The Unemployable Programmer

This is an absolutely baffling article. The job market for developers is not glutted by over-supply, it's one where marginally-qualified people get hired for salaries well above the national average because companies need SOMEONE to do the job. And virtually nowhere cares about degrees, especially for experienced devs.

And having a single development job at a big company for a decade isn't some kind of career-killing move... unless you turn it into one, by letting your skills stagnate and wither, which is on you.

(Or maybe that wasn't a development job for those ten years? The article is vague. If, for some reason, the poster was out of the dev world for a decade then yeah, it's going to be harder to get back in without a lot of aggressive self-retraining. But even then, if you actually can program, it should be very do-able.)

I once found myself unemployable as well, maybe what I did can help someone. This was quite a few years ago when the ColdFusion job I had just ended and the job I had before that was in Visual FoxPro (and a few other even less known technologies). Talk about unemployable. Also I am not in a major city, so I was getting pretty much no responses to my resume.

After a few months I realized I was unemployable and set out to change it. Being unemployed, I luckily had a lot of free time. I made a study of the programming job ads in my target market and if I didn't know what a technology was, I looked it up. I tried to figure out which language was the most asked for, and decided it was PHP (at the time). Also in my studies and in the job ads I noticed that most of the work involved these new-fangled Content Management Systems and so decided I needed to learn one of those, and I chose Joomla. It was a choice I would later come to regret but it got me a job.

To learn these, for both PHP and Joomla I ordered a book from Amazon.com. I limited my search to books published in the last few years and ranked them by customer satisfaction and chose one near the top. And then I made myself go through reading these books and doing the exercises at the end of the chapters. This was very very boring but I made myself do it. Then I created a few Joomla websites for local small businesses for free.

And then, after 6 months of unemployment, I had made myself employable again. I saw a job ad that I was now now barely qualified for, applied, and was hired to maintain a legacy Joomla website. Was it a glam job? No, but it was somewhere to start. And the rest is history. I do think if I found myself unemployable again I could repeat the process and figure out what is being asked for these days and learn that.

I haven't done a study of it lately but I would guess almost any kind of expertise in a major JavaScript framework like Angular, Ember, or React/Flux might get you a remote job fairly easily, as there are very few experts in this and many companies seem to want it. Also most developers don't want to do front-end/JavaScript stuff like that so there is less competition. That's where I'd start looking anyway.

> Being able to get work in this field without a fancy background is still possible, but only if you have the right connections. Like I said: it's no longer sufficient to be able to do the job

This sentiment regularly comes up on HN, and I find it a little exasperating. Human interaction has always been an important part of career.

There's a subtle (or not so subtle) contempt for soft skills in these laments. You can write code and have fun, but if you want to get paid for it that's a career. As part of this career, you will produce software as a byproduct. However, the primary purpose of this career is solving problems.

You work in the sales department of your own career. Sell your ability to solve problems. Do not sell bits.

Hmm... I'm a 35 year old programmer and I work in Defense/Aerospace. If you think finding a good developer is hard, try finding a good developer who also holds a security clearance. If you're any good at all, you will always be employed and well compensated. The work can be dull, with Vogon-esque processes and procedures, but I have side projects to keep me sane :)

Every couple of years (ok, at least every year) I'll try to apply to non-defense jobs, and I get the impression that there's a glut of highly qualified engineers in the private sector -- "Sorry, we're being deluged with applications right now, we'll totally get back to you someday." And the interviews generally involve 3-4 rounds of hazing via Knuth. In the defense sector, they verify your clearance and credentials, check for a pulse, then show you to your desk.

Some are interested until they hear my current salary "You'd have to be a 10x RockNinja to make that kind of salary here." Yes, even Silicon Valley companies (and I live in an area with a relatively low COL). I'd love to find a remote job, but those seem to be even more competitive (understandable, I suppose).

Guess I'm stuck.

The developers we hire in their 40s don't all have degrees, but what they do have is relevant experience. Now that relevance may be domain knowledge in the industry, or it might be experience with particular part of our stack - the classic example is the very experienced Oracle developer. You'll all too easily lose out to the young, hungry graduate who will also need to learn lots of things on the job, but doesn't come with as much baggage.

The OP might well have lots of relevant experience but it hardly comes across in the post. Neither does any appreciation, or indeed even an active lack of appreciation, that "knowing people" is the way to break through the HR process. After 20+ years in development there's a degree of expectation that you have built bridges along the way with people who can recommend you - because they want to work with you again. Because that's the flip side of being the experienced hire, you need to have the soft skills to utilise that experience - be it coaching and mentoring, writing well, negotiating and influencing etc.

I've spent the last 13/14 years writing Perl so I started getting worried a year or two back that I was making myself unemployable by not branching out. I've been doing a lot of front-end development since, learning JavaScript and NodeJS to a good level, familiarising myself with JavaScript frameworks like React and Angular and learning/launching a couple of simple sites using NodeJS/Express and Python/Django (two other technologies I recently started to learn). Turns out this was the correct thing to do as I was made redundant about 6 weeks ago and it turns out there are a lot more JavaScript jobs in my area than Perl jobs. At least I've got a couple of projects I can point to now to show I have some experience. I'm still looking for something new, but I'm very glad I started working on expanding my skills before it became an immediate necessity. I guess this is the industry we work in. Oh, I also created a "hireme" website to try and sell myself. I'm not sure how effective it will be, but if nothing else, creating the website and listing my skills was a big confidence boost (I didn't realise how much I knew) - https://hireme.grepular.com - Feel free to steal the idea/design.

I want to start dating. I put my profile up to dating sites. I spend much of my days sending messages to women's profiles. I take their personality tests, but I never get messages (or replies to mine) even though I'm sure I get matches. I even started looking at niche sites such as "nerd dating..."

Dude, just get out and actually talk to women.

I'm not going to say how to get gigs, jobs, etc because I'm out of my league with the great people who post here. But whenever I see a post like yours, I see a lack of creativity and human contact.

I understand that you probably get tunnel vision from the stress. But try different things and different approaches. Try to get to know people. Get involved in different developer ecosystems. Talk to real people. Or get someone to talk to real time if not in person. Get that human touch going.

I like James Altucher's idea of list building. Brainstorm a list of different approaches you could take to land different work. Brainstorm other types of work that you could do. Brainstorm a list of side-gigs you could work on. Brainstorm anything, just to get that idea creation machine going.

