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Ask HN: Who has started a business because they couldn't get hired for work?

• CamelCaseName 8y ago
  I didn't graduate because I couldn't bring myself to go to classes I had no interest in. No degree put me in a rough position. My resume claimed that I had graduated, but I had not. While I did get offers, whenever I shared that I failed out of fourth year, my offer was rescinded. Not wanting to work for someone unethically, I went into business for myself about 10 months ago and am doing quite well, more than I would have earned in my first year of work at another company. I would certainly have preferred the stability of a full time job while moonlighting, but either way I feel like long term success is still on the table. (Which wasn't the case 10 months ago) If you're failing, get help. You are not alone.
  • piracy1 8y ago
    Out of curriousity, what does your company do?
  • catdog 8y ago
    > No degree put me in a rough position. My resume claimed that I had graduated, but I had not. While I did get offers, whenever I shared that I failed out of fourth year, my offer was rescinded. Do I get this right, you servery lied on your resume and really are surprised that you got rejected once it was revealed? What did you expect?
• whitepoplar 8y ago
  Brian Acton started WhatsApp with Jan Koum in part because Twitter and Facebook rejected him for a job. Facebook later bought WhatsApp for $16 billion dollars.
  • Techonomicon 8y ago
    Being refused a job or two is different than not being able to get no job, like a million times different.
    • whitepoplar 8y ago
      Yeah, you're 100% right, which is why I hesitated posting this, but it's too juicy not to mention.
• spidfire22 8y ago
  Elon musk did
  • whitepoplar 8y ago
    Did Elon get rejected or did he just say "Fuck it, I don't want a job"?
    • jamestimmins 8y ago
      I believe he couldn't get a job at Netscape, as he didn't have a formal CS background. Unclear if he applied for other jobs or just this one.
      • dboreham 8y ago
        Not to contradict Elon, but: I worked at Netscape and did not have a "formal CS background" nor did I ever ask interview candidates about their formal background. recall we hired a guy who's previous job was mixing a Nine inch Nails album. Fantastic coder.. In my experience the whole "must have formal background" began with Google, some years later.
        • lgregg 8y ago
          Do you recall which album?
        • twilightcircus 8y ago
          Do you remember if it was Steve Duda, the guy who owns XFER Records? He was an engineer for NIN in the late 90's.
    • 52-6F-62 8y ago
      Yeah he got rejected by Netscape. Also not sure if it was an 'all-eggs-in-one-basket' situation, or if it was the only place he wanted to work at the time. Then the X.com story
• _sdegutis 8y ago
  I’m kind of at this point right now.
  • raarts 8y ago
    From your resume you don't seem to be one who is having trouble being hired.
    • ccajas 8y ago
      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.
      • raarts 8y ago
        Why don't you put a link to your resume in your profile? Now you got people reading...
  • ccajas 8y ago
    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.
  • slow_donkey 8y ago
    I'm assuming you already have your own freelancing setup? But if you're looking for ft positions I would definitely consider rewriting portions of your pdf resume job descriptions. I'm confident you could sound much more impressive.
• Alex3917 8y ago
  > from being unable to get hired anywhere and so needed to make money independently for themselves? Lots of immigrants. There are tons of folks with Ph.D.s or who were doctors or lawyers in your own country, but in the U.S. the best job they could get was bagging groceries.
• Clubber 8y ago
  I've heard of several small businesses run by people who couldn't get a meaningful job because of prior convictions; typically drugs.
  • dsnuh 8y ago
    Yeah, I think this is a more common occurrence in industry outside of tech. I would imagine there are many stories that echo this amongst construction trade and independent truck drivers, for example. I know of several folks in those industries that started their own business because of priors.
    • misterhtmlcss 8y ago
      We don't want them to re-offend, but we won't give them meaningful work either. Terrible cycle
      • dsnuh 8y ago
        I think a lot of Americans play lip service to "innocent until proven guilty" and "repaid debts to society", but in reality, to many, an arrest is a conviction, and if you are a felon, you are stained for life, even if you served the terms of your conviction the law decreed necessary to atone for your crimes.
        • Clubber 8y ago
          Not only that, the justice system in the US seems horribly broken. It's just one of those things you have to put out of your mind, like the chances of getting mangled in a car wreck driving to work every morning. I don't think the US will change much in regards to the justice system the near future. We seem to have full and unshakable faith in state and local police, prosecutors and juries while at the same time, berating government workers for being incompetent. It's completely illogical and bewildering. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-cost-of-convicting-the-innocent/2015/07/24/260fc3a2-1aae-11e5-93b7-5eddc056ad8a_story.html?utm_term=.5de87e842287 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-cost-of-convicti...
• maerF0x0 8y ago
  Once upon a time I started doing consulting because I was tired of being laid off. Had work in like 2 days because I was already part time on upwork . Nice the former employer paid me like 2 months severance :D
• nijynot 8y ago
  Jack Ma.
• excitednumber 8y ago
  Not exactly what you are asking but, here's my story: I graduated in 2009 from a masters with a focus on financial engineering. At the time it was very hard to get a job doing what I want (let me emphasize this point - I could get a job but just not in what I wanted). Eventually, I took a job to afford living in a major US city. Due to my frustration I began coding much more at home. Fast forward to now, I have a few projects under my belt that are generating more cash than my day job. Additionally, the skills I acquired working on my personal projects absolutely helped me land my current job. I have had my share of disappointments, successes and career frustrations along the way, but I get the most satisfaction out of the work I do on my own.
  • whitepoplar 8y ago
    Any chance you can share what those projects are, either in public or in private?
    • excitednumber 8y ago
      I apply the things I have learned in my degree, on the job, and reading academic research. The projects I focus on are related to investing - buying and selling securities programmatically.
      • tinktank 8y ago
        Very cool. So are you doing the investment on your cash, others, or a combination of both?
        • excitednumber 8y ago
          My cash for now. I work in asset management so my outside business activities cannot also be in it. Kind of a bummer but that's how it goes.
