An inspirational read. Personally I am at a strange spot in life where I am trying to rediscover my own self worth as a programmer after working for several years as the CTO for a small startup company. I've been out of work for a few months now. It can be hard to wake up and know that the places I have interviewed are not interested (there have been several). It isn't that I am trying to get another executive position because a "programming" position would do me just fine. I am just trying to keep a positive outlook and move forward. So it is good to read about success, I guess, that is the result of hard work. Anyway I feel adrift. I am working on my own project/potential company so perhaps that will turn out to be a way to feed myself. Probably it wont. Am I out of the programming game for good? Sometimes I feel that way, but I can say that I was mesmerized by that first hello world.
What positions are you applying for? Roughly how many places have you applied to? How far do you get in the interview process? What do you think is the reason for not getting the offer?
Probably people feel it's dated and not appropriate for tech, but What color is your parachute stills seems fundamentally sensible to me. Points like:
most jobs aren't advertised; think of your search like shopping for a job that suits you; see how you are solution/resource for some problems; and what silent questions interviewers want answered, or should want. In order: why us? can you do the job? what's special about you? will you fit with us? can we afford you?
There's a lot of encouragement in it, especially extensive sections taking inventory of what you have to offer, your knowledge, skills and especially what engages you.
I don't know what the issue is exactly. I worked for two years at an insurance company using c#. It was a good group of people. I decided to join a startup. I worked through the process of growing the technical side of that company from 0 to 150,000 paid accounts. At almost the 10 year mark, I was let go due to financial difficulties. The company that I worked for, which still exists, is now run by one person - the original founder - in conjunction with a partner company that now manages the stack and handles sales. It is a bit of an odd story to tell and evolved into what it is today because of the pressures of trying to keep a company alive, I guess. I went from being a programmer to being the CTO during this time. I wasn't managing a team other than an intern once in a while so I was responsible for administering the servers (AWS) just as I was responsible for furthering development. It all fell to me for the most part. We did have another programmer for the first couple years, but they left. It was pretty taxing to be honest.
When I am asked how many people I managed I can only honestly say two interns and am then told my skills are not enough.
When I am asked to take home a programming assignment or whiteboard something the end result is that my skills aren't good enough.
It is a mystery to me because I built a system that currently processes 80 to 150 million emails a month. It encrypts them, it stores them, it makes them searchable. There is even functionality to encrypt outgoing emails as well! To be fair the core component was already built prior to me joining the company: the PKI api. But as needs grew I built around that. I built the web interface (not the design: I'm not a god). I wrote code to process incoming/outgoing email. I created an ES cluster that scales itself (probably not very well and search is astonishingly slow, but the customers don't seem to mind given the low price tag). I programmed in php, perl, ruby, javascript, and then eventually heavily used golang for its concurrency. The system is not perfect nor am I.
I too thought that people would be super interested in working with me, but I haven't found that to be the case at all. I guess am not good at networking so here I am. If you want to see what I have built in my own time recently, the url is in my description. It is a tragic example of my design skills and the code is all my own. Interestingly - or not so - it is entirely written in golang (+ gopherjs).
Damn, it looks like they’re slotting you into a tech lead / people management role because of your years of experience when your experience is better suited for a senior IC role.
Regarding the coding challenges, could it be that your code structure / cleanliness has atrophied from not working in large groups?
How good are your algorithms / data structures skills? If not already good, would you be able to develop them from practicing leetcode? Many people complain about fang style interviews but the nice thing is that if you are capable of doing those kinds of problems there isn’t as much other weirdness in getting a job. With your yoe you would qualify for going straight to phone interview with pretty much any company on interviewing.io if you do well on a few practice phone interviews there first. (I’d also be happy to provide referrals to a couple companies if you can do leetcode style problems.)
Yeah I have become painfully aware of the downside to be found in being the only developer at a company: no finger on the pulse of where the industry is moving and no experience with working with a group of people, which probably yields better results. I was always interested in teaching myself things and continue to do so - my current personal project uses kubernetes, which I am finding is nice enough to work with - but my algorithm skills do need some work. I practiced at hackerrank for a certain period of time last year. I found that I could not think up solutions for the hard problems off the top of my head. Medium problems were hit and miss. That isn't to say I couldn't understand an answer if it were presented to me.
Thank you for the suggestion. I will keep your offer of a referral in mind thank you. Where would these companies be based out of curiosity?
