
The Unemployable Programmer - fuligo
http://unemployable.pen.io/
======
mkozlows
This is an absolutely baffling article. The job market for developers is not
glutted by over-supply, it's one where marginally-qualified people get hired
for salaries well above the national average because companies need SOMEONE to
do the job. And virtually nowhere cares about degrees, especially for
experienced devs.

And having a single development job at a big company for a decade isn't some
kind of career-killing move... unless you turn it into one, by letting your
skills stagnate and wither, which is on you.

(Or maybe that wasn't a development job for those ten years? The article is
vague. If, for some reason, the poster was out of the dev world for a decade
then yeah, it's going to be harder to get back in without a lot of aggressive
self-retraining. But even then, if you actually can program, it should be very
do-able.)

~~~
vonmoltke
> This is an absolutely baffling article. The job market for developers is not
> glutted by over-supply, it's one where marginally-qualified people get hired
> for salaries well above the national average because companies need SOMEONE
> to do the job. And virtually nowhere cares about degrees, especially for
> experienced devs.

What is baffling is this Valley-centric, web and mobile development-centric
line being repeated constantly in this thread. Most of the world is a
different story. Outside the Valley and a couple other metros, and outside the
web and mobile fields in general: 1) degrees are usually required; 2)
employers are much pickier.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Agreed, sometimes people aren't aware that HN is its own little echo chamber.

I was talking to a recruiter recently for a managerial job and somehow got
onto the topic of hiring. I asked him what's the hardest jobs for him to fill
right now. He told me he's dying for entry level .NET/ASP and Java developers.
Corporations have built their castles on these technologies, not FOSS/Mobile
and need staff. Degrees were an issue but he said he could place people with
two year degrees.

We talked about pay, and it wasn't terrible impressive, but for someone
straight out of community college it sounded pretty good to me and he also
revealed that if the person wasn't a complete nightmare socially, he could
expect to be promoted quick.

~~~
outworlder
> He told me he's dying for entry level .NET/ASP and Java developers

Why does he need so many _entry level_ programmers?

> We talked about pay, and it wasn't terrible impressive

Is the recruiter trying to staff a company with mostly entry-level
programmers, paying low wages? I've seen plenty of companies like that,
including those who used mostly trainees. Usually, the work environment was
the crappiest possible, and word gets around.

~~~
sjcrank
In the interest of building an experience-diverse workforce employers need
entry level, mid level, and experienced developers with skills in their core
stack, which in many cases is Java or .NET.

My theory is that technology trends are leading the entry level developers to
learn Python, Ruby, and JavaScript rather than .NET or Java, thereby reducing
the supply and putting these candidates in high demand.

~~~
tracker1
So, they _could_ hire another senior person at 2.5x the pay instead of 3-4
junior devs. The problem is a lot of younger managers don't understand the
different in ouput can vary a _lot_ from developer to developer. And on top of
that quality output can be far more maintainable.

All they care about is # of jira/tfs tickets that are open, and the number of
features, and how many warm bodies based on their averages they need. The
smoothest project I ever worked on was staffed by all senior people, with
relatively diverse and overlapping skills. That wouldn't be possible with 3x
the developers if 2/3 of them were junior to mid level.

------
fringedgentian
I once found myself unemployable as well, maybe what I did can help someone.
This was quite a few years ago when the ColdFusion job I had just ended and
the job I had before that was in Visual FoxPro (and a few other even less
known technologies). Talk about unemployable. Also I am not in a major city,
so I was getting pretty much no responses to my resume.

After a few months I realized I was unemployable and set out to change it.
Being unemployed, I luckily had a lot of free time. I made a study of the
programming job ads in my target market and if I didn't know what a technology
was, I looked it up. I tried to figure out which language was the most asked
for, and decided it was PHP (at the time). Also in my studies and in the job
ads I noticed that most of the work involved these new-fangled Content
Management Systems and so decided I needed to learn one of those, and I chose
Joomla. It was a choice I would later come to regret but it got me a job.

To learn these, for both PHP and Joomla I ordered a book from Amazon.com. I
limited my search to books published in the last few years and ranked them by
customer satisfaction and chose one near the top. And then I made myself go
through reading these books and doing the exercises at the end of the
chapters. This was very very boring but I made myself do it. Then I created a
few Joomla websites for local small businesses for free.

And then, after 6 months of unemployment, I had made myself employable again.
I saw a job ad that I was now now barely qualified for, applied, and was hired
to maintain a legacy Joomla website. Was it a glam job? No, but it was
somewhere to start. And the rest is history. I do think if I found myself
unemployable again I could repeat the process and figure out what is being
asked for these days and learn that.

I haven't done a study of it lately but I would guess almost any kind of
expertise in a major JavaScript framework like Angular, Ember, or React/Flux
might get you a remote job fairly easily, as there are very few experts in
this and many companies seem to want it. Also most developers don't want to do
front-end/JavaScript stuff like that so there is less competition. That's
where I'd start looking anyway.

~~~
monk_e_boy
I chose to write a hugely boring open source product that no one in their
right mind would bother with. Old tech, competing with a ton of other similar
projects. I focused on the documentation, make it as simple as 'cut and paste
this code to get it working' every time someone had a question, bam - a cut
and paste example.

Did some serious SEO and soon was racking up a couple of thousand hits a week.
This soon hits the million mark. That gets me interviews, even with people who
don't want that old tech, they just see results.

I am currently doing a bit of Drupal for a client, there are a TON of half
baked modules. Take some of them and make them work. Make them work with the
backup module, the restore, the import.... then your CV is padded with a ton
of neat stuff.

This is super common advice, the trick is to actually take it. Get all OCD
about it and make it work.

~~~
hardwaresofton
If you're getting millions of hits per week, you might want to consider doing
something to monetize the open source project...

~~~
nordic_nomad
That's what I was thinking. Find something 1 in 1000 would pay a dollar for
and you're golden.

~~~
acoard
1,000,000 / 1,000 = $1,000. Hardly golden. Still, I take your point, with a
million eyeballs you don't have to monetize much to make a pretty penny.

------
duggan
> Being able to get work in this field without a fancy background is still
> possible, but only if you have the right connections. Like I said: it's no
> longer sufficient to be able to do the job

This sentiment regularly comes up on HN, and I find it a little exasperating.
Human interaction has always been an important part of career.

There's a subtle (or not so subtle) contempt for soft skills in these laments.
You can write code and have fun, but if you want to get paid for it that's a
career. As part of this career, you will produce software as a byproduct.
However, the primary purpose of this career is solving problems.

You work in the sales department of your own career. Sell your ability to
solve problems. Do not sell bits.

~~~
fmsf
In most cases we need to sort CVs somehow. If we sort by degree there is a
high chance that someone in the top 10 fits the position. Interviewing dozens
of candidates is very resource consuming. I can emphasise with his story, but
is all game of numbers in the end.

~~~
huherto
FTFY empathize :)

~~~
fmsf
[https://www.google.pt/search?q=emphasise&oq=emphasise&aqs=ch...](https://www.google.pt/search?q=emphasise&oq=emphasise&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.496j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8)
one is british english the other one is american english

------
jcadam
Hmm... I'm a 35 year old programmer and I work in Defense/Aerospace. If you
think finding a good developer is hard, try finding a good developer who also
holds a security clearance. If you're any good at all, you will always be
employed and well compensated. The work can be dull, with Vogon-esque
processes and procedures, but I have side projects to keep me sane :)

Every couple of years (ok, at least every year) I'll try to apply to non-
defense jobs, and I get the impression that there's a glut of highly qualified
engineers in the private sector -- "Sorry, we're being deluged with
applications right now, we'll totally get back to you someday." And the
interviews generally involve 3-4 rounds of hazing via Knuth. In the defense
sector, they verify your clearance and credentials, check for a pulse, then
show you to your desk.

Some are interested until they hear my current salary "You'd have to be a 10x
RockNinja to make that kind of salary here." Yes, even Silicon Valley
companies (and I live in an area with a relatively low COL). I'd _love_ to
find a remote job, but those seem to be even _more_ competitive
(understandable, I suppose).

Guess I'm stuck.

~~~
mgkimsal
Problem there is you can't just go get a security clearance - you have to be
... sponsored(?) - is that the word - by a company already. At least, that was
my reading of the situation a few years back. I gave up applying to defense
positions years ago because every one required existing security clearance.
It's the defense industry version of "you have to have experience before we'll
hire you to get the experience".

~~~
jcadam
Right after I graduated with my BSCS in 2002, I went into the Army for four
years (which is how I got my clearance). The only employers willing to even
look at me ("if you love programming so much, why haven't you been doing it
for the past four years?") were defense companies, and only because I already
had a clearance. :)

We sometimes hire fresh grads without a clearance, but experienced hires are
generally expected to already have them. It's not cheap (and definitely not
fast) to get someone a clearance. Though, some companies/contracts/projects
are probably more flexible on this, especially if they have something
unclassified you can work on while they wait for your clearance to come
through.

~~~
Retric
Out of curiosity what's your take on people who had a clearance and then let
it expire? They go inactive after 2 years so getting back seems like an issue.

------
cmdkeen
The developers we hire in their 40s don't all have degrees, but what they do
have is _relevant_ experience. Now that relevance may be domain knowledge in
the industry, or it might be experience with particular part of our stack -
the classic example is the very experienced Oracle developer. You'll all too
easily lose out to the young, hungry graduate who will also need to learn lots
of things on the job, but doesn't come with as much baggage.

The OP might well have lots of relevant experience but it hardly comes across
in the post. Neither does any appreciation, or indeed even an active lack of
appreciation, that "knowing people" is the way to break through the HR
process. After 20+ years in development there's a degree of expectation that
you have built bridges along the way with people who can recommend you -
because they want to work with you again. Because that's the flip side of
being the experienced hire, you need to have the soft skills to utilise that
experience - be it coaching and mentoring, writing well, negotiating and
influencing etc.

~~~
Udo
_> The OP might well have lots of relevant experience but it hardly comes
across in the post._

Strange, I read it very differently. Just because those things aren't
specifically addressed didn't leave me with the impression there isn't
anything there. Very early in the article it was stated how they spend a lot
of time honing their skills, presumably all their life, not sure I agree with
your impression this is an unskilled individual.

 _> After 20+ years in development there's a degree of expectation that you
have built bridges along the way with people who can recommend you_

That's different from just asserting they lack in skill, however. If you read
the article, it's clear why they can't satisfy this specific expectation. It
seems callous to simply proclaim they should have built industry relations all
their lives, and now there is nothing left to be done.

~~~
navait
Being sufficently vague is a common way of hiding the fact that you don't
actually have required knowledge.