• anoncoward111 8y ago
  Sales engineer here. I tried to start a variety of businesses when I was laid off from my last job, where I lasted for 4 years. I tried to get clients for my life coaching biz (budget, brain, and brawns as I called it). Got some traction at just 7 bux a month (I was living in Chile), but not enough once I moved back to NY. I also tried to test product market fit for a site i was developing (a curated list of multi-month foreign apartment leases), but that was too expensive for me to scale. Ultimately, making a prototype and getting some users wasnt even the hardest part. It was trying to grow past that base and make the unit economics work that was impossible, maybe even with outside funding. After one year of job hunting, I found another sales engineering position that Im happy with :)
  • sahil-kang 8y ago
    If you don’t mind sharing, how did you go about testing the product-market fit for your apartment website?
    • anoncoward111 8y ago
      Of course, my pleasure :) I'll send you an email too just to say hi. So, in my case, I was living in Chile and I had booked tickets to Thailand and Japan (Ironically I ended up moving back to the USA for a full time job that I wasn't planning on landing!!) In Chiang Mai Thailand, specifically, you can book a 1-3 month apartment for about $150 a month USD cash. They speak english, there's no lease, no craziness. And only a few guest houses offer these types of prices and terms, so you really had to hear about it from a friend of a friend type situation. So I wanted to build a site that was a "curated list" of these apartments. And I didn't even have firm data, names and numbers of landlords, availability, etc. I just wanted to make something that looked and felt like airbnb, but was light-weight and mobile friendly (text, css, and basic js only. site load files of just a few KB not MB!!!) So, I mocked it up, and made some posts to some reddits and discords where I was only sort of a contributing member. I basically said, "guys, all of us are having a lot of problems finding legit landlords with good terms and prices abroad. I have a list of a few that are good, but I want to scale it out and make it available as like a public service to our channel. Is this something you guys would read? aka, is it worth my time to do this for fun?" And the response was overwhelming. "YES! I want to see this list!" and "Thank you so much!!! I'm having no luck booking a room right now". and etc etc. People I've never heard of messaging me for months, "Did you finish it yet?" From a technical standpoint, the site was a success. It looked and felt like a responsive airbnb that worked on any device. The problem was that it was extremely, extremely difficult to collect data of any kind. Language barriers, not network effects, nothing. These landlords are so hard to find, they're like ghosts!!! So the product fell dormant because of an inability to scale to the level of service needed for it to be useful. But the demand is there, and the grassroots method I used to discover that demand was really successful and mostly by accident ;)
• mark212 8y ago
  Lawyer here. Opened my own practice after the 2008 collapse because no firms were hiring. Best decision I was ever forced to make.
  • anoncoward111 8y ago
    Congrats :) Do you feel that law school is too expensive for nearly all applicants besides those who are eventually hired by big firms to make 175k a year?
    • wtvanhest 8y ago
      Not op, but obviously. If you have 200k in debt and dont even break 100k per year... it isnt a positive thing.
      • henryfjordan 8y ago
        There are a lot more factors that makes this not "obvious". If you can make 40k as a paralegal and 80k as a lawyer, and you are 25 (30ish more working years), investing 3 years and 200k in law school might make sense. 30 years * 40k/year = 1.2mil ((30 years - 3 years) * 80k/year) - 200k = ~2.3mil This assumes you can pay that 200k all at once upon graduation and that salary is stagnant, but even if you drop that first assumption take your whole career to pay off your loans and end up paying 2-3x the principle you still come out ahead with a law degree. Don't choose education for money though, choose it because you want to be educated.
        • wtvanhest 8y ago
          Paralegals often make more than lawyers who don't get to big law and those jobs are not open to people who went to law school bc they are "over qualified". I agree with not choosing an education due to money, but money is a great reason to NOT choose an education. Law is a totally broken model where the 5% who get big law do great and the other 95% get slaughtered.
• mettamage 8y ago
  Interviewed for 3 jobs. 1 rejected me for being too broad, 1 rejected me for not being reliable diring the interview (despite good track record and refs), 1 rejected me because they only wanted to hire cheap(ish) devs (2000 - 2500 euro per month). It was my first round to see the world after graduation. Note: I worked on serious jobs during my studies, no internships, actual jobs. Will start my serious round soon. If no one wants me for what I think I am worth/can offer, then I will start on my own too. I chose this profession partially because of this ‘power’.
  • narag 8y ago
    ...cheap(ish) devs (2000 - 2500 euro per month). <sigh> Where is it?
    • mettamage 8y ago
      Amsterdam
      • narag 8y ago
        Thank you. I've been resisting moving last five years, mostly because the kid. But now that he's approaching uni age, I'm running out of excuses :)
        • mettamage 8y ago
          Where are you moving to?
          • narag 8y ago
            Before brexit I was considering UK. I'd heard that speaking English is OK for work in many other countries. No problem to learn another language later. I had a nice offer for Vienna two years ago but I refused after strong family protests. Now the situation is different for a few reasons so, starting August, I'll be looking again. It's incredible how different are salaries just crossing the border. One would believe that sharing a common currency that wouldn't be the case, but we earn half the money for the same positions. And not only developers, just any profession.
• Jemmeh 8y ago
  Thing is most businesses take time to build. If you're in "dire need", like really about to starve, you probably would take a job you might even be overqualified for.
• Mave83 8y ago
  Dude from Germany here. Without a proper school education I was unable to get a apprenticeship in an IT profession, although I started profesional coding with age of 11 and general IT with 6-7 years (~1989). I ended up learning mechanics and after finishing my apprenticeship I founded my first company (~2000). After 18 hard working years of entrepreneurship I managed to start and exited 2 successfull companies with 8 figures volume. I can only suggest to start your own business if you are dedicated. Don't think it is easy, or that you will have a lot of spare time. But I won't miss a day of my journey so far. And yes, I don't need to work anymore, but can't stop!
