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Comment by gregjor | Hacker News Reader

I’m almost 60, lots of various technical experience in my 40 year programming career. I’m busier than ever with freelance work.

Don’t try to join startups or cool SV companies unless you have an inside track. Their recruiting and hiring practices are mostly geared to ensure “culture fit.” That’s code for young single male who will work 12 hrs/day and think free beer and pizza makes it cool.

Focus on measurable accomplishments rather than languages, frameworks, tech buzzwords.

Learn to solve business problems rather than “engineering problems.” No one needs 2,000 more lines of Javascript. Lots of companies need business problems addressed.

If you’re applying for jobs you’re hobbling yourself. If you have years or decades of experience you should have a large network of colleagues to get leads and jobs from.

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If you have years or decades of experience you should have a large network of colleagues to get leads and jobs from.

Clearly I've failed here. I've kept in touch with a few folks from previous jobs via LinkedIn or whatnot, but as a network, I'd describe it as "thin and weakly connected." Part of that is due to being an introvert and generally terrible at maintaining long term human connections. And part of it is a certain indifference I've had in the past to actively managing my career, which in an of itself is a result of how generally easy it's been to find work. Curious if I'm alone in this?

I suffered from shyness and what's called introversion when I was young. I also got combative with people I worked with. In my early 20s I met a guy (at a seminar) who was outgoing, friendly, easy to be around. Somehow we hit it off. He got me to attend Toastmasters (to get over my fear of speaking to strangers, and speaking to groups) and gave me some advice that some people pay thousands of dollars in therapy for: smile, look people in the eye, listen. Talk to (at least) one stranger every day -- initiate a conversation rather than standing in the corner.

At first that all felt forced and artificial but before long it was second nature. That free advice helped me in my professional life more than any tech skill. People decide if they like you or not within seconds of meeting you, based on a variety of cues. If they don't like you then you will struggle to get a job or gig.

Programmers often complain that the extroverts get ahead even if their tech skills aren't great. That's human nature, so rather than complain and fight it you can try to change yourself. You don't have to be fake. I see people on HN and other forums all the time writing about "hacking" their lifespan, their diet/metabolism, their ergonomics, their productivity. You can "hack" your personality too. Stop calling yourself an introvert for a start, that's not something a person "is," it's a label you can change.

This doesn't work for people in the autistic spectrum. It will just tire you and frustrate you, you have been warned. As for others, I this advice might prove useful. I guess the solution is to look for an job that doesn't emphasize neurotypical personalities. Or just be straightfoward to the people you meet; not everyone has to fit the extrovert card.

This also does not work for people with “worse” appearance.

After trying hard multiple times - Ive said F IT and went full b2b. Ppl may not like me, but they need my skill..

Hey, I accidentally added you on LinkedIn (I wanted to add a but couldn’t on the phone). I’d like to hear more about this as some of my social skills could really improve. I also like learning about it.

Let me know if you’re up for a chat :) if not, then thanks for the comment! :D

I’m the wrong person to help, I think. I can only relate my own experience. Unless you get lucky and meet a natural extrovert coach like I did, seek out a coach, or even a therapist.

I limit my LinkedIn network to people I actually know, no offense.

None taken

> Curious if I'm alone in this?

I think most people underestimate their networks. Not saying you're wrong, but you've worked with people, right? Hopefully not been a complete ass :) ? Done work on a team with or adjacent to them?

That's a start!

Networks aren't created overnight, and people try to hack them poorly all the time.

Think about it like a garden, not a project. It can't be created overnight: the right way is repeatedly, but at a low-intensity, tending to it.

Set yourself a goal: reach out to one person you've previously worked with on LinkedIn a week. Don't ask for a job. Just say you were thinking of them, {insert memory, if you have one}, and hope they're doing well. If they reply, maybe steer the convo to what technologies or challenges they're working on now...

I get it. I'm an introvert too. I'm €®£÷ing terrible with people. But it's improveable with repeated effort, like anything else.

A few ideas (in preferred order): (1) Take coffee (or now, Zoom?) with folks to catch up, (2) Volunteer with tech groups (pref charities, in tech, with people you want to network with, not just you giving free labor, and make sure to introduce yourself and talk about what you do), (3) Attend tech meetups (eh... unless you're presenting, this can be a waste of time), (4) Attend conferences (again, be seen, introduce yourself. Many are remote and free this year, good for attending, bad for networking)

The end goal is that if that person thinks "I need someone to X" then your name pops into their head. If you haven't talked to them in 5 years, that's not going to happen.

I was standing at a gas station in rural New Mexico a few weeks ago when my phone buzzed. It was a LI note from an ex-colleague that I hadn’t seen in 12 years, wanting to know if I was available. I’m meeting her team in a few days.

Just being a good human being will get your far in life irrespective of tech stacks.

I hate to be a sourpuss, but in my experience that usually means that your long-lost former colleague is struggling to fill an unappealing vacancy, and not actually offering a valuable insider opportunity to you in particular, just because you happened to work together more than a decade ago.

FWIW that hasn't been my experience; mine has been closer to gp.

Best work advice I ever got: the competent nice guy always gets hired before the genius asshole.

People just want to solve a problem as painlessly as possible and go home.

That's completely understandable - people change over time. In this case it's truly appealing for both technological and non-toxic-work-environment reasons.

I think most people underestimate their networks. Not saying you're wrong, but you've worked with people, right? Hopefully not been a complete ass :) ? Done work on a team with or adjacent to them? That's a start!

This is absolutely spot on advice.

Having a career network is roughly equivalent to saying "I have former coworkers that would say that I am competent and pleasant to work with".

