Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by potta_coffee 2993 days ago
Thanks for taking the time to respond, it's helpful.

I do tend to self-deprecate. I'm really working on not doing that anymore. I've come a long way but the past few weeks have been really discouraging. I interviewed for some jobs and got turned down. The sad thing is, after talking to the devs that interviewed me, I was pretty certain that I'm more competent than they are. I was turned away because I'm "obviously not passionate about front-end", whatever that means... Interview process was long and I wasted a lot of time.

Then I came to this place where I realized I'm writing lots of framework code, and not really understanding Javascript as well as I thought. Heck, I've forgotten more about Javascript than I can remember.

Anyway the most discouraging thing is that I can become as competent as I have, and still have a very difficult time getting work. The people I am contracting for are very, very happy with my work (probably because they're getting a good deal).

EDIT: I'm really good at cranking out work. I'm a workhorse. Some days I can put in 8 - 10 hours of solid coding if I need to, and my bug count is pretty low...really low. But I'm terrible at remembering specific technical knowledge. A lot of things, I internalize and practice intuitively. I get in interviews and they start asking "gotcha" language questions and I just choke. Then I leave and kick myself because I knew the answer all along, but I couldn't remember it during the conversation. So I need to get better at interviewing, build a better portfolio, learn new frameworks, keep working so I can eat... Sorry for the sob story, it's just rather daunting at the moment.

1 comments

Lots of job interviews don't involve gotcha language questions. So it's worth spending some time filtering companies based on how they interview, if there are some interview styles you don't like.

Also, you may be underselling yourself by focusing too much on specific technical knowledge.

I'm happy to do a resume review (which is often a how-do-you-pitch-yourself review) - been doing a bunch and people seem to find them helpful. Email me at itamar@codewithoutrules.com. May answer with delay, but will answer.

Thanks for the offer. I'll likely take advantage of it. I've been submitting my resume a lot, and making tweaks here and there.