So uhhhh…what am I supposed to do in the meantime while waiting for a job?
Real talk, this is a bit of a crapshoot but it can work, it’s worked a couple times for me.
Go hard on personal projects.
Make what you want to make, rewrite it when you’re done and realize how stupidly you wrote it the first time. expand it, connect it to other projects, put it all on github, put a decent readme of the whys and hows of this project, it doesn’t matter if you’re the only one who uses it, that’s called internal tooling.
When you run into an issue with a library you’re using, learn to contribute to open source, file a pull request, get a feel for it.
Put your github at the top of your resume. Prune your top repos so people see what you want them to see first.
This wont be a silver bullet but if you apply to smaller shops that like/support open source, it makes the nerds interviewing you like you more. I’ve skipped programming challenges completely because I was able to talk in depth to the designs of my personal projects, so they knew I actually wrote it because I understood it. So if they wanted to see how I wrote code, they could trust I wrote what they’re seeing.
The benefit to this approach is you also get a lot of experience. You’re forced to learn to architect your stuff from first principles, you’re forced to learn from all your mistakes.
This market sucks, these projects will feel like a full time job, but it can pay off, and its a better bet than waiting. Nerds like working with other nerds. People on projects like working with others who can break down problems and figure things out, even if they don’t know the solution immediately.
Real talk, this is a bit of a crapshoot but it can work, it’s worked a couple times for me.
Go hard on personal projects.
Make what you want to make, rewrite it when you’re done and realize how stupidly you wrote it the first time. expand it, connect it to other projects, put it all on github, put a decent readme of the whys and hows of this project, it doesn’t matter if you’re the only one who uses it, that’s called internal tooling.
When you run into an issue with a library you’re using, learn to contribute to open source, file a pull request, get a feel for it.
Put your github at the top of your resume. Prune your top repos so people see what you want them to see first.
This wont be a silver bullet but if you apply to smaller shops that like/support open source, it makes the nerds interviewing you like you more. I’ve skipped programming challenges completely because I was able to talk in depth to the designs of my personal projects, so they knew I actually wrote it because I understood it. So if they wanted to see how I wrote code, they could trust I wrote what they’re seeing.
The benefit to this approach is you also get a lot of experience. You’re forced to learn to architect your stuff from first principles, you’re forced to learn from all your mistakes.
This market sucks, these projects will feel like a full time job, but it can pay off, and its a better bet than waiting. Nerds like working with other nerds. People on projects like working with others who can break down problems and figure things out, even if they don’t know the solution immediately.
There is hope.
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