There doesn't need to be some intense relationship that persists past working together. Just shared work experience, and a track record of jobs well done on your part. : )

Totally agree. I'm not a "networking" person in the sense of deliberately cultivating/expanding a network, going to networking events, etc. It's also true that all three jobs I've had over the past 20 years were through personal contacts. (And the only tech job before was right out of grad school via an on campus interview.)

I think this is a bit too passive of an approach to generating freelance work. Everyone that I know of in consulting or freelancing is actively approaching people, drumming up conversations and trying to find things that they can help with to get their foot in the door. Once you've delivered on some projects with those clients, then they'll typically start coming back and asking for more, but it's not realistic to think that you'll get people cold-calling you asking for your services simply because you talked to them on LinkedIn for 10 minutes.

Everyone I know in freelancing/consulting, including myself, does almost no work drumming up new customers.

Repeat business from long-term relationships, and word of mouth through referrals are my main source of new customers. I work through an agency that puts new projects in front of me, but most of my customers are long-term, and I got them through contacts.

Among your professional colleagues you have to cultivate a reputation as an honest person who can solve problems, someone who is easy and pleasant to work with. Then people will think of you and recommend you when they hear about an opportunity.

I'm on LinkedIn mainly to keep in touch with people I used to work with, but I have never used LinkedIn to get consulting/freelance work.

I know lots of people trying to freelance struggle with getting jobs. They're all over Upwork and Fiverr and the many other gig sites. That's piecework, it's not the same as consulting. I hire people from those marketplaces sometimes to do small short-term projects.

One goal for freelancers and consultants is to get to the point where you're the only person the customer talked to. You aren't interviewing or submitting proposals. I understand that doesn't sound realistic to someone just starting out, and I admit I had the advantage of decades of professional experience and a lot of contacts. I describe some of my experience on my web site, I don't think I'm particularly unique.

Depends on gig length. I tend to work on longer contracts, so should have called that out.

If you're doing short-job, multiple-contract work, definitely salt active effort to taste.

> Volunteer with tech groups ...

Along these lines, personally I find helping out at local Makerspaces (prior to covid lockdown) both rewarding and a source of interesting new forward looking people. Often people with early stage (physical) product ideas, thinking how to make their first working prototype(s).

Once the covid thing is over (whenever that is...), it might be a useful avenue to try out. :)

> I think most people underestimate their networks. Not saying you're wrong, but you've worked with people, right? Hopefully not been a complete ass :) ? Done work on a team with or adjacent to them?

Wait, I wasn't supposed to be a complete ass? Uh oh. :(

^^ this is really spot-on advice

You're not alone, but I also think that (like most of us) you're setting the bar higher than it actually is for what a "network" means. You posted a question on HN and look at how many people are willing to put effort into answering it and helping you out, and literally the only connection is "all of us read HN."

If you look up people you've worked with or otherwise know whose opinions you respect and ask them a version of the question you asked here, my experience is that most people will be more than happy to talk and to direct you to other people that can also give useful information.

The key issues (again, just in my experience) are:

1) don't ask for a job, or approach these conversations with the goal of getting a particular job. People can be 1000x more forthcoming and are generally more helpful when it's an "informational interview" rather than an informal "job interview."

2) always ask, "do you know anyone else I should talk to?" That's how you make progress.

3) don't be an ass. More actionably: interact with other people the way you'd want to be approached if the roles were reversed.

tl;dr: a "network" doesn't need to be a close group of your friends.

> More actionably: interact with other people the way you'd want to be approached if the roles were reversed.

I believe the introvert's response here is "I wouldn't want to be approached if they're just looking for work"

That's most of the reason for the first item: "don't ask for a job, or approach these conversations with the goal of getting a particular job."

Many people, introverts included, would want to be approached by someone genuinely interested in their opinion about, "how to approach job search as a Jack-of-all-trades?" even by people they have little connection with.

(As the sibling comment points out, these conversations often benefit the person you're talking to as well, even if you are asking for a job. But that's not the specific point I was trying to make since it relies a little more IMO already having stronger connections.)

I used to struggle with this too. What helped me get over it is realizing that this is completely backwards. At every company I've worked for there has been a near-constant need for good people. When a former colleague who I know does good work reaches out to me about jobs at my company, I'm thrilled to have a conversation with them.

Even aside from any degree of friendship, this is nearly always a mutually beneficial situation. If it works out, I get a new teammate who I know is good (lower risk than hiring someone random). I probably also get some kind of kudos (generally even a bonus) from the company for the referral.

But if they fail that can be on you as well. There is a risk connected with this activity.

> I've kept in touch with a few folks from previous jobs via LinkedIn or whatnot

That's enough. Most people will be happy to hire or recommend people they've had positive (read: not negative) work experiences with.

To you, you may seem introvert and invisible. But to someone else you may be a professional who doesn't waste time on banter and who will get the job done without rocking the boat.

Just contact people you've worked with before, you'd be surprised at how they remember you.

I’d add that it’s not to late to form connections now—people you’ve simply _met_ will often offer to recommend you.

I’ve cold called people I don’t know to ask about roles/companies, and had them then go on to advocate for me and get me on the inside loop. People I’ve never worked with! People generally love helping other people. Think: you’d likely do the same.

Also: it’s a positioning game. A name people have heard before is better than one they haven’t …

I think your connections are probably stronger than they appear. I'd be more than happy if a former colleague reached out to me about a job with my company. Even if is was somebody that I never really socialized with.

I don't think professional connections are something that need to be maintained in the same way that personal ones are. If someone remembers you and thought you did a good job, I doubt they care that you only reached out because they happen to want a job where you're currently working.

I have a network of close friends that I have maintained since college 20+ years ago but along the way there were a lot of people that I was friends with while I worked with them and for a time after we went our separate ways. I've started going through my contact list and started reaching out for a quick call to the people I'd like to build up contact with again using COVID as a reason to reach out. Anybody that answered was really happy that I rang. I try to do this once a week, all it takes is a few minutes, try scheduling it and picking one person a week, worst case its a short call best case its a friendship renewed. I think during COVID people are happy to take a personal call as casual conversation has died a death and work calls don't fill the same gap for human contact and conversation. Try it, what's the worst that could happen!

