
Ask HN: Where do you look for work if you need experience? - coroutines
I&#x27;ve done low-level network programming in C, game development with Lua, and for the past 7 months have become a Javascript&#x2F;Coffeescript&#x2F;Node.js web developer ~thing~ (preference for backend).<p>My question is this: Where do you look for work if you need experience?<p>I live in California about an hour by BART from San Francisco..  I have an AS in Computer Science and Computer Networking - and I am out of that community college, but haven&#x27;t yet got the funds to do the university thing.  When I look at job ads I&#x27;m overwhelmed by the expectations and competition.  I feel like I don&#x27;t have a chance, every firm wants the best of the best and I&#x27;m somewhere in the middle?  I apply anyway, but have only scored a handful of interviews (btw I love the people from TypeForm, very pleasant).  I guess I kinda hope that the people posting these ads realize they&#x27;re expecting too much and do want you to learn some amount on the job.  I wish I could be an intern but most positions are unpaid and expect you to be a university student already.  I&#x27;m really trying to avoid working in the fast food industry..<p>I feel like I could be a government worker.  Somewhere you can&#x27;t be fired and you have 3 decades of job security to learn one new skill and apply it (partially) before you retire on a nice pension.  Where are those jobs? :p
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mattmanser
I think you're looking at the wrong thing. You're getting interviews so you're
doing something right and looking in the right place. Obviously you can find
jobs to interview for and sounds like your CV is fine.

So keep at it?

You just haven't clicked with someone yet. Perhaps the questions you need to
be asking is, 'how do I blow people away at interview?'.

But to answer your question, if you didn't know there's a monthly 'Ask HN:
who's hiring' thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9812245](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9812245)

That's a list of a thousand companies that hire software developers. Plus
loads more on the older threads, there's one every month.

If you're having trouble finding more jobs to apply for, you could email all
the ones near you with a brief covering letter (as the body of the email) and
your CV and ask whether they have any entry level positions. Bonus points for
including something in the covering letter that shows you've read a bit of
what they do. If you're having trouble figuring out who to email, you can
phone the company and ask the secretary 'that you're looking for an entry
level position and you were wondering who you would send your CV to'. They get
questions like this all the time. Depending on who you are, that might be
scary, but the quicker you get used to doing scary things, the more successful
in life you will be.

The worst they can say is no.

In all seriousness, so many companies are constantly looking for developers
but not constantly advertising. Like I went to a meetup last Thursday and a
no-experience guy there got an interview from another one of the attendees,
even though that's not what he came for.

Also, to follow up on that, network, go to technical meetups, talk to
_everyone_ and introduce yourself. Drop in that you're looking for your first
job without sounding too needy, making it the focus of the conversation or
doing the whole 'I haven't got a degree' thing. Also some meetups have job
announcements at the end, you can ask to be included in them, if you do ask
keep it positive and short.

Finally, though it sounds like your CV is fine, get a couple of articulate
people to look over your CV, especially anyone you or your parents know who
works in marketing (for the presentation), recruitment (because they know what
works) or IT (for the relevant experience).

~~~
coroutines
I really appreciate this reply, I hadn't thought about essentially cold-
calling companies that need devs but aren't advertising.

My problem is I live in a small town that's really only residential and fast
food - no real industry or large companies here. While I love public transit
my transportation beyond that is limited (no car) -- which is why I wish I
could get hired in SF, I can easily make it to that tech center. I have looked
at the Who's Hiring post, but I wish I could find more companies interested in
Coffeescript/JS or Lua that are willing to help with relocation - even remote
work.

I have had friends look over my CV, and that was amusing - I had a section
that essentially read like "He enjoys long walks on the beach and talking
about American Idol". I was trying to sound more like a human than a machine.
A friend rightly informed me that this sort of personality information would
be best disclosed at an interview. After that I added a bit to my 'Experience'
section - work that I had done for friends while acting as a system
administrator. I get a little upset when I have friends who are more qualified
in security fields and they get hired very easy - it seems like their resumes
aren't formatted as nicely. Qualifications really do speak for themselves.

I think I'm just upset when listening to grandparents talk about how 'back in
their day' they could easily go find an apprenticeship. I wish I could find
the same for webdev, frontend work. I usually go to DEFCON each year if I can
save for it, but I haven't had as much luck networking at that. I think most
people show up to DEFCON to drink, really.. (not a bad thing)

Anyway, thank you for your kind advice, sir - I will adjust my search <3

~~~
mattmanser
By meetup I meant smaller ones like on meetup.com.

The meetup I was talking about only 7 of us were there. Sometimes it's 20,
sometimes it's 5. Of which 2 mentioned their companies had open positions and
the third gave another person at the meetup an interview (this is what I went
to:
[http://www.meetup.com/NottinghamProgrammers/](http://www.meetup.com/NottinghamProgrammers/)).

