innomansland

thanks! and good question - same locale but jumped ship to be a contractor.

I was a team lead prior and dealt with a lot of vendors where I was approving their time sheets so I saw how much they were being paid. Told myself.. WTF, why aren't I doing this?? Paid twice as much, way less accountability (parameters of work are all defined per project or per SoW) and I don't have to be stress out about the politics within the company. Also.. as a contractor, my schedule consist of half the time on customer's premises and the other half dealing with internal dev teams which gave me loads of flexibility of WFH.

This is the unfortunate reality for IT positions in any industry in Australia - Full time positions have not many upsides and contracting is the best way you can capture as much $$$ as you can. There are some downsides but upsides outweigh it by a mile!

using my throwaway account but have some comment history on my career (i did a Ask HN post on pivoting my "career" last year). I saw someone from Sydney posting their history so I thought I add my perspective from another Australian lurker:

Date - Company ID | Starting Salary | Percentage Increase Role | Role

2005 - Company A | $20/hour | 100%! :) | Part Time Tester

2007 - Company B | $48,000 annual | 20.0% | Graduate Engineer

2009 - Company B | $65,000 annual | 25.0% | Engineer

2010 - Company B | $70,000 annual | 16.7% | Consulting Engineer

2011 - Company B | $78,000 annual | 11.5% | Consulting Engineer

2011 - Company C | $120,000 annual | $53.8% | Engineering Specialist

2012 - Company C | $125,000 annual | 4.2% | Team Lead

2013 - Company C | $128,000 annual | 4.5% | Team Lead

2014 - Company D | $210,000 annual | 64.0% | Solutions Architect

2015 - Company D | $225,000 annual | 7.1% | Solutions Architect

2016 - Company D | $195,000 annual | -1.3% | Solutions Architect

2017 - Company D | $205,000 annual | 5.1% | Solutions Architect

2018 - Company E | $150,000 annual + bonus | -26.8% | Management Position

edit: took out notes since it wasn't relevant and rearranged fields to look more uniform. If you have any questions, on each role, feel free to AMA.

Hey Pavel, not sure if you reply was for zeptomu or myself but i just checked out ipfabric and it looks really interesting! I hope it is ok if I send you an email about this?

hey dave, really awesome feedback! I couldn't thank you enough.

I actually agree on most points, especially on the ageism bit considering I am not exactly old. It is been my sneakiest feeling that it is my resume and/or cover letter.

I saw in your profile that this is an area of expertise. Will it be ok if I engage you for some help? I will send an email via my personal account later in the day if it's fine with you.

Interesting (and very uplifting) story! I love this bit:

> i submitted the 42875th iteration of my cv

I have to say this, I chuckled loudly at that cause I think i am at the low hundreds at this point!

That confidence thingy is a very interesting perspective. I think i am confident with myself but it probably just applies to my current industry and it is possible that I do not come across that when I apply for jobs outside of my forte and industry. I do note that with the constant rejections, I am noticing more and more that I am feeling dejected.

Hey, thanks for sharing your story. Hearing all these personal experiences does put things into perspective for me and realising there are many people like you out there.

I don't think you should get too hung up about having big name companies on your resume. As a anecdotal data point, I worked in 5 companies till now and 3 of those companies are internationally well-known yet even I am in your shoes - no callback or interviews.

As others have said in the thread, before considering doing a masters just for the sake of it, spend some time:

- persisting with your job applying. Sometimes it is just a numbers game.

- start working on your own personal side projects.

- get involved in the local <$programming> meetups, communities, conferences, etc

Good luck!

Customer Support or Operations.

I see where you are going with this! I always thought I knew exactly what I want to be in but what may be specific for me may be vague to someone else.

wow, you are doing more of a pivot then I am!

In my years of working, the most rare gems I ever found was people that are not only good at marketing but can code. If you are a champ at these 2 skills, man.. such a killer combo.

I said somewhere above but I actually do code and have a portfolio of side projects but it doesn't seem to matter (at least with the companies I have applied for). Nevertheless, you are right that 3 months is not that long.. I will start despairing at the 1 year mark! :D

Haha I definitely not think myself as old! I think antiquated will be a better term. ;)

This actually crossed my mind! I worked with these guy and he was recently "fired" and straight off in 2 weeks, he found a job in another industry. I was curious why and took a look quickly at his LinkedIn profile and wow, every cliche buzzword you can imagine is on his profile.

My profile is fairly straight forward plus I just can't bullshit the way he did it.

Gosh, reading what you just typed hits home real hard. Replacing all the technologies, companies and achievements with my own and I can relate word for word. And i am almost a decade younger!

I won't be much help since I am in the same boat as you but all I can say is keep your chin up mate and hope you pull through and find something!

Thanks for the offer mate! That was really nice!

I want to note that I actually do still have a job (funny enough, most consider my company as "consulting") and the reason I want to change jobs is simply that I been in it for 12 years and want to move on from my niche.

Also, being in telco for so long, I have had my fair share of dealing with Accenture, IBM, Deloitte, Infosys, etc and no offense to these companies but it is not exactly the sort of working environment I will like to be in having been in a similar company for the past 5 years. ;)

Exactly!

There is one thing I am absolutely confident with is my ability to not only deal with customers but to also lead technical teams to deliver what they require. I have great references from both my clients and internal teams hence why I thought this will be an easy enough transferable skill to other industry. Nope! After applying for similar pre-sales roles in other industries, I get the feeling that most require actual experience in the industry that role is in (which is fair enough).

This is gold! Can't thank you enough for your input.

Just as a side note, while my professional life is very "narrow", I have been doing stuff on the side! I own 3 dropshipping sites (WooCommerce & Shopify) and 2 pseudo-SaaS sites (one MEAN stack and the other Meteor.JS). I started these projects last year just so that I can get my hands dirty in the latest web technologies (last time i made a full fledged website, I was using LAMP and/or Perl!) and also, hopefully, generate some side income for myself (my FI goals is a story for another day).

Anyway, I did include these projects in some of my applications where appropriate but it seems to be ignored. There was another Ask HN thread on this particular topic [1] and it seems that side projects are generally ignored?

You did raise an interesting point on meetups, coding dojos, conferences, etc which will provide an avenue for me to meet people to hopefully build a network outside of my current profession. There is one thing I am absolutely confident with is talking to people! I love being in customer support. :)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13463105

Just to be clear, I was never told that I am "too old" but simply wasn't a "culture fit". Note that particular reason was given probably 1 out of every 10 times and the other 9 times, it is usually along the lines of "we did not find you a good fit for the role".

Funny enough, I do have a particular industry (actually two) that I am extremely interested in - FinTech and Cloud Computing/Hosting. Neither which I have any commercial experiences in and only ever dabbled on my own free time.

And yes, I have tried cold emailing companies that I am interested in but no dice. :(

Thanks for your reply though! Did get me thinking.