Ask HN: What Are the Job Prospects for a Developer with Only Proprietary Exp?

7 points by FishAngular12 7 years ago | 9 comments

Hi, out of college (CS Degree) I got a job at a large software company, utilizing a proprietary (and primitive/simplistic) language, which I've held for the past 8+ years. This language also doesn't seem to have a modern-day standard counterpart. I am getting bored of it technologically speaking, and would like to have the opportunity to have a development job elsewhere in the country.

How bad is it to those who are hiring that this is my only development experience? If I were to learn a new framework such as React or Angular, would I essentially be starting back at square one (in terms of Junior Software Developer role)? Would my prior experience be basically meaningless?

twunde 7 years ago |

So the good news is that you have a CS degree and that does make a difference. When you switch jobs, you won't be at square one since you do have engineering experience and you've seen what works and what doesn't. However your going to need to spend time learning new skills, possibly on your own. It's helpful to look for industries or specialities that are orthogonal to what you've worked on. For example if you had worked at Epic on EDI, you might look for jobs involving EDI, healthcare, or datawarehousing. The other thing that would be useful is to specifically look at companies that are looking for generic engineers and/or are willing to train people in the tech skills that they'll use. Examples of that include Google/Facebook etc. Also make sure to talk to a few recruiters. They have a bad rap but they should be able to give you a sense of the market and what might make sense for you.

FishAngular12 7 years ago | |

What would be job titles for careers for a CS/software developer that are specifically based on data warehousing? I'd be interested in looking up such jobs and seeing their requirements.

twunde 7 years ago | | |

You'll often see these entitled data engineers, data architects, data warehouse engineers. Terms to search for are data warehouse, data lake. Industries that use EDI tend to have datawarehousing jobs. These include healthcare, energy, retail shopping

matt_the_bass 7 years ago |

I think the key is to figure out a way to demonstrate that:

- you are not set in your “old” ways

- you can learn new tricks

- understand fundamentals of CS

Note this is the same list as for any candidate (imho) that I’d be interested in. The challenge is you don’t have “common” languages and frameworks to use as a signal of these characteristics.

Make sure your resume shows what problems you solved. Don’t emfasize the tech stack if future employers won’t recognize it.

Also consider staying in the same industry but other employer. The tech stack won’t transfer but the domain knowledge will.

FishAngular12 7 years ago | |

I actually have a contact through a family friend who is in upper management (with a development role) at a company in the industry. His company is a much smaller shop and more of a SaaS, but I believe their tech stack is much more mainstream. I might reach out and ask them what they think I'd need to equip myself with to join them.

matt_the_bass 7 years ago | | |

That is a great start! Networking is always a good resource. At minimum you’d get some relevant feedback.

laurentl 7 years ago |

Speaking as a potential hirer (in the sense that I manage a technical team and regularly look at both junior and senior dev resumes):

- if your CV only lists 1 language/framework and it’s one I’ve never heard of, I’m not likely to keep reading.

- if you have 8 years of experience in the same company, I expect to see concrete achievements and ideally that you moved up the ladder in 8 years (more responsibilities, changing teams, a new job title for instance)

- not something I insist on, especially for a senior profile, but which can have a positive impact on a candidature: is there a portfolio website or a GitHub profile on the CV/cover letter? This allows me to see what language(s) the candidate has used in the past, take a look at their coding style, check the commit history (e.g. a repo with 1 huge “upload project” commit and no other activity smacks of someone who’s never used git before)

Given the shortage of devs, you’ll find a new position. How fast you find it, and how senior it is, is up to you. I encourage you to pimp your 8 years of experience to show portable skills (problem solving, autonomy, system design...) rather than proprietary tech knowledge, and a capacity to grow and learn (i.e. show your progression during these 8 years).

Then, assuming this isn’t already the case, pick up a popular language and work on a few projects in your spare time. This will enable you to brush up on your CS skills and programming paradigms, especially if the language you use at work is primitive: do some OOP, try your hand at FP, asynchronous or parallel computing, etc. Make sure the code is clean and commented, and throw in some unit tests. Commit to github like a sane person, and add the relevant language and frameworks on your CV. Bam! Suddenly you’re a developer with 8 years of experience who happens to know a weird language.

Of course this is only good enough to get through the automated CV analysis and the first interview. But in that interview you have the opportunity to explain what you accomplished in 8 years (maybe pointing out how solving tough business problems with an antiquated language is even more impressive than with the bells & whistles language du jour). You can point out that you want more and that’s why you work on side projects with a modern language (which incidentally is part of the company’s stack). And since you’ve been coding on your free time you’re hopefully up to date on basic data structures and algorithms and you’ll pass the whiteboard tests brilliantly.

FishAngular12 7 years ago | |

Wow thank you so much for your time on this answer. You've really helped calm my fears and doubts, as well as provided me with a foundation for a strategy to make myself a marketable candidate.

I've found a Multiplatform React Native To Do/Notes application that is open source and on GitHub. I think I will try to cut my teeth with RN and JS on this application.

If I am successful with this, and eventually fix a couple bugs and perhaps implement a new feature, would that be helpful at demonstrating my aptitude with the JS/RN framework?

Thanks again for taking time out of your day with this great contribution.

beefalo 7 years ago | | |

For someone fresh out of college or a boot camp that might be useful for me, but when looking at a candidate with a lot of experience (5+ years), I would not really be too interested in languages they used unless they were in large projects at a full time role. Coming from where you are, I would think getting some chops in a more mainstream language would be helpful. If that language were to be JS I would not personally be looking for anything related to React/Angular/Other framework but just general knowledge of the language and, for JS specifically, the web platform and tools.