You got lost somewhere by being the same for X years. What you need is chaos. You need to shake things up. Routine is good for the things you don't want to spend a lot of cognitive overhead (bedtime, eating, etc) on so that you can focus on creating explosive interactions in your mad scientist lab.

As a side note. Don't farm out your dev skills for less than a solid professional rate. Lowering the value that you get for your skills is a rabbit hole. No matter how far you go down that hole, there is still room for people to devalue you. They try to get the work cheaper, they complain about what you do. You could pay them for the opportunity to work for them and it would still be ugly. Better to take a minimum wage job than to farm your dev skills at less than a solid professional rate. Better to be a starving artist waiting tables than to cheapen your artistic skills by selling them to people who don't value them.

I sympathize with your trouble but what you describe seems exaggerated to me.

If within a year you made only a thousand dollars, why didn't you spend more time working on a side project, or sharpening your skills? Maybe the ones you currently have are not much in demand?

Also, freelancing sites do have a lot of low quality jobs, but if you spend some time digging around you can find decent jobs; e.g. I, a poor country resident, have found jobs that made me in a week as much as you claim to have made within the year.

And btw, I'm thirty-something, university drop-out and with a couple of huge holes in my CV. But that's not what I bring forward when asking for a job. Instead I project the most confident image that I have for myself and that's my advice to you, too (i.e. don't focus on the negativity of your current situation, it's not going to help you find a job).

I feel I can relate to this general life story. A lot. While I'm currently only vaguely looking for a job, I also share the same suspicions about general job options for freelancers - although I have to say that I have been extremely lucky in finding work so far. But I agree it sometimes looks like our work isn't very valuable.

In this context I have to say though that the HN freelancer thread, while yielding uneven results, has mostly been very good to me. (YMMV)

The deeper problem as far as the actual hiring process is concerned, however, might be - as hinted at in the article - the amount of work and hoop-jumping necessary just to earn the privilege of showing up for work. I found this astonishing, too, especially given the fact that most programming positions probably have a high turnover rate, and I believe it does have to do with hundreds of applicants showing up for a single position. The ensuing filter process is not only a drain on the applicants, but also on the companies that are paralyzed with making this decision.

I believe the mere existence of TripleByte and SmartHires shows over-supply is a problem, and it's underscored by the fact that they have no problems turning people away.

Here's the dirty little secret about "employability" you hardly ever read about in places like HN:

It's not about you. It's about your user and what they accomplish with the tools you build for them.

It doesn't matter who you are, what you know, what education you have, where you've worked before, what turns you on, or what you think is cool. It only matters what you can do for others.

It's really that fucking simple.

So forget about all the window dressing and find a way to demonstrate to others what you can do for them. The first step is to find out what they really need.

Like many others here, I am self taught, pretty decent, and love what I do. But the thing that has always separated me from other just as capable but "umemployable" programmers has been my absolute resolve to program for others, not myself.

I even remember one interview when I didn't present a resume, but instead a one-page project plan itemizing exactly what I would build over the next 90 days to help them solve their problem. I got the job instantly. (An extreme example, but you get the idea.)

I have never lacked work. And I'm confident I never will with this attitude. Try it, please.

I got a degree but am still unemployable because I didn't have a job when I graduated and apparently nobody hires unemployed people. It's like there's just some tiny step I need to get over. Recently a recruiters said all I needed was a little Java experience and I could be making a lot of money. But I have plenty of Java experience, why can't I find a job anywhere?

The worst thing about all of this is how harsh and degrading everyone is when you want to get into the industry. Questions are met with disgust derision, as if you are spoiling everyone's worldview. But I am just trying to describe my experience for survival reasons.

> When companies find out I don't have a degree that's usually the end of the road.

I have a difficult time believing this. I've worked for & know of companies through connections that care 10x more about your portfolio than degree. We've passed on Stanford grads & even a guy who worked at NASA, because they just couldn't physically bring themselves to code when we needed them too, they couldn't sit in front of a computer & actually build out a test feature despite loving to talk intelligently about the problem. It's not nerves... Degrees/ credentials can create these terrible comfort bubbles that prevent programmers from actually diving in & being productive. When you've been around enough it's easy to spot this type.

In my experience, portfolio is the #1 factor, and I think most companies would take you seriously if you have one w/ at least a couple full, impressive projects.

The "technology" industry is extremely and irrationally picky in selecting and retaining technical employees, primarily programmers or software engineers.

Not everyone does it. Not every company that does it does it consistently. It is largely subconscious. Technical or "cultural fit" excuses are typically cited to explain and justify the rejection of the taboo candidate.

There are a number of non-technical criterion that frequently push genuinely qualified, competent, indeed exceptional candidates into the "not qualified" category. These include:

o Over thirty-five

o Looks over thirty-five (worse)

o White or gray hair (even worse)

o Has a Ph.D.

o A new or recent (within 2 years) Ph.D. (worse)

o Lack of a college degree

o Identifiable membership in certain low status minority groups, notably African-American or someone with a Spanish surname and visible American Indian ancestry

o Female

o Over ten years of purely technical experience regardless of age.

o Less than three years of paid professional experience (working for a University or government research lab often does not count)

o Expresses skepticism of a currently popular fad in programming

o Obviously knows more or is smarter or both than the people conducting the technical interview.

o Just plain different from the dominant group at the potential employer is some visible way.

o A long recent period of unemployment (over six months, probably over three months)

By his own account, the OP lacks a formal college degree and is well over 35.

Degrees only matter for "serious companies" and are used as a filter by often clueless HR employees without technical background. As long as you can prove practical experience, you should be fine.

Your network, on the other hand, becomes more important as you get older. Hiring an unknown person in his/her 40s or 50s has a much lower risk/reward ratio than hiring a random developer in his 20s who will a) do whatever you tell him without questioning anything b) work himself to death and c) work for almost no compensation.

Stay away from oDesk and online freelancing in general. Most of what's outsourced online is low skill, low risk and low reward work (landing pages, analytics integration, etc). Almost everyone can do it, so suddenly you're competing with everyone on the planet instead of just a couple of 100-1000 freelancers in your city. One of your biggest advantages over 2nd/3rd world freelancers is your location, language proficiency and cultural background. Use it to your advantage.