------
mike-cardwell
I've spent the last 13/14 years writing Perl so I started getting worried a
year or two back that I was making myself unemployable by not branching out.
I've been doing a lot of front-end development since, learning JavaScript and
NodeJS to a good level, familiarising myself with JavaScript frameworks like
React and Angular and learning/launching a couple of simple sites using
NodeJS/Express and Python/Django (two other technologies I recently started to
learn). Turns out this was the correct thing to do as I was made redundant
about 6 weeks ago and it turns out there are a lot more JavaScript jobs in my
area than Perl jobs. At least I've got a couple of projects I can point to now
to show I have _some_ experience. I'm still looking for something new, but I'm
very glad I started working on expanding my skills _before_ it became an
immediate necessity. I guess this is the industry we work in. Oh, I also
created a "hireme" website to try and sell myself. I'm not sure how effective
it will be, but if nothing else, creating the website and listing my skills
was a big confidence boost (I didn't realise how much I knew) -
[https://hireme.grepular.com](https://hireme.grepular.com) \- Feel free to
steal the idea/design.

~~~
gvb
Nice web site, I really liked your comments in it.

 _I 've been writing this on and off for the past 6 years. Whenever something
peaks my interest I write it up._

s/peaks/piques/

Ref:
[http://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/pique](http://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/pique)

~~~
mike-cardwell
Oops. Thanks for pointing that out.

------
gexla
I want to start dating. I put my profile up to dating sites. I spend much of
my days sending messages to women's profiles. I take their personality tests,
but I never get messages (or replies to mine) even though I'm sure I get
matches. I even started looking at niche sites such as "nerd dating..."

Dude, just get out and actually talk to women.

I'm not going to say how to get gigs, jobs, etc because I'm out of my league
with the great people who post here. But whenever I see a post like yours, I
see a lack of creativity and human contact.

I understand that you probably get tunnel vision from the stress. But try
different things and different approaches. Try to get to know people. Get
involved in different developer ecosystems. Talk to real people. Or get
someone to talk to real time if not in person. Get that human touch going.

I like James Altucher's idea of list building. Brainstorm a list of different
approaches you could take to land different work. Brainstorm other types of
work that you could do. Brainstorm a list of side-gigs you could work on.
Brainstorm anything, just to get that idea creation machine going.

You got lost somewhere by being the same for X years. What you need is chaos.
You need to shake things up. Routine is good for the things you don't want to
spend a lot of cognitive overhead (bedtime, eating, etc) on so that you can
focus on creating explosive interactions in your mad scientist lab.

As a side note. Don't farm out your dev skills for less than a solid
professional rate. Lowering the value that you get for your skills is a rabbit
hole. No matter how far you go down that hole, there is still room for people
to devalue you. They try to get the work cheaper, they complain about what you
do. You could pay them for the opportunity to work for them and it would still
be ugly. Better to take a minimum wage job than to farm your dev skills at
less than a solid professional rate. Better to be a starving artist waiting
tables than to cheapen your artistic skills by selling them to people who
don't value them.

~~~
wtbob
> Dude, just get out and actually talk to women.

That's a lot easier said than done.

The parallel with employment is actually not bad: one doesn't find a job by
approaching random offices asking for work any more than one finds a wife by
asking random if they would like to get hitched (yes, some small number of
people succeed with both approaches); one often finds a job by being
introduced to the right opportunity by people who know of those opportunities.
Now, those introducers might be recruiters (matchmakers) or people one has
worked with before (friends), but at the end of the day it's all about
networking.

~~~
duiker101
But that's still how you are most likely to get women(or jobs) and how it's
been done since forever.

~~~
DaveWalk
Well said. Why are we so apt to forget how things worked in the past?

------
iovar
I sympathize with your trouble but what you describe seems exaggerated to me.

If within a year you made only a thousand dollars, why didn't you spend more
time working on a side project, or sharpening your skills? Maybe the ones you
currently have are not much in demand?

Also, freelancing sites do have a lot of low quality jobs, but if you spend
some time digging around you can find decent jobs; e.g. I, a poor country
resident, have found jobs that made me in a week as much as you claim to have
made within the year.

And btw, I'm thirty-something, university drop-out and with a couple of huge
holes in my CV. But that's not what I bring forward when asking for a job.
Instead I project the most confident image that I have for myself and that's
my advice to you, too (i.e. don't focus on the negativity of your current
situation, it's not going to help you find a job).

~~~
knowaveragejoe
If it seems exaggerated, that's because it is. Outside of NYC and SF, there's
basically nowhere in the US where businesses wouldn't hire a competent
programmer on the spot.

~~~
jellicle
If you actually believe that, I pity you.

The reality is that CEOs talk up a shortage while holding salaries absolutely
steady and even while laying off thousands of programmers:

[http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-
hiltzik-201508...](http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-
hiltzik-20150802-column.html)

The reality is also that a 40+, non-degreed programmer will have their resume
thrown away by the first line HR people in 95%+ of cases. Not qualified for
senior jobs due to lack of a degree; not qualified for entry-level jobs due to
lack of a degree and age.

If you want to be educated on this, feel free to make up a fake resume of a
40+, no-degree programmer and shop it around. Make a list of any responses you
get. You can keep that list on an index card.

~~~
aianus
Well, GoogBookSoft comes to Canada every year and wastes many millions
sponsoring J1s, TNs, H1Bs, and relocation while paying the same salaries as
they do to Americans.

Why would they do that if there was no shortage of qualified American
programmers in the bay?

~~~
jellicle
To hold down wages?

If there were any shortage, why are IT wages absolutely flat?

If there were any shortage, why the famous pickiness exhibited by every
company in their interview process?

[http://cis.org/no-stem-shortage](http://cis.org/no-stem-shortage)

~~~
aianus
They're not mutually exclusive.

If there is a shortage and companies go abroad to fill positions, they're
technically 'holding down wages'. Otherwise wages would skyrocket into the
atmosphere as more and more money chases the same few engineers. Less value
would be produced at a higher cost.

I don't see why that would be a preferable situation for the industry or the
country at large. Are you really struggling on your measly $100k + stock (at
minimum) and desperately need more?

------
Udo
I feel I can relate to this general life story. A lot. While I'm currently
only _vaguely_ looking for a job, I also share the same suspicions about
general job options for freelancers - although I have to say that I have been
extremely lucky in finding work so far. But I agree it sometimes looks like
our work isn't very valuable.

In this context I have to say though that the HN freelancer thread, while
yielding uneven results, has mostly been very good to me. (YMMV)

The deeper problem as far as the actual hiring process is concerned, however,
might be - as hinted at in the article - the amount of work and hoop-jumping
necessary just to earn the privilege of showing up for work. I found this
astonishing, too, especially given the fact that most programming positions
probably have a high turnover rate, and I believe it does have to do with
hundreds of applicants showing up for a single position. The ensuing filter
process is not only a drain on the applicants, but also on the companies that
are paralyzed with making this decision.

I believe the mere _existence_ of TripleByte and SmartHires shows over-supply
_is_ a problem, and it's underscored by the fact that they have no problems
turning people away.

~~~
dublinclontarf
There is no over-supply of developers, there is a shortage of good developers
(for various definitions of good).

~~~
Udo
_> there is a shortage of good developers (for various definitions of good)._

But couldn't that simply be a result of an inadequate selection process,
instigated by a flood of applicants, and then worsened by an inability to
judge who will be good in what role? It seems very easy to dismiss anyone
looking for work on the grounds that they must not be very good to begin with.
All we _know_ is not enough long-term suitable applicants make it to the end
of the hiring pipeline.

~~~
dublinclontarf
There are multiple problems we're talking about here.

One is the selection problem, that orgs have great difficulty in working out
who is a good developer and who is not.

The other is that there are a lot of developers who have difficulty in getting
work, and to a large extent a lot of them just aren't any good and would be
better off in a different career (sorry but that's just the way it is).

Once you've removed the rubbish developers there are indeed far more jobs than
developers.

~~~
matwood
> Once you've removed the rubbish developers there are indeed far more jobs
> than developers.

Agree. And once you add in the big companies like FB, Google, etc... picking
up a huge lot of the good+ developers, everyone else is scrambling to find
someone who can at a minimum do FizzBuzz.

~~~
dublinclontarf
I don't know, I am certain that the big co's miss a LOT of good developers who
just don't fit their interview process. I went through Google's once and got
cut off pretty early in the process, and never attempted a large Co's
interview process again after that.

~~~
matwood
I didn't say they got all of the good developers, but they definitely pull a
lot of them. For a really good developer it makes sense to at least try to
work at one of the companies for awhile. The money is good, and it ends up
being a great resume builder. Are there great devs who are passed over or who
do not want to work at the big companies? Sure, but the big companies do suck
a lot of the talent out of the pool.

------
edw519
Here's the dirty little secret about "employability" you hardly ever read
about in places like HN:

It's not about you. It's about your user and what they accomplish with the
tools you build for them.

It doesn't matter who you are, what you know, what education you have, where
you've worked before, what turns you on, or what you think is cool. It only
matters what you can do for others.

It's really that fucking simple.

So forget about all the window dressing and find a way to demonstrate to
others what you can do for them. The first step is to find out what they
really need.

Like many others here, I am self taught, pretty decent, and love what I do.
But the thing that has always separated me from other just as capable but
"umemployable" programmers has been my absolute resolve to program for others,
not myself.

I even remember one interview when I didn't present a resume, but instead a
one-page project plan itemizing exactly what I would build over the next 90
days to help them solve their problem. I got the job instantly. (An extreme
example, but you get the idea.)

I have never lacked work. And I'm confident I never will with this attitude.
Try it, please.

~~~
jacquesm
> I have never lacked work. And I'm confident I never will with this attitude.

I believe you. But that's also because you started this path in life a long
time ago. If you're 40+, you've never done freelance/contract work and you
need to start finding customers or new employment in a hurry then it's going
to be a hungry winter.

~~~
keyboardwarrior
Who says anything about freelance work. People think experience = programming
+ being paid.

experience = programming if you can show a active github profile with clean
code that shows you are pro-active or a expert in stack or domain, why would
"they" not atleast contact you back.

on the other side, if you have just been coding closed source, brain farts and
clones that have no innovation or any overlapping area in what you are
applying for, then why would they hire you.

if your looking to get hired by a Oracle or a HP, freelance experience wont
cut and i doubt a github profile either, but besides huge corporate companies.
most small/medium sized startups are willing to hire programmers that can
learn and supply added value.

value is the keyword here, having more then 1 trick in your bag is a must if
your coming at it from the "no diploma" angle. Thats why i recommended people
to write code for readabilities sake. if nothing else, someone can read it.
even if its some crusty 10 year old code.

~~~
s73v3r
"if you can show a active github profile with clean code that shows you are
pro-active or a expert in stack or domain, why would "they" not atleast
contact you back."

Because you're older, or a minority, or female...

------
orthoganol
> When companies find out I don't have a degree that's usually the end of the
> road.

I have a difficult time believing this. I've worked for & know of companies
through connections that care 10x more about your portfolio than degree. We've
passed on Stanford grads & even a guy who worked at NASA, because they just
couldn't physically bring themselves to code when we needed them too, they
couldn't sit in front of a computer & actually build out a test feature
despite loving to talk intelligently about the problem. It's not nerves...
Degrees/ credentials can create these terrible comfort bubbles that prevent
programmers from actually diving in & being productive. When you've been
around enough it's easy to spot this type.

In my experience, portfolio is the #1 factor, and I think most companies would
take you seriously if you have one w/ at least a couple full, impressive
projects.