  • lalwanivikas 8y ago
    Are you in Berlin by any chance? :-)
    • Mave83 8y ago
      Sorry, I'm not "arm aber sexy", therfore I'm from Munich where we are "reich und sexy" oder "reich und hässlich" but never "arm", the greatest city of Germany. :)
  • rblion 8y ago
    Thanks for sharing. My story is very similar to yours but I am in the middle of it still at age 28. I've been at this since I was 11 as well when my older brother taught me about HTML, Dreamweaver, Visual Basic, OOP. The ABCs of this industry as we know it today. I dropped out of college at 20. Worked a few jobs in cafes and then in sales and finally as a technician. First technician job was fixing ATM machines, second was building high-end gaming computers for an Amazon merchant. I studied FreeCodeCamp after work and got into a coding bootcamp that I thought would help me get into the industry. I moved to Utah and got kicked out of it midway through for smoking weed. I lived out of AirBnb for a month and a half before getting a job on my own at startup. The school gave me a refund though because I guess they felt bad for me and wanted to help. Good on them, still grateful for that. That job was for an MLM startup and I had to leave because it was not a good dev environment. I got hired by Bluehost and I learned all about DNS, email, popular CMSs, SEO, and all kinds of problems that everyday non-tech people run into with computers and with the Internet. It was a great learning opportunity for me. Then they laid me off along with 900 other people...they were bought out and this was common procedure for their acquisitions. I did not know that when they hired me :/ I decided to start my own agency/consultancy since I had a few friends who needed sites made. It's been miraculous how each of them always sends me new work through their network. Now I have a pipeline of clients always coming in and I just have to keep shipping work every day and money will keep coming in. :) I've started working on ideas that I've drawn out and lost sleep over with some friends of mine who are engineers and investors. Maybe I can start a 2nd income stream too and eventually buy some real estate too!
• khitchdee 8y ago
  Hi. I was in my 30s and holding a steady job as a programmer with big corporate. Then I decided to take a small sabbatical. Before I knew it, several years had passed and my savings were getting epleted. So I tried to get bck in the job market again, landed a job, but couldn't clear their probration then landed another job and also couldn't clear probation, then spent almost year without success looking for job. That's when I decided to start my own business. It's been almost a decade since then and I still haven't made any money, but it sure beats being jobless or unwanted at a steady job. An engineer's career usually tapers off beyond a certain age. Risk taking therefore has to be reduced as your career options get narrower with seniority -- moral of the story.
  • hahla 8y ago
    I hire freelancers frequently. I never ask them what their age is, I ask for their portfolio and what they are skilled in. Maybe you should look into contracting.
    • jetai 8y ago
      What kind of freelancers do you usually look for? That's honestly the question when it comes to this type of thing, there are so many different skillsets and not everyone can find contracts as easily as they'd hope; or it's not as reliable as they need for their life.
    • khitchdee 8y ago
      At my age, being able to move around is limited and being able to stay in one place and work is preferred as it assists in keeping a more stable lifestyle which helps with foucs that tends todecay with age. Since contracting typically is for short terms, and requires frequent changes in job location, it's not as attractive as it would have been at an earlier stage in life.
      • mifreewil 8y ago
        Ideally, find a contracting role / freelance locally, but work remotely. Doing it "locally" will help build up your network and reputation and lead to more opportunities down the road. Maybe meet 1-2 times every 1/2 weeks and work remotely. More frequent communication should be limited to agile-like questions that come up and should be able to completed over email if you pick your clients well.
• ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
  If I'm being super honest, I never would have started my first company (A Funded Startup, that had very significant revenue for 3-4 years) if I didn't have IBS. Once the company grew to the size that we needed a real office, my need to exit was at least partially influenced by IBS as well. I could have gotten a job in a lot of different places, but I couldn't handle the workplace environment because I needed to use the restroom more than 10 times per day. I also had accidents where I would need to change my pants at least once a week, and always carried spare clothes in my backpack. I still keep that habit, even though I've largely conquered the disease. It's a weird PSD I kind of have. Even today, I'd probably accept a 20% pay reduction for if a company would give me a private restroom connected to my office.
  • deluxeroyale 8y ago
    How did you conquer the IBD?
    • ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
      More info in the other reply, but basically r/ZeroCarb.
  • devilfish 8y ago
    did you hear about FODMAP? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FODMAP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FODMAP Did it help you?
    • ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
      That's what did it for me, but I didn't know that's what it is called. I discovered my Keto for weight loss and noticed a huge improvement in my IBS. That led me to r/ZeroCarb eventually and after a year or two of healing, I am now to the point I can have 1 high carb meal per week without a problem. I just have to take big breaks in between carbs or my body starts breaking down fast.
  • crystalPalace 8y ago
• nikivi 8y ago
  I didn’t start a business but instead made an open source website as no one wanted to or still wants to hire me. Funnily the website solves the problem of how to learn anything in the most effective way. Website: https://learn-anything.xyz https://learn-anything.xyz
  • jetai 8y ago
    I'm interested! This looks intriguing.
  • yagodragon 8y ago
    How is it possible no one wants to hire you? You seem way more competent than many devs out there and you've created a 10k stars github project among others.
    • sheeshkebab 8y ago
      I sometimes wonder whether SDE employment is inversely proportional to how popular a person is... it’s not like employer is looking for a rock star to sit and fix issues all day long for years. The person will lose interest in two weeks and quit.
    • monksy 8y ago
      The technical interviewing process. It's one of those things where it treats everyone if they're lying about their experience.
      • izacus 8y ago
        That's because everyone is. For every rockstar CV you'll get an identical one where the person can't even code a fizz buzz.
        • monksy 8y ago
          What will the ability to or not to code fizz buzz about their prior experience?