Also, hiring is really tricky. No one has really figured out how to do it right and so you have these hiring rituals with IQ tests, personality tests, weird screening procedures etc. In the end no one wins, because interviewees have gotten insanely good at playing the hiring game and employers have become overly careful just not to hire a random guy who will mess up their code base in 6 months and then leave for the next gig.

My personal advice to the OP: if there are tech/startup/... meetups in your region, go there. It's a good starting point and it's fun most of the time! You can get to know some interesting people and that might open some doors!

Best of luck, if you're reading this!

> I would argue that the outcome of hiring an Unemployable Programmer might in fact be better overall, because we're motivated and we get stuff done - as opposed to the hipster "rockstar" programmer we actually do eat and breathe code.

It's odd that the author seems convinced that they are more productive than 'hipster rockstar programmers' who aren't motivated and don't get stuff done. Isn't that what they do by definition? And what's truly strange is how he seems to think that those types of people don't "eat and breathe code", when the prevailing sentiment on HN is that these 'rockstars' have poor work-life balance and don't do anything except code on evenings/weekends. It feels like he's lashing out at 'young people' in general who seem to be able to get jobs.

I seems that the author's lack of success obtaining a job stems directly from a lack of effort - or knowledge of how much effort is required. He seems to think he is entitled a job just because he's been doing it since he was a kid or because he's had a job for ten years.

I can say from experience as someone who was looking for a development job with no experience, much more is needed than passively posting on a job board, listlessly browsing oDesk, or even sending out a few resumes. Every intern hiring season, my classmates all end up disappearing from class and social life for a few weeks - sending out hundreds of resumes and applications, dozens of emails (cold or introductions), spending hundreds of hours studying for interviews, tens of interviews - pounding the proverbial, virtual, and literal pavement - resulting in most of us receiving one or (more often) multiple job offers.

We have openings we can't fill because we're specifically looking for "nerds" (those who actually do live, eat and breathe code). And I've got a similar CV with the exception that I never left writing software (I did give up on hardware development).

Care to e-mail me a CV?

Reading stories like these really, really scares me. I'm European, and next year my wife and I will most likely move to the US together (long story short: she is a US citizen, we have decided to move, and have already applied). I'm super excited about that. I currently work as a Rails developer, have a diverse background as a Linux sysadmin and developer, and have never had problems finding (or keeping) work where I live.

What I don't have is a college education. I'm also in my mid thirties, don't really have any US contacts, nor do I know very much about the job market there. Throw in some impostor syndrome and stuff like this creates a certain level of anxiety, to put it mildly.

I do a lot of interviews, and I interview plenty of programmers who have 10+ years experience or so they say. Knowledge of Java, C#, C++, Python, etc in their resume.

Most cannot tell the difference between private and protected.

Most have no idea what an abstract class is or a static variable. Let's not even talk about an interface.

The vast majority have no idea what transactions are.

These are stupid basic things. I don't ask any library or framework questions. I stick to the basics, to the core language. It's the most depressing thing ever. I don't even go into language specific details.

I understand why there are so many unemployable programmers. They let themselves rot. :-(

The whole 'do an open source' project is a crock. I single-handedly wrote a large Javascript module for a well-known editor. It's used by hundreds of people around the world but all the folks employing 'front-end' programmers seem to bin my CV as my current fulltime job is 100% Python.

I think being around 40 with a decade of dev experience should be pretty attractive, at least if the programming experience is somewhat modern. 10 years OO-programming should be translatable to any OO language with ease, regardless of what you actually used before, for example.

There are "unemployable" developers out there, but they are 10-20 years older and have 15 years of niche in-house platforms in some huge enterprise, and now they have no experience with anything anyone recognizes.

Unemployable because just 1 company on CV, no degree and around 40? Sounds strange.

I see this as a result of two problems:

1: We expect everything to be perfectly packaged and ready to go, including people. We aren't interested in investing in people. A cog is a cog.

2: Older programmers are more expensive (see: skilled), and are more likely to have families or obligations that prevent their hustle (see: working bullshit hours for free).

If he or she would put some contact info in that blog post they might be able to strip the 'un' from the title.

Where in the world does the author live??? I live in the Upper Midwest USA, and there is no shortage of local jobs at banks, health care, tech companies, and the one-off positions at obscure businesses. Now, hanging my programmer shingle out on the internet and Jesus - there are remote jobs pouring in from everywhere who pay even more.

I've got a Mechanical Engineering and Masters degree, 14 years dev experience on multiple stacks, so that does help my resume look nice, but shit man. Businesses are dying looking for qualified people.

> When companies find out I don't have a degree that's usually the end of the road.

So, this is the reason why no one will hire you? I find it hard to believe. The current company I'm working in found out that I don't have a degree after I signed the contract — they just didn't care at all.

But I would have huge problems hiring someone spent last 10 years responding to emails and doing nothing.

Judging by how easily you dismiss advice about github, you must have tried it. Care to give a link?

Now, seriously, if a software engineer in his/her forties is unemployable in 2015, what the heck is an accountant, lawyer, a builder, a painter or a woodworker to just name a few?

Come on. We are so lucky we did choose technology as a way of living. Sorry but stop complaining and start learning back new stuff. Can't believe what someone has to read.

-- A developer in his forties.

To the author - it's very difficult to go freelance directly to customers. However, one possible channel is via digital agencies, who often need work done on a contract basis. They usually have their marketing channels worked out. Attend in-person meetups, and let the organiser know that you are looking for work, and it will start to open doors.

I am self taught with no degree and honestly, I get at least an interview with about 70% of the places I apply to. I don't put my education on resumes and nobody EVER asks. I am applying to mostly startups though..

One reason I stayed in finance is that the programming scene is very fragmented. Some people say everybody that can do a print "hi" gets a job, yet many job advertisements come with increasing requirements. Startups keep looking for the 0.1%, whatever that means, that tells me that there is, indeed, strong competition for candidates (and that I have a 99.9% chance of not getting any job in those startups). Finally, age does come into play, one thing is to go into this at 20, another is at 30 and even another a 40, etc.

There is a lot of survival bias. So far, I did not hear any salary higher than 50k euro from face to face talk in Germany (mine is higher, with no coding job). Thus, I am also not clear how real is to have one of those $100k+ salaries just doing "normal" coding (no managerial stuff). If that were possible and achievable even in a 3 years span, I'd definitely jump into it, but reality tells me it's not. At least out of the tech hubs (SV, etc.), but then the 0.1% thing kicks in, so you have a 99.9% chance of not getting any of those jobs, while you have plenty of opportunity to get a steady carrier just where you are.

