achicagodevdude

I'm newish to HN so I don't know if I can DM you through here. Do you mean another website, such as LinkedIn?

As far as experience goes, I call myself experienced only in the sense that I held a few paid jobs in this career. It would be splitting hairs to redefine "experienced" in some other way.

The oldest job in my resume was indeed a hard one to put much detail in it, given my short time there. I wasn't even allowed to write code in that job at the time I was working there. It literally was just look over these source code files, document possible errors in Excel- all without having to run the code- and send it over to the team lead. (code analyst would be a better title, then?)

The second job was mostly CMS/WordPress type setup of websites, and occasional custom backend work like the essay reviewing system and the CRM application for the cleaning company. These applications were for my company's clients, and did not directly contribute money for the company. It's a web dev agency, and in these places, it's the salespeople that make the company money, not the programmers.

Most of my career has been job hopping from small company to small company with little mentorship or guidance for good development practices. Lowering my targets would invariably lower the quality of companies I'd be able to go at, or can it not be that way? I need to improve myself by positioning myself as a junior hire, and surrounding myself by employees much better than me.

So work at a place where I can experience better career growth, while juggling the task of lowering my target. I think that is where you're referring to, when you said go some place where I can make significant contributions.

So looks like a reset in my career is in order then. Would it be fine removing my oldest job from the resume?

As far as my name on Github goes, I'm okay with it showing up, just didn't want to post a very direct connection to personal info.

Regarding interviews I hardly get any algorithm questions that are found in CTCI.

Most of the technical interviews ask me practical knowledge on languages or tools, like how would I write a query for some problem, build a simple splash page with X set of features, etc.

It may be more of a west coast thing to ask CTCI questions. Interview styles might be like hip hop or food styles...it probably varies by reason. Local companies don't ask them much. The only companies that asked me those are Amazon and TripleByte.

I don't know of any resources for mock interviews.. my friends and family aren't familiar enough with my work to do a proper one. There doesn't seem to be much of a market for professionals to do mock interviews, which I find interesting.

Also, looking into the future, when I get my next job, what can I do on the job that will keep my interview skills fresh?

Besides Upwork, what places do you suggest for freelance work? And the freelance work wasn't on an online marketplace. It was from an ex-boss that gave me side projects that his employees didn't want/have the time to work on.

I don't write cover letters unless it's required. Almost all my jobs I apply as a total stranger.. I hardly know any software engineers, and none of my friends on Facebook know of anybody looking to hire one.

I only had one friend refer me to a job in 2015. She knew the CEO of a small company. After two onsite interviews I didn't get an offer. It an was odd reason. They changed their mind on giving me a technical assessment because they already concluded that I wasn't fit to do the assessment.

It's usually pretty generic stuff. I wasn't a good fit, or they found someone else that's a better candidate, etc. Liability reasons cause them to withhold details. Many people consider all interviews practice, but practice only makes you better if you get proper feedback.

Here's my resume (with most names redacted): https://www.dropbox.com/s/6290viuyjbr09jc/web_resume_swe.pdf...

I have also a short freelance job that at least shortens the gap of time.

Finally, I can show my resume (with most names redacted)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6290viuyjbr09jc/web_resume_swe.pdf...

I do send my resumes with a list of projects in them, with Github links. Only a few have said anything about them. If you want to take a look, it's here: github.com/ccajas

If I have to be considered as a junior to be on boarded and learning from other, so be it. I never had much guidance from more experienced people anyway. Small companies usually cannot provide that, so it's possibly time to get a fresh start as a junior at a large company. A good old "soft reset" might be the thing my career needs. I'll remove past jobs from my resume, and just keep my education info and list of projects.

> Can I suggest you reconsider your approach to applying?

Yes, you can suggest that. What other approaches do you recommend for applying?

