| Some friendly advice from someone who's been in your situation: The post is overly dramatic for my taste. By adding drama and name calling your ex employers you only harm your own image. There's lack of qualified programmers pretty much everywhere you look, so writing a normal resumé, listing your expertise and experience should be more than enough. Send it to as many job boards as you can find, and try to find a few agencies looking for your kind of talent and pitch yourself to their agents. Sure, agency jobs are not as cool as getting hired by a startup in Palo Alto, but hey... you've got to start somewhere. Be realistic about it: considering your situation you might want to look for jobs in countries that don't make immigration a pain in the ass. You could be a truly kick-ass programmer for all I know but you are still completely unqualified for a Skilled Worker visa in most countries (too young, not much to show). Don't even get me started on an H1B. Take advantage of your citizenship to try England and Germany, where there are lots of open positions. Finally, as others have suggested, don't just stop and moan: DO STUFF! If you have the time and resources, maybe write an open source project. If you want to improve your skills while still getting paid, go the freelance route. It's not great, but it pays the bills. Better yet, at the end of the day you'll have a much bigger portfolio of knowledge (notice I didn't say projects, but knowledge) to woo your next employer. In any case, good luck! :) |