Every person has multiple social networks that they interact with on a daily basis. I think you're confusing your personal friend network with your larger professionally relevant network. All you need to get a job lead from someone in your professional network is for them to have a positive impression of you, even from years or decades ago. That impression can be built up from years of working closely together on projects including building up a close friendship, or from talking to someone for 15 minutes if you really stand out positively to them. Don't undersell the value of the connections that you have. Most people would rather hire someone that the know than someone randomly selected from a stack of resumes.

LinkedIn is a terrible place to get jobs and a terrible place to look for talent. Many people are very unsatisfied with this site for tech/developers. Often one looks great but once started development it is bad. I have not being developing about half of time as the parent thread author. However, all what he said sounds true!!

I never used a site to find work, always through network or colleagues. They tend to know my capabilities best. Head hunters are horrible people for tech. Buzz word and framework doesn't mean a thing. If you a good developer you can figure out how to do anything! It is how you thing and how you understand stuff and how to solve problems that counts.

I agree that LinkedIn is a terrible place, or a last resort, to find work. It's actually a pretty good place to maintain some connection with former colleagues and people you've met in your professional life.

I will disagree about recruiters (you wrote head hunters, which refers to a specialized kind of recruiter). Most of them are useless, but if you can find a good recruiter they can open a lot of doors. Many companies only work through recruiters, and good recruiters know the local job market and have contacts. How do you find a good recruiter? By asking people in your network.

> How do you find a good recruiter? By asking people in your network.

Yeah I am a bit weak in the area. I have stopped LinkedIn after MS bought them, a concern about my data privacy. One friend recommended a recruiter, wasn't very helpful. Would be open for other recommendation someone who is NOT just looking at buzzwords.

Think of it less as a friendship network which requires active effort to maintain and more of a collection of people who have experienced first hand your technical abilities and can vouch for them. Hiring good engineers is really hard and interview processes aren't all that good at selecting good engineers. So if you are looking for a new opportunity and have a way to broadcast that fact to former colleagues (LinkedIn!) then you will likely be able to get a lot of leads from people you may not have talked to in years and maybe didn't even know that well on a personal level when you did work together.

I can think of probably a dozen people I have worked with over the year, haven't spoken to since we parted ways professionally but would nonetheless immediately try to hire (or refer for hire) if they reached and said they were looking.

I have a great network of old colleagues, in the UK. Unfortunately for both my network and I Brexit happened and as the UK wanted me to give one of my two passports up in exchange for a nice blue one from the UK, I decided to move to the mainland instead. Network blown, and have to interview in a second language. It's harder for sure, but not impossible. I'm 50 and happily in a financial position where I can last a few years without a job.

I don't believe the UK has any rules against multiple citizenships [1] -- speaking as a triple national with UK citizenship, if I may ask, what happened there?

[1] https://www.gov.uk/dual-citizenship

I asked the home office what it would take for me to stay. Note that this was in 2018, so some time before they'd actually nailed anything down formally. Anyway they told me I'd have to apply for indefinite leave to remain, and eventually become a Brit. There was a fee too, I think ~ £1000. And the kicker, they said I was only allowed a UK passport and one other. And so I left the UK.

Having left I no longer paid much attention - I have no idea what the actual rules/requirements are for EU citizens with an additional non-EU citizenship to naturalise into the UK. And honestly I was so destroyed by the referendum anyway that I doubt anything would've kept me in the UK. Crazy sad.

Thanks for sharing your story and sorry to hear about your troubles. Best of luck. Also if you like I’m happy to speak with you more about opportunities, especially contracting; I’m usually thrown more than my network can handle.

Wow thanks for that offer. Grateful, but if I may I will decline - I really want to learn how things work here, and I'm making great progress. At the same time I'm trying to finish three software projects - one that has 60kLoC and started life in 2004. No shortage of stuff to do (and if I can turn one of these into a lifestyle business I'll be well happy)!

Curious question, does ur country of origin allow for double citizenship? I suspect that is the reason.

Otherwise, pardon me, I'd be shocked the UK keeps on growing inwardly and isolated from the rest. I just hope that they embrace the rest of the world as their leaders say. The US would love to have a closer relationship and I suppose other non-european countries too.

You are not alone in this, I'm an introvert as well and have a thin network but some of those contacts from the network are genuine friendships I made with former coworkers. I've made friends with gregarious extroverted coworkers too but it seems that those connections don't last once we're not working together. Oh well, it is what it is, there are clear disadvantages to being introverted.

I am really bad at this, but have gotten four jobs because I knew one person who really liked networking and thought I was really smart and convinced companies to hire me.

Definitely not alone. That post could have been written by me.

Sounds way too negative from my experience. I’m only in my 30s to be fair, I’m sure it does get harder as you get older, but I’ve also definitely interviewed a lot of older engineers and made offers to them at what seems like a similar rate as other age groups.

I have to strongly disagree about advising the OP not to join SV startups. I’ve worked at many of them, and they can the perfect environment for a “jack of all trades”. I also have not found that all of them just care about culture fit, there are certainly some that might fit that caricature but but by and large what they care about is can you get things done quickly without needing a lot of hand holding. Smaller startups are more likely to look for this as well in an interview, and for example have you build something fairly practical rather than solve tricky algorithms problems that bigger companies rely on.

As far as using your network to get jobs, you might be surprised that it’s not as easy as you think. The smaller the company the more pull this can have. But most companies try to be objective in the hiring process, and any company over a certain size (I.e. if they’re big enough to have recruiters and a head of HR) probably won’t just give you a job if you don’t pass their standardized interview questions. The main way it can help is if you don’t yet have enough experience on your resume or a good school and are having trouble getting past the resume screen, a personal intro can move you along to at least the hiring manager screen or first technical screen step.