And finally, programming will go through some kind of "commoditization", it's already happening. It might be good to "only" be coding today, but 10 years from now, older and with kids (so no possibility to work week ends anymore), this will probably not be enough and will move you more towards the unemployable zone.

Just some thoughts from an ex-wannabe programmer.

IMO your problem is not lack of degree (personally, this is the last thing I check on a resume). Nor your age (I am also 40ish and more productive than ever). Your problem is your debt.

Is your physical location also having an influence here? There's no doubt programming jobs have got harder for a lot of people to get and I never believe articles about a shortage of STEM candidates (just there's a shortage of them at the right price). However, I know a few people in the UK who don't struggle for programming jobs (London area) even though they've got no university degree.

I took my linkedin profile down b/c I was tired of dealing with recruiters. I work for a top 5 Fortune 500 company making ~70k 1.5 years out of college in ATL.

I've interviewed with a couple companies just to see what it's like out there. I usually ask for some ridiculous salary b/c that's the only way I would leave my current job.

I find the interviewing process stupid. I had one company ask me to code up a fully functioning Angular site from scratch in some jsfiddle clone that I had never seen in 1 hour. It took me around 5-7 minutes just figuring how to work with the fiddle clone.

All the while I went in there as a guy who had written a pretty good Angular JS clone from scratch - recursive compiler and all. You would think that would be proof enough that I am pretty good at JS/front end dev. I just laugh at these interviews.

I'm also a self taught programmer, but I have never been treated less for not having a degree. I'm rather fortunate I guess. I once even wanted to work in San Francisco (I'm based in The Netherlands), and the first job I applied for actually hired me and flew me in every so often.

Reading this thread, I get the sense that most comments are from twenty-something guys. There is no way they would understand what the 40-something rusty programmer is talking about. It's call the invincibility of naive youth. You will be him in a few years.

I have a bachelor degree in EE and have been programming since 2 years, and also doing penetration testing since i love security, yet i have not even managed to get an interview at any company i applied to , don't even know what is the problem .

What about an on-line cursus, like, at Stanford, studying and getting the diploma. Of course, it may not be considered equivalent to the diploma obtained at Stanford in the Silicon Valley, but it would change you to a diplomed programmer, and you might get more doors open? http://online.stanford.edu/ There are others MOOC: http://coursera.org/ http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

I wrote a blog post a while back about how dropping out of school has impacted me professionally and personally. I feel it's relevant, even if my story did not involve exiting the industry for an extended period, because being self-employed for a decade puts me in a fairly similar position, along with lack of a degree.

http://www.likewise.am/2015/07/too-cool-for-school-a-retrosp...

To me it sounds like someone "good with computers" but doesn't really know how to program. All that stuff about "commodore 64" and "garage startup" sounds a bit like a smokescreen. OK, you liked playing around with computers as kid. Great, most of us did. And that made you good enough with computers that you got a job at BigCo. Then you got a little lazy and stopped learning new stuff. It happens. This isn't a condemnation.

I don't think BS is going to help. So here are a couple of options. If you really want to do startups and glam and make hundreds of thousands... you'll have to learn how to program in modern ways. It's going to take some time and effort. And you will have to build some real stuff. You might not have the time.. you are in your 40's, and you might not have the real desire to put in the effort. It's not you can't do this, you probably can but it's going to be difficult and take some real desire and most important some time and a lot of effort.

Here is another option that might be a better one. Go back to a BigCo. You have a history of job stability. You know about BigCo ways of doing things. You are good with computers. Get a certificate or two if you need to. It's not a million dollars but given the required effort, the pay is pretty decent for sitting at a desk. Forget about the 100K+ salaries you see bandied around. That's for something else.

> I felt drastically out of place, but for years it was just too damn convenient to go with the flow.

That sums it up.

My experience with oDesk was completely different from the Unemployable Programmer.

Yes, there are plenty of "lowest-wage programmers" on those sites. I never bothered to compete with them on price. I simply charged what I thought I was worth, and ratcheted my price up and up as I discovered that the market thought differently. Interestingly, as my price went higher and higher, the constant noise of "crappy" job offers quieted down and was replaced by a small number of great offers.

I did mostly software engineering and software architecture in my studies, just to find out that no one gives you a job as software architect right after university. Everyone has to start as a developer and one day, if he's lucky, he will score a job as software architect.

If I wouldn't have had a job as a programmer on the side (first a few months as intern) while studying, I wouldn't know much about programming.

Besides some of the other advice offered. You're probably looking in the wrong place.

Anecdotal story: I found myself working at a warranty company and a friend of mine worked at a specialized software company. We got together one day for drinks and lamented the fact that we had problems finding the right people. His problem was that everyone who applied was fresh out of college and had no true hands on experience, where he wanted senior programmers. My problem was that everyone who applied had a Masters or Doctorate degree and was applying for mid level/entry position.

If you're finding yourself unemployable in a particular area, you're probably right. More than likely though, you could find an excellent job at a company that isn't directly a traditional tech company. Every company in the world now needs to have an IT strategy of some sort. With an IT department of some sort. And I can guarantee that there are enough out there who are just looking for experience that they would hire you on the spot. The problem though is reaching out and finding them.

"But they're not talking about people like me, they're talking about twenty-something Ivy League post docs with stellar CVs."

We're trying to recruit a devops with AWS experience. We really don't care about which uni you went to or didn't go to.

Probably no good for you as we're in Manchester, UK but I don't think we're that unique.

One thing that might help is to stop selling yourself down. Like me, you are a giant risk because you have no degree. However, risks are taken all the time if somebody decides that there is a good chance that the risk will pan out.

Show to them why you are a worthwhile risk instead of showing them that you are more of a risk than you are.

Go contracting and your "employment" is safe. Always wonder how few questions I am asked as a contractor, earning thrice the money of my employed colleagues who have to go through painful hiring processes. Of course they can fire me any day, but that never happened to me and can happen to an employee as well.

Hello sir, you have possibly found your doppelganger.

