Welcome to the modern IT world. First dude, you will need to cheer up, since many of us had been in the same position. As a matter of fact, I've been there coup

Welcome to the modern IT world. First dude, you will need to cheer up, since many of us had been in the same position. As a matter of fact, I've been there couple of times and that is the path of The Professional (learning things on your own skin). Here are couple of my own remarks: 1) You are good dev and teamplayer, as other respected you, just that other guy steal the day somehow. Who knows, maybe he is someone closer to CEO or he managed to sell himself really good (CEOs often think like this: this new guy is expensive, have shiny CV, hence it is good. BMW is expensive and shiny, hence BMW is a good car). 2) I'm sorry you used the word f* during the talk, but it's not bad, this is your first real work after all. To be honest, your destiny has been determined long time ago when CEO started to look for alternative, so no matter how polite, honest or hard working you were, you would get fired at some point. 3) As others mentioned here, don't beg for work. Make your profile/blog looking professional, remove that post we all read here and write about Rails tricks you learn on daily basis. Write about it in weekly or bi-weekly span. Use blog to write about life, your kids and family (under different tag), so recruiters can see how positive you are (also CEOs and recruiters looooove devs with family as they can be easily locked within the company). 4) Start your own small business. You do have experience with plastics plants, go to your previous employer and ask to create a web page or a management tool for him. Offer it for free or a small fee; offer free support. You will see that people will start calling you after some time. Be patient and the work will come. And good luck!