Due to the stress I'm afraid to seek the job as a python backend developer, as I truly believe that I lack modern skills and previous employment was too focused on telecom things.
What skills should I learn? Should I learn and then apply or apply anyway? Each failed interview is like 6 months of doing nothing... How to escape this vicious loop?
I'm a below average programmer with around 7yr of experience.
1) Go out for some exercise (45min of moderate walking)
2) Get some sunlight
3) Check your Vitamin D levels
4) Drink about 2 liters of water
5) Eat healthily
6) After all this, start thinking about your employability again
Never forget that when one opportunity closes, others open up. The following metaphor might seem like quackery, but "instead of focusing on a sick tree, look at the entire forest around it"
100% on this. Exercising, especially lifting weights, feels like you're improving yourself after every single session. You will literally see the difference in the mirror.
It's something that you can control. You can't always control how lucky or successful you are in your career. But you can always control your exercising. Once you improve the way you look, you start to feel better and people will also see you as more confident. Slowly, you'll get more opportunities.
Tldr; control what you can first which is your body, and the things you can't control will slowly get better.
Many studies show exercise is as good if not better than drugs at treating depression.
* Just apply to everything, you'll get used to it. Don't be picky, don't focus on backend, look for testing, QA, etc.
* Polish your CV. Do NOT try to explain anything regarding the last 3 years in your CV. The CV is just there to get you into interviews. Just state the pure job facts as they are.
* The most important thing is to get you into a job. ANY job. Be flexible with compensation. Once you are back in the game, it's much easier to find something else.
* Never, I repeat: NEVER, mention ANY kind of mental issue, be it depression, anxiety, whatever. While you might get sympathy, it is a huge red flag to any HR department and will result in you not getting hired. Seriously, pretty much ANY other explanation will be better than dealing with mental problems (well, maybe don't use "jail"). Don't be afraid to lie, your personal issues are nobody's business. Just say you traveled the world. Learn to lie convincingly, details matter!
> Don't be afraid to lie, your personal issues are nobody's business. Just say you traveled the world. Learn to lie convincingly, details matter!
Agree, don't talk about personal issues, but, don't lie! Then you have to keep up the facade and it's exhausting. If you want to be honest, perhaps smile and say the last three years are behind you...
No offense, but that would be a terrible answer. IF you really, really want to be honest, say you had medical issues, but that it is all fine now. No interviewer will dig deeper here, as it would be plain illegal to do so. Still, I think there are better answers than that. I'm sure the OP did SOMETHING in the last three years. Maybe you traveled abroad a bit, read a few books, so just say you took some time to grow as a person, whatever. It's not really lying if there is some truth in it.
1. Design and Build a project. Add it to Github, and commit to the main branch as you go. This makes it open source.
2. Once done (or while you build it), make a web portfolio which includes a description page and even demo of your project
Recipe for improving skills:
- study video tutorials (and code along) via udemy.com
- roadmap.sh for ideas
- libgen.is for free books
- chat rooms like IRC, Discord, Slack (google "discord channel for <thing that interests you-- such as Django, Flask, or another framework or a language>" -- substitute Discord for IRC and see those options)
I didnt have a CS degree. I taught myself full stack dev skills, then built something, then published a website about it. I used it to land my first 100% programmer job.
Also, prior to that 100% programmer job, I was a "business analyst" which involved some scripting. To get that role, I had to move states-- from the South over to California (San Jose area). I literally camped out for a month, then rented a room for a month-- until I landed my first job, then started renting a studio-- about 2 months in to my stay.
It's not necessarily the easiest path, but it's doable for some, depending on various factors.
Depression is very hard to deal with alone. For physical wounds, we have very well developed mechanisms to tell us how to rest the wounded body part.
Things that mess with our perceptions are a whole different beast.
As others have said - First self care.
Things that help with depression the most consistently without going to a therapist is regular exercise.
Dont stress if you cant do it every day. You wouldnt push yourself to run on a busted ankle.
Small moves here, open up smaller spaces elsewhere, and so on and so forth.
No joke though, getting back on top is work.
Also - motivation and drive are major attributes for being recruited. Why do you think that was less important than your programming skills?
I also heard this saying recently that I like, not sure who said it originally:
“If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present.”
this is more proactively aligned around your current value and interests.
it also includes volunteer, nonprofit, consulting, teaching. just really get aligned around service and helping and even if you dont land a job out of it directly, your confidence will benefit.
