

Need some advice: I'm losing confidence trying to find a job as a Jr Rails dev. - Lhopitals_rule

I graduated months ago with a non-computer science degree but spent the latter half of university diving into Rails, Vim, Linux, and other peripheral technologies. I'm comfortable (at varying degrees) with the menagerie of tools/tech that comes with the space from Haml to Sass to SQL.<p>But I'm confident in my ability to make any conventional app with Rails.<p>I'm having trouble cajoling employers, though. My Github only has a couple trivial Rails apps. I have a meager blog. I can answer questions on #rubyonrails all day, but it's hard to represent my knowledge to employers. Or maybe it's just not enough.<p>Having found HN around the time I decided to jump into web development a few years ago, I became complacent with the amount of times I hear people say that there aren't enough Rails developers to go around. I felt like I was getting a head start by learning Rails during uni. But I forgot to consider that I'm hearing this on HN, a community that's probably predominantly based around the bay area.<p>I live in Texas and haven't had much luck finding many Rails jobs to begin with. I started off with an asking salary of 70k due to the aforementioned complacency. It's amusingly high, but I promise it's not the Dunning-Kruger effect in action. :)  I just had no idea how to answer "What's your salary requirement?" Especially when I'd accept an offer $20k+ below that. What also led to my overestimation was that my friends with the same degree were getting into Microsoft shop consultancies and product companies around the $70k mark, but none of them had any experience outside the few trivial ASP.NET projects we had along our degree plan. None of them had side projects, programmed/made something for fun, or even knew much HTML. I thought surely I had more going for me than just being a new grad.<p>I've since dropped it to $50k, but am now lowering it to $40k in future interviews since it's evident that I need to just get my foot in the door.<p>Time is running out. It's been 5 months since I graduated. My parents resent that I didn't recruit heavily as I was graduating, but the recruited positions like "Business Process Analyst" and "Financial Management Trainee" (and much of the business school at large) were at odds with what I want to do with my life and the personality traits that make me enjoy the atmosphere around HN, Rails, and budding communities like Nodejs. I'll admit I was a bit drunk with confidence in my ability to find a Rails job at the time. Any job!<p>I'm not really sure where to go from here. I don't have the budget to move to the west coast or anywhere else at the moment. But I also understand I'm an unproven junior developer with no professional Rails experience. Only a very small subset of companies would fly out such a candidate. I certainly don't blame anybody for not taking a chance on me after a phone interview!<p>I think getting an unrelated corporate job just to get a job would be a bad idea for me. I enjoy working on my side projects. I have a few more interviews within the next two weeks, but I now see myself working a more menial job to pay the bills/debt while I continue to develop my side projects.<p>However, I'm approaching my mid-20s and I'm reluctant to believe that scavenging for free time to work on side projects is going to ever allow me to compete with other job candidates.
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overgryphon
The bay Area is far away, but what about Austin? Austin has a lively tech
scene, and quite a few startups looking for employees. Find a menial job so
you aren't desperate, and find the local RoR/other programming related meetups
to ask about job opportunities. Housing is cheap over the summer near the
university, since many students want to sublease their apartment while not in
school. Coops near UT campus also provide very cheap summer housing (you don't
need to be a student for this).

Meet people in the RoR community, work on some more substantial projects for
your Github, and ask others in the community for help learning and applying
for jobs. Contribute to an RoR open source project. Give it the summer, and
reconsider your options in the fall.

It's okay to not have a job right away. It's okay to get a job not related to
your degree. There are jobs available for inexperienced developers, it just
might take some time to find them. If this is what you want to do, you can do
it.

You aren't a student, but it may be worth calling the UT natural sciences
career center and ask to be put on the mailing list about job opportunities in
cs. They know who's hiring, and the worse that can happen is they say no.

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patdennis
Depending on your situation this may not be the most useful advice, but have
you considered moving to the Bay Area? It may be tempting to stay in your
comfort zone, but for me getting to the big city on my own after college was
vitally important.

If I didn't, I have no doubt I'd still be working some soul crushing job in
suburbia like my friends who didn't get out.

EDIT: I did see that you said you don't have the budget to move right now, but
that's hardly an excuse. You can always flip burgers or freelance or whatever
you need to do to save up. Or try to secure yourself a job before you move.
That's what I did.

~~~
Lhopitals_rule
I agree, it's not a good excuse. It's just something that wouldn't be able to
happen until many months from now.

Thanks for the insight. I'll keep sending resumes out, working on my side
projects, and making money in some fashion. When I have enough saved up, if
I've found no opportunities, I'll set a date and move.

~~~
jvrossb
If you score a job in the Bay Area (or anywhere else with a decent tech
scene), they should be able to pay you enough to relocate. I would not limit
your job search to what's locally available. Also try bidding on jobs on
Freelance sites to get some work while you're looking for a job. This will
also help you build a better portfolio while getting paid.

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ayers
Hindsight is a magical thing. Speaking from personal experience you need to
stick with trying to find the job that you are passionate about. I took a job
that wasn't ideal over another job offer. The decision came down to the fact
that it was in a location (and other personal factors) that all fell in my
"comfort zone". The job that I didn't take would have been a much better
cultural fit and more in line with my long term goals. I just didn’t have the
foresight to see this at that point.

I underestimated the negative effect of taking a job that had a tech stack I
wasn't passionate about, would have on me personally and professionally. I did
learn a lot of valuable lessons from the job I took and by no means was it a
write off. I ended up staying there a few years but can’t help wonder how
things would be different if I had taken the other job.

You have the right attitude in not wanting to get an unrelated corporate job
just for the sake of having a job. So my advice would be to keep looking and
if you need work desperately then settling for a temporary job outside of
tech(or in) while you continue your search is better than getting tied into
the corporate job you don’t want to be doing. It will be much harder to get
out of that job and onto the one you really want.

edit: formatting

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kbedell
All I can say is stick with it. Hard work pays off in time.

And I can vouch for the dearth of rails devs (though I guess I do live in
Boston).

The one thing I'd say is hold out as long as you can to make sure you get into
the type of job you want. If you take a job doing MS Tech just to feed
yourself, it'll be hard not to get branded with that tech.

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bwb
Hit me up -> bwb@site5.com, we are 100% remote and you can read about our RoR
projects at eng5.com

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canterburry
Send me a resume! Our company here in the Bay Area is looking for Rails people
like there's no tomorrow and we have plenty of people working remote.
canterburry@gmail.com.

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tgc_ror
can you email me at tgcdev1@gmail.com?

