Ask HN: Has my education made me unhireable?

Apply to whom ever sponsored your research. Indeed, you are probably overqualified to write CSS for a living.

It doesn't necessarily mean that. Lots of people with PhDs in CS go to work outside of academia. (Maybe most of them these days, since tenure-track jobs in academia have been getting increasingly difficult to find.)

On the other hand, I've worked in software with someone who had a PhD in Biomedical engineering (so not even CS!), and he got his first job via a referral; if anyone who knows you can code (Undergrad classmate? Open source collaborator?) works somewhere that's hiring, that would be a great way to get your foot in the door.

Larger companies receive thousands of resumes per day, therefore a personal reference is essential to getting in the door.

Avoid using a one-size-fits-all resume. For each start-up applying to, write a custom resume tailored to their needs.

1) PhDs in your area, with a focus on CS and related disciplines

2) PhDs in your area, with a focus on areas that need CS grads (e.g. business, etc.)

3) Types of people you work well with (judging by your past--previous jobs, professors, family, friends). Use any typology you want--"creative women in marketing," "decisive men who enjoy technology," "ENFPs of any gender in a creative role," whatever seems to get you a usable list.

4) People in roles that you would like. For example, a developer using lots of creative leeway to build new systems.

5) People in roles that work with people in roles that you would like. For example, a developer might look for people in online marketing or a specific field you want to work in.

6) People who have advised people like you--e.g. professors, counselors at schools (yours or other schools).

Then I would contact those kinds of people (getting contact information via local Google searches, Facebook graph search, whatever works--and phone calls are ideal, email less so) and ask if you could meet with them for ~10 minutes for a brief informational interview. Basically explain your situation. See what they think. Ask them if they like their career (if applicable). Don't ask them for a job, but let them know that you are looking for work. If they offer to help you find a job, great. If they seem like they'd be a good friend, terrific.

This is one of the fastest methods of starting from scratch and finding a job that I've found. Finding a job is an amazingly analog / human feeling-driven process and sending resumes and filling out applications all day often turns out to be a waste of time, but connecting with people is like manually spinning the warped analog cogs of this messy job-finding machine in your favor.

Source: Work as a volunteer in a charitable organization, helping people find jobs / start careers.

Edit: Just wanted to say, I've been in a "need a job now" situation before several times (thankfully in the distant past), and it can be pretty depressing. Please take care of yourself and hang in there--with your background you'll find something great for sure.

If on the other hand you're gunning for a standard developer position, you're definitely going to have a hard time because of who you're competing against as well as the stereotype of Ph.d's like you mentioned.

There are many reasons companies will reject candidates. Don't latch onto one thing too soon. Maybe it's just your résumé wording.

Best of luck mate.

Even a lot of firms that rely mainly on software need people with strong theoretical background. For example, Google X, Netflix, Amazon, and any shop doing robotics.

If you think you don't have a shot based on your background, you are looking in the wrong places, narrowing your scope too much, not networking at all, or a combination of the three.

I know you worked incredibly hard in academia but people love to see tangible things.

Just the fact that you're thinking about these kind of issues tells me you're heading in the right direction. Drop me a line at samb@zenefits.com and I'll get you a phone screen here.

Also, most things that people will tell you re: build portfolio, contribute to open source, etc. — it's largely a waste of your time, at least with regard to getting a paycheck with large numbers in your hands as expeditiously as possible. Please, contribute to open source, I need that stuff. But don't do it because you think you have to in order to land job interviews.

If your skill and discipline as a "get stuff done every day" developer is roughly no better than your average junior web developer, that's approximately a $90k/yr position for which the market has deep unmet demand. The set of people who are hiring decently competent developers is approximately "everyone with an existing software development team."

A much better approach is:

* Make a list of companies you would be interested in working for

* Figure out who at these companies is currently managing a dev team

* Contact those people, convince them you can write compiling code

* Discuss doing work for them in exchange for large amounts of currency

Beyond that, understand that you're going to have a learning curve to get your "getting stuff done every day" and domain-specific development skills up to spec. Right now, you're probably about as productive as a junior developer with six months of industry experience. This sucks, but you're already aware of it. The typical grad student is shit about e.g. coding as part of a team, using commit-driven development, issue tracking, that sort of routine process things that keep work happening regularly - even if they have a great grasp of their chosen languages(s) and tool(s), which many do not.

If you play your cards right, the learning curve from there to "competent if inexperienced senior developer" is about 6 to 18 months for a typical engineering grad student who has some experience mentoring undergrads and helping them through issues like "this wouldn't have happened if you'd just use version control" and "would you please write comments that tell me what the heck you're trying to do with this block of code."

At worst, the outlook is about the same as a run-of-the-mill junior developer, who is still likely taking home an embarrassingly large paycheck while they improve their skills.

Your safety net is "CRUD monkey." That already pays well enough to make the median dual-income American family rather jealous. From there, what do you want your career to be? Application development? Graphics? Data science? Database engineering? Pick something, find teams that are working on that, talk to them about the work they're doing. Bonus points if you already have some understanding about their subject area based on reading you did as a grad student, or projects you worked on, but they likely already hire people with less domain experience than that.

The real reason you see many PhDs fail to get private sector jobs is that they're expecting to be compensated for that PhD. But from the perspective of a hiring manager they're really just a recent grad with a superiority complex.

If you are willing to accept that your PhD does not catapult you into being a senior developer (particularly for startups), then you shouldn't have any trouble finding a job, assuming you are in fact a good developer (unlike many PhDs).

Also, if you're in dire straits, I recommend picking up a contracting gig. It's a great way to tide you over without rushing into the first job offered.

If you'd like to work in NYC, or want to try your hand at contracting, just write to me: morgante@cafe.com.