ccajas

I see you live in the same local area as I do. Would you mind if I could have a chat with you? I have worked about as long as you have, and am technically freelancing, although not to the point where I can make a sustainable living. I also can't grok interviews which is one of the inspirations from making this thread.

Well he is self-employed, but if I called myself self-employed that would be an understatement. I'm actually unemployed and wondering what I could to to capitalize on my current skills that will also not be hampered by my weak soft skills.

I'm on the 1-2 hour limit camp. As much as I know a lot of people find whiteboard tests awkward, or don't like coding tests with short time limits, I actually prefer them over take-home coding challenges. If a company requires that I do one of those before the interview proper, I usually give them a pass.

With short live coding tests in person, Once it's done, it's done. I do not like to finish an interview, and still having to think about putting more time aside to do additional "work" for them in the form of a take-home test requiring an arbitrary length of time. The fact that they happen outside the office, outside of the worry of the company's time constraints, makes these sorts of tests more prone to exploitation. Self-contained interviews in a short time limit are my personal preference.

There is a Github page that is a compilation of companies that do not use whiteboard tests for their candidates. I'd like to find out if a similar list exists for companies that don't give their candidates take-home tests.

I have no experience working with software "at scale" so it may be that my interviewing experiences are different from yours. Generally speaking, though, software developers at non-tech companies, or at agencies for small-med business clients (what I tend to work for) don't ask those kinds of technical questions.

It's not simply compensation, but the variety and flexibility of learning or working in different things, and from others.

Try doing that with a startup whose bulk of development is done overseas. No personal work connection, lack of meaningful discussion (due to time zones and cultural/philosophy barrier), no concern for your growth as an individual. You are more likely to be distant from your workers due to startups' smaller budgets discouraging the use of in-house developers.

>but it’s also incredibly easy to learn how to do things the wrong way, if you have no one to learn from

Yep, say hello to startups who go cheap by outsourcing to developers who are not as good in their craft or don't care about learning more.

Why have I been told to begin your career at a startup, before you work at a big corp in order to "level up" your work environment? I took that advice and it has just left me starving for better compensation and, and am pretty lacking skills-wise. And now I'm still unfit to get an offer at the big tech corps, or even a chance for an interview.

How long ago did you interview with them? I have just started to get a first reply from them today (after submitting my resume).

SEEKING WORK

Location: Chicago, IL

Remote: Yes

Web developer/game developer with remote experience. My interests revolve around data viz, games, and simulation work. I have 10 years total experience, including 3 years of remote work. I'm handy at helping out with challenges related to performance or improving the visual experience of your application.

Skills: HTML/CSS, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, MongoDB, React, Vue, Node.js, Three.js, WebGL, HLSL, C#, XNA, MonoGame, Unity

Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/chriscajas

Github: https://github.com/ccajas

Resume: https://www.dropbox.com/s/r1syietklc2rxw8/ccajas-resume-soft...

Email: chris.cajas.m [at] gmail.com

Software developers in the bottom 20-25 percentile of their local area make roughly half of the local median in most places in the US.

A lot of people seem to think you have it automatically made in the shade if you're a software engineer. But it doesn't guarantee a good income, not even in the US. Cue delusional managers seeking $15/hr full-stack web developers. Or the infamous "do everything with computers" one-man IT job that gives you no benefits or no strong future with the company.

There are a lot of people in this field that still struggle financially, even though they are not buying expensive luxuries.

SEEKING WORK

Location: Chicago, IL or remote

Web developer/game developer with remote experience. My interests revolve around data viz, games, and simulation work. I have 10 years total experience, 3 years remote. I'm handy at helping out with challenges related to performance or improving the visual experience of your application.

Skills: HTML/CSS, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, MongoDB, React, Vue, Node.js, Three.js, WebGL, HLSL, C#, XNA, MonoGame, Unity

Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/chriscajas

Github: https://github.com/ccajas

Resume: https://www.dropbox.com/s/r1syietklc2rxw8/ccajas-resume-soft...

