
A programmer's personal story about finding a job in this economy - rayvega
http://shadowcoding.blogspot.com/2009/12/life-update.html
======
motters
I also went for a job with a military contractor a couple of months ago. The
first thing that the interviewer asked was "what are your views on the Afghan
war?". I gave him my views, but stopped myself after a few sentences as he
looked increasingly horrified. Needless to say, I didn't get the job, but I
wasn't disappointed because a job which required me to become closely involved
in a cause that I didn't believe in wouldn't have suited me.

~~~
Poiesis
I'm surprised this question would get asked--first because of possible legal
problems with asking questions political in nature, second because in my
experience the employer doesn't really care what you think as long as you do
the work. Also, there are quite a lot of left-leaning folks working for
military contractors that may or may not support a particular action but are
professional enough not to let that get in the way of their job.

~~~
thaumaturgy
A few years back I interviewed with a company that manufactured
potentiometers. They had a bunch of government contracts and the like.

At one point my technical interviewer (and soon-to-be supervisor), Jerry,
looked me square in the eye and said, "You realize you'll be making parts that
kill people, right?"

To this day it still bothers me that I took the job, but I really needed it at
the time so I justified it out: someone else would make them anyway, and
besides, I wasn't the guy giving the orders.

There was a news report a while back that a Hellfire missile had been used to
kill some number of people in Afghanistan. It's likely, given the timeframes
involved, that I made sure that at least one of the parts on that particular
missile functioned correctly.

~~~
palish
Good. Personally, I'm glad a competent engineer was responsible for making a
weapon of war function successfully (even if it was being misused -- let's not
forget that it _is_ actually important to have a technologically-advanced
arsenal, regardless of our personal political views about how that arsenal
should be used).

------
chubbard
I've been getting a fairly steady flow of recruiters emails for the last 3
months looking for people. Even a few .Net jobs, and the recruiters know I'm
not a .Net person. Since my last job search I've started helping the
recruiters connect with people even if I'm not interested at the time. If they
send me a job post I try and send it around to my network of people. If I hear
of someone looking I forward them the posts I get.

I see it two ways one I'm helping people get jobs which I think is very
important, and two it keeps me in the loop for when I'm looking. The
recruiters remember me and help me out.

I wish this guy was in my contact list. He wouldn't have gotten so desperate.
But, if you're a programmer get to know some recruiters make sure you know
them and they know you. Don't wait until you're looking.

~~~
shaddi
Ok, a question from an (almost finished) student: how do you get to know
recruiters? In my experience, recruiters are generally temps that come and go.
In the last couple internships I've had, I changed recruiters at least once in
each hiring process. Even if I wanted to keep in touch with a recruiter, I
wouldn't know how, since they seem to move on in a matter of months.

Is there a different class of recruiters you're referring to? Or am I just
unlucky?

~~~
chubbard
Starting out is always tough. Your experience has been somewhat unlucky and
somewhat true. Recruiters your age are going to have a high turn over. Lots of
people get out of school and go into high tech recruiting. There's no barrier
to entry, but it takes a lot of hard work to stay one. They bop around for 3-6
months, and if they don't show some aptitude they get cycled out. See if you
can get to know people a little older and have been out there a couple of
years. Don't just work with one recruiter. Have several from different
companies looking for you.

Go to your local user group meetings. Java, Ruby, Php, Python, .Net, Flex,
whatever. (If you get too niche chances are you'll strike out). Typically
there are always someone there handing out business cards, or job postings.
Take it and send them a nice email introducing yourself the next day along
with your resume.

If you have friends that have been out of school for a while try and connect
with them. They might know of good people to put you in contact with.

LinkedIn is like crack for recruiters. Make sure you're on there and have some
of your experience on there. Connect with people. You'll start to see who is a
recruiter very quickly (500+ connections) chances are they're a recruiter.
LinkedIn helps you keep in contact with recruiters if they move companies too.

Put your resume on Dice. It can take a month before that pays off because it
takes a while for your resume to make the rounds.

The economy sucks, but IT is bouncing back quicker than other sectors.

~~~
oujheush
Thank you. I'm a sophomore CS student who's recently been going through huge
amounts of "I'm never going to be qualified or find a job" moments and this
post is the single most helpful thing I've seen.

I think right now my biggest weakness is that while I've done bits of work in
a variety of languages, I don't have one that I'm really fluent in and thus
could try to get recruited for. But the ideas you have here and the
information in this whole thread will definitely be helpful as I try to orient
myself towards the market.