~~~
keyboardwarrior
Completely agree, you can spot the competent programmer from miles away who
was atleast some opensource projects he thinks of as "hobbies" in his
portfolio.

companies dont care what you think you can do, because you have a degree. they
care for what you can do for them, if what you are doing in your own time
complements the things they would like somebody have done for them. the choice
becomes easy.

------
NumberSix
The "technology" industry is extremely and irrationally picky in selecting and
retaining technical employees, primarily programmers or software engineers.

Not everyone does it. Not every company that does it does it consistently. It
is largely subconscious. Technical or "cultural fit" excuses are typically
cited to explain and justify the rejection of the taboo candidate.

There are a number of non-technical criterion that frequently push genuinely
qualified, competent, indeed exceptional candidates into the "not qualified"
category. These include:

o Over thirty-five

o Looks over thirty-five (worse)

o White or gray hair (even worse)

o Has a Ph.D.

o A new or recent (within 2 years) Ph.D. (worse)

o Lack of a college degree

o Identifiable membership in certain low status minority groups, notably
African-American or someone with a Spanish surname and visible American Indian
ancestry

o Female

o Over ten years of purely technical experience regardless of age.

o Less than three years of paid professional experience (working for a
University or government research lab often does not count)

o Expresses skepticism of a currently popular fad in programming

o Obviously knows more or is smarter or both than the people conducting the
technical interview.

o Just plain different from the dominant group at the potential employer is
some visible way.

o A long recent period of unemployment (over six months, probably over three
months)

By his own account, the OP lacks a formal college degree and is well over 35.

~~~
norea-armozel
The minority status thing is a problem from what I can tell among LGBT
developers for sure (if you're looking for work outside of San Francisco or
New York). I can't seem to understand why one's ethnicity or gender identity
and/or sexual orientation should ever be an impediment to doing one's job, but
for some reason certain people seem to fear the Other.

------
strathmeyer
I got a degree but am still unemployable because I didn't have a job when I
graduated and apparently nobody hires unemployed people. It's like there's
just some tiny step I need to get over. Recently a recruiters said all I
needed was a little Java experience and I could be making a lot of money. But
I have plenty of Java experience, why can't I find a job anywhere?

The worst thing about all of this is how harsh and degrading everyone is when
you want to get into the industry. Questions are met with disgust derision, as
if you are spoiling everyone's worldview. But I am just trying to describe my
experience for survival reasons.

~~~
nordic_nomad
Make your own job man, if you did any freelance work then you were self
employed. If you find yourself unemployed, hack on something in between
interviews and call it a startup that didn't work out.

Never, never, never admit to any hiring person that you weren't in charge of
your career path at all times. That's one of the few distinctions they can
make with technical people about whether or not they're qualified or not.
Don't make it easy for them.

~~~
strathmeyer
...but, I've never been in charge of my career path. There have never been any
jobs for us. Yes I work on video games in my free time but now I have been
doing it for a decade and I have never found anyone to show my games to. The
problem isn't that my startup did work out, the problem is that my life isn't
working out. How am I supposed to feed myself every day if I don't have money?
How am I supposed to program every day when I can't feed myself. Every day I
am slipping further and further behind and nobody has any clue what to do.

I don't have any clue how to talk to hiring people. Ever since I got a degree,
they were experts at fishing the worst things out of my life that somehow
disqualified me from employment. Whether it was a bad grade I got somewhere
that is somehow completely my fault, or the way I am supposed to ask and beg
for a job as an unemployed person.

If I knew how to make my own job I wouldn't be starving and homeless.

------
amm
Degrees only matter for "serious companies" and are used as a filter by often
clueless HR employees without technical background. As long as you can prove
practical experience, you should be fine.

Your network, on the other hand, becomes more important as you get older.
Hiring an unknown person in his/her 40s or 50s has a much lower risk/reward
ratio than hiring a random developer in his 20s who will a) do whatever you
tell him without questioning anything b) work himself to death and c) work for
almost no compensation.

Stay away from oDesk and online freelancing in general. Most of what's
outsourced online is low skill, low risk and low reward work (landing pages,
analytics integration, etc). Almost everyone can do it, so suddenly you're
competing with everyone on the planet instead of just a couple of 100-1000
freelancers in your city. One of your biggest advantages over 2nd/3rd world
freelancers is your location, language proficiency and cultural background.
Use it to your advantage.

Also, hiring is really tricky. No one has really figured out how to do it
right and so you have these hiring rituals with IQ tests, personality tests,
weird screening procedures etc. In the end no one wins, because interviewees
have gotten insanely good at playing the hiring game and employers have become
overly careful just not to hire a random guy who will mess up their code base
in 6 months and then leave for the next gig.

My personal advice to the OP: if there are tech/startup/... meetups in your
region, go there. It's a good starting point and it's fun most of the time!
You can get to know some interesting people and that might open some doors!

Best of luck, if you're reading this!

~~~
eitally
One of the biggest problems -- speaking as a former technical hiring manager
myself -- is that a lot of those "serious companies" have HR policies that
explicitly forbid hiring managers from pursuing candidates on their own. They
are 100% at the mercy of whatever recruiters find for them, which is an
awwwwwwwful, horrendous situation.

~~~
brianwawok
Really? All the big corps I worked at had a referral program. Friend want a
job? Send his resume to HR. If he got hired, some kind of referral bonus (500
to 5000 depending on job market)

Not the same as a direct hire of a friend but I know referrals were assumed
better qualified than a random who applied online.

~~~
vonmoltke
I think that was the point. Referrals has to go through HR, who reserved the
right to review and reject the candidate. The hiring manager was not allowed
to bypass the HR filter and pursue a candidate they wanted.

------
brogrammer90
20 somethings aren't comfortable hiring 40 somethings. That's the bulk of it,
and if you think this isn't true you're lying to yourself.

~~~
doktrin
This. I've been on teams that have straight up turned people down because of
age (sorry, "culture fit").

------
victorvation
> I would argue that the outcome of hiring an Unemployable Programmer might in
> fact be better overall, because we're motivated and we get stuff done - as
> opposed to the hipster "rockstar" programmer we actually do eat and breathe
> code.

It's odd that the author seems convinced that they are more productive than
'hipster rockstar programmers' who aren't motivated and don't get stuff done.
Isn't that what they do by definition? And what's truly strange is how he
seems to think that those types of people don't "eat and breathe code", when
the prevailing sentiment on HN is that these 'rockstars' have poor work-life
balance and don't do anything except code on evenings/weekends. It feels like
he's lashing out at 'young people' in general who seem to be able to get jobs.

I seems that the author's lack of success obtaining a job stems directly from
a lack of effort - or knowledge of how much effort is required. He seems to
think he is entitled a job just because he's been doing it since he was a kid
or because he's had a job for ten years.

I can say from experience as someone who was looking for a development job
with no experience, much more is needed than passively posting on a job board,
listlessly browsing oDesk, or even sending out a few resumes. Every intern
hiring season, my classmates all end up disappearing from class and social
life for a few weeks - sending out hundreds of resumes and applications,
dozens of emails (cold or introductions), spending hundreds of hours studying
for interviews, tens of interviews - pounding the proverbial, virtual, and
literal pavement - resulting in most of us receiving one or (more often)
multiple job offers.

~~~
imissmyjuno
I think the author brings up a few valid points but totally agreed, they think
they are more productive than the "hipster "rockstar" programmer" while in the
same breath saying they have been wasting life away at a desk for 10 years.

------
smoyer
We have openings we can't fill because we're specifically looking for "nerds"
(those who actually do live, eat and breathe code). And I've got a similar CV
with the exception that I never left writing software (I did give up on
hardware development).

Care to e-mail me a CV?

~~~
eitally
It's funny you mention that. My hiring success (in terms of impact the new
hires made) went way up when we stopped wording job postings using traditional
enterprisy language & bullets and instead posted much simpler "hackers wanted"
at the local universities. Note: this was in Mexico, not the US, though a
handful of the folks I recruited there have gone on to work for SV startups. I
feel obligated to note one special case because I still feel a little hurt by
it and consider it poaching. (Gbox) [http://www.gbox.com](http://www.gbox.com)
has 5 of my former employees (3 devs, 1 SQA lead, 1 UI/UX) out of their total
staff of about 20-25.

~~~
umanwizard
What's wrong with poaching? You don't own your employees; this isn't 1850.

~~~
brightball
When you lose 5 people to the same place that's usually from insider
recruiting. A lot of companies use No Raid clauses in both employee and client
contracts specifically to prevent that type of thing.

If you want to go work somewhere else, that is totally up to you but I'm more
than allowed to have a policy stating that you're not allowed to recruit away
my entire staff because that destabilizes the entire business, makes the
business unable to meet it's contractual obligations and in a multitude of
cases can jeopardize the jobs of everybody who is still there.

~~~
umanwizard
I still don't understand why that policy's fair.

I recently left one company and joined another, and am trying to convince all
my former coworkers to apply here as well because I genuinely think it's a way
better place to work.

If you can't compete on the labor market fairly, you deserve to lose
employees. Policies like the one you describe are just a market inefficiency
that doesn't have a real justification for existing (outside of your own
interests).

~~~
brightball
If a company employs 20 people and 5 of them are programmers without which the
company can't function, one leaves and recruits away the other 4 to go work at
the same place that means the remaining 15 people are out of work.

Business owners have a lot of people's livelihoods at stake. It's about a lot
more than just how much more another company is willing to offer you. That
might not matter to you, but that's also why you get to see the policy before
agreeing to work at the company.

If coming to work at my office and having the flexibility to recruit away all
my staff is important to you...then you don't really have to sign the
contract. If you do sign the contract then you're agreeing to the terms. It's
not rocket science. Fair policy is that you get to decide whether or not to
abide by it before I start paying you. You have the right to decide that
policy isn't okay with you and not take the job. Nobody forced you to sign the
contract and take the job. If it's a market problem, then I will eventually
lose all of those employees because they will have plenty of other choices if
they aren't happy working there anymore.

Or to spin this around into the language that you used, policies like the one
I describe exist because a lot of people only have their own self-interest in
mind and part of my job is to have the interests of all of my employees in
mind.

