
Ask HN: Is IT actually not for me? - wishiknew
Been looking for a job for many months and I can&#x27;t find anything. I&#x27;ve got a bachelor&#x27;s degree in CS but I feel like I didn&#x27;t learn much at school, honestly. I see the kind of programming going on here on HN and in hot cities&#x2F;companies (Google, Mozilla, etc.) and I have no clue. If you give me a project idea and time to discover a framework, I can get something out of it (see [redacted] for my 2-day discovery of Angular). But how am I supposed to sell myself as an Ember, Angular <i>and</i> Node <i>specialist</i>, for instance? This is ridiculous.<p>I have a pretty small network but the people I&#x27;ve worked with know how reliable I try to be. While an intern I&#x27;ve solved many business problems with languages I didn&#x27;t previously know, such as Excel VBA. None of those people could help me get something although they could have, with a different timing.<p>My biggest achievement is creating and managing a WordPress site now visited 50k times per month. I used to think it was an excellent asset when seeing what my classmates were up to (playing video games, mostly), but companies are definitely not impressed. And in a sense it&#x27;s true that I didn&#x27;t write a lot of code for it. But the code I wrote is rock solid. So yeah, I don&#x27;t know.<p>So what should I do? I live in a small country where German and French are spoken. I speak English and French. I have theoretical notions of German and I could speak it in a matter of months if somebody gave me a chance. Since French-speaking companies don&#x27;t, I doubt German-speaking ones would, though, and so far they haven&#x27;t. What have we done for companies to be so afraid of us? I grew up in this country, graduated in an excellent high school and in a decent CS school; somebody&#x27;d make a pretty damn good deal if they hired me while I&#x27;m cheap. But everybody&#x27;s rejecting me despite my motivation and my clean profile. This is wicked and there&#x27;s a point at which I will simply stop and go milk cows instead.
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mattdw
My first suggestion is to forget what you see on HN; it's totally not
representative of most of the world's IT work.

Excel VBA and legacy business systems and nasty abandoned PHP and shitty Java
monoliths are _way_ more common out there than Angular and Node and the like.

"…solved many business problems with languages I didn't previously know, such
as Excel VBA" sounds like it would make you a fantastic employee for any
number of small businesses out there, the trick will be finding them.

I lucked into my first gig via a short-term contract (through a friend) that
turned into full-time employment. The job was a mix of Filemaker (which I'd
never touched before) and PHP and weird CSV import/export formats (so,
basically the most awful combination of technologies in existence), but I
solved real problems and was of real value to my employer. Sounds like you
could pretty easily do the same, you just need to look for the opportunities.

The stuff that gets talked about on HN seems to be a weird microcosm of
cutting edge tech, too much money, and "we have to convince investors we're
worth buying so we have to keep up with all the buzzword tech". Meanwhile the
other 99% are just tucked away in small businesses solving boring business
problems with boring legacy tech and keeping the world turning.

~~~
Discere
I would definitely agree with this comment too. I work at a large law firm,
now managing a team of developers. I've been in the industry for ~6 years. HN
is not what the majority of programmers do.

I started off in IT procurement and worked my way up by showing how I can add
value to doing things like you said with the tools around me (Excel, VBA).

If you can demonstrate that you want to solve their problems that's far more
important than being a language\framework specialist.

Stability, reduced risk, maintainability, solid track record are more valuable
to companies than just using new technologies - these come in and out of
fashion - good developers solve problems not just use technologies

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rifung
Honestly I don't think companies expect you to really know anything about
specific technologies if you've just come out of school. Most likely they just
expect you to have strong fundamentals in CS, which hopefully you learned,
though you say you "feel like [you] didn't learn much at school".

My only advice is to keep applying and work on something while you are still
unemployed. You left out whether you've been getting interviews or not, which
might be important to see whether it's your resume or interviewing that is the
problem.

~~~
wishiknew
I know, my original post was much longer but I had to trim it to 2'000
characters. I've been interviewed by a good web agency who doesn't have
anything for me right now but who said they liked my profile. (Luckily I don't
have to deal with anxiety during interviews because that would make the
problem impossible to solve.) I've also been interviewed on the phone and took
a Java test for a second company – still waiting on their opinion on the test.
Finally, I want to try to become a freelancer if I don't find anything by the
end of March.

~~~
rifung
With all due respect, just because you got good feedback from one company
doesn't mean it's actually good. Employers will always try to be polite and
it's unlikely they would ever say anything bad.

In my opinion the only real test is how often you are getting interviews vs
not getting one.

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playing_colours
You are either from Switzerland or Luxembourg, right? Maybe move to Berlin?
There are a lot of English-speaking startups here, and you can eventually pick
up some German as well. Learn say some Ruby on Rails / Javascript by building
a website and then apply to jr. positions. Software development requires
effort and time. You cannot just build something serious without years of
learning and coding.

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lumberjack
You have a CS degree but you are applying for relatively simply web
development jobs where you can easily be out done by less formally educated
people who have more web development experience. That's a bad strategy.

You should apply for the less flashy jobs at bigger companies that tend to
want people with a solid formal education.

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FlopV
Have you applied to some of the relatively large corporations? Maybe something
more IT oriented than development oriented?

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codegeek
where are you located ? How can I contact you ?

~~~
wishiknew
Switzerland. You can write to me at forverylong at gmail dot com.

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a3voices
Maybe you just need to write your resume better, and work on soft skills when
talking to recruiters and hiring managers? Maybe secure an internship to
collect even more job experience while looking for a better job?

Experience matters more than pay. Do anything to get a software or IT job, and
then eventually hop to something better. Howard Stern (the super rich radio
guy) used to make barely anything for a very long time.

~~~
wishiknew
I've thought about improving my resume but I've had an excellent web agency
respond positively to it (and say they liked me after the interview – no
position for me right now though). So far I've taken this as a sign that my
resume is good and so I'm afraid that making something trendier or more
creative (mine's rather classic) might make myself look desperate/fake? On
internships: I'm currently looking for one.