In general you should not expect more than help getting the first interview from your network. With that being said, I have heard stories from older engineers in my large company that they skipped fizz buzz type questions for people with a strong internal reference.

How much help you get from a contact or referral depends on where that contact is placed. Sometimes you just get your resume put on the short list. Sometimes you skip the entire process. Regardless of company size or HR policies, a hiring manager who wants to hire you will do that.

That has happened to me more than once, and I have heard the same from former colleagues who literally walked in to jobs at Google and Netflix without any interviews or HR, because they knew the right person and had a professional reputation that spoke for itself. You don't suppose Google interviewed and tested Rob Pike, or Microsoft whiteboarded Anders Hejlsberg, do you?

I don't, but I suspect that they aren't asking for advice on how to find work.

> I have to strongly disagree about advising the OP not to join SV startups. I’ve worked at many of them, and they can the perfect environment for a “jack of all trades”.

Well, you can disagree, but you’re wrong. Just look at what the interview processes are optimised for.

I agree they can be the perfect environment for a jack of all trades. But they too often (not always, not uniformly) have recruiting, interviewing, and hiring practices that screen out older people, or anyone who isn't just like the team. That may be discrimination, or (more likely) just the normal human tendency for people to associate with other people more like them than not. By the same token I'm not going to fit in at a skateboard park or a club for video gamers.

Age discrimination in the software business is a real thing. There's a widespread (and I think wrong) notion that older people are stuck with outdated skills and can't learn anything new. Young people can have a lot of hubris. I generally excuse that as the inexperience and over-confidence of youth (I am the parent of three millenials).

A team of 20-somethings may not want me, and they may be right that I won't fit in. I think I might add some experience and maturity the team lacks, but too much friction in the team will work against everyone. Team dynamics are a first-order driver of productivity, so it's up to me, as the outlier, to persuade the team that I will fit in well enough to add value, even if I'm not going to play foosball or decorate my cube with anime (exaggerating for comic effect, but also directly from my personal experience).

> "If you’re applying for jobs you’re hobbling yourself. If you have years or decades of experience you should have a large network of colleagues to get leads and jobs from."

Sorry, but this is like saying "if you're 30+ years old you should have a large network of friends and family and not feel lonely". It does little to solve the problem of people who lack such networks to remind them that they do.

I agree with you, but at least the advice gives an idea of how some others approach finding work at that age.

It comes with the implication that it's worth aiming towards similar, if you think you could, because it's actually working for some people.

I.e. by being more aware of network-building, being a bit less afraid to mention your availability when getting to know people, having in the back of your mind that it's actually good for your future prospects if you're helpful and pleasant to people, being willing to play the slow "keep in touch" game, and the LinkedIn game, and maybe appreciate that it's not entirely social BS, it's actually kinda useful in the big scheme of things.

That doesn't solve the problem for people who are lonely and struggling, but it gives an idea of a useful direction to start building in, from knowing it's working for some people.

I will add a tiny bit of advice: It's really ok if you don't already have decades of networking and colleagues like some appear to. You're not at a permanent disadvantage.

If you have few friends and no colleagues, it will take a while but that while is measured in months and low years, and like anything, cultivating freelancing/consulting connections is a skill you can get much better at with practice. Get used to reaching out, like for example write to some of the "freelancer wanted" posts on HN, and write to people at companies who post something interesting, including C?Os and so on. That's kinda fun, because some of the people you end up talking with actually really enjoy human connections and are interesting people, and you are building their network too. To them, you are valuable, even if they don't know why yet. Some of them know this and are happy for the contact.

I agree with your point. However, I think it applies to youth more so than adults. I strongly think that a lot of adults who suffer these type of hardships are aware of them. And have tried to remedy them.

I know that for some: years and years of trying isn't enough to create neither type of social network.

I'm doing ok now, having started from near-zero network in my 40s, after a long lull and letting my social and professional circles fade away due to life circumstances.

That's why I say it can be done when older too, and have an idea what the timescale is.

(I also think the "other people appreciate your potential value in their network" point applies more to older people than younger. That is, if you're older, your perceived network value is a bit higher; I'm guessing the age is vaguely associated with seniority and future opportunity for the other person.)

However, I have the advantage that I did figure out people and developing and maintaining social links (if I want to and feel up to it), a number of years ago. I've led community groups occasionally too, which is not always pleasant but very educational.

I still remember not knowing how to, having no active friends at times, and being very lonely and isolated. So I empathise (a lot) with those who are stuck and unhappy with that.

For those people you're talking about who have tried for years and years, if they're really stuck, I wonder if there is some kind of coaching or training that would make a useful difference, assuming they want to change the situation. If there isn't, there ought to be.

No, it's a reminder that you have work to do.

You know when people say, "marriage is a lot of work" ? Meaning the relationship needs to be tended. Same here, when maintaining connections.

I doubt many people have networks so strong that people are just giving them jobs without them having to go through some kind of application process.

I think you'd be surprised at how common this is. Not just for programmers -- it's the norm for executives, marketing people, sales people. Personal connections and professional networks are vastly more effective than spamming resumes out and applying for jobs. It's human nature -- we prefer to deal with people we know, and we trust referrals from people we know.

This is not common, much less the norm, for programmers. It might be the case in small startups, and it might be the case in other outliers, but not in typical companies. Even the most strong referrals are at best a foot in the door and a leg up over other candidates. Referrals still have to go through the same interview process, and potentially be rejected.

Your mileage may vary. I haven't interviewed for a job since 2005. The three f/t jobs I had before that I had to interview for, but I was the only candidate they considered (because of professional connection). The other interviews were required to comply with HR policies (apologies to the candidates who didn't really have a chance).

