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You really want to prioritize embedding yourself in the industry, making a brand/name for yourself, and networking. I'm not trying to sound like some kind of w

You really want to prioritize embedding yourself in the industry, making a brand/name for yourself, and networking. I'm not trying to sound like some kind of wanker, I'm a programmer too. My career never really got off the ground until I stopped settling for the retail-esque job search methods and got serious about socializing with smart people and building things. Make something, slap your name on it, show it to HN. I doubt your job search productively consumes 16 hours a day. Go to meetups for your various areas of expertise (PHP, JavaScript, Databases/MySQL), go to events/conferences, get involved in online communities, contribute patches, etc. Stop being contented with the only part of your job search being submitting resumes. It's a fool's errand. Get people talking about you. In my particular area of expertise, Alex Gaynor is something of a paragon of what I'm talking about. Look at how solid his career and reputation is, and how young he is. I doubt any programmer would be harmed by following his example. Edit: I concur with Noahc wholly as well. Edit2: Honest to god, if there's one thing I regret my father being unable to impart to me because of his blue-collar background, it's the nature of having a professional career and the necessity of networking/branding even as an individual. That said, I can change the hell out of the oil on my car. <cato> Further, I move that Alex should be working on the MongoDB backend for Django. </cato>

photon_off 16y ago
You don't sound like a wanker at all! That's all sound advice you've given. The problem is that I'm very good at building things, but not so good at branding/marketing/selling them. It's my job to engineer things, not sell them. And, for some reason, I always feel uncomfortable selling myself. I don't really enjoy boasting. Check out my profile. I've made things, I've shown them to HN. I built, probably, the most powerful bookmarklet to date. But the splash page sucks, and it's confusing, so I'm scrapping it. My website similarity search engine is doing pretty well, with traffic growing 15% a week for the last 7 weeks. But, I don't have a personal website, or a blog, or a twitter account, etc. I don't care for starting flame wars about "Why you should[n't] do X" or "How I did some amazing thing in some short amount of time". It's really not my thing. While I completely agree it'd make it easier to get a job, and is probably the optimal approach, it's not an option right now. It would take a large amount of time to suddenly build a brand/identity. On the other hand, optimizing my approach to the current systems of job postings is probably a better use of my time. This is the type of advice I'm looking for.
- alnayyir 16y ago
  >You don't sound like a wanker at all! Thank you, but I hate feeling/sounding like a robo-MBA. >The problem is that I'm very good at building things, but not so good at branding/marketing/selling them. That's okay, you'll learn. You're an HN user. Start with telling people on HN about it. Ask a designer from HN to collab with you on it, making it explicit that it's a silly portfolio builder and that you'd both be doing it for that purpose. You don't have to make a product you'd be selling, just...make something. And get people to talk about it. Something you can show people, even if it's just an open source helper-library you can talk about in a tech-screening. >But the splash page sucks, and it's confusing, so I'm scrapping it. Start from scratch, get help, get feedback, respond to feedback and pivot quickly. Don't let it languish without seeking advice and learning. >But, I don't have a personal website, or a blog, or a twitter account, etc. Well, I don't like that sort of thing either, so here's what I did. I made a very plain business card website. It links to a blog that's actually got a single post (but a thoughtful one, I'd like to think) that is in fact a tech demo for a micro CMS I rebuild a few times a year from scratch. It also links to my CV which is W3-conforming html/css. It also links to my twitter which acts as more of a connector-hub. I'm not an active twitter user, I just use it to ping random industry people occasionally. I'm not saying you should become some kind of social networking maven...just...poke, prod, get yourself out there a bit. You don't have to be famous, you just have to have a presence of some kind. Look at how many people in writing/journalism or in the entertainment industry that have a presence but aren't necessarily 'famous'. That's what you need to seek. Just because you don't have the capacity or credentials to become some kind of coding superstar doesn't mean you shouldn't try at all. >This is the type of advice I'm looking for. In the new economy, being a more efficient resume-monger isn't enough. I hope for your sake I'm wrong, but I doubt you'll do much better than par for the course that way. If you're satisfied with merely doing "okay" and not really pushing your career to the next level, then I honestly don't understand why you're on hackerne.ws Isn't lateral thinking, novel approaches, and aggressive self improvement while pushing past your comfort zone the whole point of this community? We're here because we glory in achievements and advancements, code and business alike. This isn't the monster.com forums where we talk about how to better organize our 100 resume and cover letter submissions per week. I'd like to finish by saying, please don't respond to this looking for some kind of way to rationalize or defend your accomplishments/approach to job hunting. It's not my business, it's not the business of those reading this thread. You came for help/advice, and I tried to introduce a different way of thinking about your career. Good luck, this is where I sign off.
noahc 16y ago
I also come from a blue-collar family. When I applied to college, I didn't even know that you should have a backup school. I thought you applied to college and either you got in or you didn't.
- alnayyir 16y ago
  I didn't actually go to post-secondary, but I know what you mean, haha.
kwellman 16y ago
What resources for finding meetups, events and conferences do you recommend?

