
Ask HN: How to recover from a career false start? - laurieg
So I&#x27;m 26, I&#x27;ve had a lot of troubles with work and also I&#x27;m worried that my job history is a black mark on my resume.<p>I graduated with a CS degree from a top 10 school in 2011.  I did a small internship with a 15 person software company.  From there I spent a year studying (natural) languages.<p>After that I did a few odd jobs until I landed my first programming job in 2014. It was programming part time for a startup mainly using python.  I always felt utterly confused about what I was doing.  I left the company after 6 months.  I told them I was going on to a new opportunity but really I just felt like I couldn&#x27;t contribute at all.<p>Some more odd jobs and I landed a full time programming job using Ruby on Rails.  I had built my own ruby on rails project as practice and felt like things would go pretty well.  After entering the company I couldn&#x27;t seem to get anything done.  We did pair programming but I could never keep up.  After a while I just used the pair programming to try to hide the fact that I wasn&#x27;t keeping up.  After 6 months the boss and I have a conversation and agree to call it quits.  I felt relieved because those last few months I honestly felt like I was stealing.<p>After these failures I decided to try freelancing.  I met with a company multiple times and they seemed keen, but every time I met with them I felt like I was getting more and more out of my depth.  Finally we agreed a rate via email and they asked for a few bits of paperwork.  I completely froze up and couldn&#x27;t reply to them.  That was 9 months ago and I never did manage to reply.  A similar thing happened with another freelancing gig.<p>Now I look at my resume and feel like it&#x27;s full of holes that I can&#x27;t explain that well.  I look at freelancing and feel like I can&#x27;t take on anything because I&#x27;m not sure I&#x27;ll be able to do it.<p>Has anyone been in a similar situation?  Does anyone have any advice?
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Cozumel
It sounds like you have zero confidence in your development skills. And the
fear of failure is ironically what's making you fail.

Maybe contribute to an open source project or start your own? Are you sure
development is something you actually want to do? If you're sure then go to a
site like upwork.com and start small, doing small jobs, it'll give you
confidence.

Don't worry about holes in your resume, most employers couldn't care less, you
can just say you were freelancing during that time, and put your friends down
as references.

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alexellisuk
Have you thought of applying for a junior or grad role at a software
development house? What do you like most about coding? What would be your
strengths etc?

