Comment by codegeek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by codegeek | Hacker News Reader

I will be brutally honest and hoping to help you with some advice. You have a few red flags that may give a pause to prospective employers and it has nothing to do with your doing boring PHP etc.

- You have not worked for 2.5 years. That is a big gap and you need to be explain it well. Unfortunately there is lot of competition these days and anyone with that large of a gap without a good and reasonable explanation will find it difficult.

- You have never seemed to hold a proper W2 job and if you now are looking for one, you have to make that case which is not easy. For example, what happened with that 3 months full time W2 and then unemployed ? Did you quit yourself ? Were you let go/laid off/fired ?

I think your biggest challenge is that you have technically "worked" for over a decade but seems like you don't have much to show for it unfortunately. This is where most employers may get a pause.

Good news it that PHP, vanilla JS/jQuery etc are very much in demand. You need to be more focussed in your approach and fix the negatives. Perhaps go back to one of our freelance clients and ask for a job if they are hiring ? You need to have someone vouch for you since you have been out there for a long time. Then go from there.

I hope this was helpful and not overly critical. Just trying to give it to you straight.

Don't stress about the gap. I addressed mine by saying:

"I had bitcoin and like climbing rocks and doing stuff, now I don't have any bitcoinlololol"

and it was totally fine. People just want to see if you will flinch.

Where did you climb? Did you follow the seasons or stick to one area? I’ve been doing the same off and on and found van lifing to be fun but lonely, even when traveling with a partner.

> You have not worked for 2.5 years. That is a big gap and you need to be explain it well.

God forbid people save up a bunch of money and decide to not work for a year or two.

God forbid people have health issues that keep them from working.

God forbid people lose their job, struggle at finding a new one - not because they're incompetent but because they're terrible at job hunting. Or because the job loss triggers mental health issues (which you can't get addressed because you don't have a job and lots of mental health professionals either don't touch anyone on insurance period, or they don't touch people on the subsidized healthcare plans.)

Employers: "WE CAN'T FIND ANYONE TO WORK FOR US!"

Employee with a 2.5 year gap: "Uh, hi?"

Employers: "Not you."

That’s why OP said you will need to explain it well… What you have listed are all perfectly valid explanations.

Your skills have almost certainly deteriorated in that time if they have not been used. I think that is a valid concern from an employer's perspective, don't you?

If the value of the skill has a life-cycle of two years, then precisely how qualified is this job?

The problem with a gap is that it "smells" of a "deficient person" that there is no demand for.

I think the only solution that actually works is to bullshit through the doubt.

Employers who want a front end developer can hire a boot camp grad who has more up to date skills.

I'll have to work my experience to my advantage, then. Squeeze out every last drop I can get, even if it's not much. Or go for one of those bootcamps.

I have to show that I'm still better than less experienced bootcamp grads, because I have not been able to accept that I wasted many years of my life.

If you haven’t kept up with technology, you probably have.

That’s harsh. But it’s not meant to be judgmental. I’ve told the story plenty of times how I became an “expert beginner” by the time I was 35 (I’m 48 now). I was still doing VB6 in 2008 when it was discontinued in 2001. It was until 2016 (at 42) that I had any type of “lead position”.

All you can do now is upskill and get current. I couldn’t spell AWS or “cloud” until 2018 (at 44) when I first logged into the console.

My first job at any company you have ever heard of was 2 years ago.

Also, the landscape changed a lot since the time you started pivoting at 2008. That's just one year after the time I started my career, competition was less fierce.

Now I'm curious it it's become more difficult in the present day for an expert beginner to rebound, when there's far more beginner competition and boot camps are springing up everywhere today.

On the other hand, there are also a lot more learning resources online since the late 2000s. Still trying to weigh both things in my head and estimating whether a 2022 expert beginner would be at a net advantage today compared to 14 years ago.

Everyone with disadvantages gets victimized by the PVP aspects of our world. It is reality. One must deal with it the best they can. And it is getting worse.

> God forbid people save up a bunch of money and decide to not work for a year or two.

That's interesting. My assumption is that you would need to work so that you can save a bunch of money.

Like the 11.75y of work that preceded it?

Agreed. This is a sick and denigrating attitude to take towards people, who might just maybe, possibly have prolonged lapses of other priorities in life besides improving bottom line value for others during half their day. And it shouldn't need some sort of rigorous justification as if one were a peon who had better make amends for not worshipping "hustle" every year of their damn adult life.

jQuery in demand? Since when outside legacy work?

Legacy work includes websites that were written a few years ago, but still work and don't need to be completely redone. Add some features, but a rebuild is unnecessary.

The point is, there is a ton of legacy work out there.

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