I don't think my experience is unique or even unusual. I have hired friends and former colleagues with only pro forma interviews because I already knew what they could do. I've been hired the same way. At almost every place I worked other people there got their jobs through a connection.

Maybe the difference is I know quite a few people who have hiring authority, possibly as a function of my age.

I stopped working f/t jobs in 2011, have freelanced full-time since then. I don't interview or submit proposals for freelance jobs either. Usually I'm the only consultant the company is talking to, the others waste time on discovery and proposals and "process" whereas I'm ready to get to work right now.

You are what is called an "outlier". Your experience is so far from typical as to be irrelevant to anyone looking for full-time employment work. You experience isn't unique but it is very much unusual.

Anecdotally I don’t think so, but I don’t have any numbers. I’ve had quite a few jobs in 40 years working as a programmer. I believe around half of the people I’ve worked with got their job through the side door rather than through a formal application process. Sometimes the side door was a connected recruiter, but more often it was through a past work relationship or friend-of-a-friend. I can’t remember ever getting a job myself by sending in applications, though I have gone through interviews.

I suppose a lot depends on where you want to work.

Regardless, my main point is not to overlook contacts and former colleagues. I think going through the front door with applications is the last resort, not the first or best approach. There’s a book called Who’s Hiring Who? that I found useful a long time ago.

This. With the exception of super early stage startups that could easily go belly up fast, or small mom&pop shops, networks and connections are most likely to only get you to an leetcode phone screen. From then on, you're just going to traverse the leetcode whiteboard interview gauntlet like any other candidate.

I have a friend/ex-colleague that I would describe as a "master networker". He has a huge network including some pretty senior executives at various NYC hedge funds, and even a billionaire or two. I kid you not in that he can literally make a few calls and get a "developer job" at a hedge fund.

The downside is that he has to be extremely unpicky and be willing to settle for very unsexy jobs like shuffling XML feed files using SSIS or working with Excel VBA or legacy ASP.NET Webforms code, etc. But all of them still pay very well, so...

At every company I've ever worked at, even if I recommend someone, they still have to go through the hiring process. No company would hire someone just because I said they were worthy. It's just lead generation.

It's not my job to solve the problems of people who don't have networks. I have 40 years professional experience in the software dev business, as I wrote, and during that time I've met and worked with a lot of people. Networks grow organically but you have to cultivate them (another person commented in this thread with the garden analogy).

If you feel lonely or struggle to connect with people, or maintain relationships, don't expect to get help for that in HN comment threads. Don't feel sorry for yourself, get help.

If you feel lonely or struggle to connect with people, or maintain relationships, don't expect to get help for that in HN comment threads. Don't feel sorry for yourself, get help.

While you are close to being 100% correct with this advice, don't you think you are being a bit harsh on the OP as it's obvious that's exactly what he has done by posting his job seeking issues here on HN?

I mean...if this is how you feel, why bother even replying to him? Obviously, it's too late for your advice to be of any help to him now in his current situation, right?

I'll come clean and add that I, too, am in a very similar boat as the OP...I'm a 55yo software developer with 35 years in the industry, and due to my lifelong passion with a side-career as a semi-professional musician and other introvert-type issues, I literally have a non-existent network of people who will help me find work.

In no way am I feeling "sorry for myself" with my job hunt...I'm just trying to keep from being homeless and hungry.

It's probable that the OP is facing the same things.

I don't think HN comment threads are a good place to get therapy. At best you get a variety of opinions and some personal anecdotes. I posted about my own struggle with shyness and introversion above. If I still suffered from shyness and introversion I would get therapy, I wouldn't come to HN and ask random people what to do.

In the spirit of trying to help, let me point out that your comment, and some others from people who apparently don't have networks of friends and colleagues, start the discussion with a negative tone. "That's fine for you but I don't have a network, I guess that means I've failed." Comments like that communicate giving up and blaming external forces, or things outside your control. We can all control whether we get along with people and cultivate relationships. Some people are better at that than others, but it's a skill anyone can learn if they want to. It's probably harder than learning a new programming language, but it has a couple of orders of magnitude more value in the long term. And it's never too late to start.

I'm not trying to be harsh on people or show off. I had the shyness/introversion problem when I was younger, and the lack of friends and professional network to go with it. The problem was my own behavior, not the world, not some cloud hanging over me I couldn't control. It took a person with insight who cared enough to try to help me to let me see I could change my behavior. Ironically that person was a new acquaintance I had just met a few days before. Just like changing any self-defeating or limiting behavior you start by acknowledging it and committing to change. Try CBT (cognitive-behavioral therapy), that might help if you can't push past it on your own. What doesn't work is telling people "I'm introverted" or "I don't have friends."

> I literally have a non-existent network of people who will help me find work.

A suggestion is to just build that network of past people on linkedin, today. There's no rule saying you can only connect with people you worked with recently.

I've been on linkedin a long time (2004) and for many many years I did the introvert approach of only connecting with those I worked very closely with and considered friends. So my network was tiny.

Somewhere along the line I realized this isn't my list of friends, it's just a network of people I've worked with who I'd be willing to forward their resume to HR if they asked. That set is a couple order of magnitude larger than my list of friends. So I started sending out invites to everyone I've worked with since the 90s who was adequately competent or better. The vast majority of people accept.

> If you have years or decades of experience you should have a large network of colleagues to get leads and jobs from.

That's really big assumption.

After spending 25+ years at Intel, all of my peers were from that company, and they fall into to groups: either retired because they were there when the options were plentiful, or they are stuck there because they are over-leveraged with houses, cars and kids and their skills are pigeonholed to something only 3-4 other companies are interested in.

EDIT: You're website is great, btw!!

