ccdev

That's an interesting thought. It never occurred to me that feedback on technical skills is more commonly given than feedback on communication skills. How did you discover that?

Also, withholding certain kinds of feedback because of fear of reprisal does not seem like an effective way to manage or improve your employees. So they'd rather fire you without telling you how you needed to improve? That doesn't sound like good management to me and it sounds like these are the types of managers I should avoid.

I am at a loss for networking ideas.

But almost everything about soft skills on a job interview feels too orthogonal and dissimilar to my applied work soft skills. Interviews like that are more suited for sales jobs, I think. Sales skills seem like they have been put on a pedestal. Therefore I cannot see these interviews as an accurate representation of most soft skills at work.

Edit: Also about my older thread, are you referring to the one about returning to an office job after 2 years of being away from it? I really do feel like this is what I need and almost all the jobs I apply to require daily 9-5 office work. I'm a homebody and hang out only with 3 people regularly. It remains to be seen on the "when" of I'll get that kind of job.

People don't know how hard it is to get a job offer until they are unemployed and don't have a good network. I would love it if I never have to worry about finding another job again.

Wrong assumption - the majority of my on-site interviews don't even use whiteboards. They involve discussing real world problems and work experiences with me. I still do not get offers from them.

A C++ job would be interesting for me to take on (I have used C++ in projects mostly from the mid-late 2000s) but I need to brush up on current standards even there. Would I be at a huge disadvantage right now in most jobs if I cannot yet code C++11 compliant code?

A lot of my correspondence involves talking to non-technical people such as project managers, so I have gotten to figure out how to communicate many things to non-tech people.

1) I usually don't. Unless I really bombed on a problem and am stuck on solving a problem for so long, I really can't tell true negatives from false negatives by the tone of someone's voice, or what they say to me.

2) I apply to mid-level jobs. I used to apply to senior positions (have held 5 jobs) but as I'm getting so many rejections, I've lowered the bar since.

Going by the phrase, "walk before you run" I consider myself still in the walking phase for many skillsets, yet even if I apply to jobs that are less challenging to get into, many people assume I have enough experience to run and say I cover lots of ground but not a lot of depth to have an exceptional strong point. And this is coming from someone with a lot of experience in small companies, where "running" is the norm. I thought years of experience is just a number? Many people learn at different rates, and have a diverse set of work histories.

3) I do some research in questions I should ask, and what I should know about the company beforehand. Typically would be able to find some work they're doing and bring it up.

4) My go-to questions to ask interviewers is "how long have you been working at this company and how have things changed since then?", "What is a typical team size for engineering/development?" and "What is the onboarding process like for new hires?"

5) Interview practices are almost impossible with a friend because I don't know any close friends in the industry, or with any experience interviewing people in general. More of a homebody so I don't talk to many of them. Because of that, I don't believe a mock interview with a random friend is a good substitute for a real interview, because they will not have actual experience in hiring developers.

For now I'll have to wait until October if I want to re-apply to AMZN, and there are no local companies (I'm from Chicago) that have hiring practices similar to them. I get tons of resume rejects locally.

I'm also not interested in starting my own business. The typical "startup scene" outcome for a typical person is to be in your 30's with 5 short-term jobs and zero net worth. I don't feel like I make a big impact in small companies either.

My city is full of these and there is the disconnect online I get from interview prep guides on algorithms, but none of that benefits me in the local companies I apply for.

A lot of these companies flat out ignore me, despite that I know OOP development well enough for a couple of years.

So much revolves around taking in new tools and frameworks that it's become fashion. That's a big reason why I want to head out of web dev too.

Along with that, it seems like most web dev jobs just are hooking up API endpoints for applications that don't get a lot of traffic, so there are no interesting speed/performance problems to solve.

The median "startup scene" outcome for a typical person is to be 30 with 5 short-term jobs, zero net worth, and wondering if it's too late to get into a real stable career. Picking a startup that will "take off" and earns high valuation sounds like a time-costly numbers game at this point.

It's pretty good for the most part, but being gamedev related, it is not a very lucrative spot to be in. Initially I tried finding another PT programming job to fill in the extra time, but that proved to be fairly difficult, so I'm just riding out the rest of the contract while keeping my options open for a full-time job somewhere else in the future. I chose this job because it really spoke to some of my coding projects and it's a nice pivot away from my usual web development fare.

I've been using my extra time to pursue various topics and hobbies (both programming and non-programming related) and on errands for my mom (I currently live with her). I hope to go back full-time soon and live independently again.

The biggest difference to me is not in working part-time but telecommuting. Returning to an office will be a necessary adjustment. It can definitely affect your ability to socialize and communicate in-person, especially if you're more of a homebody like myself. I've found that to be more harmful to your career than even just idly surfing the internet, as people tend to hold certain expectations towards your network and ability to attain job offers at certain lengths of tenure.

Remote: Depends on position

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: JavaScript, C# .NET, WebGL, HLSL/GLSL, PHP, MySQL, HTML/CSS, C++

Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chriscajas/

Github: http://github.com/ccajas

Email: chris.cajas.m at gmail

Current part-time contractor game dev who has held previous jobs (local and remote) in back-end and front-end web dev. Open to move to the west coast, and looking to continue to explore areas in computer graphics and real-time simulations. PDF resume available upon request.

Being self-taught, I have started to feel trapped, hard to do anything outside of web development or mobile apps. My subpar network also limits that selection of jobs even more. Unlike most programmers that have gotten more experience, I did not earn the luxury of being picky with jobs. A lot of people also recommended that I get a CS degree if I want to work in something way outside the mainstream web jobs (my aerospace interest for example).

There's also the ironic advantage that new graduates have in the job market- they are held to less strict hiring standards by large companies, and generally speaking, their school experiences have more similarities. As someone that is mid-level, I felt a strangeness in some companies I apply to. That happens when a company holds all mid-level programmers to the same standards, even though the patterns of what mid-level programmers experienced (and the knowledge they missed) varies much more greatly than the patterns of new grads.

I see a return to college as a second chance in having a prosperous life where I like doing what I work and have less to worry about my company keeping me in good hands.

1. If they tried hiring me as a mid-level Rails dev, I'd be too inexperienced in Rails

2. If they tried hiring me as a staring Rails dev, I'd be too underpaid

So apparently, my past web dev skills are non-transferrable to some companies that hire web developers. Yikes.

Most of my experience is with small web shops and startups so you could definitely get their attention. They just left me with a bad impression when one of their recruiters ghosted me hard. According to LinkedIn the recruiter still works there but it's been difficult trying to get a hold of someone else.