Ask HN: How do you deal with continuous failures?

[mynextstep]

Life is hard for everyone.

But I never thougnt life will be so hard to me. I felt I failed everything that I wanted to achieve.

Last year I wanted to have a career as web developer. So I went to another city to attend a coding bootcamp there.

In the 6 months learning, there were ups and downs. But finially I finished the training.

After the training, some of my classmates found the jobs immediately.I was not in a hurry to find a job, so I continued to study by myself.

Until last month, after studied another two months, I think I am ready. Because many of my classmates told me their interview questions, all are easy, I am very confident to find a proper job.

But the the relatity taught me a lesson. I am totaly wrong. after applying all the 200+ jobs, only 5 companies called me to interview. And When I went there 2 hours by bus, their attitude are like 'You don't have experience as web developer before？then fk off'

Yesterday, Some classmates visited me, they shared their working experience. All taskes are easy. I also can handle them perfectly. But there is just no company willingly to give me a chance.I don't know whether it was releated to my age or not.(4+ old than almost all classmates)

I just could not stop crying.At first my confidence level is 100, now is 0.

What should I do?

[happertiger]

Keep going. Don’t quit. Don’t get discouraged. Keep applying. All careers require “finding your break.” It may take time.

The worst thing you can do is get discouraged. You should put four hours into finding a job every day and four hours into building a commercial product (yes you can do it) that will be your resume and should also be able to rock some revenue if you need to find more time.

You have to hustle. You have to push. Spend your time preparing for your first big break.

Also hit up conferences (open source conferences) and talk to people. You might also find referrals in your co-grads because that’s often a solid channel.

I don’t understand why people think they can just go to some academy and the world will beat a path to their door. You’ve got to be more realistic about what it takes to win. You need hustle! You can do it! Go kick ass and never quit! Be committed to sending 5000 resumes and writing 100 lines of code a day and the world will give you what you want.

Rock fourth and be so committed to your goals that nothing will keep you from your success.

Posting this was smart! Ask for help! Remember most people love to help.

[mynextstep]

Thanks for your words.

Because my other classmates all found their jobs easily. When I apply, just fail and fail. I felt burn myself out mentally.

After reading your comment, just like a lot of Adrenaline was injected into my body. I will push.Wish you the best.

[adiusmus]

Given you find the technical side “easy”, the other side you may need to develop is people skills. You may need practice in dealing with people. Especially self confidence.

If you doubt yourself and you’re the expert on yourself, shouldn’t others also doubt you?

[cc_stoic]

I agree with @happertiger you can not give up. Pet yourself a little today, but go about kicking ass tommorow.

Employers want to see a portfolio. Invest in building one (and indirectly, your skills), give yourself experience, showcase your work to your friends, network, build stuff for cheap. It'll pay off.

[brudgers]

Ask your classmates with jobs if they have any leads. They know your work and they have inside information about the companies where they work. Professional networks are often more productive than cold applications to strangers.

Good luck.

[mindcrime]

OK, first the pep talk part: Remember this quote from Michael Jordan, one of the greatest basketball players to ever live?

“I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed."

EVERYBODY experiences failure, and likely lots of it, even the people in the running to be considered "The Greatest of All Time". So why should you be any different? You're going to have some failure, big deal. Suck it up and keep punching, buttercup.

Now the "reality" part. Pep talks and motivational videos and listening to "Don't Stop Believing"[1] until your ears fall off is useful, but you need more. If you're missing 1000's of shots (failing to get hired by 1000's of companies in this case) you need to ask "Why?" and figure out what to do. If a basketball player is missing lots of shots, his coach will work with him on technique cues, assistance drills, more practice, whatever it takes to help him reach his potential. Take that mindset.

You need a way to figure out what you need to work on. Unfortunately, as you probably already know, many (most) companies give little or no feedback to people they don't hire. The best advice I can give is to try finding people who will do practice interviews with you, and try to help you figure out how to improve. The people are your coding camp may be able to help. If not, go to local meetups / user-group meetings related to the technologies you use, and try to find experienced people there who will help. Failing all that, ask here, or on reddit, or LinkedIn groups, etc. Do practice interviews over Skype if you can't do them face to face.

Next, even without data specific to yourself, it is possible to know more about the kinds of things that in general employers are looking for, and that might be tripping you up.

In terms of technical skills / coding, look for books like Cracking The Coding Interview, and the like. Or Google "how to prepare for a Google interview", read those article and do those exercises. "But wait", you say, "I'm not planning to interview at Google". Doesn't matter. They're notorious for having challenging interviews, so plan for the worst. Prep like you're interviewing at Google and you should be good for many less demanding firms.

Next, as others have said, having a portfolio is very valuable. You can have experience even when you don't have a job. Start building an application of your own. It doesn't even really matter (that much) what it is, the point is to showcase your skills. Build a clone of something that already exists if you want: a Google clone, a Twitter clone, a Facebook clone, whatever. Or make it something entirely new - just work on it, as much as you can, make it as awesome as you can, put the code on Github /GitLab / Sourceforge / etc. (you don't have to make it open source if you don't want to) so people can easily access it.

Spruce up your LinkedIn profile as much as you can... add everything that helps show who you are and how dedicated and passionate you are. Classes you've taken, or are taking, papers / blog posts you've written, projects you're working on, etc. Also start working hard to network and connect with people in your field. You never know what connection will pay off.

Lastly, just because your coding bootcamp is done, doesn't mean your education is done. I've been doing this stuff professional for almost 20 years, and as a hobby for 10 more years before that, and I am still constantly taking Coursera and Udacity and EdX classes, doing courses on Udemy, watching videos on Youtube or Videolectures.net, reading books, reading papers, etc., to keep up. The thing about this field is, it moves so fast, you can't really ever afford to rest on your laurels.

Worst case, if you have to, take a job as a barista or something, to pay rent, and keep taking courses (like the aforementioned Coursera / Udemy stuff, etc.), building projects, networking, doing practice interviews, studying for the "Google interview", etc., until you break through.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k8craCGpgs