6 ms·

A programmer's personal story about finding a job in this economy

59 points by rayvega 17y ago

ilamont 17y ago
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.
scotch_drinker 17y ago
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.
- mquander 17y ago
  Not to drag this way off topic, but 6k isn't really very spectacular; I'm neither a great programmer nor a prolific contributor, and I have a much higher rep than that, just by answering about one question per day for 11 months. If he had 50k, in my opinion, then it might be a commentary on the meaning of the reputation, but not so much as is.
  - scotch_drinker 17y ago
    Based on the users currently on StackOverflow, he ranks 747th by my count. Assuming there are 100K+ users on StackOverflow, I think that makes it a pretty spectacular reputation statistically speaking. Answering a question every day for 11 months is also pretty spectacular if you ask me. He may not be a Jon Skeet but he's clearly head and shoulders above the great majority of StackOverflow users. He's exactly the type of programmer that I think Joel would say would have a good use for the Careers portion. So I find it interesting that he had such a hard time finding a job ASSUMING he knew about and utilized the Careers section.
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
- rayvega 17y ago
  Hypothetically speaking, given his situation, do you think he would have ponied up the (soon-to-be) $100 to sign up for Stackoverflow Careers?
  - scotch_drinker 17y ago
    No, but it was $29 when he was looking which is almost negligible. If you're going to go broke, it will happen whether or not you have an extra $29. On top of that, I have no doubt that if he emailed the team at StackOverflow and told them his situation, they would have gladly waived the fee. I just don't see the money as being a sticking point.
- Poiesis 17y ago
  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 17y ago
    Those developers must never google any programming questions then.
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
    - Periodic 17y ago
      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 17y ago
        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.
    - bmj 17y ago
      I think it depends on the nature of the query. Often, I don't get SO results on the first page of a Google search.
  - scotch_drinker 17y ago
    That wouldn't surprise me but I'm not sure it's germane to my point that he seems like a perfect candidate for Careers at StackOverflow. Yet he had one hell of a time finding a job. Yes it's new and yes not a lot of employers are on there yet but this guy was in a pretty decent area as far as tech talent and needs go. I'd think given his SO rep, he would have known about the Careers section and given it a go. If he did and still couldn't find a job, I just find that interesting.
- UncleOxidant 17y ago
  sounds like he had some free time without work for a while to work on the SO score. ... but he did have a pretty desirable skillset with stuff like C#, .NET ( I see ads for this kind of thing, anyway). And F# which means he's gotten into the FP stuff which means he's aware of current trends. So if it was tough for him to find work, well, then it's tough out there. Oh, and nice to know that I'm not the only one who has trouble with nervousness during interviews.
pmichaud 17y ago
His lack of team experience really would be a big downer for getting a job. Glad to see he found something.
motters 17y ago
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 17y ago
  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 17y ago
    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 17y ago
      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).
ardit33 17y ago
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 17y ago
  > 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 17y ago
    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.
    - dasil003 17y ago
      The other part of this is that by learning more technologies you get better at learning faster, which is a huge asset whenever starting a new project.
    - xsmasher 17y ago
      Of course it's hard. I think being fluent in all of those techs is unlikely. I've seen too many back-end programmers who think they know js and css; they understand most of the syntax, but not the patterns in place, what wheels exist already, what libraries to use, or the quirks in the current implementations. Some don't really know the DOM, others don't really understand cascading. Sure they can make something that looks good in the latest Firefox, but when you open it in IE 6 or 7 you're screwed. Example: Did you know you can't have a JavaScript variable that shares a name with a form element? Do you know why?
andreshb 17y ago
Never thought it would be that hard to find a job as a developer. I seem to never have enough developers.
- angelbob 17y ago
  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 17y ago
    >> ...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 http://shadowcoding.blogspot.com/2009/07/moving.html Given that bit of info it explains a lot about his struggles to find work.
- jasonkester 17y ago
  It's nearly impossible to hire good developers. Just as you've noticed. It's also really easy to find a job if you're a good developer and have the references and public-facing projects to prove it. It's the other 90% of the guys who have all the trouble finding jobs and who contribute to this sense that "there are no jobs out there". That's not actually true, but it may as well be for them. Shame too, since a lot of those 90%'ers are actually pretty good. They just don't have a ton of experience, enough good references, or a single big hit they've built that they can show off.
chubbard 17y ago
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 17y ago
  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 17y ago
    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.
clistctrl 17y ago
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.
webwright 17y ago
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...