Thanks for the kind words on my site.

I know the problem, you work at a big company and that constrains your professional network. I worked at Nike and Apple, and when I was there all of my professional (and most of my personal) contacts/friends were also co-workers. Fortunately many of them went on to other companies and worked their way up to hiring authority positions.

My advice is to expand your network outside of the software dev/tech group. Marketing people have been a rich source of work for me. I worked in logistics for a long time so I know managers who move from one place to another running distribution centers, and they have significant pull in those companies.

In my job, I pretty much have carte blanche, driving our technology choices. We're a b2b in the shipping space; our customers literally don't care whether we're running React or jQuery, Rails or ColdFusion, Node or old school PHP. They'll notice if it runs slow, if things break, or if we take longer to crank out a promised feature. I love to nerd out, but I'm continually suppressing that part of my personality, because truth is, buzzword bingo isn't my job. (At the same time, it's not a matter of sticking to old technology, we just base our decisions on metrics other than HN posts or Github likes)

For someone who wants to eventually be drowning in freelance work (or at least the option to be), what jobs would you recommend looking to join if not startups or big name SV firms.

I have some articles about freelancing on my site, typicalprogrammer.com. I have worked in logistics, e-commerce, education, publishing, marketing. I worked in software dev at Apple for a while. I think getting business domain expertise counts for a lot, as does learning to work with people who aren’t software geeks. People skills, domain expertise, and a good network count for more than tech skills when freelancing. Most of the things I work on aren’t technically complex, but have significant business value.

>I think getting business domain expertise counts for a lot, as does learning to work with people who aren’t software geeks. People skills, domain expertise, and a good network count for more than tech skills when freelancing. Most of the things I work on aren’t technically complex, but have significant business value.

Yes. I'm in diapers in terms of experience compared to you, but I tweeted about this as a reply to people who want to get into consulting/freelancing. A few things that came to my mind at that time from exclusively dealing with large organizations for mid six figure contracts that one or two motivated people could pull off[0][1].

Are you doing this as an individual or through a company? In any case, why one and not the other?

- [0]: https://twitter.com/jugurthahadjar/status/131066829330549965...

- [1]: https://twitter.com/jugurthahadjar/status/131971626283503206...

I’m represented by 10X Management, they handle the contract, money, marketing stuff. I work solo, sometimes I outsource small projects. I have small business clients and Fortune 100 clients.

I don’t have much formality or process. I ask potential clients to make a list of their priorities, pains, problems and then attach a value to those. I build long-term relationships by communicating and delivering what I promise, and taking an interest in the client’s business.

When I ask clients what went wrong with their last developer it’s usually poor communication or not understanding the business priorities, or both. It’s never “They didn’t know how to balance a binary tree with Rust.”

> When I ask clients what went wrong with their last developer it’s usually poor communication or not understanding the business priorities

This is the secret of being "good" at consulting.

If I am a business, and I have a problem, and I bring in a consultant to solve that problem, and I have to assign one of my people to handhold the consultant through solving the problem, then I've now (1) paid for a consultant & (2) lost substantial amounts of one of my peoples time.

So I had 1 actual problem, and now I probably have 2.5 problems: paying a consultant, less productivity out of one of my people, and a half-working solution to the original problem.

As a good consultant, your job is to change that equation. Have a light footprint on other people's time & communicate clearly and concisely. Make sure you understand the actual problem, and weigh in if you're being asked to build a solution that doesn't solve it well (there may also be good reasons you aren't informed of about why it's built that way).

It's not hard. But it is specific. And trainable in yourself!

Most companies are variations on the same theme. And their dysfunctions are variations on the same problems.

"Building the solution" is table stakes. The real skillset for consulting is shadow-technical-PMing.

Remember: by definition, you're parachuting into a company that wasn't able to efficiently and effectively solve this problem themselves. So is it reasonable to expect them to tell you how to solve it? ;)

Agree completely. If you ask my customers why they keep sending work to me they will say "He answers his phone calls and emails." Woody Allen said "Eighty percent of success is showing up" and in the freelancing business "showing up" means taking calls and responding to emails from your clients. It means addressing their actual problems, and helping them solve any problem they tell you about. Sometimes that means I will refer my clients to someone in my network (and that referral skips any interviewing/proposal process, because that's how it works).

Upvoted because this is the truth.

As a consultant, don't be an administrative burden for the client, be someone that gives them a feeling they can really stop worrying about their problem or task, because a real pro now has it in hand and it will magically get solved, and they will get the correct reports so that everyone is happy etc.

Ideally you let them imagine you are much, much better than anyone they've ever worked with, by rolling with that idea and not doing anything to detract from it. It's what they want to believe from the start, so you actually have some advantage from that. E.g. you can communicate when other people would avoid doing so, which often helps a business problem anyway, and you are likely to be presumed quite authoritative, even if you're secretly reading up on the material as fast as you can between meetings.

And be straight with the client if at all possible about issues, including whether you're being asked to do the right tasks, and manage yourself as if you had a great manager and PM so they don't have to. If necessary, help with gaps in managing other people too, but gently, by making sure people know bits of information that help, and taking small initiatives as long as they help. Overall be like you are wise, insightful, helpful, and understand engineering and businesses better than anyone they could hire normally, even if it's not really true.

I have just been a problem to two of my current clients, because of a timing conflict (and being messed around in a serious way by another company). That anguishes me and I'm now in repair mode. ethbr0's advice is exactly what I will be trying to get back to, and in the spirit of "be straight with the client" I will literally tell them that I understand why they hire a consultant, that I failed and have cost them (because I really have), and what I'm doing to rectify the problem. It's likely to work out fine, because once they (all the relevant people) feel that I really understand what they need, they're likely to stop worrying and be glad that someone else is making the problem magically disappear again. It will take about 1 meeting per person and some good deliverables, and a week or so for the network of managers talking to managers to calm down, until they feel that way, but me showing understanding and an aura of "humility, integrity and leadership" usually means they go back to all the other busy things occupying their time, confident I'm "on it" again.

