

Ask HN: Better options than grad school for getting into bay area software dev - canbrianExp

I&#x27;ve been trying to find employment as a software dev in the bay area, but I feel like the best jobs aren&#x27;t available if you haven&#x27;t:<p>A) Gone to a top tier school.
B) Know somebody
C) Had the type of experience that requires having gone to a top tier school or knowing somebody.<p>I was considering trying to get into a high tier grad school, but its not something I really want to do, I just don&#x27;t see any other clear options for progressing as a software dev, and was hoping that someone could share advice.
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gojomo
Can you be more specific about what you consider the "best jobs" and what your
current experience is (or lacks)?

There's a lot of places hiring and willing to take chances on people with some
demonstrable skills and ability to learn. Take any job that's closer (in tech,
geography, or organization type) to your goals than your prior work, and go
from there. Graduate degrees are not a prerequisite, and many employers would
prefer seeing shipped code, on recent related projects, over formal
credentials.

~~~
canbrianExp
Best jobs: Lets say a "good job" is 75k starting, not more than 50 hours a
week average workload. Theres a lot of other things I care about more, but
keeping it highly quantifiable might make the discussion easier.

Experience: 4 years as a php software developer with good recommendations, but
no where with with a huge number of users.

Applying to about 30 places, the reasons I've been turned down have been:

\- Other candidates worked at bigger companies. \- Didn't go to an impressive
undergrad school. \- Failed 1 technical screen out of 10 taken.

Could you name some of those places hiring?

~~~
gojomo
I suggest working to demonstrate interest and aptitude beyond PHP. (Even the
famous PHP-using successes, Yahoo and Facebook, don't seem to be emphasizing
it in their current job listings.) There are certainly PHP wizards and
opportunities, but employers can fear that "just PHP" people are minimally
self-taught, in isolation or on mostly non-tech teams, on small repetitive
projects – and thus have bigger gaps in their experience, or more out-of-date
habits, than people who've done a variety of things.

Personal projects, open-source contributions, or any work experience showing
flexibility and use of new technology helps here. Simply indicating that
you're eager to learn whatever new thing _they_ want you to learn isn't
enough, and can be seen as a negative: it's waiting for external direction,
and they're hoping to see independent ambition/curiosity in the fields where
they need help.

Similarly, avoid sending the signal that your main criteria is anyone who'll
get you into the region at your minimum salary number. The employer will fear
you have no special interest in their tech or market/products, and thus be
harder to train up or likely to jump ship quickly.

Still, to a first approximation, every growing or well-funded company is
always looking for people and often having a hard time finding them.
Craigslist, the big job sites, and the monthly "Who's Hiring" thread on HN are
all reasonable places to look for postings, but it also makes sense to look
for companies with offerings you admire using technology you want (and have
readied yourself) to work with, and then look for listings on their sites or
ways to get the attention of their existing devs. If you're in the area,
attending the meetups/networking events for your target technologies will also
help you know who's using it, what they're doing, and what for what roles
they're hiring.

Good luck!

~~~
canbrianExp
I'll put some more work in those directions and send out some more resumes.
Whichever way it goes, thanks for taking the time to give me some pointers.

