[rosspackard]

Please don't say this:

'Can you work as a sw dev? I'm probably not as skilled as a professional dev. I would never be time-efficient as a professional.'

I have seen many fellow developers say things like this (impostor syndrome). Productivity as a code monkey is rarely relevant to jobs and probably not relevant to the jobs you want. You have worked in a variety of roles and have lots of life experience. This may make you many times more efficient in other essential parts of software engineering. Clear communication, problem solving, planning, understanding actual customer and business needs. The most efficient software engineers I have seen don't type [insert some huge number] lines of code a day, they ask good questions and fully understand the domain before the tackling a problem.

As for your problem finding a job, I would be working on creating a portfolio of code samples/projects in the field I wanted to work. Also I would make sure to tailor my resume depending on who I sent it to and what the job description lists.

One successful approach I have seen is contacting companies you want to work for (works best on smaller companies) and trying to talk to someone before giving them a resume. This can be accomplished at meetups or cold calling/emailing :shudder:. When you talk to them you identify what real problems they are facing. Then tailor the resume to those specific problems (or even throwing in a case-study of how you would approach and solve them).

[atmosx]

Hm, I wonder does cold-email actually work?! I mean do you know of cases where they hired someone out of the blue via email pitch?

[rosspackard]

I only have anecdotal evidence but I helped a colleague use this successfully. Sourcing companies to email on angelist then using google/linkedin to find contact info of the appropriate person instead of going through the career page. Cold emailed 5 companies and was able to initiate conversations with 3 without sending a resume. The 3 showed interest but after the conversations he only wanted to follow up with 1 and was able to tailor the resume very specifically. Lead to an offer.