• ProfessorLayton 8y ago
  Yes, kind of. I helped my aging father pivot from manual labor to running his own contracting business. It was, and continues to be, a lot of work, but it was the only way my parents could continue to pay their bills (Especially here in the Bay Area). There was a lot of learning when getting started, but the business is roughly a 10-person concern, and growing — all completely bootstrapped. Edit: More details on what it took to get started - Studying the materials one needed know to get a contractor's license - Actually getting licensed - Setting up an online presense - Acquiring our first customers - Earning a good reputation - Incorporating, hiring, worker's comp/various insurances ($$$$) One of the biggest ongoing challenges is competing with unlicensed contractors, and being able to hire enough skilled labor.
  • lgregg 8y ago
    Sorry, I ruined your 1337 karma. What do you use to stay organized? I have a friend who was in the same position as you and they're around 15 people now. Their problem is staying organized, everything is paper.
    • ProfessorLayton 8y ago
      Staying organized is a huge burden! One of the ways I've helped them organize, is by moving to digital communication wherever I can: - Customer leads are almost 100% digital (Website, Google Ads, Yelp). This means they can reply back and forth without having to call, so no paperwork is necessary until they're customers. Everyone involved seems to appreciate this. - Estimates and invoices are delivered digitally, we currently use Waveapps, which is good enough for the small business for now. This allows us to keep track of who has/hasn't paid yet. This is a huge help with staying on top of things. - My parents aren't tech people, so after much trying with iCal/Gcal, their best calendar to work with is actually an old fashioned paper one. Used to keep track of estimates, and project scheduling. - Ultimately we've had to hire a 3rd party to help with tracking worker hours, payroll, and taxes. Yes there's payroll software, but again because my parents aren't tech people and they're currently at their wits just running the business, it was best to hire outside help. I'd like to help with this, but I work full-time, and screwing this up can result in extremely steep fines to the business. - Really the only new paperwork we have to deal with on an ongoing basis is storing copies of customer contracts.
• Naomarik 8y ago
  This is almost me. I wouldn't be where I am if I got hired from specific companies I applied to. I found it impossible to get a job I wanted before I learned programming. Triplebyte denied me in a phone screening and at that time I had just read all Paul Graham's essays and would have sacrificed a lot to move back to USA and work for a YC startup. At this point I'm very happy things turned out the way they did. One thing I will never miss is having my life controlled by an alarm clock.
• jetai 8y ago
  I've ran into the issue of only being able to be hired by Startups, this is both good because I like the environment and bad because there's never enough need for my skills in business development, marketing, and professional-level creative, legal, and business writing. This means I eventually get replaced and scramble for another job. I'd like to start my own thing but it doesn't feel viable sometimes, seeing as I'm not a developer.
• jason_slack 8y ago
  I am considering starting a business right now to fill a gap in the insurance industry. The company I worked for just wont step up so I put in 2 weeks notice.
• ahmetyas01 8y ago
  I came to the US to study and IT job opportunities in 2001. The IT market has collapsed. I started my online business with $100 and turned to $50m in 5 years. Boom.
  • lgregg 8y ago
    Wow, congrats! What type of product?
• jedberg 8y ago
  Be careful with your thinking here. If it really is bad soft skills that is keeping you from getting/holding a job, then you'll have a tough go at your own business. Running a business requires a lot more soft skills than getting a job, because you live and die by your sales, no matter how good your product is. So just make sure that you have at least an idea of how you will get some sales that involve minimal interaction with other people.
  • nraynaud 8y ago
    I think you can carve your little niche with a few customers and not Shooting for the moon.
  • john_moscow 8y ago
    > Running a business requires a lot more soft skills than getting a job, because you live and die by your sales, no matter how good your product is. Yes and no. The good thing about the internet is that you can get a decent sales funnel without having to talk to a single person. Write interesting blog posts on relevant topics, help others by showing how to solve their problem with your product, etc. There's a lot to learn here for a techie nerd, but the learning curve here is much easier for those who aren't naturally good at dealing with people.
    • MichaelMoser123 8y ago
      there is still the remaining issue of customer support - especially with software (of any kind)
    • nickjj 8y ago
      I've been a freelance developer for about 20 years. Writing blog posts is about 10% of my job. Most of the time I'm either doing live screensharing sessions with people or writing code. Keep in mind, this is working as someone who helps other people solve their individual problems, not so much selling a SAAS application.
    • endorphone 8y ago
      Getting people into your sales funnel is only the first step, though. Converting those people into sales, however, is an extraordinarily social, soft-skills reliant activity. I say this as someone who had no problem getting jobs, but social anxiety made me desire the idealized notion of working in my home office and seldom conferring with people -- just delivering great solutions with every waking moment. I started my own business and quickly discovered that about 80% of my time was courting and talking to people. People love talking. Getting someone to commit to a sale is often just a brutal enterprise. From a time perspective, the advice to write pertinent blog posts just isn't really that lucrative anymore.
• mgbmtl 8y ago
  If you suspect that you have bad soft skills, try to find 2-3 people who are comfortable with them. I find it easier to work with 2-3 clients than to deal with teams. If your jurisdiction makes it easy, start by freelancing, incorporate later, if you need it (I didn't need to finally, until I wanted to work with a small team; Quebec/Canadian law is very freelance-friendly). In the field I work, we mostly joke that we are a bunch of unemployable people. We like being our own bosses, working in small teams. I formed a worker's co-op with a few ex-colleagues and I'm happy with it. We also federate loosely with other companies in our field (around the FOSS project that we provide support for).
• leovander 8y ago
  Give Dave and Jamison a listen to on Soft Skills Engineering[0]. They are great to listen to and their episodes are driven by their listener's questions. Most of their immediate responses are go get a new job if you are unhappy with your current position, but that is more of them being entertaining, but I guess a truthful answer in most of the scenarios they are presented with. [0] https://softskills.audio/ https://softskills.audio/
• j0hnnyF1ve 8y ago
  I'm interested in seeing where this discussion goes, I'm in a similar position and will have to consider different options and paths beyond the normal job path.