I don't have time to type up my whole story, and a lot of it is in my comment history, but the gist is:

I started programming with BASIC and later QBASIC. Self taught, no degree. Video games / text adventure games were my thing. Later fell into web dev and loved it... until I got further along in my career and was entangled in some really vicious office politics. I also suffered from untreated depression for years (which I have now managed to get under control). Those things combined with some really stressful personal family issues coalesced into a nervous breakdown of sorts and I holed up in my house.

I haven't had a fulltime job in 4 years - I just contract remotely. Almost everything I've done has been through recommendations which is really the only way to go when contracting. I've had multiple clients whom I've never seen - just spoke to on the phone for a few minutes and then slack / email for the rest of the contract. Sometimes this works out well, sometimes it doesn't. I only made $30k last year and it was very spread out - there was at least a full week where the only food in the house were biscuits made with water. This year has been better thankfully.

Contracting is not my end goal - independent video game development is. At the end of the day I don't care about the money all that much. If magical riches await me in the future then I will accept them with open arms of course - but I'm only seeking enough to survive. I care about making things - I really don't want to go implementing the ideas of clients. I always fancied myself a creator and need to find a way to make my projects profitable so that I can find self-fulfillment through the things I create.

So, in addition to contracting for these last 4 years I've spent the vast majority of my free time improving my skill set (improved my python, dabbled with node, started building "modern" websites - SASS, Bower, Gulp etc).

I also started teaching myself how to make 3d games using Unity and c# (in case you're wondering, I'm creating my own assets, not purchasing them - and I have almost zero interest in creating mobile games). My girlfriend teamed up with me, started teaching herself 3d art and has already produced some pretty impressive models for the game we are working on.

I'm very interested in teaming up with a programmer similar to myself, or perhaps a group of similar programmers.

Edit: left out some words

I think it's critically important to get involved in a open source project in some way or create your own, i.e. on GitHub. My project svidget.js is up to 154 stars (at the time of this post). It not mind blowing stats, and it may be niche, but it's in a space (SVG and data visualization) that I enjoy.

The benefits are plentiful. I've learned more about JavaScript that I thought possible. It also demonstrates you have a passion for technology and it's just not a job. You have the satisfaction that are helping others solve technological challenges. If anything, you are more marketable which is the point of that article. Good recruiters and hiring managers look beyond your resume and looks for way that you standout.

I'm the exact opposite -- have a shitty degree (that I'm almost a bit embarrassed about) so I leave it out of my resume. With 10+ years of solid experience I compress my resume pretty tight to fit it into 2 pages but just leave out my degree. Most people don't care and I don't have trouble getting a new job (and no I am not a 20's something hipster programmer, whatever that is).

A degree doesn't show how smart you are, it shows you have the ability to get things done (or at least show up and do your work). But guess what? So does shipping real products.

Best of luck, UP. You seem like a smart guy so keep up the perseverance and get more stuff on that resume!

OP : that was jarring, and I feel for you. I'm sure others in this thread have already offered much more salient and actionable advice than I can, but I do hope you find a resolution to your unpleasant situation.

You have to sell yourself with confidence. Employers often want people who have enthusiasm (not just skill).

Unfortunately, people who had a really tough career like the author often tend to lack enthusiasm (which is understandable) - It's one of life's vicious cycles and it's almost impossible to get out of.

You just have to hustle. Try a lot of different things and make yourself known to as many people as possible - It's all about odds. If you find a way to spam out your resume to thousands of potential employers, you're bound to get some responses.

Feels pretty accurate. The real source of the problem is political, meaning how people perceive tech in modern days. It's very different when you look at IT business history.

Going mainstream implies major changes, which are not technological, but still exclude many players because big corporate players bring immense business differences.

To be honest, skill and intelligence never mattered when it's about success. Humans want to be happy, technological progress interests nobody. That's where the "overskilled" comes from.

This should come with a huge YMMV.

The demand for programming skills varies across locations, skills and age. Certainly you can be an unemployed programmer but adjusting locations/skills can greatly improve circumstances. ODesk/Freelancer gives you very little control over demand and hence, you are just a commodity. I've yet to see anyone doing well out of it from a contractor side but plenty of people doing well who need cheap contractors fast.

Understand the market or someone who does will take advantage of you...

It appears that the OP is in Germany, which is probably a more significant issue when trying to get work with US companies and/or with US-centric sites than not having a degree.

I would look too into jobs where programming is an asset. I wasn't initially contracted as programmer (caption reviewer of all things), but managed to bring code into most problems, automate away lots of repetitive processes and create tools and workarounds for whatever we didn't have yet on our main app, or even to help customers integrate with our API. Conditions may not be as good as a plain software engineering position, but you may have a bit more freedom.

What about people that instead NEVER had a job?

I got my degree in 2009, at the height of the crisis (for now at least... here in Brazil the crisis of 2009 is finally getting worse), I NEVER had a legal job, all the stuff I put in LinkedIn were semi-legal or outright illegal stuff (or my startup).

Also my programming language of choice were clearly a poor choice, I learned C, and C++ and whatnot when I was a kid (I was 6 when I started to learn coding), those are clearly mostly useless now.

I can empathize. Perhaps getting involved in open source would help?

The OP was a little bit light on details of the exact work under-taken at the 'company' but I'm guessing it wouldn't be interesting enough to pass the sift of most recruiters.

That's tough but with Open source you could get involved in anything you felt like, make a contribution, get recognition and reboot/re-skill that way?

Still, it's not an easy or quick solution though and YMMV.

You don't have a degree, do you have a portfolio? If not, then how can you expect to get a foot in the door with no easily verifiable proof of competency?

My first job out of college in 1999 (getting my CS degree) was a startup. The other devs there laughed at me and told me my CS degree was worthless. I went home and seriously contemplated whether I did indeed waste my time in college. Fast forward 5 years, a dotcom crash and several interviews later, and I can tell you with certainty that degree was worth it every step of the way.

Reading this and other posts, is there even a market for an American Mediocre Programmer?

Seems like employers would rather just hire a H1-B from TCS instead because then they know are tied to them via the H1-B, whereas a mediocre programmer who is trained up would become a better programmer and might leave once they are good at their salary doesn't commensurate?

I think the important thing that the author acknowledge he missed is not getting to know the right people. Get to know your coworkers, connect with them on LinkedIn, and keep those connections fresh. When you need to find a job later, you can tap your contacts network and have a much better chance than randomly applying or using a hiring agency.

Working 10 years for a company looks like a reasonable history in my eyes. Show what you have done and learned in that time.

