[romuloab42]

Github projects are not as important as people might think. They are a plus, for sure, but not the meat -- unless you are a legendary open source contributor, but then you wouldn't have problems finding good work anyway.

I'd say build a non trivial, non toy project, from scratch. No need to be novel or groundbreaking. Something that really works and is not just the fun part. That is, both functionality and design must be professionally looking, it must feel thought-out, polished. It doesn't matter if your code is a masterpiece if the product looks like hacked together over a weekend. _Then_ use that as portfolio, independently if the source code is available at Github or not. People really like to see you can deliver a finished product.

I'll skip the details about resume and interview tips. There are plenty of resources out there.

[peterburkimsher]

Ok. I built https://pingtype.github.io to help me learn Chinese.

The design is not "professional looking", but I don't know how to do "design". I've never been good at GUI work. I studied electronic engineering, but moved into software because I can't go to America to work and nobody outside Silicon Valley is designing chips.

Marketing is a huge problem for me too. Every time I tell people about my program, they basically ignore it. There's a company that's doing a very similar thing to study English (VoiceTube) and I had a nice Skype call with their CEO, but nothing's come of it.

It really seems like the industry is rigged to support artists and con-men, while people who actually write code are basically ignored.