| You sound plenty hire-able to me, based on your story. Your best bet will be getting a job through a personal connection, somebody who _knows_ how you work and wants you (or is willing to strongly refer you). Barring that, not all companies will make you do sorting algorithms and brain teasers for a job interview. My problem is that I have the memory retention of a gnat. I learn quickly, then discard the information to make way for new stuff. Six years ago, I was a full time .NET programmer (for years!) and I can barely remember anything about .NET at the moment. This makes certain types of technical interviews difficult for me. My team runs a moderately high traffic web site. Learning quickly, being flexible, and fiercely persistent matter much more to us than a deep understanding of computer science concepts. Now that I am in a position where I do the hiring, I try to accommodate people like us. Unconventional background, hate whiteboarding in public, terrible memory. Whatever. Can you produce something of value in a reasonable time frame? That is all we care about. The way I hire people now days is to give them a simple challenge to do (at home, on their own time). Basically, take a small data set and display it on a web page. Depending on the level of interviewee, I will ask for more or less features (make it sortable, derive additional data points according to some algorithm you must devise). The challenge has no time limit or rules. You can use your own resources and do it on your own pace. When it gets sent back to me, I evaluate the candidate based on the final product. I don't much care how they got there. If the product is good, we bring you in for an interview. During the interview, I ask you to work on _your_ code. The code you provided to get the interview. Essentially, we pair program. Adding features, fixing bugs. Whatever seems the most fun. If you show me that you can code on your own codebase, using your tools and process, and you are pleasant enough to work with side-by-side for several hours, you've got the job. I know you said you don't want to move, but we are hiring developers here where I work in NYC. Drop me a line if you are interested jdslatts at fzysqr dot com. |