Ask HN: Self taught hacker graduating in December.How do I find employment? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Self taught hacker graduating in December.How do I find employment?

3 pointscubo3 comments

I have been so focused on learning on my own, that I did not focus on potential employers for when I graduate this December. How do I go about finding a company with more agile and modern management style, that is looking for someone with more applied experience even though I am fresh out of college.I don't want to sound conceded or narcissistic but I feel that most of the businesses at career fairs are looking for entry level programmers with no prior experience even in the language they are hiring for.

<p>tl;dr : I spent college teaching myself outside the curriculum.About to graduate, How do I find and contact a company for employment.

View on HN

'I feel that most of the businesses at career fairs are looking for entry level programmers with no prior experience even in the language they are hiring for.'

Guess what? You take the job anyways. You've given no examples of professional experience so you are entry-level. Technical-skill wise you might, maybe, be a step above everyone else; but you are still very much entry-level to a company.

Now that being said, I feel you homie. You want a job a bit better then some local programming shindig and something with a bit of flair, a bit of challenge. What you need to do is begin to look at your geographic working locations and then within those areas look into companies that may be able to offer you an exciting position. Or you take a job with company that won't offer you as exciting a position because A) initial experience B) Even Ramen costs 10 cents per packet.

For what it's worth, Agile sucks. Putting projects on a whiteboard with sticky notes isn't agile; its just a project management technique, and one that some of us were using way prior to Agile. But really why does Agile suck? Daily standups. You think I don't know what I'm thinking about? Enjoy your daily meeting. Every day. Monday through Friday/ Because that's all a daily standup is, a quick DAILY meeting that's more or less pointless. Stop looking for a set of criteria (agile, TDD, whatever else), and start looking at the company themselves. The business, the problems, the solutions, the career potential, and also, the money. Find a place that lets you work and build things and work on your programming, and then interview well, and then say yes when they offer. That's how you find the type of employment you are really looking for. Good luck.

Do you have friends who graduated 6 months to a year ago? Where did they find jobs and are those places any good? Or even people who you kind of knew. Many companies offer referral bonuses so even somebody you knew casually will usually be willing to help.

I'm not sure what you mean by "applied experience." Do you mean a job? Or do you mean you hacked together some open source projects?

Unless you have experience outside of what you wrote here, you are entry level. You may be a good coder. You may be a better coder than people who have been doing the job for 10 years. But you are still entry level because you haven't yet proved that you can do the coding in a work environment, day in and day out, when somebody else tells you too and not when you feel like it. That is the difference between a job and a hobby.

All that said, if you feel you are better than entry level you will want to look for smaller companies where you will have the ability to quickly get a visible project. It is easier to contact these companies because they usually have a direct email to HR instead of through a 3rd party website and can ask any questions you want free form. Be professional and have somebody double check for grammar.

Good luck.

tell us what you've taught yourself. you never know who's reading. i'm hiring.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com