[feudalism]

If I've learned how to code on my own but lack professional experience, what site(s) would I have the best chance of finding employment as a software engineer / QA / etc.?

I've been looking on Indeed, HN: Who is Hiring, and angel.co but have had zero luck this past year. I get that companies don't want to take on the risk of a potential bad hire but c'mon. I can't even get an interview.

[MarkMarine]

If you have no experience as a software developer, it would probably be a lot easier for you if you have some other method of displaying your work. Extensive open source contributions, where I can read your code and see how you interface with other developers, is far more valuable to me when choosing a hire than even the recommendation of some other manager at another company that I don’t know and can’t really tease out what their inner team workings are like.

[legerdemain]

I have ten years of industry experience. To me, "extensive open source contributions" is synonymous with either deep industry expertise or academic research. It's the realm of people writing app frameworks, databases, and distributed software.

To be frank, "too inexperienced to get a job? time to contribute to open source!" is almost always a glib and unhelpful retort. If someone can't get recruiters to reach out, they probably don't have the expertise to build open source, and vice versa. Open source is not a dumping ground for inexperienced newcomers.

[MarkMarine]

I’m not being glib, I was trying to be helpful. Open source shouldn’t be gate kept, if the person writing that wants to help and the patches that are accepted, what’s the issue? Or, do you think a formal CS degree and multiple years of industry experience should be required to submit to open source, so the maintainers don’t have to waste a couple minutes reviewing and commenting on substandard work?

That is certainly one way to treat someone willing to do free labor in service of something the maintainers love, but I don’t think it’s a positive way. If open source is to continue and grow, it will always need a fresh set of people to work on it, and bringing those people along is part of the work of shepherding an open source project, in my opinion.

What is your advice to the person saying they can’t get an interview?

[legerdemain]

I'm saying that if your bar for interviewing a newcomer is "extensive open source contributions," then you are the one gatekeeping.

[MarkMarine]

I don’t have a bar, I interview everyone recruiting sends me. I’m a software engineer now, but a mechanical engineer out of school, so I was trying to give some guidance without just laying out my life story and saying do what I did, starting with jumping in a Time Machine.

You still haven’t given your advice. If you’re going to be critical of mine you could add something positive in counter.

[tracker1]

I'm not sure I'd go that far. My suggestion there is generally work on something you use, want or otherwise need.

In general, getting something done counts for a lot. And many floss projects will welcome contributions. There will generally be feedback, need adjustments for testing etc. But there's room to do productive things.

[turdprincess]

You could pick up some contract work on Upwork. Set a really low rate and then work up. Pick a niche and specialize.

After you do some contracts and get some good experience under your belt, register as an LLC and give yourself a title - software engineer at your company.

It should be enough to get your foot in the door for an interview and from there as long as you are a good talker you will get the job.

[okaram]

You may be better off going to physical sites. Go to meetups for a few programming languages, meet some people etc

[legerdemain]

Do those even exist anymore? I'm in SF and I've been looking for active meetups for many months now. It's extremely slim pickings out here.

[lordnacho]

Do you have any professional experience at all, or just no coding experience?

There's a lot of jobs where coding is part of it but it's not called coding.