3 ms·

Your education and past experience are very impressive. Your employment gap is less so. There's a lot of passion and pride in your stories, use that energy to s

Your education and past experience are very impressive. Your employment gap is less so. There's a lot of passion and pride in your stories, use that energy to sell yourself to employers - tell them you'll make something for them that they'll be proud of. What about giving tech presentations as self-employment? Since you enjoy doing these, you would just need an audience, maybe at a school? Or maybe presenting concepts on YouTube? "There were problems and I had to move home to run the family for a while, but I stayed busy making YouTube videos about tech concepts," might be a more palatable narrative to a prospective boss. The kids could even help make the videos.

p4wnc6 10y ago
As I mentioned in the other comment, given the full-time duties I have to care for my current family situation, there simply is no physical possibility for doing anything that remotely resembles work. Devoting the time necessary to create presentation materials alone would be way, way too prohibitive. Already, even just spend a couple hours on telephone interviews and a couple hours on personal code projects is an extreme time strain for me, not to mention that in this rural area there is no reliable internet connection and I often go for hours, sometimes even days, without ability to connect except by tethering to a 4G device and paying huge data charges. If I have to pick between spending those few hours actually coding vs. spending them making videos or something, I think it's obvious that actually coding (and reading to stay current) is much more important. That's what I want to do in my next job. Making YouTube videos is likely to be completely ignored by most recruiters, and even when considered it won't be regarded as useful in the way that actual coding skill will be.

3 ms·

Your education and past experience are very impressive. Your employment gap is less so. There's a lot of passion and pride in your stories, use that energy to s

by stephengillie 10y ago

p4wnc6 10y ago
As I mentioned in the other comment, given the full-time duties I have to care for my current family situation, there simply is no physical possibility for doing anything that remotely resembles work. Devoting the time necessary to create presentation materials alone would be way, way too prohibitive. Already, even just spend a couple hours on telephone interviews and a couple hours on personal code projects is an extreme time strain for me, not to mention that in this rural area there is no reliable internet connection and I often go for hours, sometimes even days, without ability to connect except by tethering to a 4G device and paying huge data charges. If I have to pick between spending those few hours actually coding vs. spending them making videos or something, I think it's obvious that actually coding (and reading to stay current) is much more important. That's what I want to do in my next job. Making YouTube videos is likely to be completely ignored by most recruiters, and even when considered it won't be regarded as useful in the way that actual coding skill will be.