I've had a Github profile for a couple of years, usually filled with some graphics programming or game projects, coded in C#. That's one of the languages I'd be interested in finding a job in. In 3 years went from learning what a reference type in C# is, to writing a graphics engine using .NET that uses object pooling for best performance, and can be implemented as a DLL for other projects. And learning HLSL for writing my own shaders, doing thing like optimize a parallel split shadow mapping algorithm to run in a single pass within the 512 instructions limit of the Shader Model 3.0 spec.

I also made a software rasterizer in JavaScript, it's very small in size uses no 3rd party libraries but supports z-depth checking and texture mapping.

As you can see I like doing graphics stuff in my spare time. But I'm not sure how to sell my skills in those projects to more "mainstream" web development jobs. My real world JS work is not as novel or even up to current standards. At the last startup I worked on a front end JS code base totaling over 25K lines. And it didn't use any modules. No Grunt or Webpack, no packages to automate builds, bunch of jQuery function calls with little grouping to them- it is JS but JS circa 2009.

So basically I have some novel projects but my dev practices may be "out of time" with certain companies. So I'm looking to see how to show the better side of my skill set.

I don't alter my resume on a per-application basis, but I have a web development focused resume for web dev jobs, and a more general software engineering one for non web jobs. I make changes to both of them every month or two.

I apply to very few junior or senior jobs. Mostly mid level jobs or other SWE jobs that have no title modifiers. Most of the feedback leads me to the conclusion that I have too many years to be considered for a junior role, but lacking the experience for a senior one.

That lead me to ask about jobs that are more lenient with ramp up time. I'm the career version of the student that repeats the same grade. I've had poor opportunities to follow industry trends.

I am going to meetups more often this year. Trying to do at least two a month. This is the only way I talked to developers BTW. I don't have any Facebook friends who are SWE's or even know a SWE.

Can't share a resume, at least not now, as I'm typing from my phone. And I cannot use the laptop for internet at the moment. My resume docs are in my laptop.

No links now, but recent companies I've applied to: Akuna Capital, Braintree, Vokal, Cloudflare, DialogTech, BMW, ParkWhiz, Enova, Power Reviews, Vivid Seats, Uptake, Amazon, Morningstar, Rocketmiles, Nerdery, Sprout Social. I am willing to move if relocation is paid for. Most rejected me at submitting my resume. I bombed first tech interview with Amazon. But I'm in the interviewing stages with Cloudflare and Akuna Capital.

>Have you actually found positions you're interested in?

Yes.

>Have you been applying, but not getting interviews?

about 1000 applications since late 2014, and about 20 interviews

>Have you been getting interviews but not succeeding?

No offers from any interviews in the current job hunt.

What is the usual percentage of offers that I should expect? How many applications is the usual to send before someone gets their first offer?

By the way, I've been with countless recruiters in the past. They haven't been very helpful.

I've been to their offices a few times, have been on many phone calls and get moved around from job opening to job opening but I never have gotten an offer because of a job recruiter.

Currently I use BuiltInChicago, Indeed, Craigslist, WeWorkRemotely, Angel.co, and LinkedIn for sending in applications.

I still need the following questions answered, as mentioned in the OP...

What are some places in the Chicago area that:

* Don't care what tech stack you've used?

* Have a large enough tech team to tolerate a greater ramp-up time for new hires?

* Years in the field mean less to them, because they can just hire and place someone where it's appropriate?

Well, I started in 2007 so your projected statistic wouldn't have been very relevant. In 2007 I should have been able to get a full-time job more easily, yeah? Yet even in 2007-13 I only have gotten cheap contractor offers.

I'm not interested in part time gigs. My contract jobs pay too low, highest paid one was $25/hr. I'm looking to settle down for a salaried position with benefits (as any decent job would have) while I still can. Nearly all the jobs on the local boards are still full-time with benefits.

I've already tried. None of the recruiting firms have been able to lead me to job offers. I got a few interviews, but that's it.

There's a lot of detail in my original post, so you would need to provide more detailed, personalized advice. "talk to a recruiter" would be already attempted for someone that's been on the job search as long as I have.