~~~
logicfiction
Anti-raiding policies seem to stand on dubious legal grounds (that is there is
no consensus with some places in the US prohibiting) and most often only
include the solicitation from direct competitors to the business, not just
other companies in general.

------
igth
Reading stories like these really, really scares me. I'm European, and next
year my wife and I will most likely move to the US together (long story short:
she is a US citizen, we have decided to move, and have already applied). I'm
super excited about that. I currently work as a Rails developer, have a
diverse background as a Linux sysadmin and developer, and have never had
problems finding (or keeping) work where I live.

What I don't have is a college education. I'm also in my mid thirties, don't
really have any US contacts, nor do I know very much about the job market
there. Throw in some impostor syndrome and stuff like this creates a certain
level of anxiety, to put it mildly.

~~~
eitally
Start making friends in the US, now. Look for meetups, find Facebook groups,
figure out which companies have a significant presence in the area where
you'll be relocating. You're starting from nothing with your social network
but you already have valuable skills. Get to work on the networking now and
you'll set yourself up to easily find work once you land ... if not sooner.

~~~
igth
One thing that I am definitely planning on doing is sending emails to
companies of interest some months before the move and just introduce myself.
You're absolutely right though: networking starts now, but it is hard when I
can't be there in person and go to meetups, etc.

------
segmondy
I do a lot of interviews, and I interview plenty of programmers who have 10+
years experience or so they say. Knowledge of Java, C#, C++, Python, etc in
their resume.

Most cannot tell the difference between private and protected.

Most have no idea what an abstract class is or a static variable. Let's not
even talk about an interface.

The vast majority have no idea what transactions are.

These are stupid basic things. I don't ask any library or framework questions.
I stick to the basics, to the core language. It's the most depressing thing
ever. I don't even go into language specific details.

I understand why there are so many unemployable programmers. They let
themselves rot. :-(

~~~
logfromblammo
I have done a lot of interviews where I was told that I was the single
strongest candidate on the tech screen. I would be told, in the interview,
that I correctly answered questions that no other previous candidate could,
often prefaced with "I don't know exactly, but if I had to guess..."

And then I never hear from them again.

I am not making this up. And this has happened on multiple occasions. I get
strong positive feedback during an interview, then the company falls into a
black hole. They don't contact me. They don't return phone calls or email.
Ever.

It happens at least once a month, whenever I start looking for new jobs.

~~~
segmondy
That's rather unfortunate. I will never say that to someone and not offer them
the job, unless they have a personality problem.

~~~
logfromblammo
In my case, the personality problem might be the ever-increasing paranoia that
I'm being rejected on the basis of some outlawed or unethical criterion, and
subsequently ignored upon orders from the corporate legal or PR department.

It's one of several plausible hypotheses I have for the observed behavior.
Very few are compatible with a healthy future employer-employee relationship.

This is one reason why I hate the brainteaser questions. I was told for one
such question that I was the only candidate to give the correct answer. Then
the interviewer suggested that I must have encountered it previously, even
after seeing me "showing my work" on a whiteboard. Can't win; if you didn't
lose, you must have cheated. That company blackholed me after I flew in from
another city to spend a day-long interview with them. They didn't even
reimburse me for my personal travel expenses.

It was Spatial, owned by Dassault, near Denver, in case anyone cares. That
was, in fact, the second Denver-based company to do _exactly_ the same thing
to me. The first flew me in, interviewed almost all day, then cut off all
contact, didn't pay travel expenses, and even tried to stick me with the cost
of the hotel stay by canceling their payment. That was Tyler Tech, Eagle
Division.

Neither are unique in cutting off all contact, but they certainly are
remarkable in waiting until after an in-person interview by a non-local
candidate to do so.

------
magicbuzz
The whole 'do an open source' project is a crock. I single-handedly wrote a
large Javascript module for a well-known editor. It's used by hundreds of
people around the world but all the folks employing 'front-end' programmers
seem to bin my CV as my current fulltime job is 100% Python.

~~~
bayesianhorse
Though I can't understand why someone wants desperately to switch from Python
to Javascript, I do believe open source projects or at least side projects are
very useful.

They show what you can do, and that you are able to solve problems. Maybe the
editor plugin is not doing that. A cool demo is worth more than a thousand
lines of well written code.

------
alkonaut
I think being around 40 with a decade of dev experience should be pretty
attractive, at least if the programming experience is somewhat modern. 10
years OO-programming should be translatable to any OO language with ease,
regardless of what you actually used before, for example.

There are "unemployable" developers out there, but they are 10-20 years older
and have 15 years of niche in-house platforms in some huge enterprise, and now
they have no experience with anything anyone recognizes.

Unemployable because just 1 company on CV, no degree and around 40? Sounds
strange.

~~~
matwood
I've interviewed people like this though not as extreme. Basically person gets
a job. They learn the job in about 3-6 months and now repeat the same job for
years without ever learning anything else. So on paper it shows 5-10 years
experience, but in reality they still have about 3-6 months experience.

Part of the blame lies on the company for not giving the employee a growth
path, but the largest part lies on the employee for not continuing to grow on
their own. Software as a profession is one where you have to constantly be
learning. People need to know going in that it is ultimately their
responsibility to keep their skills growing and up to date.

~~~
Zimdale
> They learn the job in about 3-6 months and now repeat the same job for years
> without ever learning anything else. So on paper it shows 5-10 years
> experience, but in reality they still have about 3-6 months experience.

This is the most spot on thing I have read regarding this issue and is why
interviewing is so challenging when it comes to developers. This is also why
the interview process for developers is so grueling and long. You would be
amazed how difficult it is to figure out how much ACTUAL learning experience a
person has vs. someone that has done the same thing for 10 years.

I also feel this is why 20-somethings are popular, at least you know for
certain how much experience one could possibly have.

~~~
jschwartzi
Except for all the 20-somethings who started programming when they were 14.

------
rm_-rf_slash
I see this as a result of two problems:

1: We expect everything to be perfectly packaged and ready to go, including
people. We aren't interested in investing in people. A cog is a cog.

2: Older programmers are more expensive (see: skilled), and are more likely to
have families or obligations that prevent their hustle (see: working bullshit
hours for free).

~~~
icefox
Depends on the company. My current company does invest in developers.
Especially at the junior level where there is a lot to teach, but at all the
levels effort and investment is made in individuals. From books, classes, pair
programming, etc. Taking the long outlook and investing in individuals knowing
that the payoff is going to be in a few years works from what I have seen.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
I agree, I just think it will take time for it to catch on among the private
sphere. I work now in higher Ed and the culture is much different: surprise,
surprise, an Ivy League university likes its employees learning. I also work
with a lot of non-career programmers, none of which have Ivy degrees (nor do
I). Ofc most companies can't hold a candle to these educational resources, but
if they choose to invest in their staff, like you say, it does work.

------
vegabook
If you're in your late 20s and coding is all you've ever done, be afraid.
Domain knowledge is where it's at.

I am in a similar situation to the OP having started off with a ZX Spectrum,
did CS, coded, but in my late 20s I was tempted into fixed income finance, and
did that for 15 years at the highest level (unrelated to coding - I was a
strategist and trader). Then in my late 30s I picked up Python, then R, and
now know both really well (plus C and a bit of JS, Ocaml). What I find in my
interactions is that the whizz-bang programmer guys, who are better than me at
coding (though not by much - I picked up again pretty fast), are completely
useless at mapping their skills to the finance domain, while my knowledge of
_both_ fields is where my value lies. I would strongly suggest to programmers
that they ensure they know a non-CS domain too, preferably a niche one (we're
such a big world now), and know it well - practise it as a _primary_ activity
for a few years. Climb the learning curve again even if it's hard at first. It
is in the nexus between CS and other domains that opportunities are still
plentiful.

~~~
gagbba
I have been interested in doing a similar thing for some time now. Can you
drop me an e-mail if you could give me an insight into a couple of things I've
been wondering about?

------
jacquesm
If he or she would put some contact info in that blog post they might be able
to strip the 'un' from the title.

~~~
FLUX-YOU
The new hiring meta-game: complaining about being unemployable to become
employed!

------
robodale
Where in the world does the author live??? I live in the Upper Midwest USA,
and there is no shortage of local jobs at banks, health care, tech companies,
and the one-off positions at obscure businesses. Now, hanging my programmer
shingle out on the internet and Jesus - there are remote jobs pouring in from
everywhere who pay even more.

I've got a Mechanical Engineering and Masters degree, 14 years dev experience
on multiple stacks, so that does help my resume look nice, but shit man.
Businesses are dying looking for qualified people.

~~~
kzisme
Do you think some of these places are also looking for "entry level" positions
as well?

------
golergka
> When companies find out I don't have a degree that's usually the end of the
> road.

So, this is the reason why no one will hire you? I find it hard to believe.
The current company I'm working in found out that I don't have a degree after
I signed the contract — they just didn't care at all.

But I would have huge problems hiring someone spent last 10 years responding
to emails and doing nothing.

Judging by how easily you dismiss advice about github, you must have tried it.
Care to give a link?

------
anon4
I'm a bit past my mid-20s, so I might be talking out of my ass, but can't you
rebrand yourself as an "independent contractor"? "Years of industry
experience, broad skills applicable to your situation, comfortable with legacy
code bases, able to get started immediately, flexible payment options tailored
to your project, etc."

Better yet, find some more people like you, as you're trying to do, and start
a consulting company together. You could each use your connections to find
work for the others, put in a bit of your profits towards upkeep of the
company, grow your network and so on.

You may be unemployable if you put yourself in the same bucket as the recent
college graduates, so make your own bucket.

------
mpermar
Now, seriously, if a software engineer in his/her forties is unemployable in
2015, what the heck is an accountant, lawyer, a builder, a painter or a
woodworker to just name a few?

Come on. We are so lucky we did choose technology as a way of living. Sorry
but stop complaining and start learning back new stuff. Can't believe what
someone has to read.

\-- A developer in his forties.

~~~
jacknews
I don't think the comparison with lawyers and accountants really works, those
careers seem to reward seniority quite heavily. Perhaps for builders and
painters (as in walls, not canvas), it is more appropriate, since in
technology I guess programming is more equivalent to a tradesman, than an
architect.

~~~
robotkilla
> I don't think the comparison with lawyers and accountants really works

I do, but I think it was misapplied. My step-grandmother is a business lawyer
who has passed the bar in multiple states including Florida. She is extremely
intelligent, reads faster than anyone I've encountered and is very current
with the times. She is also 60 and hasn't been able to get a job in years due
to her age... so she has to contract.

------
teyc
To the author - it's very difficult to go freelance directly to customers.
However, one possible channel is via digital agencies, who often need work
done on a contract basis. They usually have their marketing channels worked
out. Attend in-person meetups, and let the organiser know that you are looking
for work, and it will start to open doors.

------
websitescenes
I am self taught with no degree and honestly, I get at least an interview with
about 70% of the places I apply to. I don't put my education on resumes and
nobody EVER asks. I am applying to mostly startups though..