If you can find some spare time, perhaps invest in open source? It's an easy way to diversify your CV.

As some said this post feels completely uninspired. If you breathe code you have a world of options to create a living wage. Go out, meet people, work with them (create their minimal products, help them further their agenda) and you will see results.

Sorry to hear you are having hard times. I notice you don't mention anything about your skillset? I am based in the UK and there seems to be a huge supply of work around in mobile and web. Whats your current skills in?

I sympathize with anyone that have convinced themselves they are stuck even though conditions for success is at an all time high. Chin up and either network or build something usefull yourself.

Depending on your circumstances, there may be a strong argument to be made for your completing a degree program. There are MANY more options now compared to when you were in school.

Where are you based? What programming language skills do you have?

Where do you live and what is your skill set? If you know PHP, .Net or Java, look for jobs in the Washington, DC, area. There are plenty.

You've got a few things working against you but I doubt you're actually unemployable. I don't want to say you're doing it wrong or that I have a better formula, but here are some things to think about.

Your age, the buzzwords ("skill sets") on your CV, lack of college degree, possibly lack of recent relevant experience -- all of those can be negatives and will keep you out of a lot of jobs. So don't try to get those. You can't fight prejudices or stupid hiring processes.

You have to present yourself as someone who can solve business problems, because that's what companies actually hire and pay for. No matter what the job posting says no company or client actually needs a PHP or Ruby programmer. What they need is someone who can translate business requirements into working software. Get the focus on your ability to deliver.

When I talk to a potential client I start by asking them to tell me their top handful of business problems or pains. I pick one that I think I can help with and talk about that. We almost never get into technology or languages because those are incidental to actual business requirements. Many business problems are not actually programming problems. Just because a client has 300,000 lines of Ruby code I don't need to write Ruby to help them with their PCI compliance audit (real client). Another client had an enterprise logistics system written in Java, but that had very little to do with shipping charges calculating wrong -- I don't have to be a Java guru to figure it out. The problem was fixed with almost no programming, just correcting some data that was formatted wrong between systems.

My point is that you need to present an appealing package with some obvious business value to the client or employer. You don't choose a car based on a list of the parts in it (CV), you choose it based on perceived value, appearance, and emotional appeal.

Instead of applying for every job and putting yourself on job sites and scraping the bottom of the freelancing barrel on Fiverr develop a few skills you are really good at and sell that expertise. Identify companies or business niches you want to work at and knock their door down. Make the deal low-risk: I don't charge clients if I can't fix their problems.

Meet more people. Most people get their jobs from contacts, friends, even casual acquaintances -- I got a job lead from a guy at a bar in LA after we started talking about bourbon. Get out in the world. Don't treat everyone you meet like another node in your network, though. People like to help friends and people they like, so be the guy people like. People don't like to help the constant network-builders.

I'm not saying it's easy, but you need to play a different game, because a programmer in his 40s without a lot of recent relevant experience with the latest toys is not going to stand out. Sorry, but no one cares about your startup experience or what you did five years ago. They care about what you can do for them right now, so focus on that and don't get bogged down trying to win the recruiting numbers game.

Presumably it was the author that posted this. So why hasn't he commented?

That's my biggest fear trying to make a living in this world.

Coffee and techno, dude. Coffee and techno.

I can relate to the author of the article.

Programming is seen as the silver bullet to solve employment in many countries resulting in you competing against a whole continent with a 100 million IT pros, all super smart foreign students who studied in the US, thousands of school leaving kids wanting to become programmers because they grew up playing games or owning laptops/iPads/smartphones and programming is made a core skill in schools. They're even teaching programming in prisons. With all the free online courses and code schools there isn’t a barrier that stops anyone from becoming a programmer where as other industries have barriers of entry. If you are a tech professional, you're competing against the biggest pool of potential workers in the world all willing to do anything to get a foot in the door.

In my experience I find there is a huge ageism issue in the IT sector. At his age the author seems to be insinuating it's due to his lack of degree but I can safely say it's his age and not the degree. I find a manager in his early 30s late 20s won't hire a programmer older than him. Similarly a manager in his 40s won't hire a developer his same age. In applying for positions I find I can make it to the final interview but then it comes down to my age not making me the perfect fit. It's like the unasked question is why you haven’t made it and if you are still looking for a job at 40 so you must be damaged goods. The other big disadvantage in the tech sector is years and years of experience is not valued as it is in all other industries. At 40 the stigma of old tech being listed on your resume is seen as a negative rather than a positive. Fitting in with your co-workers is another big issue with hiring managers and HR and it seen as a risk that you won’t fit in with people 10 to 20 years younger than you.

When I complain to others I hear stories of someone who knows of x developer at 40 who still works as a developer but they’re obviously not starting from step 1 looking for a job so that comparison I always find stupid.

I do agree with other posts that networking is the problem as 90% of job are not on job boards. However as a programmer I find networking is hard because you are focusing on completing x feature/project and generally want to work uninterrupted for long stretches rather than spending time at sucking up to a manager or co-worker that might help you in the future. Also I find unless you have something that someone wants I find networking at 40 is difficult because people generally don’t want to network with you.

The lessons I’ve learnt are primarily the entitlement that I felt x years ago is something I have to get rid of very quickly. I’ve always thought if you give me problems and I always solve it that means I am special. However I realize I’m just like the other billion wannabes with the huge disadvantage of my age. I feel like I have to work 10 times harder now that I’ve been given the scarlet letter of age to wear around my neck. That said knowing the problem is the first step to solving it so I can at least be optimistic.

My advice. Understand you always have to learn and have to solve the networking/self marketing problem. Try to have a purpose even if it’s just a dream of a purpose. Even if have to take up a non IT job full-time because of your situation you can always code part time. With a strong base and today’s ease of access to information, picking up new language is surprisingly easy.

The press, and some people here, are always saying they can't find good programmers, and it is certainly something that is overstated. One reason there aren't enough good programmers are people in your situation - you got by for a while programming Javascript and web full stack in Germany, yet now, during an economic boom in tech, you are increasingly having trouble finding work. As you get older, and if the tech market slows, you could be in worse shape. You're a data point for bright, young people who want to increase their tech skills towards why they should not want to go into IT.

