Hacker News Reader

Speaking as an employer (not in France though). What do you have to show me that you are capable? I place next to no value on formal education. But it will get you a foot in the door if you have no actual work experience. It at least tells me you can commit to something, even if it sucks (like most formal CS education).

What I do care about is what you've worked on. If you have any personal projects to show me.

No education, no projects that you have worked on tells me nothing about you. If there are 10 candidates waiting, you have very little chance of being picked.

Someone with a history of open source contributions would be at the top of our candidate list.

I have some downloadable exes on my website http://zonas.free.fr

Also bitbucket.com/jokoon/eio and github.com/jokoon/eio

Not really bright, but when I hear the "booming IT sector", I'm a little skeptic.

Please keep in mind I'm just trying to give you advice on how other employers might view you.

Your github/bitbucket just looks like bunch purposeless code. I presume it's your game?

If I were to make a judgement from looking at that. My impression would be that you might have a hard time being motivated for the work I would give you. You were not motivated enough to finish school. In your spare time you're working on a game, which is something beginners tend to start with.

There are a bunch of projects that are highly active and welcoming to contributors. Projects like servo or atom.io

Also try to keep your reddit and similar profiles private. You can give an employer too much of an intimate view.

> If I were to make a judgement from looking at that.

I'm reading anyway

> You were not motivated enough to finish school.

You might not know what the school system is like in france, and you don't know me either, so don't jump to conclusions.

> on how other employers might view you

You seem like a PR person, and I don't really like it. I has its importance, but I don't think it matters to me or should matter to my existence.

> You can give an employer too much of an intimate view

I got nothing to hide, I like to be honest. Points up for creepiness. If an employer wants to be politically correct, it's his problem.

Employers have to chose who to hire based on 1h interviews; how do you expect them to do that without jumping to conclusions?

Also, don't confuse honesty with aggressiveness. The interviewer will never get to know you, they'll only get a glimpse; it's not dishonest to make a deliberate decision about what you'll show them.

I read your parent posts and nodded in agreement, wondering if maybe I should ask for your resume. IT around here really has a lack of smart people that can keep things running. Then I read this. Whoops, dodged that one.

So what I should change my mind about my opinions? I could say the same about your comment "Phew, dodged that one".

If you really think you're going to know me by reading my internet comments, well, that might be your problem too.

No, you should not change your mind on your opinions. You should however keep your opinions to yourself or give up on "l'ascenceur social". Pick one.

(And also, read between the lines. People are dropping heavy hints in their responses to you.)

So, someone who is studying compsci and maintaining an FLOSS project would be at the top of your list?

Well, sadly that doesn’t help finding a student job that I can do in parallel to studying :/

It's not even America, look around you: Germany has great opportunities for people with developing knowledge, Netherlands, England, Ireland... On the other hand I know France is in that situation, as well as Spain, Italy...

But a part of it is definitely your attitude; move around, search for your options.

This comes from a Spaniard that dropped out of college, has lived in France (I worked for Renault, FFS), Holland and, for the last 10 years, in Ireland. And I wouldn't change a thing.

> But a part of it is definitely your attitude; move around, search for your options.

I'm part of the population who are considered poor in france. I don't have resources to "move around", I'm on welfare, and currently can't move out of my girlfriend apartment because I don't have enough resources to get a new home, nobody will risk renting to me. Both parents are broke. I live in one of the most unemployed region of france.

I might have an attitude, but I have explored options, and they're not so good. Maybe I should take risks, and maybe I'm not inventive. I've had many interviews, and none hired me.

Not hiding my desperate situation is creeping up on my moral, but I think I would be open to any decent suggestion that don't involve me being at risk of turning homeless.

If you've got an internet connection and a computer you can develop on, you can try starting as a freelance developer on one of the many websites like elance or guru etc.

In the beginning you'll have to work for little money and not-great projects to compete with lots of people from poorer countries, but as you start adding completed projects and good feedbacks to your profile, you can go up the ladder and, probably find better opportunities - either by starting to work regularly for some of your online employers, or moving somewhere else.

Assuming you're willing to relocate, have you tried remote interviews? Nowadays the first round can be done over video-conference, and even if you need to go to their offices for the final interview, many companies are willing to pay for the trip.

danmaz74's advice is good too; if you pick a niche tech that you know well, you can make 50-60€/hour on fixed-fee jobs, though you might only get two or three per month initially.

In many parts of the US, including Silicon Valley, experience and demonstration of competency is valued much more than education when it comes to software. Consequently, everything is about getting that initial experience, education just makes that first step easier. From there you can bootstrap yourself into almost any position in the software world through demonstration of capability and most employers will take you seriously.

What makes this more difficult in Europe is that they often discount any amount of experience without what they view as the appropriate education.

There is a simple formula in the US that countless developers have used for bootstrapping a career without education or experience: work for a bottom-feeder consulting shop. The job will generally be awful and have terrible pay, but because of that it makes it easy for someone with talent and work ethic to really stand out. In a year or two, plenty of much better companies will hire you on the basis of your experience. Wash, rinse, repeat. As far as I can tell, this doesn't work in Europe.

It does work in UK. I've applied to many positions in the last 5 years or so and not even once the education was brought up in any significant way. Skills/experience is what counts and smart employers know that.

UK is not really europe, it's also pretty liberal compared to the rest of europe, especially compared to france.

In Germany it does, too, though. I know many people in Germany and Austria in IT who have no formal education.

Even in America it's difficult to get a job with no CS degree and no experience. Actually it can be tricky to get a job with just a degree and no experience.

I got an English degree and then spent the first several years building Drupal websites on contract. Eventually I built up enough business experience to pursue more sophisticated work.

Contributing to Open Source is great too, in that there's no barrier to entry except your ability to work on a team and write sufficient quality code. Employers will still want to see some traded-code-for-money type experience on your resume though, so it's best to bite the bullet and find some lowball consultancy work.

I'm pretty curious if there actually are open source projects that are in need of beginners.

> except your ability to work on a team

Whell I'm bad at playing politics. I don't see why teamwork should be important for an open source project.

> Whell I'm bad at playing politics. I don't see why teamwork should be important for an open source project.

Well, mostly because you often get issues where you, as a team, have to make a decision.

Do we decide to support this specific feature, even if it increases our maintenance cost by a lot?

> I'm pretty curious if there actually are open source projects that are in need of beginners.

There are many projects. A good way to start is by trying to fix some tiny things that annoy you personally, use your changes yourself, and try to get them merged. This is useful as (a) probably others had the same issues, and (b) you have already tested the changes somewhat by that point.

It would help not to think about teamwork as "playing politics".

A degree carries much weight in London. Developers with negligible coding skills and a degree sail past those with skills and experience but no degree. It's quite bizarre. I guess the companies who hire that way don't know any different, and no one can be accused of taking a silly risk if something doesn't pan out.