~~~
jpgvm
I do think startups are the key. Startups generally don't have the money for
silly hiring processes so they actually take the time to talk to people that
apply for positions.

That and the money they save on stupid HR process goes to my salary so that is
great too.

~~~
swalsh
I disagree, i've worked for a few fortune 500 companies. The fact that I don't
have a degree has never stopped me from getting a programming job. On the
other hand, i've definitely had the feeling like there was a glass ceiling.

------
kfk
One reason I stayed in finance is that the programming scene is very
fragmented. Some people say everybody that can do a print "hi" gets a job, yet
many job advertisements come with increasing requirements. Startups keep
looking for the 0.1%, whatever that means, that tells me that there is,
indeed, strong competition for candidates (and that I have a 99.9% chance of
not getting any job in those startups). Finally, age does come into play, one
thing is to go into this at 20, another is at 30 and even another a 40, etc.

There is a lot of survival bias. So far, I did not hear any salary higher than
50k euro from face to face talk in Germany (mine is higher, with no coding
job). Thus, I am also not clear how real is to have one of those $100k+
salaries just doing "normal" coding (no managerial stuff). If that were
possible and achievable even in a 3 years span, I'd definitely jump into it,
but reality tells me it's not. At least out of the tech hubs (SV, etc.), but
then the 0.1% thing kicks in, so you have a 99.9% chance of not getting any of
those jobs, while you have plenty of opportunity to get a steady carrier just
where you are.

And finally, programming will go through some kind of "commoditization", it's
already happening. It might be good to "only" be coding today, but 10 years
from now, older and with kids (so no possibility to work week ends anymore),
this will probably not be enough and will move you more towards the
unemployable zone.

Just some thoughts from an ex-wannabe programmer.

~~~
Merovius
> yet many job advertisements come with increasing requirements.

I think you shouldn't really take these at face value. If you can give _any_
justification why you can cross off one or two of these, that should probably
be enough to get you an interview.

> hus, I am also not clear how real is to have one of those $100k+ salaries
> just doing "normal" coding (no managerial stuff). If that were possible and
> achievable even in a 3 years span, I'd definitely jump into it, but reality
> tells me it's not.

I got one of those. No managerial stuff (though also not purely coding, also
systems engineering. But a purely engineering job), right out of University,
with a math degree and I wouldn't consider myself especially capable. I'd say
it's definitely possible with a degree and a degree should be within the
advertised three-year range if you are borderline competent (most people at my
university aren't and they are still getting their degree).

To be fair: You have to take into account where you are going to work. A
friend of mine is also getting around 50k in Hamburg, I am moving to
switzerland for my job. There is a _huge_ difference in pay based on location.

I definitely think that "just coding" isn't enough. Employers are looking for
a degree for a reason, there are certain skills you will probably not learn
when "just coding", like abstract thinking, algorithmic analysis and stuff
like that. And you will find tons of people bitching at University about how
that is totally irrelevant to a software job, so we shouldn't learn it. But
you should.

All of that being said: I doubt you will make significantly more money than in
the finance industry. From what I've heard, if you want to make real money,
work for a bank. Finance vs. SWE is definitely a lifestyle-choice, not
primarily a money one :)

------
bikamonki
IMO your problem is not lack of degree (personally, this is the last thing I
check on a resume). Nor your age (I am also 40ish and more productive than
ever). Your problem is your debt.

~~~
csense
How would an employer even know about that?

~~~
bikamonki
About his debt?

------
planetjones
Is your physical location also having an influence here? There's no doubt
programming jobs have got harder for a lot of people to get and I never
believe articles about a shortage of STEM candidates (just there's a shortage
of them at the right price). However, I know a few people in the UK who don't
struggle for programming jobs (London area) even though they've got no
university degree.

~~~
camdenre
I was thinking the same thing about location. If you can, move to a city where
there is less competition for jobs. Midwest cities have a lot of jobs in
banking and insurance that aren't as competitive.

------
alistproducer2
I took my linkedin profile down b/c I was tired of dealing with recruiters. I
work for a top 5 Fortune 500 company making ~70k 1.5 years out of college in
ATL.

I've interviewed with a couple companies just to see what it's like out there.
I usually ask for some ridiculous salary b/c that's the only way I would leave
my current job.

I find the interviewing process stupid. I had one company ask me to code up a
fully functioning Angular site from scratch in some jsfiddle clone that I had
never seen in 1 hour. It took me around 5-7 minutes just figuring how to work
with the fiddle clone.

All the while I went in there as a guy who had written a pretty good Angular
JS clone from scratch - recursive compiler and all. You would think that would
be proof enough that I am pretty good at JS/front end dev. I just laugh at
these interviews.

~~~
kzisme
Do you consider these sorts of interviews fair? I don't see how re-writing
something you've already showed them accounts for many things (aside from
working under a time constraint)

~~~
alistproducer2
I don't know if I thought of it as unfair as much as self-defeating on the
employer's part. In the specific case of that interview, I told them upfront
that I was not an expert in the practice of AngularJS. I understand the
concepts of Angular at a very high level, as evidenced by writing a competing
framework with more advanced modules and superior algorithms.

Why they would then sit me down and ask me to code up a full site in a hour is
beyond me. This is something I would think is a legit request of a candidate
who came in saying they were an Angular expert. But why waste your time on
person who has already told you they don't have that skill set?

------
dutchbrit
I'm also a self taught programmer, but I have never been treated less for not
having a degree. I'm rather fortunate I guess. I once even wanted to work in
San Francisco (I'm based in The Netherlands), and the first job I applied for
actually hired me and flew me in every so often.

~~~
eoin_murphy
I took this to be less a post about not having a degree but rather, not
keeping up with the market. How it's easy to just do the work that's in front
of you and not consider how your choices now will affect your career in
10~20~30 years time.

Not having a degree doesn't help finding work (it shouldn't make a difference,
but unfortuantely with most HR depts it does) but if the poster had been
willing to aggressively work on their career instead of coasting at the
"traditional office" the story could be very different.

I've done a few years with a mixture of small company/freelance work myself
and I'm back in an enterprise company for the first time in ages and on a
purely technical level it's a giant step back. There's huge resistance to
changing existing code and/or introducing new technologies. Often with good
business reasons (the product is done, it's in production and huge changes are
not needed) but if you're on the technical side then you absolutely have to be
looking out for your own skills if you ever want to work outside of that
company again.

If I was a hiring manager, seeing 10 years at a "traditional" company on a CV
with no signs of interest in the field outside of the job would be setting off
alarms. I absolutely would rather hire someone with experience and fully
developed professional skills than a fresh grad, but the nightmare is that
your experienced hire is used to just following their 80 page internal process
guide every day and they wouldn't be able to handle any new situations.

------
balozi
Reading this thread, I get the sense that most comments are from twenty-
something guys. There is no way they would understand what the 40-something
rusty programmer is talking about. It's call the invincibility of naive youth.
You will be him in a few years.

~~~
nordic_nomad
The job cycle is a lot shorter now than it used to be, and the landscape
changes a lot faster. I'm in my 30's now, but have had to completely reinvent
myself 3 times already (twice within tech) and expect it to happen more.

Ageism works against the young as well as the old. Most of these 20 something
people I'd suspect, if they haven't been developers since they were 9, have
run into it. The advice is still sound.

An employable skillset is now a moving target. You can't depend on job
websites to get the job done. Your number one job is to be your own
salesperson. Find someone who is where you want to be and find out how they
got there, you're probably not that far off from being able to replicate their
methods if you're already in the field.

Being hopeless and depressed about the issue doesn't solve anything, and if
you're over 40 you have plenty of advantages. Become a consultant and sell
yourself to companies who won't even give a 20 year old the time of day. They
may not want to hire your outright, but they can definitely see they need your
expertise.

------
kiloreux
I have a bachelor degree in EE and have been programming since 2 years, and
also doing penetration testing since i love security, yet i have not even
managed to get an interview at any company i applied to , don't even know what
is the problem .

------
informatimago
What about an on-line cursus, like, at Stanford, studying and getting the
diploma. Of course, it may not be considered equivalent to the diploma
obtained at Stanford in the Silicon Valley, but it would change you to a
diplomed programmer, and you might get more doors open?
[http://online.stanford.edu/](http://online.stanford.edu/) There are others
MOOC: [http://coursera.org/](http://coursera.org/)
[http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm](http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm)

~~~
kagamine
OP's age might (will) still work against him even with a diploma. There is
still a perception in IT that anything to do with technology is for the young
and hip (even though the Internet is 20 years old and digital gaming even
older, but ho hum). It's ridiculous and annoying and there are too many young
people willing to be taken advantage of in return for grok-only-knows-what
they think they are getting.

~~~
kragen
The internet is 46 years old. I've personally been using it for almost 23
years.

~~~
kagamine
Ok, the WWW then. Let's be honest, the average Joe didn't use the Internet
before the WWW came along (at least not knowingly). But I should know better
than to mix the two up.

~~~
kragen
The WWW is 25 years old. I find the implication in your "let's be honest" to
be repugnant. I was being honest.

~~~
kagamine
Untwist your knickers, you are not the victim you think you are. You are a
pedant.

------
abalashov
I wrote a blog post a while back about how dropping out of school has impacted
me professionally and personally. I feel it's relevant, even if my story did
not involve exiting the industry for an extended period, because being self-
employed for a decade puts me in a fairly similar position, along with lack of
a degree.

[http://www.likewise.am/2015/07/too-cool-for-school-a-
retrosp...](http://www.likewise.am/2015/07/too-cool-for-school-a-
retrospective-on-dropping-out-of-university/)

------
jqm
To me it sounds like someone "good with computers" but doesn't really know how
to program. All that stuff about "commodore 64" and "garage startup" sounds a
bit like a smokescreen. OK, you liked playing around with computers as kid.
Great, most of us did. And that made you good enough with computers that you
got a job at BigCo. Then you got a little lazy and stopped learning new stuff.
It happens. This isn't a condemnation.

I don't think BS is going to help. So here are a couple of options. If you
really want to do startups and glam and make hundreds of thousands... you'll
have to learn how to program in modern ways. It's going to take some time and
effort. And you will have to build some real stuff. You might not have the
time.. you are in your 40's, and you might not have the real desire to put in
the effort. It's not you can't do this, you probably can but it's going to be
difficult and take some real desire and most important some time and a lot of
effort.

