as a junior-level developer. So I'll focus on the resume, where I see a few things that could be improved:

- You mentioned that you've worked automotive jobs with some technical aspects. I would strongly consider listing those jobs, even if they don't include any software experience. They still demonstrate a lot of things that managers are looking for: work ethic, conscientousness, general technical ability and intelligence, motivation, and so forth. And for HR screeners, they eliminate resume gap concerns.

- More broadly, I'd try to make sure that your resume tells a clear story of what you've been doing in recent years. A progression of technically oriented automotive work to a UC Berkeley extension program to a portfolio of working software projects is a great story, but someone skimming over your resume for five seconds might not see that story. They might just notice a smattering of disconnected dates and wonder if you've been in prison, or fired from a succession of short-term software jobs, or sitting at home watching TV. (And if any of that does apply to you, I don't mean to discourage you. But one way or another, I'd focus on structuring your resume to tell a clear story.)

- I'd add something below the UC Berkeley heading to make clear that you were enrolled in an extension program rather than a degree-seeking program. Otherwise, someone might think that you enrolled for a semester or dropped out, or that you're trying to make an extension course look like something more. And if you completed the program and got some sort of certificate, you might want to make that explicit, to demonstrate persistence and follow-through.

- I'd rewrite the summary statement to focus on your story without anything buzzwordy (like "on time and under budget" and "agile"). The key points I'd include are: 1) you've done professional, serious work as an adult; 2) you're making a transition into software; and 3) you've completed a UC Berkeley extension program and a number of projects and thus have demonstrable knowledge and skills. That tells your story upfront, and every point is something substantive and meaningful.

- This is minor, but the fact that the text runs all the way to the bottom of the page with no margin stood out to me. I'd reformat things so that the resume has nice, even margins all around, even if you have to trim some text to make it fit. You obviously a sense for design, judging from your website, and your resume should demonstrate that too.

- You might want to consider trimming your skills section a bit and tailoring it to each position you apply to, if you're not doing that already. The embedded C++ and IoT experience stood out to me; it's actually impressive if you're competent in both C++ and front-end JS, but if you're applying to a front-end dev position, the C++ probably isn't relevant, and I could imagine a hiring manager being slightly bemused by seeing that mix of skills.

The last thing I'll say is that I've had some ups and downs in my career and gone from being really discouraged to finding great opportunities through a combination of persistance and chance, so keep your chin up. It seems like you're approaching this with the right attitude. Good luck!

Ooh your site's fancy.

Summary could use some rewording. Maybe something like

> Full stack web dev with experience completing projects on time and under budget and working with other teams. For my next opportunity I’m looking for ...

Skills goes up top, under summary. You want people to know your areas of expertise sooner so they know the rest is worth reading.

Keep education at the bottom.

Since you're coming from a non-traditional background (absolutely no judgement, just means we have to tweak the template is all), my idea is put your work experience and projects in one section. Organize them as relevant to the position you're applying to instead of chronological, with the most relevant up top, so start with Story Factory, then portfolio-v4.0-react (I'd drop the "professional portfolio" and just call it by the github project name) and continue on from there.

First of all your portfolio is really good in my opinion. I finished a boot camp in 2017 after moving to wa state from Berkeley. One thing I think is tough about the industry now is everything being remote - I’ve gotten my two dev jobs through in person connections (and ironically of all the hundreds of jobs applied the only two I’ve worked are the ones I didn’t apply for). My suggestion (based on what’s worked for me) is to work in dev adjacent roles as a way to get your foot in the door. For me this was technical writing and qa/manual testing.

That way you’re getting real world experience and at the same time making quality connections.

There are also contract opportunities which can sometimes be worthwhile.

Based on your portfolio you are competent to be considered for an interview, dont get discouraged but possibly find the things you haven’t been doing and focus on that.

Applying online is a tough way to get a position, keep up the good work

Edit: not my first choice but have kind of found a niche as a Ruby on Rails dev. When starting out I think it’s good to have a specific stack to focus on, for looking for job postings and having subject matter expert experience in a single thing. Python is a widely used language and a good one to know (wish I had more experience and something I’d do differently if possible)

I also think your skills should be near the top of your resume.

Have you considered going to meetups, attending networking events or applying to internships?

I feel like right now it’s more of a who you know situation and less of a what you know. You’re in Oakland, CA, which is the land of networking. Good ops to squeeze into some role. Don’t be too picky and you can morph into whatever you find passion for.

Btw, neat projects!