• remyp 8y ago
  I’m reasonably certain I’ve interviewed you. Send me an email (in profile) and I’ll be happy to give honest feedback/advice. For that matter, I’m happy to provide advice to any programmers struggling to find work. Feel free to reach out.
  • kinkora 8y ago
    Not OP and a hiring manager myself once but I will love to compare notes and hear your thoughts on what are the common problems/mistakes you see when interviewing developers or engineers and if you have any general advice. Considering most of the HN population are technical folks, many will possibly find your experience & knowledge useful or at the very least, contribute to a worthwhile discussion on hiring technical people. Edit - Added a list of problems/mistakes that I commonly see when I interview people for technical positions: • Being borderline arrogant, argumentative and/or abrasive in conversation even though they are brilliant - Yes, I've interviewed people that are smart and have a wealth of knowledge but the straight forward truth is this role (and most developer/engineering roles for that matter) requires a person to work with not only other people within the team but also with other technical teams & departments so if you can't show that you are a team player, it doesn't matter how good you are as a developer/engineer. • Lying straight up on certain details and not owning up to it - one common interview tactic I use is to ask what version of [technology] that the person has worked on and what are their "battle scars" experiences with that particular version or [technology]. I have had people tell me they work on versions that don't exist (i.e. latest v5 and they claim v8) or claim they have 5 years experience when said version of [technology] has only existed for 3 years. Also, I find that the true experienced people in [technology] can passionately tell you about their problems using [technology] and what they did to get around it rather than simply just evangelizing said [technology]. • Talking bad about anything or anyone - This might just be a personal preference but a big turn off for me is when a candidate starts bad mouthing their ex-bosses, colleagues or company. I might make exceptions for special circumstances (i.e. sexual harassment, bullying, etc) but even then, I will find it as a negative against their personality if that person keeps harping on it and don't show at least signs that they are taking steps to move on. Call me old school but I believe in never burning your bridges regardless of what the circumstances are and even if you don't, the last thing you should do is bring it up in an interview. Note - these are my personal opinions, preferences and experiences on interviewing and I do not claim my methods to be the best way on doing so.
• jschwartzi 8y ago
  Sometimes it's not you who has the bad soft skills. The last company I was with versus the company I'm with now are like night and day in terms of how we communicate. I work remotely and my boss actually reads what I write, comments on it, and is able to tell me when I need to do something without belittling me about not having it done already.
• karlkatzke 8y ago
  I did. I had three years experience as a software developer (full stack, but it was 2004, so it wasn’t a big stack) and leveraged an active consulting business that I would do after hours into a full time thing where I made enough to pay another employee and myself. The problem is that I’m a shit manager. I’m a shit business manager, I’m a shit sales manager, and I’m a shit engineering manager. So, the company didn’t do well. But at least I learned that I shouldn’t be in charge of people!
• matchagaucho 8y ago
  First... people with bad soft skills don't have the ability to self-reflect and admit it, as you have. Give yourself some credit. Second... the dire circumstance means any entrepreneurial venture will only be successful if you have the humility to work on problems the clients don't want to do. I would suggest poking around on Upwork, Fiverr, or other gig economy sites and experiment with some short-term engagements.
  • retsibsi 8y ago
    > First... people with bad soft skills don't have the ability to self-reflect and admit it, as you have. Give yourself some credit. This is a nice sentiment but I don't think it's true. 'Soft skills' is a pretty broad category, and you can definitely be bad at some of them without being arrogant or oblivious. (I'm confident that this is more than just a technical possibility, because I think it applies in my own case: I'm aware of and willing to admit many of my flaws, but that doesn't always save me from awkwardness, underdeveloped social instincts, etc. I can even manage to come across as arrogant, despite having quite a low opinion of myself.)
• loudandskittish 8y ago
  I work on a freelance basis pretty much due to my inability to "play the game." My poor "soft skills" don't seem to be bother my clients much.
• justaaron 8y ago
  I'm rather tired of drone-like hiring practices involving flunkies trying to stump you with questions about topics you might have written the book upon... (not that I'm anywhere near Ken, but the general picture should suffice) https://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/21/ken_thompson_take_our_test/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/21/ken_thompson_take_o...
  • drewmate 8y ago
    Some context on the Ken Thompson article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1284524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1284524
• eruci 8y ago
  Me! It was 2016, I was nearly broke from being on the receiving end of a copyright infringement lawsuit, and nobody would hire me. So, I hired myself and started a new company which pays my salary today. https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/6249ac6f67 https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/6249ac6f67
• j45 8y ago
  Many immigrants become entrepreneurs because there is no place for them among average joes.
• joelrunyon 8y ago
  I graduated in 2009 and couldn't get a job due to the recession (and me having a poor understanding that "graduating" was not all employers were looking for). I ended up doing what I now would call an "apprenticeship" and then eventually turning that into a job and then my own business.
• lfowles 8y ago
  Yep, left my job 8 months ago and had several promising interviews since but nothing has come of them. Recently decided to take time to polish games I prototyped during this period. To be quite honest I was also getting tired of essentially "studying for finals" before each interview. Thankfully (but probably also hurting my job search in general...) I'm in a low CoL area.