I agree, this should be the motto for every freelancer: "Overall be like you are wise, insightful, helpful, and understand engineering and businesses better than anyone they could hire normally, even if it's not really true."

This also works great if you are a regular employee.

I'm getting Baader-Meinhoff'd about 10X Management...

At the start of my career (have been almost entirely in legacy NYC investment bank/hedge fund tech), I thought it would be beneficial to rack up business domain knowledge.

After a while, I arrived at the conclusion that it wasn't. I could try to get enough business domain knowledge to put up an act like I was a mediocre junior trader or banker, or I could better spend that time to improve myself learning tech (and studying for interviews for that matter).

Plus if I were to leave the finance industry (which I'm desperately trying to do), none of that business domain knowledge would be portable, whereas most of my technical knowledge would be.

Just my two cents, but then again, I'm not looking at freelancing.

I think the point of being good with domain knowledge is not to act as a trader, but to understand the needs of a trader. It's a different skillset, but domain knowledge will help you with that.

Software folks with domain knowledge should really become software architects.

If only the software industry, or the world at large, cared about titles we give ourselves. "Software architect" means nothing to most people. Either you can solve problems and add value, or you can't. It doesn't matter what you call yourself. I have used the title "Programmer" for most of my career. No one cares.

I think I understand your point. A little bit of domain expertise might be worse than none at all -- pretending to be a mediocre trader or banker, for example.

The point I meant to make is about understanding and taking an interest in business priorities. When you work for a bank or any company that isn't in the software business it's important to understand that their priorities have little or nothing to do with programming languages or technical debt or the many other things programmers obsess over. It's not that those things aren't important to programmers, but they aren't usually business priorities.

My customers rarely care what language or tools I use. Technical debt is not a big concern to them because they have short-term goals, they know the business landscape will change, and they've amortized the cost of software development and maintenance (or at least think they have). The key insight for me was understanding that "reduce shipping costs" as a business priority may have a technical side, but problems like that are rarely 100% software or technical problems, so it's important to see the entire problem and have the language to talk to people who aren't programmers to get to a solution.

I have observed my own customers sitting through presentations from developers or people selling software products and noticed, more often than not, an intense focus on technical details, but little or no interest in business priorities. Choice of programming language might be important, but it's not a business priority most of the time. Rewriting a legacy application in Rust might make sense in terms of programming and future maintenance, but may not make any sense in terms of addressing business needs. To freelance/consult successfully outside of the small niche of pure software companies you have to try to understand the actual problems and requirements, and resist the tendency programmers have to immediately reduce the problem to code.

I'm not sure I'm expressing this very well. Here on HN I see programmers posting that they just want to code in their favorite language and skip meetings and be left alone by managers and users. I see people complaining about the "stack" they have to use and writing about quitting so they can work with shinier newer things. While I like that mode too, it's not an attitude that will lead to successful freelancing/consulting, because it's too disconnected from business requirements.

Another way to look at it: software development projects generally fail or rack up big budget/schedule overruns because of misunderstanding of requirements, and miscommunication within the team and especially between the team and the business stakeholders. An example from my own experience: a brick & mortar company paid for a new e-commerce site. A week before go-live was scheduled the owner (not a technical person by any stretch) discovered that the new site did not have any provision for shipping charges or state sales taxes. She assumed the developers would know that, because any company shipping physical products has shipping costs and has to collect sales taxes. The developers blamed the customer for not spelling those requirements out. Late project, each side blaming the other, bad feelings, a potential long-term relationship spoiled. At one point in my early career I would have blamed incomplete requirements. Today I would take the customer's side -- developers selling themselves as e-commerce experts should have asked about shipping and taxes, even though those are business domain questions. My solution was to help the customer move to a SAAS e-commerce solution, which meant changing some minor parts of her business process, but kept her away from owning custom software that almost no one would want to touch in six months. I didn't get as much money from that customer as the original developers, but I'm still on speaking/consulting terms five years later whereas the original developers got sued for breach of contract.

You can think about this purely within a tech space as well.

If you are a UI designer, a little bit of knowledge about web developer can help you make UI choices which work for both the customer and for the developer.

If you as a developer know a bit about Ops, you can tweak your website design to hopefully make OPS better. Or atleast start broaching the question with your Ops girl

It happens anythime there is collaboration: knowing a little about the capabilities and constraints of the people upstream and downstream of you (suppliers and customers (perhaps internal)) helps you make better decisions or at least have better conversations etc.

Laughing because yesterday I got Photoshop proofs for some minor web site changes that failed (as usual) to take the responsive nature of web sites into account. I'm baffled why 25 years into the web designers still think the web is a kind of print medium. Not all of them -- the designers who "get" the web are the ones I refer my customers to.

Well let me just take a moment and appreciate you for what you wrote.

This is a precious comment and i totally agree with you the things you mentioned. Understanding the business problem is more important compared to what stack or programming language to choose.

It doesn’t matter if you choose python,golang or java as long as it solves the business requirements that’s all what matters and programming languages are tools but its good to choose the right tools for the job

I agree here. My best projects have been reconciling financial data, or automating reports for MSPs, or copying 100k products from one platform to another, or ...

You get it. Sometimes the problems are cool - like some of the financial recon projects I worked on required neat algorithms (not complex or exotic ones, but "fun" ones) to solve something in Python in 1 minute that a R programmer's (they weren't great) script took 10 hours to solve - but most projects are boring implementation wise.

Actually, most of my really, really good and valuable work doesn't amount to any more than comparing Excel files, and giving you a report on that data. Tons of companies need that.