I am not as extroverted, so working remote has actually made me less proactive about going out. I'm not much into athletic activities, or meeting up with strangers, and I find solo activities/hobbies more interesting most of the time.

To be honest I think it's done a number on my social skills. Ever since I worked remotely I have not been able to do well on interviews as I used to. When I started out my career, it took me 3 months to get my first job as a programmer. Now, I've been interviewing for 3 years and counting. Seems like I sound kinda "off" with all the people I've interviewed with since in the few times I have gotten feedback, they say I sound nervous. 3 years of interviewing practice (I consider every real interview to also count as "practice") has not made much progress it seems.

I haven't put much effort in meeting new people. The only people I talk to today are my close relatives and two of my closest friends. And no partner to lean on socially. In fact I have never had a serious relationship in my 36 years of living. Would you consider this par on course for an introvert working remotely, or am I taking social reclusion too far?

I am introverted as well but I have not been able to get much motivated into getting into group activities with a lot of friends at once, or especially strangers. And never having a SO or a serious relationship in my life, now being age 36 probably is affected by that. I don't live alone right now- I live with my mom for financial hardship reasons- but I usually keep to myself.

I wrote a Greasemonkey script that creates page previews for Wikipedia, so I could cover more ground understanding terms and articles. This was about a year before Wikipedia's official page preview feature was made live.

I've seen that site posted a few times. It's really becoming one of my favorite sites for career skills.

The other side of his comment about the class divide is kind of telling though. It implies that the middle class is the most unstable of the three major economic classes in the long run. And with the current system of constraints, contents only want to settle in the top or in the bottom.

I'm 36 jobless and have swung back to living with my mom after being laid off a few times. Eventually I ended up going broke. Constantly looking for work when you're not employed can do a lot of damage to your leverage and you're more prone to taking another low quality job.

With no disposable money you cannot inject a lot of variety into your life. For me it became a repetitive routine of doing home chores and errands with my mom, followed up with going to a coffee shop with wi-fi just to get out of the home, and applying for jobs online, taking phone interviews or just posting on forums like this one.

Then it starts to suck the motivation out of you, motivation to learn or try new things, work on side projects that you can present to employers, etc. The grind of job hunting without variety in your days is very draining.

I really wish there was a government matchmaking program in the US that would help line up freelance employees with employers.

I am able-bodied, my only "disability" is the ineffectiveness of acing job interviews. I'd rather my government hook me up effectively with a job, than SNAP, medicaid or cash.

Academia as in attending school, or going into teaching or research?

I am considering this to bolster my skills and career options, either for ECE or full CS degree. I don't have the accomplishments you do. Instead I see academia as one of several possible solutions to change a dead-end career.

However the million dollar question is how I can survive college full-time when I also need a job to pay all of my bills. Financial aid options are not as flexible as they were when going for your first Bachelor's degree. And then there's the problem of time management in your 30's and beyond...

Being hyped up as a good candidate and relayed from person to person only to have no leads or offers for you makes you feel like you encountered the biggest farce in your recent time.

Do:

* Admit when you can't speak geek, and explain your own personal work background where it's relevant to the skills you're scouting for.

Don't:

* Hype candidates up and stroke their egos a lot, by getting them to as many interviews as they can as soon as possible. As you mostly throw them at companies who are only speculating.

You seem to be an example of survivorship bias. The majority of startups fail within 4 years, so your experience made you more marketable towards enterprise work as you progressed.

Your experience is not the norm for people working at startups, so you actually have an upper hand, just not necessarily in the smallest of places. Look for companies that are undergoing a rapid growth, just past the make-or-break point. These places need people who are experience working with problems regarding scale, and solutions that they require.

Location: Chicago, IL

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Yes (US only)

Technologies: JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, MongoDB, React, Vue.js, A-Frame, Three.js, WebGL, HLSL, C#, XNA, MonoGame, and Unity.

Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/chriscajas

Github: https://github.com/ccajas

Resume: https://www.dropbox.com/s/r1syietklc2rxw8/ccajas-resume-soft...

Email: See resume

Web developer/game developer and also into data visualization. My interests revolve around data visualization, games, VR and simulation work. I have 10 years total experience, 3 years remote. I'm handy at helping out with challenges related to performance or improving the visual experience of your products.

SEEKING WORK

Location: Chicago, IL or remote

Web developer/game developer and also into data visualization. My interests revolve around data visualization, games and simulation work. I have 10 years total experience, 3 years remote. I'm handy at helping out with challenges related to performance or improving the visual experience of your application.

Software experience includes JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, MongoDB, React, Vue.js, A-Frame, Three.js, WebGL, HLSL, C#, XNA, MonoGame, and Unity.

Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/chriscajas

Github: https://github.com/ccajas

Resume: https://www.dropbox.com/s/r1syietklc2rxw8/ccajas-resume-soft...

Can you elaborate on being depressed? Maybe I'm not being in denial of depression so much as being ignorant about the symptoms.

Here are some things I will state about my personal life: I have gradually went on "silent mode" with most people I know. I stopped hanging out with friends to dedicate more time to my job search. I don't really use Facebook anymore. My friends aren't very effective job leads, anyways. They're not really familiar with my kind of work, not even through a second-hand connection.

Is there a collection of data that outlines the average time spent looking for work amongst programmers, and other different tech fields? And how it has changed over the years?

I'm kinda surprised that roughly 40 phone interviews hasn't been enough practice to be competent. Interviewing.io is still not in public beta, and I've already registered my e-mail.

I live in Chicago, IL and the majority of the jobs I apply to are in that metro area. Occasionally, though, I draw interest from companies in the west coast (including some larger tech companies and VC funded startups). So I feel I have the skills and talent, but then get "slept on".

For a majority of that time I have been taking the "shotgun approach" of applying to tons of software development positions regardless of the company and its size, and only trying to meet some of their requirements. Then I realized that I was doing that too much.

In all, I probably have applied to somewhere between 1000 and 1500 job listings in the past three years, if I were to take a guess. I have taken about 40 first round interviews and about 10 on-sites. 90% of the jobs are local (I live in Chicago), and the other 10% are out of state or remote.

I stopped trying that brute-force approach sometime last summer and have been focusing more on research and applying only to companies that I truly have a vested interest in. My interview-to-application ratio has improved so I can now use my time more efficiently.

Because of my financial situation I had to move back in with my mom a couple of years ago. She is now recently telling me to seek some professional therapy of some kind to improve my speaking ability since she also knows that I have been consistently failing interviews. She's at retirement age and supporting me financially is starting to mentally wear her out.

Can you elaborate on sounding "throutish"? I'm curious about that as I haven't heard that before about autism.

>My advice to you is to get some kind of degree while you're looking for a job so at least you can show it in the future.

That's a possibility for me. I'd like to learn more low-level work through CS or ECE. The million dollar question though is if it's feasible to enroll full-time while also balancing it with a job that can pay all of your bills, and keep your sanity. I'm not necessarily into night school or online school, either.

>Also, keep this in mind, people are more likely to hire people that look like themselves so when you go into these interviews make sure you don't stand out. Make sure that from the start they feel that you are part of the team.

How can this be achieved before you have met most of the team? And does this also mean in terms of physical appearance? I think they're more willing to be flexible, though, if they are promoting hiring in conjunction with "culture add" instead of culture fit.

>You should also look into going to mock interviews so that your interviewers can let you know what they thought you did well and what you did bad.

I used Pramp a short time ago, and got rated 2/7 or 3/7 in most of the qualities they grade on the mock interview. I can take more mock interviews, so going to practice there again.

Also, although not a mock interview, I took the Triplebyte interview and got some good feedback on what I need to work on the technical front. Looks like those jobs where I had little physical contact with other programmers were holding me back lots!