59 points by rayvega 17y ago

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.

scotch_drinker 17y ago

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.

mquander 17y ago
Not to drag this way off topic, but 6k isn't really very spectacular; I'm neither a great programmer nor a prolific contributor, and I have a much higher rep than that, just by answering about one question per day for 11 months. If he had 50k, in my opinion, then it might be a commentary on the meaning of the reputation, but not so much as is.
- scotch_drinker 17y ago
  Based on the users currently on StackOverflow, he ranks 747th by my count. Assuming there are 100K+ users on StackOverflow, I think that makes it a pretty spectacular reputation statistically speaking. Answering a question every day for 11 months is also pretty spectacular if you ask me. He may not be a Jon Skeet but he's clearly head and shoulders above the great majority of StackOverflow users. He's exactly the type of programmer that I think Joel would say would have a good use for the Careers portion. So I find it interesting that he had such a hard time finding a job ASSUMING he knew about and utilized the Careers section.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
rayvega 17y ago
Hypothetically speaking, given his situation, do you think he would have ponied up the (soon-to-be) $100 to sign up for Stackoverflow Careers?
- scotch_drinker 17y ago
  No, but it was $29 when he was looking which is almost negligible. If you're going to go broke, it will happen whether or not you have an extra $29. On top of that, I have no doubt that if he emailed the team at StackOverflow and told them his situation, they would have gladly waived the fee. I just don't see the money as being a sticking point.
Poiesis 17y ago
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 17y ago
  Those developers must never google any programming questions then.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - Periodic 17y ago
    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 17y ago
      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.
  - bmj 17y ago
    I think it depends on the nature of the query. Often, I don't get SO results on the first page of a Google search.
- scotch_drinker 17y ago
  That wouldn't surprise me but I'm not sure it's germane to my point that he seems like a perfect candidate for Careers at StackOverflow. Yet he had one hell of a time finding a job. Yes it's new and yes not a lot of employers are on there yet but this guy was in a pretty decent area as far as tech talent and needs go. I'd think given his SO rep, he would have known about the Careers section and given it a go. If he did and still couldn't find a job, I just find that interesting.
UncleOxidant 17y ago
sounds like he had some free time without work for a while to work on the SO score. ... but he did have a pretty desirable skillset with stuff like C#, .NET ( I see ads for this kind of thing, anyway). And F# which means he's gotten into the FP stuff which means he's aware of current trends. So if it was tough for him to find work, well, then it's tough out there. Oh, and nice to know that I'm not the only one who has trouble with nervousness during interviews.

pmichaud 17y ago

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

motters 17y ago

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 17y ago
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 17y ago
  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 17y ago
    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).

ardit33 17y ago

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 17y ago
> 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 17y ago
  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.
  - dasil003 17y ago
    The other part of this is that by learning more technologies you get better at learning faster, which is a huge asset whenever starting a new project.
  - xsmasher 17y ago
    Of course it's hard. I think being fluent in all of those techs is unlikely. I've seen too many back-end programmers who think they know js and css; they understand most of the syntax, but not the patterns in place, what wheels exist already, what libraries to use, or the quirks in the current implementations. Some don't really know the DOM, others don't really understand cascading. Sure they can make something that looks good in the latest Firefox, but when you open it in IE 6 or 7 you're screwed. Example: Did you know you can't have a JavaScript variable that shares a name with a form element? Do you know why?

andreshb 17y ago

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

angelbob 17y ago
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 17y ago
  >> ...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 http://shadowcoding.blogspot.com/2009/07/moving.html Given that bit of info it explains a lot about his struggles to find work.
jasonkester 17y ago
It's nearly impossible to hire good developers. Just as you've noticed. It's also really easy to find a job if you're a good developer and have the references and public-facing projects to prove it. It's the other 90% of the guys who have all the trouble finding jobs and who contribute to this sense that "there are no jobs out there". That's not actually true, but it may as well be for them. Shame too, since a lot of those 90%'ers are actually pretty good. They just don't have a ton of experience, enough good references, or a single big hit they've built that they can show off.

chubbard 17y ago

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 17y ago
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 17y ago
  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.

clistctrl 17y ago

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.

webwright 17y ago

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...