Ask HN: About to be homeless, any ideas for a junior dev?

There's nothing I'd give myself a 5 out of 5 on after my 20 years of work.

Also, why are you "evil"?

Also remove the $70K Salary Requirement.

If you are desperate for cash and have some skills, maybe try to pick up some ~$500-1000 jobs on:

Freelancer.com, Guru.com, Elance.com, Odesk, etc.

"Am I an expert? Nah - But I know where to get free access to developers, and devops, when I hit the inevitable brick wall(IRC CHAT) and I'm always focused on learning how things work."

Don't give people reasons not to hire you. Take that off, make the page about why you're awesome, not why I shouldn't hire you.

Also there are grammatical errors on the page, which don't look good. If you want I can proof read it for you. I'm (edit: not) the greatest at that, but I'll see if my wife can help. Also your resume... it looks cool but I found it super confusing to read. Recruiters often times are looking through massive piles of resumes, whatever you can do to make it easier to see why you're awesome you should do.

Finally if you are about to be homeless look into any emergency shelters in the area. I used to work in affordable housing it can be a wait sometimes to get into a shelter. I wish I could help more. Let me do some research tonight.

There's a book to read "Winning Through Intimidation" by Rbert J. Ringer.

It is not a book about how to intimidate people, it's about not being intimidated by people.

One of the chapters addresses the issue of "promises".

We have an Algerian proverb that says "Ti9a fil wati9a". Meaning: Trust lies in the document. Which means: Make it clear, black on white, on a document.. Meaning: Get a lawyer. Meaning also: The only lawyer you have is the one you pay. (Don't assume the company lawyer is yours).

I was a kid when my brother had a company and built buildings based on word. Once he had a deal with some old man, very respectable and well known figure. I asked him why they didn't sign a contract and he said that the man is honorable, and I asked "What if he changes". He smiled to the child I was. He eventually got screwed by this very honorable man.

A lawyer also serves as a dissuasive measure taking out the sign on your forehead saying "I'm a pigeon".

Also, try oil or oil services companies. The pay is good (you're basically taken care of completely) and you don't need cutting edge tech. They also like to hire Junior people (they're like one of the few who actually massively hire people without experience because turnover is huge).

Once you have that sorted, your interview approach will probably relax a bit, as I am guessing it might be coming across to potential recruiters/employers as "help - need job now!" - whilst in a perverse kind of way, most employers seem to give preference to those that don't even need the job but are tempted to change. Make sure you play it cool, calm, professional.

Next, don't provide any obvious reasons for your resume/application to be quicksorted to /dev/null. Remove any photos, non-related qualifications, make sure all the dates line up, account for any gaps (i.e. training and consulting for example), double and treble check spelling and grammar, and unlike my post here - keep it short and to the point! :-)

Ask a trusted friend/colleague to interview you. Ask them to be hard, but fair. Ask them to interview you with an eye on your personal communication skills, and on your technical abilities. Ask them for honest feedback. Do not get down hearted if you hear some constructive comments. Make sure it is constructive, not destructive though! Make points to work on your interview and technical skills, then redo the interview again a few days later to see how it improves.

Finally, good luck. Remember - you are selling yourself on how you can solve the business problems and add value. The technical skills are just tools you leverage to achieve that. You are more than a bag of skills, and you need to get that message across.

* Starting with "Greetings" makes me think of the nerd from The Simpsons.

* "KICKASS" really?

* Terrible attention to detail: Geocities not capitalized, no space between popular and the open parenthesis, "I've Spent" capitalization, random use of present tense in job descriptions, the first entry under My Services is blank, etc.

* Irrelevant information. Massage therapy?

Strip all that down and write in a dry, active voice. I want to know what you're good at immediately. I don't want to wade through a wall of conversational text.

Why is there a photo at all? If you're going to have a photo, make it look good. If you're going to put on a collared shirt and tie, it should fit close to your neck rather than having a fist-width of space in there.

All the advice here is good.

Also, it's cool that you wrote your own framework, but right now, the jobs that map to your skills are Wordpress and Rails jobs. Your framework is an example of your capabilities.

You're a Rails/Wordpress developer, X years of Rails experience, Y years in the computer industry. You have Z academic experience relating to the field.

Your code examples probably should be on github.

Understand that making your representation quirky does you no good unless the hiring manager wants quirky. I've not met one who wants that yet.

You need to be precise, clear, lucid, humble, and confident. Clearly express what you're good at, and don't focus on the weak areas.

For your resume, take a look at Rands' "A Glimpse and a Hook".

Most Rails developers are finding its a VERY hot field, so I would encourage you to introspect as to why that isn't the case with you. Maybe attend Toastmasters or something?

Good luck.

Did you not attend interviews in the last week? In the alternative, have you lined up interviews? How many?

Did you not line up any interviews in the last week? In the alternative, have you identified people with the authority to hire Ruby on Rails engineers? How many? By what process are you identifying them? After identifying them, what compelling offer are you making them? Since most people with hiring authority are in the toughest market ever for people attempting to hire developers with experience shipping applications, they should be willing to take coffee dates with you.

You will not get most of your leads for coffee dates through your resume. In fact, if you could take your resume off the Internet, that would probably be in your favor. It does not currently suggest that you are going to be a successful candidate for a white collar position. You should not put your resume back on the Internet until it highlights your professional accomplishments. When put your resume back on the Internet, it will be absolutely devoid of errors in spelling, punctuation, word choice, professional tone, and grammar.

You mention that you have previous experience with SEO, social media, and shipping applications. You should be comfortable with discussing specific successes which you have had with this. If you do not have specific successes which you can talk about, do not mention SEO/social media/etc, and instead focus on the fact that you have successfully shipped applications. In the current environment, years of experience with successfully shipping commercial applications makes you substantially more experienced than the bar for junior developers.

If you actually have made people money with SEO and you can also code, you should know that your skill set is white hot right now. You should be contacting people whose businesses would benefit from that combination of skills, tell them how they would benefit in a similar fashion as other people you have worked with by having you implement brief sketch goes here, and then attempting to convince them to hire you.

When you are speaking to people in the industry, do not mention the words "homeless", "inexperienced", "spaghetti", or anything else which suggests that you are desperate for a job. You are not desperate for a job. You are a white collar professional with a skillset which is in incredible demand at the moment. You should carry yourself like that.

Your resume is scattered in tone and content, and inconsistently formatted: it's a bad audition for a detail-oriented solo-web-dev project. Your prior HN posts suggest a roller coaster of cash problems plus unrealistic hopes over just the last 30 days.

This suggests to me you're a bit too panicked to be planning properly. You may need someone friendly or professional to talk to, locally, as much or more than a job.

You should be seeking stability in your living and working situation above all else, so that you can regain perspective. That means avoiding solo freelancing, long-shot startup ideas, or quick money-raisers. Seek a simpler job, where you go into an office and are surrounded by a larger collaborating team, and your minimal basic needs are met. Do that for at least 6 months to a year to regain a non-panicked perspective.

Where are you located? I haven't worked w/ PHP for 8 years and I'm really not sure what the market looks like but learning other newer technologies such as Rails could potentially make a much big market available to you.

I know in the Bay Area, Jr Rails engineers are in super high demand.

http://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/

There's nothing on there about what you've achieved, what your responsibilities were in any of them. Nada.

And the guesses that can be made about why you've had so many jobs, and how you've been working for multiple companies at the same time, are unlikely to be complimentary.