Here is another option that might be a better one. Go back to a BigCo. You
have a history of job stability. You know about BigCo ways of doing things.
You are good with computers. Get a certificate or two if you need to. It's not
a million dollars but given the required effort, the pay is pretty decent for
sitting at a desk. Forget about the 100K+ salaries you see bandied around.
That's for something else.

~~~
jqm
If poster is also author I may just be wrong. Maybe they can do web
programming.

But the story just smells "funny" for some reason. I guess because I've met
people like I'm referring to in parent comment. People who haven't put in the
effort but want the advantages. People who know a little about computers or
have been help desk and suddenly want to be programmers without the required
skills or effort.

This might not be OP though. I maybe judged a bit hastily.

------
svisser
> I felt drastically out of place, but for years it was just too damn
> convenient to go with the flow.

That sums it up.

------
alexdowad
My experience with oDesk was completely different from the Unemployable
Programmer.

Yes, there are plenty of "lowest-wage programmers" on those sites. I never
bothered to compete with them on price. I simply charged what I thought I was
worth, and ratcheted my price up and up as I discovered that the market
thought differently. Interestingly, as my price went higher and higher, the
constant noise of "crappy" job offers quieted down and was replaced by a small
number of great offers.

------
k__
I did mostly software engineering and software architecture in my studies,
just to find out that no one gives you a job as software architect right after
university. Everyone has to start as a developer and one day, if he's lucky,
he will score a job as software architect.

If I wouldn't have had a job as a programmer on the side (first a few months
as intern) while studying, I wouldn't know much about programming.

------
je_bailey
Besides some of the other advice offered. You're probably looking in the wrong
place.

Anecdotal story: I found myself working at a warranty company and a friend of
mine worked at a specialized software company. We got together one day for
drinks and lamented the fact that we had problems finding the right people.
His problem was that everyone who applied was fresh out of college and had no
true hands on experience, where he wanted senior programmers. My problem was
that everyone who applied had a Masters or Doctorate degree and was applying
for mid level/entry position.

If you're finding yourself unemployable in a particular area, you're probably
right. More than likely though, you could find an excellent job at a company
that isn't directly a traditional tech company. Every company in the world now
needs to have an IT strategy of some sort. With an IT department of some sort.
And I can guarantee that there are enough out there who are just looking for
experience that they would hire you on the spot. The problem though is
reaching out and finding them.

------
aembleton
"But they're not talking about people like me, they're talking about twenty-
something Ivy League post docs with stellar CVs."

We're trying to recruit a devops with AWS experience. We really don't care
about which uni you went to or didn't go to.

Probably no good for you as we're in Manchester, UK but I don't think we're
that unique.

~~~
CmonDev
He probably wants to be a developer rather than a support though.

~~~
eropple
This is goofy and a little insulting. At my clients, I write more code than
plenty of developers. Turns out it tends to be necessary when you're
developing (key word) build pipelines and tooling. I also get to touch a lot
more of the stack.

------
zamalek
One thing that might help is to stop selling yourself down. Like me, you are a
giant risk because you have no degree. However, risks are taken all the time
if somebody decides that there is a good chance that the risk will pan out.

Show to them why you are a worthwhile risk instead of showing them that you
are more of a risk than you are.

------
geff82
Go contracting and your "employment" is safe. Always wonder how few questions
I am asked as a contractor, earning thrice the money of my employed colleagues
who have to go through painful hiring processes. Of course they can fire me
any day, but that never happened to me and can happen to an employee as well.

------
joeax
I think it's critically important to get involved in a open source project in
some way or create your own, i.e. on GitHub. My project svidget.js is up to
154 stars (at the time of this post). It not mind blowing stats, and it may be
niche, but it's in a space (SVG and data visualization) that I enjoy.

The benefits are plentiful. I've learned more about JavaScript that I thought
possible. It also demonstrates you have a passion for technology and it's just
not a job. You have the satisfaction that are helping others solve
technological challenges. If anything, you are more marketable which is the
point of that article. Good recruiters and hiring managers look beyond your
resume and looks for way that you standout.

------
robotkilla
Hello sir, you have possibly found your doppelganger.

I don't have time to type up my whole story, and a lot of it is in my comment
history, but the gist is:

I started programming with BASIC and later QBASIC. Self taught, no degree.
Video games / text adventure games were my thing. Later fell into web dev and
loved it... until I got further along in my career and was entangled in some
really vicious office politics. I also suffered from untreated depression for
years (which I have now managed to get under control). Those things combined
with some really stressful personal family issues coalesced into a nervous
breakdown of sorts and I holed up in my house.

I haven't had a fulltime job in 4 years - I just contract remotely. Almost
everything I've done has been through recommendations which is really the only
way to go when contracting. I've had multiple clients whom I've never seen -
just spoke to on the phone for a few minutes and then slack / email for the
rest of the contract. Sometimes this works out well, sometimes it doesn't. I
only made $30k last year and it was very spread out - there was at least a
full week where the only food in the house were biscuits made with water. This
year has been better thankfully.

Contracting is not my end goal - independent video game development is. At the
end of the day I don't care about the money all that much. If magical riches
await me in the future then I will accept them with open arms of course - but
I'm only seeking enough to survive. I care about making things - I really
don't want to go implementing the ideas of clients. I always fancied myself a
creator and need to find a way to make my projects profitable so that I can
find self-fulfillment through the things I create.

So, in addition to contracting for these last 4 years I've spent the vast
majority of my free time improving my skill set (improved my python, dabbled
with node, started building "modern" websites - SASS, Bower, Gulp etc).

I also started teaching myself how to make 3d games using Unity and c# (in
case you're wondering, I'm creating my own assets, not purchasing them - and I
have almost zero interest in creating mobile games). My girlfriend teamed up
with me, started teaching herself 3d art and has already produced some pretty
impressive models for the game we are working on.

I'm very interested in teaming up with a programmer similar to myself, or
perhaps a group of similar programmers.

Edit: left out some words

------
Negative1
I'm the exact opposite -- have a shitty degree (that I'm almost a bit
embarrassed about) so I leave it out of my resume. With 10+ years of solid
experience I compress my resume pretty tight to fit it into 2 pages but just
leave out my degree. Most people don't care and I don't have trouble getting a
new job (and no I am not a 20's something hipster programmer, whatever that
is).

A degree doesn't show how smart you are, it shows you have the ability to get
things done (or at least show up and do your work). But guess what? So does
shipping real products.

Best of luck, UP. You seem like a smart guy so keep up the perseverance and
get more stuff on that resume!

------
doktrin
OP : that was jarring, and I feel for you. I'm sure others in this thread have
already offered much more salient and actionable advice than I can, but I do
hope you find a resolution to your unpleasant situation.

------
jondubois
You have to sell yourself with confidence. Employers often want people who
have enthusiasm (not just skill).

Unfortunately, people who had a really tough career like the author often tend
to lack enthusiasm (which is understandable) - It's one of life's vicious
cycles and it's almost impossible to get out of.

You just have to hustle. Try a lot of different things and make yourself known
to as many people as possible - It's all about odds. If you find a way to spam
out your resume to thousands of potential employers, you're bound to get some
responses.

------
jokoon
Feels pretty accurate. The real source of the problem is political, meaning
how people perceive tech in modern days. It's very different when you look at
IT business history.

Going mainstream implies major changes, which are not technological, but still
exclude many players because big corporate players bring immense business
differences.

To be honest, skill and intelligence never mattered when it's about success.
Humans want to be happy, technological progress interests nobody. That's where
the "overskilled" comes from.

------
ilikerashers
This should come with a huge YMMV.

The demand for programming skills varies across locations, skills and age.
Certainly you can be an unemployed programmer but adjusting locations/skills
can greatly improve circumstances. ODesk/Freelancer gives you very little
control over demand and hence, you are just a commodity. I've yet to see
anyone doing well out of it from a contractor side but plenty of people doing
well who need cheap contractors fast.

Understand the market or someone who does will take advantage of you...

------
yaur
It appears that the OP is in Germany, which is probably a more significant
issue when trying to get work with US companies and/or with US-centric sites
than not having a degree.

------
FranOntanaya
I would look too into jobs where programming is an asset. I wasn't initially
contracted as programmer (caption reviewer of all things), but managed to
bring code into most problems, automate away lots of repetitive processes and
create tools and workarounds for whatever we didn't have yet on our main app,
or even to help customers integrate with our API. Conditions may not be as
good as a plain software engineering position, but you may have a bit more
freedom.

------
speeder
What about people that instead NEVER had a job?

I got my degree in 2009, at the height of the crisis (for now at least... here
in Brazil the crisis of 2009 is finally getting worse), I NEVER had a legal
job, all the stuff I put in LinkedIn were semi-legal or outright illegal stuff
(or my startup).

Also my programming language of choice were clearly a poor choice, I learned
C, and C++ and whatnot when I was a kid (I was 6 when I started to learn
coding), those are clearly mostly useless now.

~~~
drfritznunkie
How are they poor choices? Methinks you're just looking in wrong places if
they're languages you want to continue using at a job.

Embedded is hot right now, so sign up for the Jack Ganssle's Embedded Muse
Newsletter [http://www.ganssle.com/tem-
subunsub.html](http://www.ganssle.com/tem-subunsub.html). The jobs are going
to be mostly US based, but some place to start.

And look for companies that you know are going to be using C/CPP from their
products. Even if they don't have jobs posted, find someone on the engineering
team via GH, FB, LinkedIn, their blogs, guessing their email address,
conferences, where ever and email them a nice note talking about their
products and how you'd love to work with them if they have a position open.

If you can engineer a piece of code, I feel you can also socially engineer
your way to a contact somewhere you want to work.

Else if you really want to be some "rockstar" web developer (and I only ever
use that term as a pejorative), then start using a relevant language, and
learn how to talk to employers about how your deep C/CPP experience is
actually an advantage that no other diploma-mill code-school grad is going to
have.

It's never more depressing then when you've hauled in a candidate for a review
because they've got great past experience, but the candidate has zero ability
to relate that experience to conversation at hand.

~~~
speeder
They are poor choices because most jobs available to me are for
java/ruby/python/etc...

I personally like Lua (that I NEVER saw a job opening for this), and C and C++
that I learned as a kid.

When I find the rare C or C++ job, usually they want 20+ years of experience
or soemthing impossible like taht to me (I am 27 years old, obviously I can't
have 20 years of experience), or are jobs in other countries, but unwilling to
help with visa.

C and C++ became sort of too specialized, only use for high-performance stuff,
even games now (what I really like to code) several companies prefer to use
.NET or Java, the few C or C++ jobs that exist usually are in countries with
some engineering history (like Germany, I saw lots of C++ jobs there), or in
US (that has lots of jobs of lots of things).

