amagnasco

Thank you so much for all this advice! It still seemed a bit dreary so I put some of the more marketable items in bold, I guess I can change that on the fly to suit wherever I'm applying to. Thanks and likewise!

Since online applications haven't been working out for me, I'm going to start going in person, so I wrote the CV with that perspective in mind.

I don't know about CVs either, at all really. I know the limits of my knowledge and I don't want to oversell myself, I just wanted to clarify what I do and don't know. My experience is heavily linux-based so if someone is looking for a windows expert to debug their registers, that's not me. Sure I can poke around and apply critical thinking to the issue, go online and download a new dat file, reinstall the OS, virus scans or whatever, but I've never debugged a VB app. I don't even know what else is out there in the windowsverse past that point. If tinkering got me nowhere, it's not in the manual, and it's not online, I'll pass it on to someone else. As opposed to linux, OSX, BSD debugging which I can handle fine.

Thanks for pointing the firewall thing out, I fixed it.

That's incredible, I don't even know what to say. I'm looking at your website and it really is very useful, thanks for putting it up. I'll spread the word around about it when I get to the city.

I've done some grant-writing work on Upwork, and I'm trying to get into other writing opportunities for gigs. Is there anywhere you recommend for that, in particular that doesn't scam people? I will definitively come back Aug 1st and check out that thread, thanks. That reddit definitively is interesting...

I remember when Amazon started Mturk and all of a sudden, the gig economy hit the internet. Visionary, really.

would this work? www.overleaf.com/read/zrwcqvgrftvj

New CV, thoughts? www.overleaf.com/read/zrwcqvgrftvj

I agree 100%, the problem is that the places that I've been staying haven't had any open opportunities within bike distance, and I don't have a car. I'm moving back to the city, over there it'll be different.

Here's the new CV, opinion? www.overleaf.com/read/zrwcqvgrftvj

:::::::::::UPDATE:::::::::::

Thank you everyone for all of your amazing advice! It really is helping me immensely, I cannot thank you enough..

New CV incorporating your suggestions: www.overleaf.com/read/zrwcqvgrftvj

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

ah didn't notice that, thanks...

Amazing, thank you so much! On it right now! This helps immensely!

You're amazing, thank you! We're good on clothes thank god, we've been taking care of them. Hopefully by the time winter rolls around we'll be in a better position to get some new stuff. Seriously, thank you though.

Thank you, everything helps. I agree completely with you, the actual CV I send out is linked at the end of the post, and I'll upload a tech-specific one now based on suggestions here.

For the past year I've been constantly on the brink of being on the street or worse and have been fighting tooth and nail to get even a sofa or any help at all. The vast majority of my family are back in South America and have problems of their own to deal with, my friends are not doing that much better. It sucks. No-one I'm applying for a job with would hear about any of it though of course.

Thank you so much for looking over it and giving me your honest opinion. It helps immensely-- I'll write up a new tech-specific CV and post it here.

I agree with your assessment of hiring managers' mindset on that, and am being discreet. I'll even come back and delete my linked CVs as soon as I get a job opportunity.

:::::UPDATE::::: we found a way to get there and will absolutely be making use of all these incredible resources, when we get a job and have free time and money we'll go back and help out too

Wow, this is amazing. Thank you so much for all the information, I'm literally crying right now. Can I ask how you know all this?

After the better part of a year in this situation in Florida, I managed to get a friend to put us up two hours north of NYC, but there was a change of plans and we need to leave by next week. So all those amazing people are slightly out of reach right now but we'll definitively go if we manage to get to NYC, but we can't because there's no-one we can stay with.

The main problem we have right now is Catch-22. We need a job to pay rent for a roof over our heads or buy food. We need a roof and food to apply for jobs. We don't have any more savings left to keep us coasting by, any more family left that can help, or any more friends that can put us up. We managed to stay off the streets up until now but it doesn't seem like an option anymore. No-one wants to put us up, even for the promise of back-paid rent, and no-one wants to give us a job. We're at wits' end, really. We have two college degrees each for christ's sake. If we were in NYC proper we could go in person to do all of those things but we're not. I completely agree with your assessment and will definitively start looking on craigslist. Re: R, doing some programming once in a while between applications keeps me sane, which is absolutely a priority right now. I don't know why I just wrote out all of this, sorry.. thanks for all the advice

Sorry about not being more specific in there, you're absolutely right. I wouldn't mention it in an actual CV or cover letter, I just wanted to put it on here so you can see my long-term interest in CS, that it's not just to pay the bills.

As a general issue my hardware is mostly old and crappy, while most of it does have foss linux drivers the specific configuration for some is quite impossible to manage. I've been trying to figure it out with a lot of AL experts on the forums for some years now. So my interest in that would be learning how drivers work so I can actually configure them properly, helping rewrite the documentation, and maybe helping rewrite the drivers themselves if necessary. Probably the first step would be learning how to get a working Gentoo system up, as I spend a lot of time reading their documentation anyway. For example, the 2011 MacBook Pro has two video cards: an integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000, and a discrete AMD Radeon HD 6750M. It works like * even on OSX (it literally froze up on me for 15 minutes while I was writing this post), but on Arch I can't even get it to run so I just use single-user mode and do everything from bash. Unfortunately as fun as Mutt and Elinks are, I can't apply to jobs using that so I'm forced to run OSX.

As a specific interest there's a lot of areas that intrigue me in the realm of FOSS development for ARM (and HURD!).

This really helps, thanks! Take care

That is exactly the plan! At the moment we found a friend of mine to crash with but it's ending next week. I'm sorry that you had to go through that too but at least you got out! It's really encouraging, thanks for sharing

That sounds fantastic! I've always wanted to go there. I have to be upfront, neither me nor my girlfriend know Malay but we could probably pick up some Chavacano or creole quickly.

I looked on your website-- I like it! Operations intern sounds good. I'm applying, thanks for letting me know!

Ah... that's really the problem... I've worked on a lot of stuff in a lot of different fields. I could be entry level in writing, editing, research, IT. I could also be junior management at a large nonprofit. Hell, I could be senior management at a small nonprofit. The problem is I have 1 good CV and I highlight my relevance in the cover letter according to the job. I just can't seem to get past the automatic keyword screening, even using jobscan.co

Hi Kafaesq, thank you for the tips. I agree 100% with you.

1. Unfortunately I'm slightly past the point where I can get a rock-solid foundation in something, I just need a job. The classes I'm taking I've been focusing on for a while now.

2. My actual CV and cover letters don't read like this, and I had to abbreviate plenty to fit in the 2k character limit here on HN. Opinion on https://www.overleaf.com/read/jccfwqtdsfbd and how I can get my tech skills in there?

3. I agree, and it sucks because it's what my life is like right now. Having to hide it in interviews is ok I guess, but I did want to open up about it here so I could get some advice.

Long time lurker here. Sorry for the lack of intelligible paragraphs and for all the abbreviations. I had to fit it under 2000 characters.

A more reader-friendly version is at http://stackoverflow.com/cv/amagnasco