That aside, I think you can still get work. You just sound discouraged after the rejection and sound like you are beginning to think a little fatalistically. Yes, not having a CS degree hurts you and yes, being at one company for over a decade slightly hurts you (not that much though) and yes, being in your early forties also hurts you. You don't say whether you're working that full-time decade long job any more (or maybe I missed it), if you were laid off, that also will hurt you more than if you're still working there, companies prefer hiring people already employed. You are over-discouraged though, you can still get work in this market.

You talk about going through many hoops, talking to many people, and a lot of weight given to college. Which sounds like a lot of applications to big companies. Only a big company could spend so much effort on each person, put a lot of weight on official credentials etc. So one thing to do is - don't just apply to big companies! Apply to small and medium sized companies as well. They often don't worry about college degrees as much, you're often talking directly to the decision makers right away, if they like you they often have the authority to hire you. Applying for big companies is fine, but mix it up a little.

Another thing - you say companies are interviewing dozens of people for each position. OK. What is going to put you over the top? The answer is different in different situations. From small to big companies the answer is usually technical and personal. For technical - picture the people interviewing as being a Gaussian curve with a normal distribution - the x-axis is how technically good you are, the y-axis is how many people reach that level. Where do you have to be on that curve? If a friend is bringing you into the company, you have to be in the middle or better. If you are going into a company cold, you have to be (if you're having trouble like you are) one standard deviation above the mean in terms of ability. If you're two standards above the mean, then you should be having no trouble.

What you have to realize is most people are in the middle of that bell curve. Most Javascript programmers can tell you what data types in Javascript are, what the "this" keyword is etc. You probably can as well. But if you start digging deeper into how well they know Javascript or frameworks their knowledge is not that deep, and they start mumbling the answers. The average Javascript programmer with your experience have an almost interchangeable amount of knowledge - they all have the same level of depth. But every dozen interviews or so you get someone who really knows Javascript and certain frameworks backwards and forwards. People who know more than you. When you are interviewed, you should write down the answers afterwards and honestly ask yourself if you explained things clearly and in depth. Honestly, you should be able to knock every question you are asked out of the park with a very in-depth and clear answer. Because there are people who are being interviewed who can do this. Giving some sort of half-answer where I know you know it a little, and then missing a few questions doesn't cut it - because most other Javascript programmers with your experience can do the same. Knowing this cold is what puts you above the pack.

Insofar as personality - it depends on the company, the people and how badly they need someone. Most of the time, if your technical skills are one standard deviation above the norm, and your personality is normal, we usually offer the job. I've interviewed people with very strong technical skills but their social skills were not just slightly poor but very poor. They continued answering questions after being told several times that their answer was sufficient, and continued talking even after being told "OK, stop talking"! (obviously things had become a little bizarre on their end when we the interviewers felt we had to tell someone "stop talking" - which they ignored, and continued talking!) Or people who were great technically but seemed very angry and had their arms folded in front of their chest the entire interview, and made a kind of sarcastic grunt after each question. Actually I would have even hired that person, but my boss torpedoed him and I wasn't surprised. I mean, I myself have made a faux pas when I have gone on an interview - but at least I knew from the interviewer's reaction that I had made one! Some people seem oblivious.

Another thing - just hit up everywhere. Put your resume on Linkedin, look on Stackoverflow careers, Craigslist jobs board, angel.co jobs, whatever people do in Europe (and also look for remote Javascript positions in San Francisco and elsewhere). Jobs aren't always posted everywhere - if there is a Javascript meetup or jQuery meetup in, say, Berlin, their mailing list might have job postings you can't find elsewhere. See where people are meeting up in your city, or nearby cities, to talk about jQuery or Javascript or full stack web development. Go out, talk to people. Pass out your business card. If you don't have one, make one, they're not expensive, you can make them same day if necessary at some local print shops. Your best resource is often letting programmers you already know know you're on the market. Some of this is for future reference though - one reason it's good to keep in touch with people once in a while is so you're not only contacting them when you want a favor. Not that them possibly getting a referral bonus for their big company hiring you is exactly that much of a favor.

For the longer term (not now), if you think not having a CS degree is blocking you, you might think about getting one, perhaps at night. It helps in a number of ways - human resources prefers hearing you're halfway to having a CS degree to not having one. It also gives you a technical foundation - you'll learn things like what is first normal form, second normal form, third normal form etc. are if you don't already know. Also you meet people and your network can grow - again, that depends on you meeting people and keeping in touch.

Another longer term thing - I am an Android programmer. Android was first released in 2008, but even in 2011 the local Android meetings were pretty empty - we could all sit down at a table in a local bar. Now local Android meetings sometimes have dozens, if not hundreds of attendees. I picked a new technology stack which took off (one billion Android phones sold last year). Lots of companies are looking for senior Android people with a lot of experience, but the only people they have to choose from are those handful people who were sitting around the local Android meetup table in 2011. Whereas Javascript is 20 years old and Javascript programmers are a bit more a dime a dozen. The thing though is - there are a lot of local programmers who write Java web backend programs (for Tomcat, or Wildfly/JBoss). They have a solid job, so why change. Over the past few years, web has been fading a little, and native iOS and Android have been rising. It is still to the extent that it is too early to put much weight to it. It's understandable why someone making $120k a year or more with a lot of Java web work around might not take the risk of jumping to an Android job. Why they wouldn't play around with it as a side project is more of a mystery - this is where they start to get into your situation. Because I can tell you, the middle-aged go-getter guys from our local Java group are always working with the cutting edge so they don't fall behind. They're working with Android Tango at the moment, which even I feel is too far ahead of the curve for me. Although maybe if I was smart I'd order those $500 tablets and start tinkering with them.

You were too complacent over the last decade - it should be obvious to you know. It's not fatal as times are good. When you get your next job, you have to make an effort to get a diploma, keep up with the latest technology, keep in touch with people and so forth, or you'll be in a worse situation next time around.

20 somethings aren't comfortable hiring 40 somethings. That's the bulk of it, and if you think this isn't true you're lying to yourself.

If you're in your late 20s and coding is all you've ever done, be afraid. Domain knowledge is where it's at.

