| Thanks for starting this Jaclyn. I come from a non-traditional background. More than 10 years ago I started a niche community that grew at its height over 1.5M/monthly visitors. Everything custom built in PHP. Then I co-founded a SaaS analytics service which we ran for 5 years. In 2017 I started a solo project while learning Node.js, Vue.js, Postgres, microservices, to keep myself updated. I decided that I wanted to join a team after going solo for a while and to progress my professional career. However having no CS degrees I lack foundational programming skills. I only know the stuff that I come in contact with so during interviews, sometimes I can't answer seemingly basic programming questions. I always focused on implementation and having limited time, didn't look for the why. I'm falling between junior and senior experience and I feel companies have no clue what to do with me. At the moment I'm learning advanced JS concepts, programming paradigms, data structures and algorithms, and plan to open source a project that shows all that. Showing my portfolio with projects is not enough for the roles I'm looking for. I probably lack interviewing skills. So thanks for creating hatchways, I might use it in the future. From a hiring perspective, hiring full time based on a couple interviews is super risky. I actually like to work freelance/intern before committing myself - culture works in both ways. This is obviously a privileged position if you have time or money. I like the idea of the hiring manager/interviewer being more of a coach during the process, and tailoring the process towards different personalities/situations. |