~~~
swah
I do feel kinda like you, though I'm more of a "jack of all trades". You can
find C jobs in the embedded industry, in Brazil, have you considered it?

~~~
speeder
Yes of course, I got ONE interview (coincidentally, yesterday, in a company
that makes cashier machines).

And I mean ONE interview over the course of 6 years looking for a job

~~~
swah
Perto?

------
stkni
I can empathize. Perhaps getting involved in open source would help?

The OP was a little bit light on details of the exact work under-taken at the
'company' but I'm guessing it wouldn't be interesting enough to pass the sift
of most recruiters.

That's tough but with Open source you could get involved in anything you felt
like, make a contribution, get recognition and reboot/re-skill that way?

Still, it's not an easy or quick solution though and YMMV.

------
brador
You don't have a degree, do you have a portfolio? If not, then how can you
expect to get a foot in the door with no easily verifiable proof of
competency?

------
joeax
My first job out of college in 1999 (getting my CS degree) was a startup. The
other devs there laughed at me and told me my CS degree was worthless. I went
home and seriously contemplated whether I did indeed waste my time in college.
Fast forward 5 years, a dotcom crash and several interviews later, and I can
tell you with certainty that degree was worth it every step of the way.

------
supercanuck
Reading this and other posts, is there even a market for an American Mediocre
Programmer?

Seems like employers would rather just hire a H1-B from TCS instead because
then they know are tied to them via the H1-B, whereas a mediocre programmer
who is trained up would become a better programmer and might leave once they
are good at their salary doesn't commensurate?

------
rrss1122
I think the important thing that the author acknowledge he missed is not
getting to know the right people. Get to know your coworkers, connect with
them on LinkedIn, and keep those connections fresh. When you need to find a
job later, you can tap your contacts network and have a much better chance
than randomly applying or using a hiring agency.

------
erikb
Working 10 years for a company looks like a reasonable history in my eyes.
Show what you have done and learned in that time.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
If you can find some spare time, perhaps invest in open source? It's an easy
way to diversify your CV.

~~~
magicbuzz
The whole 'do an open source' project is a crock. I single-handedly wrote a
large Javascript plug-in module for a well-known editor. It's used by hundreds
of people around the world but all the folks employing 'front-end' programmers
seem to bin my CV as my current fulltime job is 100% Python. It baffles me
that they want someone who is both a CSS3/LESS/SASS design guru and
understands closures/promises/OO/etc.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
I almost always get an interview, which almost always leads to an offer, and
my resume is laid out so that open source takes up 2/3 of the page.

[http://irc.sircmpwn.com/Drew-DeVault-CV.pdf](http://irc.sircmpwn.com/Drew-
DeVault-CV.pdf)

~~~
FLUX-YOU
I watched a few of your live coding streams on twitch. Cool stuff!

------
skaplun
As some said this post feels completely uninspired. If you breathe code you
have a world of options to create a living wage. Go out, meet people, work
with them (create their minimal products, help them further their agenda) and
you will see results.

------
doridori
Sorry to hear you are having hard times. I notice you don't mention anything
about your skillset? I am based in the UK and there seems to be a huge supply
of work around in mobile and web. Whats your current skills in?

------
johanneskanybal
I sympathize with anyone that have convinced themselves they are stuck even
though conditions for success is at an all time high. Chin up and either
network or build something usefull yourself.

------
intrasight
Depending on your circumstances, there may be a strong argument to be made for
your completing a degree program. There are MANY more options now compared to
when you were in school.

------
aembleton
Where are you based? What programming language skills do you have?

------
RaskalFloots
Where do you live and what is your skill set? If you know PHP, .Net or Java,
look for jobs in the Washington, DC, area. There are plenty.

------
gregjor
You've got a few things working against you but I doubt you're actually
unemployable. I don't want to say you're doing it wrong or that I have a
better formula, but here are some things to think about.

Your age, the buzzwords ("skill sets") on your CV, lack of college degree,
possibly lack of recent relevant experience -- all of those can be negatives
and will keep you out of a lot of jobs. So don't try to get those. You can't
fight prejudices or stupid hiring processes.

You have to present yourself as someone who can solve business problems,
because that's what companies actually hire and pay for. No matter what the
job posting says no company or client actually needs a PHP or Ruby programmer.
What they need is someone who can translate business requirements into working
software. Get the focus on your ability to deliver.

When I talk to a potential client I start by asking them to tell me their top
handful of business problems or pains. I pick one that I think I can help with
and talk about that. We almost never get into technology or languages because
those are incidental to actual business requirements. Many business problems
are not actually programming problems. Just because a client has 300,000 lines
of Ruby code I don't need to write Ruby to help them with their PCI compliance
audit (real client). Another client had an enterprise logistics system written
in Java, but that had very little to do with shipping charges calculating
wrong -- I don't have to be a Java guru to figure it out. The problem was
fixed with almost no programming, just correcting some data that was formatted
wrong between systems.

My point is that you need to present an appealing package with some obvious
business value to the client or employer. You don't choose a car based on a
list of the parts in it (CV), you choose it based on perceived value,
appearance, and emotional appeal.

Instead of applying for every job and putting yourself on job sites and
scraping the bottom of the freelancing barrel on Fiverr develop a few skills
you are really good at and sell that expertise. Identify companies or business
niches you want to work at and knock their door down. Make the deal low-risk:
I don't charge clients if I can't fix their problems.

Meet more people. Most people get their jobs from contacts, friends, even
casual acquaintances -- I got a job lead from a guy at a bar in LA after we
started talking about bourbon. Get out in the world. Don't treat everyone you
meet like another node in your network, though. People like to help friends
and people they like, so be the guy people like. People don't like to help the
constant network-builders.

I'm not saying it's easy, but you need to play a different game, because a
programmer in his 40s without a lot of recent relevant experience with the
latest toys is not going to stand out. Sorry, but no one cares about your
startup experience or what you did five years ago. They care about what you
can do for them right now, so focus on that and don't get bogged down trying
to win the recruiting numbers game.

------
mratzloff
Presumably it was the author that posted this. So why hasn't he commented?

------
wnevets
That's my biggest fear trying to make a living in this world.

------
sebringj
Coffee and techno, dude. Coffee and techno.

------
devcis
I can relate to the author of the article.

Programming is seen as the silver bullet to solve employment in many countries
resulting in you competing against a whole continent with a 100 million IT
pros, all super smart foreign students who studied in the US, thousands of
school leaving kids wanting to become programmers because they grew up playing
games or owning laptops/iPads/smartphones and programming is made a core skill
in schools. They're even teaching programming in prisons. With all the free
online courses and code schools there isn’t a barrier that stops anyone from
becoming a programmer where as other industries have barriers of entry. If you
are a tech professional, you're competing against the biggest pool of
potential workers in the world all willing to do anything to get a foot in the
door.

In my experience I find there is a huge ageism issue in the IT sector. At his
age the author seems to be insinuating it's due to his lack of degree but I
can safely say it's his age and not the degree. I find a manager in his early
30s late 20s won't hire a programmer older than him. Similarly a manager in
his 40s won't hire a developer his same age. In applying for positions I find
I can make it to the final interview but then it comes down to my age not
making me the perfect fit. It's like the unasked question is why you haven’t
made it and if you are still looking for a job at 40 so you must be damaged
goods. The other big disadvantage in the tech sector is years and years of
experience is not valued as it is in all other industries. At 40 the stigma of
old tech being listed on your resume is seen as a negative rather than a
positive. Fitting in with your co-workers is another big issue with hiring
managers and HR and it seen as a risk that you won’t fit in with people 10 to
20 years younger than you.

When I complain to others I hear stories of someone who knows of x developer
at 40 who still works as a developer but they’re obviously not starting from
step 1 looking for a job so that comparison I always find stupid.

I do agree with other posts that networking is the problem as 90% of job are
not on job boards. However as a programmer I find networking is hard because
you are focusing on completing x feature/project and generally want to work
uninterrupted for long stretches rather than spending time at sucking up to a
manager or co-worker that might help you in the future. Also I find unless you
have something that someone wants I find networking at 40 is difficult because
people generally don’t want to network with you.

The lessons I’ve learnt are primarily the entitlement that I felt x years ago
is something I have to get rid of very quickly. I’ve always thought if you
give me problems and I always solve it that means I am special. However I
realize I’m just like the other billion wannabes with the huge disadvantage of
my age. I feel like I have to work 10 times harder now that I’ve been given
the scarlet letter of age to wear around my neck. That said knowing the
problem is the first step to solving it so I can at least be optimistic.

My advice. Understand you always have to learn and have to solve the
networking/self marketing problem. Try to have a purpose even if it’s just a
dream of a purpose. Even if have to take up a non IT job full-time because of
your situation you can always code part time. With a strong base and today’s
ease of access to information, picking up new language is surprisingly easy.

------
forloop
Average is over.