In Nottingham, a fairly small city, there's a different meetup every week
aimed towards programmers/designers/web centric people, almost twice a week
now. In SF there will be a different technical meetup twice or 3 times a day.
They're social things as well as technical talks.

Also, I can practically 100% guarantee there will be a bunch of companies near
you, right now, that need a junior programmer, within 30 miles of your town.
They'll just be mainly Java or PHP jobs. If you want to be cutting edge, you
know what you've got to do, move to SF.

~~~
coroutines
Oh cool! -- I had seen meetup.com before but I hadn't used it myself. Thanks
for giving me another space to look through :-))

------
hitsurume
Something you might have thought about is applying for QA (Quality Assurance)
jobs for software / startup companies. I got my foot in the door as a QA
Engineer and was able to learn many different things besides testing software
that allowed me to move on to different roles, including Sys Admin positions.

With your current experience I think you would be able to get a QA job pretty
easily and move around after you get a years of experience and move towards
being a Dev afterwards if that's your goal.

~~~
coroutines
I think part of the time I'm frustrated looking at QA positions that are
largely dealing with customers vs QA testers who work more with developers.
Still, a paycheck is a paycheck and I could probably use the experience either
way.

Thanks for your input :-))

------
RogerL
"I guess I kinda hope that the people posting these ads realize they're
expecting too much and do want you to learn some amount on the job. "

It is sad that someone with no experience can see through these ads, and the
writers cannot. Hiring is broken. "Come work for us and stall your career (by
only practicing what you have already done)". Thank you, no. The underlying
assumption is that either you are unable to learn anything, or that some other
company should pay for you to learn something, and then this new company reaps
the benefit while limiting your ability to advance your career. This is
supposed to entice us to work for you how?

But that is not an answer to your question. Unfortunately at this stage maybe
you do need to market yourself some. You mentioned learning the Paxos
algorithm. Why not write it up nicely and stick it on medium or something? To
the right company you'll be displaying initiative, curiosity, intellectual
capacity, an ability to communicate, and so on. Those are (should be) highly
desirable skills and qualities. Not everyone will value them, because you
don't have React or whatever. Those aren't the good jobs anyway, so don't fret
too much (I know, easier to say than do, we all need income, and poor jobs
look pretty enticing when you don't have one).

I think the meetup ideas posted by others is excellent, even though it
apparently imposes a commute burden on you.

Maybe your interviewing isn't going well? If you have a friend, even if they
aren't hiring, can you have them run you through a 50 minute interview
session? Buy them dinner, 2 tickets to an event, or something. Like it or not
a lot of not very emperical things factor into interviews, and if you do
something to dispose somebody to not like you in the first 3 minutes that will
color the rest of the interview. Something as simple as picking at your face,
making a weird face, or whatever can undo you. It shouldn't, but it does.

I would suggest not taking job descriptions _too_ seriously. Some companies
just dump a bunch of key words, but then triage the resumes that come in and
pick somebody good regardless of whether you tick all those boxes. Of course
others use them as gates and your resume will get tossed. But no one will
remember your name, you could reapply in six months with more skills, so it
doesn't hurt to throw your name in the ring. But chances are good that they
got zero resumes that matched everything in that list.

~~~
coroutines
Hmm. I hadn't thought about 'no learning on the job' as 'this will stall my
career development'.

You make a really good point. There is a certain area between 'you don't have
the skills needed to become useful' and 'you can pick these up in short time'
\- but I think I have been looking at this wrong another way. I do apply to
positions I feel I'm unqualified for (within reason), but it's also ridiculous
for me to think companies expect all-knowing engineers. Any other trade would
have a worker learning new skills on the job.

My resume does change fairly often - I had an interview a couple weeks ago
where I was a little embarrassed because I went in with my current version and
they pulled out the resume I had from 5 months ago. I was like, 'er... may I
see that?'

On a side-note I think wining and dining potential employers is a fabulous
idea, even friends for interview practice.

Thank you for your feedback <3

------
stevewepay
Internships in Silicon Valley are most certainly not unpaid. The company I
work at pays our interns really well.

It sounds like you need to increase the breadth of your knowledge. No one
hires for Lua, and although Node is pretty popular right now, you not being
able to get a job indicates that you are probably missing some fundamental
knowledge, like algorithms, etc. You probably need to increase the quality of
your coding, and increase your preparation for interviews.

You are 1 hr away from SF, which suggests to me you live in Livermore or
Tracy. You probably need to study up on things that companies are expecting.
Go to sites like leetcode.com and glassdoor and work on your skills, maybe
that's where you're lacking.

~~~
coroutines
I don't think BART goes to Silicon Valley - is there something to connect the
two?

Yes, Lua is very much a niche. I tried applying at Cloudflare because they use
the Lua module for nginx - that is definitely in my field as I use them both
already. I'm haven't heard back but they've had that position (Lua Engineer)
posted for months now. I think my resume might be sitting in a stack.