photon_off 16y ago

You don't sound like a wanker at all! That's all sound advice you've given. The problem is that I'm very good at building things, but not so good at branding/marketing/selling them. It's my job to engineer things, not sell them. And, for some reason, I always feel uncomfortable selling myself. I don't really enjoy boasting. Check out my profile. I've made things, I've shown them to HN. I built, probably, the most powerful bookmarklet to date. But the splash page sucks, and it's confusing, so I'm scrapping it. My website similarity search engine is doing pretty well, with traffic growing 15% a week for the last 7 weeks. But, I don't have a personal website, or a blog, or a twitter account, etc. I don't care for starting flame wars about "Why you should[n't] do X" or "How I did some amazing thing in some short amount of time". It's really not my thing. While I completely agree it'd make it easier to get a job, and is probably the optimal approach, it's not an option right now. It would take a large amount of time to suddenly build a brand/identity. On the other hand, optimizing my approach to the current systems of job postings is probably a better use of my time. This is the type of advice I'm looking for.

alnayyir 16y ago
>You don't sound like a wanker at all! Thank you, but I hate feeling/sounding like a robo-MBA. >The problem is that I'm very good at building things, but not so good at branding/marketing/selling them. That's okay, you'll learn. You're an HN user. Start with telling people on HN about it. Ask a designer from HN to collab with you on it, making it explicit that it's a silly portfolio builder and that you'd both be doing it for that purpose. You don't have to make a product you'd be selling, just...make something. And get people to talk about it. Something you can show people, even if it's just an open source helper-library you can talk about in a tech-screening. >But the splash page sucks, and it's confusing, so I'm scrapping it. Start from scratch, get help, get feedback, respond to feedback and pivot quickly. Don't let it languish without seeking advice and learning. >But, I don't have a personal website, or a blog, or a twitter account, etc. Well, I don't like that sort of thing either, so here's what I did. I made a very plain business card website. It links to a blog that's actually got a single post (but a thoughtful one, I'd like to think) that is in fact a tech demo for a micro CMS I rebuild a few times a year from scratch. It also links to my CV which is W3-conforming html/css. It also links to my twitter which acts as more of a connector-hub. I'm not an active twitter user, I just use it to ping random industry people occasionally. I'm not saying you should become some kind of social networking maven...just...poke, prod, get yourself out there a bit. You don't have to be famous, you just have to have a presence of some kind. Look at how many people in writing/journalism or in the entertainment industry that have a presence but aren't necessarily 'famous'. That's what you need to seek. Just because you don't have the capacity or credentials to become some kind of coding superstar doesn't mean you shouldn't try at all. >This is the type of advice I'm looking for. In the new economy, being a more efficient resume-monger isn't enough. I hope for your sake I'm wrong, but I doubt you'll do much better than par for the course that way. If you're satisfied with merely doing "okay" and not really pushing your career to the next level, then I honestly don't understand why you're on hackerne.ws Isn't lateral thinking, novel approaches, and aggressive self improvement while pushing past your comfort zone the whole point of this community? We're here because we glory in achievements and advancements, code and business alike. This isn't the monster.com forums where we talk about how to better organize our 100 resume and cover letter submissions per week. I'd like to finish by saying, please don't respond to this looking for some kind of way to rationalize or defend your accomplishments/approach to job hunting. It's not my business, it's not the business of those reading this thread. You came for help/advice, and I tried to introduce a different way of thinking about your career. Good luck, this is where I sign off.

noahc 16y ago

I also come from a blue-collar family. When I applied to college, I didn't even know that you should have a backup school. I thought you applied to college and either you got in or you didn't.

alnayyir 16y ago
I didn't actually go to post-secondary, but I know what you mean, haha.

kwellman 16y ago

What resources for finding meetups, events and conferences do you recommend?