Ask HN: How lacking speaking and writing could I get a programming job?

3 points by nevergetenglish 11 years ago | 4 comments

I have a Ph.D. in math and four years in CS (I drop out of CS because I began to study my Ph.D, luckly I was able to put together my studies in Math and CS and publish some papers about complexity of algorithms in top rank publications (I got tenure in a good university). I can program in many languages, python, ruby, lisp, scala, javascript, Mathematica, julia, R and others. But my main weakness is lack of experience developing any big project. I don't have a github account, it seems I am always learning and I, perhaps wrongly, believe that learning increase my opportunities more than developing, I have very little to show up for any prospective employer. Also, as I read English only sporadically and write a little bit, my speaking and writings skills are very weak.

What would you advice me to do to get better prospects to get a programmer job? I would prefer to do it remotely but that seems much more difficult.

On top of that, I am not so young, more than 30. Perhaps you could suggest another kind of job related to programming?

As I have never worked with a team, I imagine there are many unknown unknown, so I don't have any clue about how I would fit in any team. One day I was reading about advice to be a good data analyst, and P. Norvig words are etched in my memory: you need to have a lot of experience in big data analysis, It doesn't matter what or where you studied, you need to have a lot of hand experience with big data.

Perhaps is too late for me, to pursue this path and I may find a career outside of programming, but I enjoy learning and coding and I will try get a job in this field.

Added at 17:51, Madrid local time.

Thinking about all the difficulties, it may be an alternative to think about creating a start-up, but now the problem is what kind of product or service can I/my team/, provide that is of real value? But perhaps this problem is bigger than the first one, is a bootstrap.

rmcastil 11 years ago |

It's never too late to switch or alter the direction of your profession. Plus you're asking for help which means you're moving in the right direction.

It sounds like you're at a bit of a crossroads. The first thing I'd suggest is to pick one thing and stick with it. Stop the learning.

If you want to get into programming and develop your portfolio the following is what I'd suggest

1. Create a github account.

2. Find a project that interests you. I'd look at this thread from the other day on what OSS projects need the most help with documentation for projects https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8551624

2a. As you're looking through projects, look for ones that have maintainers who show they welcome contributions and are willing to go the extra mile with communication. The way to figure this out is to look at past pull requests and closed issues.

3. Once you've contacted the maintainer start helping. I'd suggest focusing on the documentation and issues first. Steve Klabnik had an excellent post on how to be an open source gardener http://words.steveklabnik.com/how-to-be-an-open-source-garde...

4. Start a wordpress, medium, or blogger blog.

5. Every time you learn something write about it and PUBLISH it

All this advice is applicable to working on two main things 1) Figuring out if you really want a career in programming 2) working on your weakness, which is communication in English. If you have any questions or want to talk about better next steps feel free to contact me. My twitter handle is in my profile.

nevergetenglish 11 years ago | |

Thanks, sounds like a very good advice. But perhaps documentation is a no so appealing endeavor.

Another weakness of mine is that whatever I do I want to be paid in advance. I just don't see a quick ROI from working on documentation but I may be wrong.

dreamweapon 11 years ago |

Sorry that I don't have time to do your question justice, but real quickly now:

(1) "Over 30" is still quite young.

(2) Don't worry about finding an ideal job right now. Or for the next 3 years, even. Just get any job that pays the bills in whatever city you happen to live, which doesn't drive you crazy every day (just some of the days), and which doesn't look like too much of a "resume stain." (A little bit of a resume stain is OK, for now).

(3) And how do you get that job? Just keep applying, applying, and applying. It's like dating: you'll encounter (a hell of) a lot of rejection at first, but soon enough you'll find someone who sees the "real you", and will look past the faults that others can't get past.

(4) Once you've done that -- everything else will take care of itself. Time will expand, and, as if by magic, you'll find space and energy to work on your big data skills, your github profile, your English, whatever.

(5) And BTW, don't worry about your English. It might ding you in interviews (and you should definitely keep working on it), but it's really quite good. And you can take comfort in the fact that 99% of the people born in monolingual English-speaking environments in the U.S. (if that's where you are), i.e. the very people dinging you in interviews for your sub-perfect English skills, are themselves total wimps and klutzes at foreign languages, and would basically starve to death if dropped in a non-English environment and no one was willing to take pity on them and help them out despite their being too "lazy" to immediately become natively fluent in the local tongue.

nevergetenglish 11 years ago | |

"Just keep applying, applying, and applying."

I know persistence is great virtue, but I was wondering if there is any way to get real work experience (team, communication, real job conditions) and at the same time getting a good salary, that seems highly unlikely now. Only way to get it if you are able to, in same way, show something outstanding of a great value for your employer, what doesn't seem easy to achieve.