• bane 8y ago
  I've known a few people who've done this. I've also recommended to a couple people to do this when they're having a hard time finding work. Here's the thing, most businesses don't make it and many people in this position are trying to bootstrap something with virtually zero money. So you can use these circumstances to your advantage -- use the business as an investment vehicle to build you as a product so that you can sell yourself later on. What this means is that you should take the time between filling out applications and wasting time in multi-day whiteboard interviews to start to build up a portfolio of what you can do. Start a blog, on some topic you find interesting, engage on twitter at least once a day. Write a couple simple but good looking web apps using cheap/free tiers on hosting providers. Check some code into public code repos. If you manage to launch something live, contact the press email address on every major news site you can find -- a surprising number will put a short article up about your app -- which you can then also advertise on your site/blog/twitter feed. All of this goes on your resume, except now you get to claim "Founder/CEO" on your resume with stunning bullet points like: - Led social media marketing strategy - Designed web applications for <insert vertical> Take screenshots of all this. Use this work as part of your resume. In an interview it's much better to claim "I tried to start a company but I just couldn't get it cash-flow positive, so now I'm back on the market." than to try to figure out how to work around a large resume gap that implies you're unhireable. This works because companies will see you as entrepreneurial and multifaceted, capable of career growth and tackling many different kinds of problems at various levels and making independent decisions. And the best part is that, as you do this, it will become TRUE! - So the worst case is that you just build your resume for a while (instead of it accumulating jobless gaps) -- most people I know who've done this end up in better jobs than they expected after this exercise. - Best case, your company takes off and you just built yourself a career -- I know 2 people who've managed to do this and ended up running pretty large enterprises.
• tluyben2 8y ago
  I started two small software companies before uni because no one would hire me; note that those were very different times (80s-early 90s); now people would have hired me. Both companies still exist and both are still profitable. I have never had ‘a job’ in my life, so you can say the experience was a positive one.
• everdev 8y ago
  I was looking for a job in 2008, unfortunately right during the stock market crash. I would go and interview for jobs and then get a call back saying that hiring was freezing as the national financial markets continued to spiral downwards. Fortunately, companies still needed their websites maintained and I opened up shop for myself below agency rates and above freelancing rates in the hopes of building my own agency. It worked and multiple clients signed on looking to save money and I was able to build and grow a team as a result, eventually working up to market rates as the economy improved.
• nickfromseattle 8y ago
  I did. Despite loving to learn, and spending a lot of time self learning, I never excelled in school. I skated by in High school, but my parents weren't pumped about paying for me to fail through college. I dropped out Junior year to teach English in Brazil. After I got back I realized I'm a college dropout, with a work experience in manual labor & restaurants, and I knew no one would hire me to do the things I wanted to learn. So I started a company on an idea I was passionate about. I told myself from day 1, whether the venture was successful or not, I was going to learn the skills and meet the people to do whatever I wanted to do next. The venture was not successful, and I did meet the people and learn the skills to do whatever I wanted to do after, and it lead great places.
• lgregg 8y ago
  I ended up out of school working in a field and role I wasn't happy with, so after saving half of my salary for a year and a few months, then I resigned. I started a marketing agency with two friends, we had the business model down but two of us were not good at sales and the one that was had a life issue occur and left. We were cash flow positive the whole time just not enough to support my two friends as I wiped out my savings. We all learned a ton though. Around a year after, I did a career switch to SWD and am currently retraining. I would do it again if I had an idea that legitimately solved a problem. We created a marketing agency knowing how to run things as ICs but not as owners. I'm not sure I'd want to sell a consulting service again but maybe another type of business. I've always been interested in WISPs and Real Estate, so maybe something in those areas.
• ConcernedCoder 8y ago
  It may not be bad luck/time or bad soft skills, in my experience, as soon as you hit 50 in the United States, you're no longer a good "culture fit" in a majority of software development roles. It's my understanding that in places like China, the cut-off age is closer to 30-35 which sounds terrible if true.
• davidhopper 8y ago
  As someone who runs a company coaching software engineers on landing employment, I've worked with a number of engineers who have gone down the path of running their own business or consultancy for sometime before deciding to turn towards employment in a larger corporation. Personally, I've found many of these engineers to have some of the most interesting and compelling stories and projects to add to their resume and speak to while interviewing, and in that sense believe that coming from having your own business can add greatly to being successful in the job search. That said, I do not think that is the only path towards landing a job, and in this case especially if you already have experience as a software developer. In my opinion reflection is key to understanding where roadblocks lie in terms of why one is not finding employment, even more so as most companies almost universally do not provide feedback (another topic...). In terms of "not surviving" in the job market, I'd ask where are you running into roadblocks, is it getting interviews, moving past recruiters, the technical screens, onsites, and within those categories diving more into why those opportunities did not materialize and what potential actions led to those outcomes. Would be happy to connect (email is in profile) and learn more, and you can see a bit of what we do at http://outco.io http://outco.io
• stealthmodeclan 8y ago
  One of my friends who is a successful entrepreneur (bootstrapped, high double digit million yearly revenue) now recals that he never managed to find a job because he looks arogant. He also lacks apathy. (I think it's some medical condition and not something sinster). He is very honest and trustworthy but sometimes he ends up insulting us like Linus. But he is also super talented, so we ignore his cons as limitations beyond his control. Currently, he is GP of our VC fund. He is lot better! So he had no choice but to bootstrap his own company.
  • akanet 8y ago
    Did you mean empathy instead of apathy?
