Contribute to open source, and start your own projects. Show your passion for what you do.
I can't tell you the number of times I've had an interviewer come into the room and clearly state that they haven't even read my resume yet (so excuse them if they take a minute to look at it first), much less looked up my projects or my website. This has happened everywhere, from tiny startups and Google/Microsoft/Facebook to banks and contract positions. Even when I've worked on projects related to the company (e.g., Twitter and Facebook apps when I interviewed at them), the interviewers had no clue (and I mentioned them quite prominently on my cover letter/resume/site). They don't look them up afterwards, either (using Google Analytics, I can tell whether they've visited).
There have been a couple times when the interviewer has looked up and liked my projects, and we've had fun discussing them, but this has been quite rare.
So unless you're directly using your projects to market yourself (i.e., you're purposely using them to network, rather than just doing them for fun and "passion"), I find this advice rather naive.
But maybe I'm just Doing It Wrong, and YMMV.
We're not psychic, if you aren't upfront with your lack of social skills, your potential to be dunning-krugering yourself, or your unwillingness to write code on your own time for the sake of it, we can't do much for you.
I had a rough start to my career (I have no degree and spent the latter half of my senior year of HS trying to avoid getting slapped with a felony charge), but I still managed to make it because when it came down to it, I enjoy programming.
I enjoy programming so much that regardless of what happens in my career, I will code.
I will code hungry, tired, or homeless.
I will code at night, in the morning, and in the afternoon.
Getting paid to code is a plus, but not the point.
This attitude showed, and I was eventually given a shot.
Where's your code? Why do you want to be in this industry?
Good luck sorting yourself out. The early years are usually rough.
I'm going to go get some night riding in.
2nd edit before I go: You shouldn't give a fuck if anybody, including an interviewer, sees your code. One of the quirkiest but most interesting programmers I've ever known is a 50-something year old that has worked as a line cook his whole life (other than a brief stint in the military). No formal education.
Rough around the edges, maybe 5 people in the whole world have seen his code, and he's probably better at programming than you are...
...because he codes. His latest project? A pseudo-stack machine JIT runtime thingamajobber. The man amazes and amuses me regularly.
Ugh, really? I feel like 90% of the time if you find yourself writing a JIT compiler, you're probably doing it wrong.
And "quirky" is not something I want to hear ascribed to a codebase.
Most recently, he's run into and fixed some bugs in linenoise, which was written by one of the most prolific programmers I'm aware of in recent history.
Don't badmouth people you don't know.
Quirky was an adjective for him, not his code.
He's writing the it for fun, that's all. He has no needs.
I make a point of reading the resume of every person I interview so I can ask relevant questions. To do otherwise would do our time together a disservice.
Currently building an online game editor / creator (my startup yCombinator plan)
i would be glad to contribute to an open source project, haven't found one that has really caught my eye, or that i feel i could add meaningful input to.
i should search Github / Google Code a little harder, fire up Mercurial, and give it a shot
I will check this out. Thank you
You can easily write code for, and contribute to, these browsers. Whether it's for the rendering engines (gecko, webkit) or their open-source browser counterparts (firefox, chrome). Get involved!