[johnnymonster]

I don't believe you have really given us any points that would help us give you any advice.

From my past experience interviewing java developers with LONG runs developing java such as yourself was extremely boring. All of their resume's looked the same. Full of java related keywords. All with the same experience. None of them had soul. None of them seemed to develop anything out of their comfort zone. NONE of them knew what github was nor had an account.

Out of 300 people, over about 6 months we found only 2 java developers that seemed to be worth anything outside of their extremely large teams they were used to working in.

Now I don't know anything about you nor have I seen a resume of yours but I will say that when I see Java developer with 10 years experience writing java, it sort of already puts a negative connotation on the experience right away.

If your trying to sell yourself for a startup, your going to have to do some major overhaul of your selling points.

You are really going to have to highlight your experience with other technologies and things you are doing to keep yourself current with the times. What have you done in the past 10 years besides java? A lot has changed since 2002 in the world of development!

Last but not least, I can't believe you turned down an opportunity to work in a new environment. If all you have is years and years of java and someone (even if your personalities don't match) offers you a job doing something else and you don't take it! Its obvious that times are really not that tough in your current position.

Your going to have to suck up your pride a little and get some relevant experience in the job type you want before you can become picky about personality matching. You should be happy for the opportunity to even get considered.

Knock that AOL syndrome out of your nose and dig in. If you really want out of the banking industry, get a job for the experience. NOT to meet your new best friend or be on extremely hipster wavelengths with your boss...

To me you don't really sound all that desperate if your passing up job offers.

[throwaway1001]

I can't comment on me refusing startup offer here without revealing too many details so I won't.

Regarding your other points: I think from the description it's clear that I was doing something meaningful after 2002 (Haskell and Python should be at least noticeable).

Regardless of that, during that 10 years I did lots of stuff. I implemented a blazingly fast key-value storage backed by file-based B-tree from scratch. I wrote a concurrent distributed pool. I'm not a J2EE/Spring/whatever guy. Now one thing I hope is that people reading resumes prefer this type of experience to 20 line Node.js hacks.

[johnnymonster]

I'm just not sure what sort of position you are looking for, which is why its going to be near impossible to tell you the magic word that will keep your resume out of the trash bin.

I will tell you from personal experience, its a daunting task reviewing resumes.

I believe that most have it right, if you want into a big player your going to have to figure out the inner workings of the company to figure out how your resume gets to the people in charge.

Its really a numbers game, don't get discouraged and send your resume out a hundred times over. Tailor it to each position you are trying to get. If you want a backend dev position, then make sure your resume looks like your a backend dev. Also try to figure out what recruiter companies the business are working with. Every company uses recruiters, figure out who they are using and get in the door with them first. find out how many people they have placed at said company. If they havent placed anyone there then you probably don't have that big of a chance. However, if they have placed someone there before, then try to get some inside info as to what the managers are looking for.

Hiring managers are more likely to give feedback to recruitment managers than directly to the candidate. Candidates tend to get emotional when told they don't have the position. No one wants to deal with that.

Another thing to do is to work with a professional tech resume writer. Your a professional developer, not a professional writer. Have a professional take a look at your resume to make it clear, concise and to the point and seriously nobody reads a 10 page resume!

[batista]

>Now I don't know anything about you nor have I seen a resume of yours but I will say that when I see Java developer with 10 years experience writing java, it sort of already puts a negative connotation on the experience right away.

This statement raised my "shallow language hipster" alert.

[pestaa]

Not that GP didn't provide explanation for this. Personally I'd never hire anyone who has 10+ years experience with one technology and none with others.

[S4M]

Well, the OP clearly stated that he can do other stuff than java, so IMHO this "java bashing" doesn't seem to apply to him.

[johnnymonster]

I didn't mean for my statement to turn into java bashing at all. I was just stating that after interviewing over 200 java developers for java related positions, I found that MOST of them "Senior" and with > 10 yrs experience were not very well rounded at all and stuck in their java bubbles. I would ask that any other recruiter/interviewing managers to comment here. I know from other people I have talked to, they felt the same.

And it sounds like this guy is trying to get OUT of java and into something else. Does his 10 years experience in java directly translate to being a senior/expert person in any other language?

So with that being said, the OP is going to have to do something with his resume to get above that stigma. Developing Java for 10 years at the same company and the exact same project just raises flags at every single level for me.

Now he did say he did some personal projects where he made some stuff on his own. I will honestly say that really doesn't make him qualified to be a senior level person on an iphone/android/something/anything development team.

[throwaway1001]

There are several points here where, I think, you share what recruiters think about my resume. I'll comment with my vision of the situation.

> Does his 10 years experience in java directly translate to being a senior/expert person in any other language?

Yes, it does. Given a Python project, I spent half of the first day (literally, half a day) using Google in parallel with coding to find some syntax-specific things out. I.e. how to declare an empty map, how to declare and use a lambda, how to throw/catch an exception, how None is handled, etc. After this half a day, the difference between me and your Python hacker is 5 times less compared to what it was before. Add a week of Python coding and I'll be familiar 90% of most used libraries or a framework you use. My capacity to write a Dijkstra algorithm from scratch, on the other hand, stays with me forever.

Having said that, I understand that if assigned to a Haskell project, for example, I'll have some harder time, of course. Python is just really simple.

With this regards I like Google interviews the most. They take essentially the same approach: choose the language you like to solve our problems, we'll be testsing you for some more serious things anyway.

> Developing Java for 10 years at the same company and the exact same project

Not sure how I made this impression: I worked in 4 companies throughout those 10 years, in very different Java projects.

> I will honestly say that really doesn't make him qualified to be a senior level person on an iphone/android/something/anything development team.

It's too bad you don't have a chance to interview me and compare to your senior iOS guy, really.

[batista]

So you'd never hire someone like Paul Graham after he has worked for 10 years in Lisp projects, or some guy doing 10 years of embedded C work, etc...

Using "lots of" technologies is a meaningless metric, except if you want a code monkey to work with whatever for some startup where everyone has to wear 10 hats.

If I was building the Curiosity I would get a guy with 20+, not 10, years of experience in just embedded C (or Ada or whatever).

If I was planning a new JS heavy web app, I would get a 10+ years Javascript wizard. If he had the JS chops I could not care less if he also dabbled in Haskell or APL.

[johnnymonster]

If I was trying to find the best Lisp developer out there I would hire Paul Graham, and if I was trying to find a senior person in C I would hire someone with 10 years of C.

So I think you are just clarifying my point here.

The OP has 10 years of experience in java. so I would consider him for a java developer position. I don't believe that is what the OP wants though.