------
scotch_drinker
It's also interesting, apropos of the recent interest in StackOverflow Careers
and the discussions on HN, that this guy has a pretty spectacular
StackOverflow rep and still was having trouble finding a job. I wonder if he
knew of the Careers/jobs portion of StackOverflow and if he used it at all. Of
course it's anecdotal but seems odd if Joel's theory stands up that this
fellow had such a hard time getting a job.

~~~
Poiesis
There are a vast number of people--hiring managers and developers alike, good
and bad--who haven't heard of Stack Overflow, or Joel Spolsky.

~~~
dasil003
Those developers must never google any programming questions then.

~~~
Periodic
I know I Google almost every day for something programming related. I know
someone else (who writes credit card processing software in Java in a large
team) and apparently most off their coding questions are answered in-house.
She tells me it's frowned upon to use outside solutions or non-standards
coding.

~~~
dasil003
I suppose that makes some sense in a large codebase where often it's hard to
know what problems have already been solved, but I can't help but feel like
using the open source world in this capacity means that I have a much larger
pool of talent to draw from.

------
webwright
Wow. Seattle, SF, NYC, etc. must be little islands of prosperity for
programmers... Still seems pretty active. The OP went to Charlestown, SC
("home")... I wonder if he tried remote work? It seems like if he was willing
to work retail/gas stations that he could find SOMEONE who would pay him
$10/hr to do junior coding working from abroad AT VERY LEAST...

------
andreshb
Never thought it would be that hard to find a job as a developer. I seem to
never have enough developers.

~~~
angelbob
Depends on a lot of things: where he is geographically sounds pretty good, but
he also doesn't have a lot of team experience, and many (most?) places seem to
discount most solo hobbyist experience, for a variety of good and bad reasons.

It's hard to find many kinds of developers, but other kinds (and experience
levels!) are lucky if they have a job at all right now.

I'm in the enviable position of having about 11 years of full-time experience
at coding, and ten or so more amateur/hobbyist/kid years before that, so I can
still pretty much dictate terms to most employers. But a lot of people,
especially people without as much education and experience, are having a tough
time right now.

~~~
rayvega
>> _...where he is geographically sounds pretty good..._

His current post is misleading because it sounds like he is currently in
Seattle where the tech job market is fairly good relative to other places.

However, he _was_ in Seattle but then moved to Charleston, SC where his story
begins. <http://shadowcoding.blogspot.com/2009/07/moving.html>

Given that bit of info it explains a lot about his struggles to find work.

------
ilamont
Pretty interesting story, and it's cool that he was able to bounce back. In
some areas, programmers seem to have lots of opportunities, even while there
are few jobs in other fields.

------
ardit33
I think this guys problem is that he knows mostly .net, and that's it. He
might be pretty good at it, but shoehorning yourself into one technology stack
is not good.

Anyway, It might be a problem of the location also. I know that in Boston
people are having trouble finding jobs too. It seems that in Sillicon Valley
there is always demand for really good engineers.

If you are really good, you will find something for sure.

~~~
jbellis
> shoehorning yourself into one technology stack is not good

on the contrary, specialization is how you get to be more than a trivially
replaceable cog in the machine.

~~~
potatolicious
I beg to differ. Both in the past and now - where I've been on both ends of
the recruiting stick for web developer, it is _incredibly hard_ finding
someone with enough breadth to tackle what you do.

Someone who speaks fluent HTML, CSS, JS, PHP, Perl, Python, MySQL, Oracle and
god knows what else is a _lot_ harder to hire than someone who knows C# and
Oracle. I'm not talking about trivial "I've heard of it" knowledge, I mean
working knowledge. These guys are rare and very hard to replace.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
_I mean working knowledge_

Yeah, but what does Google not know? ;0þ

~~~
noonespecial
_When_ to use those technologies.

------
pmichaud
His lack of team experience really would be a big downer for getting a job.
Glad to see he found something.

------
clistctrl
I found my current job in a week, actually I wasn't even looking. I said hey
what if I moved to Boston (was living in MN at the time) so i posted my resume
on Dice, an hour later I got my first email.. a week later I was at an
interview in Boston. Of course that was just after the stock market crashed, I
don't think the full repercussions had hit.

But I can understand having difficulty if he prefers to be a lone wolf.