I had hoped my community college AS in Computer Science would account for
something, but when you compare it to those who went to uni I'm sure it's
greatly devalued. I like to learn on my own as needed, but I can't show that
on paper (can I?). I do feel that I know algorithms fairly well - I spent last
week learning the Paxos algorithm so I could apply it to database
(mirroring?). I have fun doing things like that, it's just not something I can
say I'm accredited for by a university.

I hadn't been getting interviews for a few months but I managed to get 4 all
last week (when it rains, it hails?). I was nervous for the first interview
but because it was for a friends' company I think I still gave a good
impression with him vetting me. I had an easier time admitting my limited
frontend experience in the subsequent interviews with other companies. I
actually think the way I said this made me appear stronger, like I expected to
have no trouble picking it up quickly.

Anyway, I've been trying to decide if I should throw myself into a project to
show my ability through Github. I'm torn thinking I should be devoting all my
time to the job hunt, but many of my friends have done this to get noticed..

I appreciate your feedback, thank you sir <3

~~~
stevewepay
You said SF, not Silicon Valley.

Degree is not relevant, no one in SV cares. There are plenty of people that
don't have college degrees that have very good jobs. All that matters is your
skill and competence.

You are in an awkward position. You know Javascript, but you don't know front
end. There aren't very many purely backend positions that require only
Javascript/Node. They probably expect a complete fullstack knowledge, so not
knowing front end will hurt you, and not knowing a more back-end language like
Python, Java, etc will also hurt you.

Keep interviewing, but learn a new language, like Python or Java, and try to
get some experience in it, through open source projects, freelancing, etc.

~~~
coroutines
I did say SF - the fellow before me said internships were paid in Silicon
Valley so I was curious if there was a leg that added to BART to get there.

I just don't know what companies expect for frontend work - I have been doing
the tutorials for React, Meteor, Ember, and Angular but this sounds more like
backend work to me. Should I be looking in the direction of markup languages?
I have used HAML to work with data in YAML, I need to conquer SASS, LESS, and
Stylus I think.

I feel pretty confident about my language list - IRC kinda 'raised me' on
programming.

C, C++ (templates are still hard), Java (don't know popular libraries), Ruby,
Python, Lua, Coffeescript, JS, Lisp, Haskell (can read, not write..), Erlang,
Elixir (beginning), PHP, ...

I just mean to say I do know Python quite well - I worked through the Violent
Python book a month ago and loved the hell out of it :-)

Thank you for your feedback - I just wish I had a better idea of what is
frontend. Imo things like React blur that line building components against the
backend so closely?

------
alain94040
Your main strength compared to other candidates is that you are cheap. When
most CS college grads expect a starting salary above $100K, hopefully you are
willing to work for half.

So focus on companies that are price-sensitive. A good starting point: small,
underfunded startups.

After 1 year working at a low-paid job in a tech startup, starting with QA or
similar low-coding expectations, if you are any good, you'll pick up more and
more work. Within a year or two, you'll be a full-time, full-stack dev. Your
next job will be easy to find.

~~~
coroutines
I still can't get used to $100k being a realistic salary for an experienced
dev. It seems so astronomically high - I live at home with a mom who has
supported our family of 4 on $45k/year before taxes for over a decade. I do
hope to use a minimum starting salary to my advantage, it just feels like I
can't gain independence and save for my future with rent being what it is in
the bay area. It definitely makes sense to find a roommate though..

Thank you for your childhood. -- oh, I mean input :-) Just having a flashback
to The Giver..

------
lsiebert
Applying for jobs is a volume thing. Don't worry if you don't have specific
skills or years of experience, let them assess that, just apply for any
positions that seem interesting. Apply for a lot of jobs, have a github with
side projects, even if they are half finished,that's fine if they have
readmes. Get on Dice.com. Go to events when you have time and meet people.
Don't give up.

~~~
coroutines
I actually felt really bad about my Github after I started applying because
most of the repos I had were forks of things I wanted to work on but hadn't
gotten around to. I felt like I was taking credibility from others so I spent
an afternoon deleting a lot of untouched inspiration. I do think applying for
jobs is like throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks - but it's
such a waste of good pasta :(

(I swear that's a metaphor with deep meaning)

Anyway, I'll go look at dice.com right now, though :-) - my pool has been
craigslist, indeed, linkedin, glassdoor, assembly, caljobs, and.. I know there
are a few others :s

This might be an unpopular opinions but I sort of wish there were just a
government-run site for posting your resume and connecting you with companies.
If I ever do get hired I'm sure identity theft is soon to follow from all my
applications :(

------
introv-preneur
Maybe try this: [https://www.jrdevjobs.com/](https://www.jrdevjobs.com/)

~~~
coroutines
Thank you for another resource, I found this that I think I will apply for:
[https://www.jrdevjobs.com/jobs/1438869644aa61299d](https://www.jrdevjobs.com/jobs/1438869644aa61299d)