• fapjacks 8y ago
  I did, twice, and I'm about to go on a third run (though this time it's not because of any particular run of back luck with the job market). I have a weird-looking resume that doesn't look quite right at first blush, and most of the hiring decisions that brought me on board I later found out were someone "taking a chance" on me. I was in the Guard for many years, and deployed a lot (a lot). Even though it's against the law, startups just don't have the resources to give up a team member and save their spot while they deploy. I actually completely grok this. But for most of my adult life, it looks like I've jumped from job to job with weird breaks in between, which is a huge red flag. I'm actually pretty good at what I do, if you'll pardon me for saying so, and so I have a pretty good network to lean on now, but throughout my 20s I didn't truly understand the power of one's network and so didn't cultivate relationships that I should have. No problem, life lesson. We aren't all jumping out of our mother's womb in full armor swinging a chain. Anyway, I have had both success and failure when I started my own businesses. The first time was a failure, but I saw it at the time as a success, because I had to make rent, and it paid the rent. I literally sat there with a notepad thinking of things I could do in less than 60 days to make rent. Incidentally, I have always paid rent one month ahead of time. It's just something I started doing by chance when I was 16, and it turned out to be the difference between having a place to sleep and living in my car or out on the street. Anyway, that paid the rent but wasn't sustainable. Everything was wrong with it, since I thought I was smarter than everyone hah! But that was another life lesson, that the world is full of way smarter people, and history even fuller. The second time I started a business I was much older, late-20s, and by then had worked at a bunch of startups and a network full of sensors (the army says "every soldier is a sensor" and likewise your friends and professional network are like your sensors) and also had been taking notes the entire time. I still take notes every day on the things I learn, the decisions I make, or people around me are making and why, if I can discern it, or if they'll tell me when I ask (another life lesson about taking notes). That time I consider it a success, because the people I started the business with are still running it today, and I was able to sell out of my share of the business. I went back into working at startups (because that's where the action is yolo), and now I'm feeling the itch really badly. This time around I've got solid business partners / cofounders on board, and few "green leaderbooks" full of notes and ideas (another army thing) and a couple servers full of prototyped side projects. I've got enough saved to bootstrap whatever we do and most importantly, as a lifelong transient with wanderlust, I feel that same comfortable feeling of "going places and doing things and taking risks" that won't let me put down roots in one place for too long. Sorry for all the text, but that's my story.
• bryanrasmussen 8y ago
  Me. Basically I have been programming long enough and perhaps with a varied enough CV and varied enough skills and some major accomplishments mixed among just normal stuff that I do not seem to get hired as an employee anymore but people are very happy to hire me as a consultant (which I make more money at mostly) I remember there were several interviews where people suggested I would want to do more than they wanted me to do, one example: that I would not be happy just doing frontend development and they were worried I would go fix issues in ElasticSearch, and I asked "well of course I will do what I'm hired to, but why wouldn't you want me to go fix issues in ElasticSearch if I'm caught up on my frontend tickets?" That was probably not a good thing to say, because I didn't get that job.
  • bryanrasmussen 8y ago
    Also noting - I've been consulting 2 years full-time at $100 an hour which is a very good wage in my country (I'd have more but I'm subcontracting through another company) at a company that I could never get even an interview at no matter how many years I tried. I'm pretty sure I've tried dozens of times and never a peep of interest, but hiring me as consultant at more than double the amount I'd earn as an employee - oh yes that they're interested in.
• dsign 8y ago
  I did, several years ago. My soft skills are not top-notch, but they are not bad either, and my qualifications are good enough to get hired at good places ... not just where I currently live. Mostly a big adversarial blob of "cultural matters" ... let's not dig onto that, but shortly put, locals feel uneasy around me. Mind you, if I had tried hard enough, I could have gotten a dead-end-job with low pay and no promotions. Or I could have moved and looked for greener pastures. I decided instead to take my lemons and make lemonade, so to speak, and I opened a business. The cultural problems didn't go away, to this day some of our customers prefer to talk to my sales guy, even when they know they would solve their problem faster by just sending me an email directly. But I don't mind having more time for the the ever growing technical team and technical customer-related work. For brown guys in the north, jobs are overrated.
  • asenna 8y ago
    If you don't mind me asking for a tip. I'm actually in that position where I'm hoping to have a sales team take my load off new leads and conversion. How did you build / hire your sales team? Was it all on location full time hires or do you take help of Upwork / other remote options?
  • splintercell 8y ago
    How north are you?
• rodolphoarruda 8y ago
  Yes, sales is important, but don't forget about marketing, which comes first. I have lost my job in the 2008 crisis and couldn't get employed back. I decided to start my own business with other folks who were laid off as well. Marketing was key for us to open doors and put us in front of the prospective customers. We ran the business for 5 years until we decided to get back to regular jobs, have kids etc. So if you are thinking on starting your own business, reserve some time to discuss marketing fundamentals: what your product/service is; pricing options and negotiation guidelines, target markets, customer profiles, niches; advertising (which I think grew exponentially complex these days). Sales will tend to flow well once you have marketing sorted out. It will be the cherry on the top, the Showtime.
• gregoriol 8y ago
  It's not that I couldn't get hired, more like I couldn't find the right thing at that time, the kind of job I would want to invest myself into. I did talk with many people back then, many people wanted to hire me, I even tried one of them for some time, but left after a month. So, from talks to ideas, I started 2 projects with a few people, and these are working quite well now. It wasn't planned, it wasn't something I thought I wanted. We tried, we built things, slowly, step by step, without a grand plan, and... it works out very well! I wouldn't advise to go alone though: talk to your former colleagues, friends, ... find some people to work with! Apart from that, go for it, try!
• a_imho 8y ago
  Skills are overrated in interviews, you need to get lucky, it is increasingly a numbers game.
• BartBoch 8y ago
  I am a self-taught developer and marketer. I owned (no partners) a marketing business that grew to 85 contractors and employees. I have worked on dozens of huge development projects where I was a Senior Developer or Project Lead. I have worked for multiple Fortune 500 companies. More than 10 years of experience in marketing and business. Around 10 years of experience in development. I am unemployable really. Why? No formal education (I have just Highschool diploma). NDA signed for 99% of my projects (I can't even mention some of the companies I worked for). Got trapped in the referral loop, where I get referred, take a job, sign an NDA and so on. The only way for me to monetize my experience is to do contractor jobs through referrals and sometimes through freelancing sites, where rules are more relaxed. Working on building my portfolio using side projects at the moment and creating a blog to break that loop.
• s3nnyy 8y ago
  I started https://coderfit.com https://coderfit.com, a tech recruitment agency in Zurich, Switzerland while being employed as a coder. I just wasn't a very good developer and saw that I won't perform in this job as good as other people. Tech recruitment was/is a domain with a small barrier to entry and where I could use both my tech skills (knowing what programmers like/want) and "sales" skills, helping companies and developers present themselves better to the "counterparty". Now, I am building a jobboard (https://jobs.coderfit.com https://jobs.coderfit.com) that complements my tech recruitment agency activity.