When my kids (or anyone) asks me what tech skills to learn that will have a long lifespan I say Excel and SQL. Being the "Excel expert" at work is sometimes more valuable than being the Javascript expert.

It's a commonplace observation that data has more value than code to companies. Lots of their data is in spreadsheets and databases (relational or otherwise). I've seen medium-sized companies running their operations in Filemaker, Access, and of course Excel. In big companies you'll find departments using the same tools. Critical to the business, not technically interesting or challenging. Plenty of work/money in that. Same for WordPress sites -- lots of them, most of them need work, not sexy or particularly challenging but you can get top dollar doing that.

Give a man matching CSV columns, get him paid for a day. Teach a man to VLOOKUP, get him paid for a lifetime.

..or something like that..

Yeah but boy can SQL be frustrating! When learning you have to balance rewarding activities with valuable knowledge and skills. Excel maybe isn't so frustrating (unless you're trying to do stuff like, short-circuit "or" statements .. )

I much prefer to take the data into a language -- like Python -- and do analysis on it. Sometimes (actually, 1/10 times in my experience) this is not actually possible, so SQL is a great skill to have.

I know of three fortune 100 companies that run 100+ person departments entirely from Excel. Massive Excel files.

SQL was frustrating to me when I did not know it very well. Taking the time to learn SQL (especially analytical flavored queries) and relational algebra changed not just how I write software, but how I analyze other developers. RA is one of those can't-be-unseen tools that I think everyone either learns directly or spends effort/years doing poorly.

I'll take SQL over Excel anytime.

Hey I did Recon work when I was at a bank and my boss was totally amazed when I wrote a script that performed reconciliation in seconds compared to there method which took them hours to do.

How do you find financial clients how are looking for automating repetitive tasks

In addition to what the poster said, which is really spot on in its generalities, I can share: my opportunities come from (1) my former coworkers and (2) direct pitching to RFPs.

Re: (1), when the poster says "people skills," he means you will not source work from engineers. Additionally, you are not likely to source work from most big-company product managers. It's all about who is in a position to work with vendors in the first place. These will be "ideas" people, people you meet at business school or business-school-lite multidisciplinary design schools, people who themselves may have limited execution capabilities but have the "people skills" to... tell you what the big company wants and how to format your docs and pass their vetting process. People who aren't hung up on just telling you like it is - people who aren't pedants. People who are the opposite of most engineers.

In this respect, startup and big SV jobs will not lead to drowning in freelance work. Go to an exciting grad school, work at a large philanthropy, work in politics, work in research, consulting, etc. - things where you primarily interact with businesspeople who have vendors.

Great input, I always say the role of a good engineer is being a good problem solver regardless of the language or tool.

The role of a good CTO is helping others understand and solve problems.

Checking out your website was fun, thank you for writing about freelancing. I am not the type that wants to do only "sexy programming work", I believe that maintenance work is where the stability is at. Solving business problems with what is already there rather than pulling in unstable codebase of an OS project that may die or is already dead.. are some of the things I live by. Hoping to get into freelancing soon.

> Learn to solve business problems rather than “engineering problems.” No one needs 2,000 more lines of Javascript. Lots of companies need business problems addressed.

Want to highlight this -- it's very rare but hugely valuable to be able to look at the business' needs and solve them, versus "I just work on what they tell me to"

It's said there's 2 kinds of people in the workforce: workers and bosses. It's not about who's a supervisor, as much as whether you can see the big picture or would rather to just focus on your job. No reason why this wouldn't also apply to higher-level jobs like programming.

This is true, but let's not forget that business problems can become engineering problems and vice versa.

Sometimes adding features (solving business problems) gets so tedious that engineering problems need to be addressed!

> If you have years or decades of experience you should have a large network of colleagues to get leads and jobs from.

This is where it gets harder to move to a new town as you get older. Companies aren't looking at you as a young hungry dev they can take a chance on. If they want you at all, they probably want a known quantity. Which probably dovetails with your comment about freelance. Contract work tends a bit more toward known quantities, although there are certainly exceptions (some of the places I've added the most to my resume have been 'consulting' roles)

> Don’t try to join startups or cool SV companies unless you have an inside track. Their recruiting and hiring practices are mostly geared to ensure “culture fit.” That’s code for young single male who will work 12 hrs/day and think free beer and pizza makes it cool.

The exception being if you can come in as a CTO and _set_ some of that culture including making an effort to give everyone a bit more work/life balance. I've been in this situation a few times with companies that are otherwise as you describe.

This is great advice but let me be the devils advocate for a moment.

Ensure you can wrap these experiences with buzzwords of technology.

Can you intelligently speak about service meshes and Istio and load balancer? What about the benefits of typescript vs javascript?

At some point you’ll deal with a recruiter and most are using superficial “checklists” to assess your competency combined with your experience.

I moved countries 4 times, unfortunately a solid local network isn’t transferable outside it’s boundaries

The notion of "focusing on business problems" is - in my opinion - the absolutely correct answer.

Coders will jump through technical interview questions. Business people with great coding experience will say "I will solve your business problem."

These are really helpful suggestions, especially the one about applying for jobs. Thank you.

Every company is hiring if the right person comes along. The right person is someone who can add value and solve business problems. Most jobs aren’t advertised. Getting work through referrals and contacts is far more effective than going through the application process. I haven’t had to use a resume or interview or apply for almost 15 years.

> No one needs 2,000 more lines of Javascript.

What about Gmail? Facebook?

It's (together with the next sentence) a figure of speech. The technical solution might well be 2000 lines of Javascript, but it's the means, not the need.

I'll assume your comment is facetious. If you're serious then you don't understand my point, and you don't understand what employers hire for. Millions of people can write 2,000 lines of Javascript. Significantly fewer can solve a business problem that may require writing some code.

I think I just misread the original post!

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