------
GFK_of_xmaspast
Moral of the story is: stay in school, kids.

~~~
forloop
A reasonable conclusion.

------
Ologn
The press, and some people here, are always saying they can't find good
programmers, and it is certainly something that is overstated. One reason
there aren't enough good programmers are people in your situation - you got by
for a while programming Javascript and web full stack in Germany, yet now,
during an economic boom in tech, you are increasingly having trouble finding
work. As you get older, and if the tech market slows, you could be in worse
shape. You're a data point for bright, young people who want to increase their
tech skills towards why they should not want to go into IT.

That aside, I think you can still get work. You just sound discouraged after
the rejection and sound like you are beginning to think a little
fatalistically. Yes, not having a CS degree hurts you and yes, being at one
company for over a decade slightly hurts you (not that much though) and yes,
being in your early forties also hurts you. You don't say whether you're
working that full-time decade long job any more (or maybe I missed it), if you
were laid off, that also will hurt you more than if you're still working
there, companies prefer hiring people already employed. You are over-
discouraged though, you can still get work in this market.

You talk about going through many hoops, talking to many people, and a lot of
weight given to college. Which sounds like a lot of applications to big
companies. Only a big company could spend so much effort on each person, put a
lot of weight on official credentials etc. So one thing to do is - don't just
apply to big companies! Apply to small and medium sized companies as well.
They often don't worry about college degrees as much, you're often talking
directly to the decision makers right away, if they like you they often have
the authority to hire you. Applying for big companies is fine, but mix it up a
little.

Another thing - you say companies are interviewing dozens of people for each
position. OK. What is going to put _you_ over the top? The answer is different
in different situations. From small to big companies the answer is usually
technical and personal. For technical - picture the people interviewing as
being a Gaussian curve with a normal distribution - the x-axis is how
technically good you are, the y-axis is how many people reach that level.
Where do you have to be on that curve? If a friend is bringing you into the
company, you have to be in the middle or better. If you are going into a
company cold, you have to be (if you're having trouble like you are) one
standard deviation above the mean in terms of ability. If you're two standards
above the mean, then you should be having no trouble.

What you have to realize is most people are in the middle of that bell curve.
Most Javascript programmers can tell you what data types in Javascript are,
what the "this" keyword is etc. You probably can as well. But if you start
digging deeper into how well they know Javascript or frameworks their
knowledge is not that deep, and they start mumbling the answers. The average
Javascript programmer with your experience have an almost interchangeable
amount of knowledge - they all have the same level of depth. But every dozen
interviews or so you get someone who really knows Javascript and certain
frameworks backwards and forwards. People who know more than you. When you are
interviewed, you should write down the answers afterwards and honestly ask
yourself if you explained things clearly and in depth. Honestly, you should be
able to knock _every question_ you are asked out of the park with a very in-
depth and clear answer. Because there are people who are being interviewed who
can do this. Giving some sort of half-answer where I know you know it a
little, and then missing a few questions doesn't cut it - because most other
Javascript programmers with your experience can do the same. Knowing this cold
is what puts you above the pack.

Insofar as personality - it depends on the company, the people and how badly
they need someone. Most of the time, if your technical skills are one standard
deviation above the norm, and your personality is normal, we usually offer the
job. I've interviewed people with very strong technical skills but their
social skills were not just slightly poor but very poor. They continued
answering questions after being told several times that their answer was
sufficient, and continued talking even after being told "OK, stop talking"!
(obviously things had become a little bizarre on their end when we the
interviewers felt we had to tell someone "stop talking" \- which they ignored,
and continued talking!) Or people who were great technically but seemed very
angry and had their arms folded in front of their chest the entire interview,
and made a kind of sarcastic grunt after each question. Actually I would have
even hired that person, but my boss torpedoed him and I wasn't surprised. I
mean, I myself have made a faux pas when I have gone on an interview - but at
least I knew from the interviewer's reaction that I had made one! Some people
seem oblivious.

Another thing - just hit up everywhere. Put your resume on Linkedin, look on
Stackoverflow careers, Craigslist jobs board, angel.co jobs, whatever people
do in Europe (and also look for remote Javascript positions in San Francisco
and elsewhere). Jobs aren't always posted everywhere - if there is a
Javascript meetup or jQuery meetup in, say, Berlin, their mailing list might
have job postings you can't find elsewhere. See where people are meeting up in
your city, or nearby cities, to talk about jQuery or Javascript or full stack
web development. Go out, talk to people. Pass out your business card. If you
don't have one, make one, they're not expensive, you can make them same day if
necessary at some local print shops. Your best resource is often letting
programmers you already know know you're on the market. Some of this is for
future reference though - one reason it's good to keep in touch with people
once in a while is so you're not only contacting them when you want a favor.
Not that them possibly getting a referral bonus for their big company hiring
you is exactly that much of a favor.

For the longer term (not now), if you think not having a CS degree is blocking
you, you might think about getting one, perhaps at night. It helps in a number
of ways - human resources prefers hearing you're halfway to having a CS degree
to not having one. It also gives you a technical foundation - you'll learn
things like what is first normal form, second normal form, third normal form
etc. are if you don't already know. Also you meet people and your network can
grow - again, that depends on you meeting people and keeping in touch.

Another longer term thing - I am an Android programmer. Android was first
released in 2008, but even in 2011 the local Android meetings were pretty
empty - we could all sit down at a table in a local bar. Now local Android
meetings sometimes have dozens, if not hundreds of attendees. I picked a new
technology stack which took off (one billion Android phones sold last year).
Lots of companies are looking for senior Android people with a lot of
experience, but the only people they have to choose from are those handful
people who were sitting around the local Android meetup table in 2011. Whereas
Javascript is 20 years old and Javascript programmers are a bit more a dime a
dozen. The thing though is - there are a lot of local programmers who write
Java web backend programs (for Tomcat, or Wildfly/JBoss). They have a solid
job, so why change. Over the past few years, web has been fading a little, and
native iOS and Android have been rising. It is still to the extent that it is
too early to put much weight to it. It's understandable why someone making
$120k a year or more with a lot of Java web work around might not take the
risk of jumping to an Android job. Why they wouldn't play around with it as a
side project is more of a mystery - this is where they start to get into your
situation. Because I can tell you, the middle-aged go-getter guys from our
local Java group are always working with the cutting edge so they don't fall
behind. They're working with Android Tango at the moment, which even I feel is
too far ahead of the curve for me. Although maybe if I was smart I'd order
those $500 tablets and start tinkering with them.

You were too complacent over the last decade - it should be obvious to you
know. It's not fatal as times are good. When you get your next job, you have
to make an effort to get a diploma, keep up with the latest technology, keep
in touch with people and so forth, or you'll be in a worse situation next time
around.

~~~
mattmurdog
Spot on! Couldn't have agreed more. I'm currently hiring JS dev and 99% of
them are self proclaimed "experts" 10 out of 10 but they barely scratch the
surface with the potential of JS.

------
zxcvvcxz
Not a fan of this. I think the OP exhibits some toxic mindsets.

> As a final station, I'd like to describe what online freelancer markets look
> like for people like me. On freelancer.com and oDesk, you compete with
> hundreds of lowest-wage programmers from third world countries for
> exceedingly crappy "projects". It's an unmitigated race to the bottom.

Why does the OP feel entitled to not have to compete with others? Why should
he be given a "not crappy" job? Because you were born in the US?

Fuck that attitude. Here's what happened. The OP stagnated, and other parts of
the world didn't. Being from a first world country does not make you special.
And it no longer shields you from the brutal realities that most of the world
goes through with respect to human competition.

> Maybe even more alarming, the nature of these jobs has changed, too. A year
> ago, you could sell some landing pages and some basic web programming.
> Today, almost every inquiry you get is for some illicit script to scrape
> social media sites.

Yes, the world moves on, the nature of work changes, and things that were
valuable 10 years ago become commodities. Being a programmer means being able
to program many different things; you know how demands are changing, so either
adapt or die. Or switch what field you work in. Construction workers can get
$35 an hour, and it's better for your body.

> I feel obsolete, and I'm afraid it's starting to show outwardly.

Woe is me.

> While I was asleep at the wheel during my generic office job, the world
> moved on without me.

So what are you going to do about it?

> Being able to get work in this field without a fancy background is still
> possible, but only if you have the right connections.

So work at making those connections.

> Personally, I will just keep looking. Maybe something will turn up.

No, don't do that, it's the same shit that isn't working for you. Go to some
meetups, conferences, hackathons, etc. Take a part-time job doing something
else to be able to afford the time to build the connections you see as being
so important. Buy books and read tutorials (and build side projects) regarding
new technologies you want/need to learn. Hey I'm not saying this is the best
plan, but any plan is better than no plan.

Or are "connections" your way of excusing your ego for slumping in life? I can
blame others for having good genetics all day long, but I'm still going to go
to the gym to improve my physique.

\---

Be proactive when shit hits the fan, when you miss out, when you make
mistakes. There is no alternative.

------
curiousjorge
Being unemployable is _fucking great_. You don't need to put up with any of
the bullshit that comes with the 9-5. My holy shit moment was when I found a
major corporation was willing to pay my year's salary as a dev for a software
I created. You mean I just sell you this license at the cost of my entire
annual salary as a dev without having to work 9-5 for the entire year? _Fuck
yeah I 'll do it._ An interviewer might not even have noted the sheer
challenge behind designing & shipping by oneself with no pay for over a year
(obviously rote memorization is of much more value), but somebody at some
large company found it valuable enough to pay the equivalent of my year's
salary had I been a developer. The best part is there's very little
maintenance or cost involved. Just answer email and provide support. After the
sale, the hard part of the work is done. I guess I could get somebody to
manage the after-sales part but I really enjoy talking to my customers and the
greatest thrill that it's helping their business.

Since then I've been practically unemployable. It makes no sense if I could
make an entire year's worth of salary after a few phone calls and a quick
demo. The only downside to this is that you have a lot of idle time. Obviously
you can't do sales 24/7 (I wish I could). I'm still trying to figure out how
to best use my idle time instead of obsessively commenting on HN or Reddit or
playing Counterstrike. Get out? Travel? I don't know yet.

You can do this too. You absolutely can. Don't sell yourself short so you
could have a 'secure' job. Don't become a slave to appease others and censor
yourself to keep a job. Your time is the single most valuable asset in your
life. DO NOT SELL IT FOR CHEAP. Control your destiny. This is capitalism. This
is North America.

I had too much coffee, I'm out. _mic drop_

TL;DR: Get your money's worth. Don't waste time applying and going to
interviews for a 9-5. It's not for you.

------
s73v3r
"People at the office were nice. They had very modest and orderly lives, but
they didn't have any interest in science, creative tinkering, or anything
fanciful really, so very unlike the people I had worked with before."

I really hate this characterization. Are there people at the office like this?
Of course. But there are also plenty of offices that have people like this.
They just have their own interests outside of the office job that they like to
spend their time on.

------
notNow
To the author of this piece:

Have you tried any of the following alternative in your quest to land a job:

1- Theme marketplaces like Envato.

The competition is really fierce but you could make it and establish a name
and sharpen your skills and be up to date when the latest trends and movements
in our profession.

2- Kickstarter campaign to crowd-fund a technical project that you're
passionate about to showcase your technical skills and expertise and as an
opportunity for you to reboot your career.

~~~
sharemywin
He said his skill weren't up to date. That's the whole point. Companies would
rather hire kids out of college with recent experience than someone with years
of experience that's not the what's in fashion.

------
kagamine
True story: had an uncle who outperformed everywhere he worked. He faked his
own references (via fax at that time) to get in the door, and when people made
reference to university he just sidestepped the question or gave vague "yeah"
type answers as he had not attended but had left school at the minimum legal
age and become self employed (and failed a couple of times). Everyone else
studied for 4 years to do what he did better than them.

Not saying you should fake it, I'm saying employers need to stop thinking
donuts can't be iced by anyone with less than a masters degree. I've seen a
masters grad unable to get through a door that had a security card swipe thing
because there were no instructions, even though she had the card in her hand.
Sometimes a course isn't what's needed to get a job done.

------
matwood
I get where the OP is coming from, but it was his responsibility to move on
sooner. I worked DoD for a time and lasted 9 months before I left out of a)
boredom and b) feeling my skills completely rot away. I chalked it up as a
retirement job I would go back to when I was ready to hang out from 9-4 every
day.

I had another job where I learned a lot, but after a couple years the job
became repetitive with no further learning opportunities. At that point it was
time to leave, because if you are not moving forward you are moving backwards.

People need to take control of their own careers.