I am in a similar situation to the OP having started off with a ZX Spectrum, did CS, coded, but in my late 20s I was tempted into fixed income finance, and did that for 15 years at the highest level (unrelated to coding - I was a strategist and trader). Then in my late 30s I picked up Python, then R, and now know both really well (plus C and a bit of JS, Ocaml). What I find in my interactions is that the whizz-bang programmer guys, who are better than me at coding (though not by much - I picked up again pretty fast), are completely useless at mapping their skills to the finance domain, while my knowledge of both fields is where my value lies. I would strongly suggest to programmers that they ensure they know a non-CS domain too, preferably a niche one (we're such a big world now), and know it well - practise it as a primary activity for a few years. Climb the learning curve again even if it's hard at first. It is in the nexus between CS and other domains that opportunities are still plentiful.

I'm a bit past my mid-20s, so I might be talking out of my ass, but can't you rebrand yourself as an "independent contractor"? "Years of industry experience, broad skills applicable to your situation, comfortable with legacy code bases, able to get started immediately, flexible payment options tailored to your project, etc."

Better yet, find some more people like you, as you're trying to do, and start a consulting company together. You could each use your connections to find work for the others, put in a bit of your profits towards upkeep of the company, grow your network and so on.

You may be unemployable if you put yourself in the same bucket as the recent college graduates, so make your own bucket.

Being unemployable is fucking great. You don't need to put up with any of the bullshit that comes with the 9-5. My holy shit moment was when I found a major corporation was willing to pay my year's salary as a dev for a software I created. You mean I just sell you this license at the cost of my entire annual salary as a dev without having to work 9-5 for the entire year? Fuck yeah I'll do it. An interviewer might not even have noted the sheer challenge behind designing & shipping by oneself with no pay for over a year (obviously rote memorization is of much more value), but somebody at some large company found it valuable enough to pay the equivalent of my year's salary had I been a developer. The best part is there's very little maintenance or cost involved. Just answer email and provide support. After the sale, the hard part of the work is done. I guess I could get somebody to manage the after-sales part but I really enjoy talking to my customers and the greatest thrill that it's helping their business.

Since then I've been practically unemployable. It makes no sense if I could make an entire year's worth of salary after a few phone calls and a quick demo. The only downside to this is that you have a lot of idle time. Obviously you can't do sales 24/7 (I wish I could). I'm still trying to figure out how to best use my idle time instead of obsessively commenting on HN or Reddit or playing Counterstrike. Get out? Travel? I don't know yet.

You can do this too. You absolutely can. Don't sell yourself short so you could have a 'secure' job. Don't become a slave to appease others and censor yourself to keep a job. Your time is the single most valuable asset in your life. DO NOT SELL IT FOR CHEAP. Control your destiny. This is capitalism. This is North America.

I had too much coffee, I'm out. mic drop

TL;DR: Get your money's worth. Don't waste time applying and going to interviews for a 9-5. It's not for you.

"People at the office were nice. They had very modest and orderly lives, but they didn't have any interest in science, creative tinkering, or anything fanciful really, so very unlike the people I had worked with before."

I really hate this characterization. Are there people at the office like this? Of course. But there are also plenty of offices that have people like this. They just have their own interests outside of the office job that they like to spend their time on.

To the author of this piece:

Have you tried any of the following alternative in your quest to land a job:

1- Theme marketplaces like Envato.

The competition is really fierce but you could make it and establish a name and sharpen your skills and be up to date when the latest trends and movements in our profession.

2- Kickstarter campaign to crowd-fund a technical project that you're passionate about to showcase your technical skills and expertise and as an opportunity for you to reboot your career.

Average is over.

Moral of the story is: stay in school, kids.

Not a fan of this. I think the OP exhibits some toxic mindsets.

> As a final station, I'd like to describe what online freelancer markets look like for people like me. On freelancer.com and oDesk, you compete with hundreds of lowest-wage programmers from third world countries for exceedingly crappy "projects". It's an unmitigated race to the bottom.

Why does the OP feel entitled to not have to compete with others? Why should he be given a "not crappy" job? Because you were born in the US?

Fuck that attitude. Here's what happened. The OP stagnated, and other parts of the world didn't. Being from a first world country does not make you special. And it no longer shields you from the brutal realities that most of the world goes through with respect to human competition.

> Maybe even more alarming, the nature of these jobs has changed, too. A year ago, you could sell some landing pages and some basic web programming. Today, almost every inquiry you get is for some illicit script to scrape social media sites.

Yes, the world moves on, the nature of work changes, and things that were valuable 10 years ago become commodities. Being a programmer means being able to program many different things; you know how demands are changing, so either adapt or die. Or switch what field you work in. Construction workers can get $35 an hour, and it's better for your body.

> I feel obsolete, and I'm afraid it's starting to show outwardly.

Woe is me.

> While I was asleep at the wheel during my generic office job, the world moved on without me.

So what are you going to do about it?

> Being able to get work in this field without a fancy background is still possible, but only if you have the right connections.

So work at making those connections.

> Personally, I will just keep looking. Maybe something will turn up.

No, don't do that, it's the same shit that isn't working for you. Go to some meetups, conferences, hackathons, etc. Take a part-time job doing something else to be able to afford the time to build the connections you see as being so important. Buy books and read tutorials (and build side projects) regarding new technologies you want/need to learn. Hey I'm not saying this is the best plan, but any plan is better than no plan.

Or are "connections" your way of excusing your ego for slumping in life? I can blame others for having good genetics all day long, but I'm still going to go to the gym to improve my physique.

---

Be proactive when shit hits the fan, when you miss out, when you make mistakes. There is no alternative.

True story: had an uncle who outperformed everywhere he worked. He faked his own references (via fax at that time) to get in the door, and when people made reference to university he just sidestepped the question or gave vague "yeah" type answers as he had not attended but had left school at the minimum legal age and become self employed (and failed a couple of times). Everyone else studied for 4 years to do what he did better than them.

Not saying you should fake it, I'm saying employers need to stop thinking donuts can't be iced by anyone with less than a masters degree. I've seen a masters grad unable to get through a door that had a security card swipe thing because there were no instructions, even though she had the card in her hand. Sometimes a course isn't what's needed to get a job done.

I get where the OP is coming from, but it was his responsibility to move on sooner. I worked DoD for a time and lasted 9 months before I left out of a) boredom and b) feeling my skills completely rot away. I chalked it up as a retirement job I would go back to when I was ready to hang out from 9-4 every day.

I had another job where I learned a lot, but after a couple years the job became repetitive with no further learning opportunities. At that point it was time to leave, because if you are not moving forward you are moving backwards.

People need to take control of their own careers.