Comments
An inspirational read. Personally I am at a strange spot in life where I am trying to rediscover my own self worth as a programmer after working for several years as the CTO for a small startup company. I've been out of work for a few months now. It can be hard to wake up and know that the places I have interviewed are not interested (there have been several). It isn't that I am trying to get another executive position because a "programming" position would do me just fine. I am just trying to keep a positive outlook and move forward. So it is good to read about success, I guess, that is the result of hard work. Anyway I feel adrift. I am working on my own project/potential company so perhaps that will turn out to be a way to feed myself. Probably it wont. Am I out of the programming game for good? Sometimes I feel that way, but I can say that I was mesmerized by that first hello world.
I have so many questions.
What positions are you applying for? Roughly how many places have you applied to? How far do you get in the interview process? What do you think is the reason for not getting the offer?
Did you have any kind of exit at your startup?
Probably people feel it's dated and not appropriate for tech, but What color is your parachute stills seems fundamentally sensible to me. Points like:
most jobs aren't advertised; think of your search like shopping for a job that suits you; see how you are solution/resource for some problems; and what silent questions interviewers want answered, or should want. In order: why us? can you do the job? what's special about you? will you fit with us? can we afford you?
There's a lot of encouragement in it, especially extensive sections taking inventory of what you have to offer, your knowledge, skills and especially what engages you.
Not interested as in you don’t pass the interview? If you have several years of experience people should be knocking down your doors to recruit you.
I don't know what the issue is exactly. I worked for two years at an insurance company using c#. It was a good group of people. I decided to join a startup. I worked through the process of growing the technical side of that company from 0 to 150,000 paid accounts. At almost the 10 year mark, I was let go due to financial difficulties. The company that I worked for, which still exists, is now run by one person - the original founder - in conjunction with a partner company that now manages the stack and handles sales. It is a bit of an odd story to tell and evolved into what it is today because of the pressures of trying to keep a company alive, I guess. I went from being a programmer to being the CTO during this time. I wasn't managing a team other than an intern once in a while so I was responsible for administering the servers (AWS) just as I was responsible for furthering development. It all fell to me for the most part. We did have another programmer for the first couple years, but they left. It was pretty taxing to be honest.
When I am asked how many people I managed I can only honestly say two interns and am then told my skills are not enough.
When I am asked to take home a programming assignment or whiteboard something the end result is that my skills aren't good enough.
It is a mystery to me because I built a system that currently processes 80 to 150 million emails a month. It encrypts them, it stores them, it makes them searchable. There is even functionality to encrypt outgoing emails as well! To be fair the core component was already built prior to me joining the company: the PKI api. But as needs grew I built around that. I built the web interface (not the design: I'm not a god). I wrote code to process incoming/outgoing email. I created an ES cluster that scales itself (probably not very well and search is astonishingly slow, but the customers don't seem to mind given the low price tag). I programmed in php, perl, ruby, javascript, and then eventually heavily used golang for its concurrency. The system is not perfect nor am I.
I too thought that people would be super interested in working with me, but I haven't found that to be the case at all. I guess am not good at networking so here I am. If you want to see what I have built in my own time recently, the url is in my description. It is a tragic example of my design skills and the code is all my own. Interestingly - or not so - it is entirely written in golang (+ gopherjs).
Damn, it looks like they’re slotting you into a tech lead / people management role because of your years of experience when your experience is better suited for a senior IC role.
Regarding the coding challenges, could it be that your code structure / cleanliness has atrophied from not working in large groups?
How good are your algorithms / data structures skills? If not already good, would you be able to develop them from practicing leetcode? Many people complain about fang style interviews but the nice thing is that if you are capable of doing those kinds of problems there isn’t as much other weirdness in getting a job. With your yoe you would qualify for going straight to phone interview with pretty much any company on interviewing.io if you do well on a few practice phone interviews there first. (I’d also be happy to provide referrals to a couple companies if you can do leetcode style problems.)
Yeah I have become painfully aware of the downside to be found in being the only developer at a company: no finger on the pulse of where the industry is moving and no experience with working with a group of people, which probably yields better results. I was always interested in teaching myself things and continue to do so - my current personal project uses kubernetes, which I am finding is nice enough to work with - but my algorithm skills do need some work. I practiced at hackerrank for a certain period of time last year. I found that I could not think up solutions for the hard problems off the top of my head. Medium problems were hit and miss. That isn't to say I couldn't understand an answer if it were presented to me.
Thank you for the suggestion. I will keep your offer of a referral in mind thank you. Where would these companies be based out of curiosity?