• pjmorris 8y ago
  I unintentionally backed my way into my own business. Back during the dot com bust, the large consultancy I worked for went bust, and I went back to the small consultancy I'd previously worked for. Then, after 9/11, they went bust. The economy was in rough shape, and I was only getting interviews for junior positions. Meanwhile, friends were calling to say 'Could you come do this gig for a month or two?' Having plenty of free time, I read up on how to start and run a business (Nolo Press is a great resource), set up an LLC, printed business cards, worked hard at the gigs I got, and kept my ear to the ground for new ones. I'd kept good relations with my previous bosses and co-workers, and wound up working for five years running my own little consulting shop (That might be my suggestion: keep up with your old bosses and co-workers, and see if they're aware of any suitable opportunities). Life circumstances changed, and it made sense to go back to work for somebody, eventually, but I found the experience, and the confidence it built, to be invaluable.
• WarOnPrivacy 8y ago
  The org handling my scholarship & job placement were defunded just before I graduated in 1996. This job market here was already one that won't hire w/o a personal into. The only way a coder w/o experience + buddies in HR was getting hired was thru blackmail or ransom. I knew how to do basic hardware & some networking so got a biz license & biz cards and chatted up everyone I could find for 3 years. I went door to door to every business in town. None of them hired me but there would be other people around who thought it was novel that I was marketing like it was 1955. Those people intro'd me to people they knew & that got me established. The 2008 crash sinkholed my clients (car dealers). I started over with med providers but by 2010 the ACA sinkholed my new clients. I finally started writing some code 5 years ago to build blocklists for custom firewalls.
• wolfspider 8y ago
  Well I guess this fits under the same category...I’m currently rebooting my family’s business. My father retired but has been minimally keeping alive the LLC he founded when he lost his job. As a family we all sat down at a table, argued a bunch, and agreed to help him start it. My sister and I were great free labor as teens but unfortunately doing videography didn’t pay all the bills so my father went back to work until retiring as a webmaster for our local university. I studied business until I couldn’t afford it while working IT jobs which turned into development and then project leader. The lack of jobs here in NCFL made gov a nice fit eventually. Prior to that I worked in game development, television broadcast, and fintech fields all with concentration in dev. Companies I got to work with included CNN, Fox, Univision, Epic Megagames, Psyonix, Wells Fargo and a whole lot more. I went to my father asking if I could do something with that business he kept registered- he wanted to hear a business plan surprisingly he was no push over on this. It was difficult but he agreed so now off I go. The new pivot is really in stealth mode I think I’ll just say this will now become a “media” company. I don’t look like a typical developer I’m a pretty salt of the earth guy- people in my town think I’m a laborer or delivery guy. That doesn’t help get me hired. I’m also getting up there in years but gov provides the steady income for me to get started and so far it’s been going great. Along the way I’m open sourcing tools and getting a lot of support that way- if I can help someone out we get some good R&D in return. So to summarize- lack of jobs in the area and lack of formal CS education that would be my reason. I love my dad he taught me everything it all started with a C64 we got at a garage sale. I was 8 years old and have been programming ever since. Technically speaking I’m a co-founder! So is my sister who moved to Paris to do IP law. It’s all coming together now and feels great.
• chad_strategic 8y ago
  This post is literary the story of my life... After 20 years in the Marine Corps, I don't have the "polish" to work in corporate world and need the intensity of a start up or my own business. My frustrations, probably started here: http://www.strategic-options.com/insight/you-cant-have-more-than-10-years-of-experience-on-rails/ http://www.strategic-options.com/insight/you-cant-have-more-... In that time, I have had numerous run ins with trying to find job in the FinTech and Tech. http://www.strategic-options.com/insight/how-do-you-get-a-job-in-algorithmic-trading/ http://www.strategic-options.com/insight/how-do-you-get-a-jo... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15551623 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15551623 http://www.strategic-options.com/insight/the-best-or-worst-way-to-decline-a-technical-interview/ http://www.strategic-options.com/insight/the-best-or-worst-w... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9107657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9107657 http://www.strategic-options.com/insight/best-cover-letter-ever-or-worst-cover-letter-ever/ http://www.strategic-options.com/insight/best-cover-letter-e... With all that said... I think that I have finally come to terms with the fact I'm not corporate guy and ageism seems to be running rampant in the tech field. If I'm going survive over the long term, I'm going to have to carve out a space for myself. About a month ago, recommitted myself to a strategy of carving out a space for myself in the FinTech space or working in some form of start up that I have a stake in, immediately I feel a "H E double hockey sticks" better about my career future. Soon after I wrote this educational / semi self promotional piece, I picked up some side work in the next week. Side work in this case, is step in the right direction and eases the pain of my minding numbing, over paid programming job. (but I'm grateful to have a job, cause there are times I haven't and being unemployed is a horrible burden.) http://www.strategic-options.com/insight/the-best-and-worst-stock-and-option-trading-apis/ http://www.strategic-options.com/insight/the-best-and-worst-...
• sabareesh 8y ago
  On a similar boat sometimes I feel most companies worth my work. Really love to start my business. I am a Software Dev too
• onetokeoverthe 8y ago
  If you dislike people who talk condescendlingly about your "soft skills", one has no other choice. 30 years of self employment here. Many projects. A 15 yesr reliable freelance "job" helped. But now that company solves the client's problem with the internet only/an automated solution, without people. Thus, 50 guys around the US, no more work, gone to pasture.
• DataDisciple 8y ago
  I know a few who have, but its not ideal. I think if you already have businesses that you are attracted to and the risk/reward for starting that business becomes greater than the risk/reward of what your job prospects are then it needs to be explored. The challenge is that most investors can easily sniff out someone who is starting this biz because they can't get a job, and that isn't a pattern they typically fund. I think a good mix is to start working on the business while continuing to look for a new job. Then if you get traction, you will likely have a better story to sell. It also helps you minimize your risk on the business.