[nordic_nomad]

So I'm self taught, no degree, and I get job offers and headhunters out of the blue from all over the central US. Denver, Kansas City, Omaha, Des Moines, Chicago, and small cities I've never heard of.

The best thing I ever did was look at my friends early on who were getting found on linked in and organized my linkedin profile to look as similar as theirs as I could truthfully. The next best thing was taking 6 months off from freelance work to just build a portfolio of small projects that demonstrated the skills people were looking for, and it made interviews much simpler.

I honestly refuse technical interviews at this point because they're a waste of time and I don't study the crap they ask for and it indicates technical leadership can't spot a good developer by looking at what they've built and talking to them about their methodology.

If I really want a new job pronto, I email 5 recruiters who send me the most random postings and tell them what I'm looking for. Last time I did this I had 6 interviews scheduled that week and was in a new job that met my requirements in 2. This is in Kansas City, and while there is a fair amount of tech worker shortage here it's no where near what it is other places.

Honestly the OP's story doesn't sound all that different from my own. Started a tech company in grad school, taught myself javascript and front end work, left just before what we started was sold for a small amount and didn't get anything out of it except exhaustion and credit card payments on top of student loans. But my "40 hour a week vacation" as I called it didn't work out and I got dumped in an executive reshuffling. Did one of those code bootcamps to learn back end C# .Net MVC work in 6 months and got my first developer job at $40k, got the next one at $60k 6 months later, $75k 6 months after that, and $100k 6 months after that.

It's very doable anywhere in the country right now, but you can't just float down stream. You have to have a plan and actively work it and check yourself against the market and learn stuff people want you to know to get to the next level. Your skillset is not a constant, and it's up to you to demonstrate that you have it. If you leave it up to someone else to figure out how to do all that you're screwed, because if they knew how to do that they wouldn't hire so many developers who don't know what they're doing.

[philbarr]

Lessons from this post:

1. If you're going to swear, don't use an asterisk to try and make it look good. We can take it, honest.

2. Something in between two asterisks on HN gets shown in italics.

[nordic_nomad]

Huh. Yep, all I did was use the asterixesses. Clearly the site was offended by my attempt at modesty.

[doktrin]

You can edit it. It's a weird nitpick, but it actually detracts from the legibility.

[nordic_nomad]

Done, sorry for the eye strain.

[FLUX-YOU]

>Did one of those code bootcamps to learn back end C# .Net MVC work in 6 months and got my first developer job at $40k, got the next one at $60k 6 months later, $75k 6 months after that, and $100k 6 months after that.

That's a ridiculously good trajectory actually. Did you go to each next job based on what you built previously (plus the business experience), or were you also doing your own stuff in parallel to work?

[nordic_nomad]

So the first 2 years I was significantly underpaid with the digital agency we started really, where I was the only person doing front end and everyone else being a data scientist or strictly back-end person.

Front-end work was really undervalued as we priced our work, but the only thing that was less valued were my MBA and business operations skills, so I kept doing that until student loans kicked in.

I did a lot of community centered work for free and freelance stuff on the side after I left especially after my Senior UX job at a startup that was making money fell through, but it wasn't until I built my portfolio and assembled what I could that was all over the place and used it as my initial resume that I realized people would hire me as like an actual employee web developer.

It's a couple years out of date now, and really starting to show its age, but this is what I used when doing my initial job hunting early in 2013. http://www.startup-designs.com

So some of the trajectory is due to the foundation I had already, but most of it was talking to people I knew who were where I wanted to get to and blatantly copying what they told me I needed to do. It's not rocket science the stuff that actually works, but it's not intuitive either.

[dba7dba]

it wasn't until I built my portfolio and assembled what I could that was all over the place and used it as my initial resume that I realized people would hire me as like an actual employee web developer.

I second this experience. In fact having an easily accessible portfolio (aka website) was what got me interviews and current job.

I was let go from help desk position about 3-4 years ago. I admit I was over paid help desk tech. I tried to use that time to restart my career (study) as a linux admin/tech. Despite my years in IT working as IT tech and Windows admin, I didn't get much response. What really helped get my current job was putting up a blog with tutorials explaining how to do certain tasks on Linux/webdev. I have a few dozen articles and each blog post is 2000+ words. Each took many hours to complete, some days. It goes from learning something, start writing, editing, going through the steps again to ensure it works.

For anyone who's having a hard time getting a job in tech industry, your goal should be putting up online an example of what you can do that others can view easily. Our industry is blessed with workers having this option. In most other career fields, this is not possible.

I would encourage the original poster of pen.io to put up his work as part of his resume. I feel his pain as I'm also not in the early 20's age bracket but don't give up.

[thekingofspain]

Um, whatever key you used instead of 'u' in 'fucked' made almost your entire message italicized.

[derekp7]

As I was reading the post, I couldn't wait for him to swear again so the italics would be turned off.

[s73v3r]

"Started a tech company in grad school"

How could you do that if you don't have a degree? Very few grad schools will admit someone without an undergrad degree.

[ClashTheBunny]

I think he means that his degree is not in Computer Science or a related field. Not that he does not have a degree.

[nordic_nomad]

Yep, undergrad was in finance. Grad school was an MBA in entrepreneurship.