
Ask HN: How to help my friend land a developer job? - sanggonlee
Hey folks, I&#x27;m a software developer in Canada and have been full time for roughly 3 years.
I have a friend who&#x27;s been trying to become a developer for about 1.5 years after graduating from a college with programming diploma (it&#x27;s a 2 year long program and not a computer science or university level engineering degree).
He&#x27;s 35 years old, done 2 not-too-impressive co-op terms, and now working part-time (about 15-25 hours per week) at a restaurant. He&#x27;s quite desperate now, as he interviewed at a number of places but didn&#x27;t an offer from any of them, but thinks he&#x27;s too late to search other career paths (I know, it&#x27;s never too late to start anything, but I can understand him when I think about all those years on college and studies, besides I can&#x27;t think of anything else in particular he excels at or enjoys).
And to be honest, I don&#x27;t think he has enough technical or problem solving skills to qualify for a full time developer position. That&#x27;s why I haven&#x27;t referred him to my employer yet.
So I&#x27;d really love to help him get those skills needed to land on a developer position. I&#x27;m hesitant to tell him to just work hard, because he needs a good direction he can commit to. Should I tell him to complete a not-so-trivial application development project? Or should I tell him to work on theories (data structures, algorithms, OOP, design patterns)?
He&#x27;s been learning React and done a few tiny projects in it. He lacks practical skills in general, but lacks theoretical knowledge even more.<p>I&#x27;m really hoping he will make his way. These days I&#x27;m starting to even worry about his mental health. Any advice will be a huge help!!
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dlphn___xyz
maybe consider another career path - theres far better opportunities if you
broaden your search.