I got out of my funk by giving up on finding a "real" IT job and instead taking a part time job teaching English that paid less than anything I'd done since the middle of college.
But having to dress up everyday, go somewhere, and talk to a lot of people made me stop projecting a cloud of gloom (apparently), and resulted in a good temp job that turned into my current, permanent employment contract.
You most likely don't have the exact same option, but don't discount the benefit of having something that you have to get dressed and leave the house for on a regular basis, even if it doesn't pay well or at all.
If you're below average after 7 years and unemployed for the last 3, it makes one wonder why you keep trying to do this? You're a decade in and it isn't working out. That's okay. There are millions of other things people do to support themselves.
What else do you enjoy? It might not pay as well as being a programmer, but it probably pays better than being an unemployed programmer. Why keep your wagon hitched to this one path?
It doesn't sound like this is the path for you. I don't know what voice is telling you otherwise, but I wanted to add mine in to say you don't have to keep trying to do this.
Oh. And never ever ever give up. We are all below average at something that is why humans work in teams
A lot of companies use recent employment as a filtering mechanism: if you have a big gap in technology employment, you might have trouble getting interviews.
I'd say to create an LLC on your own that serves as a consultancy and to put that on your resume that you're working with them to plug this gap. Register on freelance sites and take any jobs you can: even shit underpaid jobs. Make some money and get your skills a little current and use that to bypass the hiring filters.
Pissing anything other than excellence is often frowned upon, so build your legend accordingly...
Apart from that, and as others have also recommended, building a portfolio is a great approach towards employability.
Eat healthy, exercise, meditate, socialize. Do not despair. Surely with ˹that˺ hardship comes ˹more˺ ease. Best of luck !!
Exercise of course.
1. It is hard to explain not being able to land a job for 36 months for a Python backend developer, even if you are below average as you said, or too focused on a niche industry. Unless you have very high standards and if you are willing to work for a not-too-fancy company for industry average or slightly below salary, you should have found one.
One thing comes to mind is this has nothing to do with your skills, but you are just unable to sell yourself. Unfortunately this is another skill you will need. I would contact some friends who are experienced with recruiting people (doesn't have to be in the software industry, but it helps) and ask them to do a mock interview with you to give you some feedback.
2. Technically speaking, Python is one of the better backgrounds you can have:
- I assume that you already know how to use git. If not, learn it too.
- I would simply watch a few online courses on how to implement REST APIs with Python (start with Django REST Framework) as that's what many Python backend jobs expect.
- Make sure that you know how to interact with containers (at least Docker).
- Kubernetes is nice but it is not unusual not to have any experience with it, so I wouldn't spend much time on it. Also not everyone uses it.
Assuming the python ecosystem is not that much different from ruby/rails, C/unix, etc, no it's not. Especially for anyone even slightly unusual, ie anyone not in their 20, maybe 30s at a stretch, with a CS degree, living in a western nation, a continuous employment record, etc, etc.
Sounds like every PM i've ever worked with!
Advantages of technical writing:
1. You get to spend your time playing with things, asking questions, talking to engineers, and, therefore, learning.
2. Depending on what you're writing, you may get to do some coding along the way.
3. You make a valuable, urgently-needed contribution to the world, for even when they can write, most engineers don't write, and the result is that most workplaces are saturated with so-called 'tribal knowledge.' Not only does this waste an engineer's time (explaining and re-explaining how a thing works,) but it also means that people who fail to ask for or receive help never learn how a thing works. This has all sorts of knock-on effects, monocultures and ingroup/outgroup dynamics among them. Yet you can write this fate away, if you can find an employer who recognizes the importance of documentation.
4. Which is not to say you'll be recognized or celebrated. Writing, these days, is a humble pursuit. But the impact you have will be significant, even if no one traces it back to you, and that can be be its own satisfaction (and also, résumé talking point.) And helping change the world for the better -- even just a tiny part of it -- can greatly improve mental health.
5. Once you get in the swing of writing, apply it to your stress/depression/anxiety (or however you want to characterize it -- that feeling.) Keep a journal. I know this feels like being given a teaspoon and told to excavate a cavern --- your mental health struggle sounds like it has its roots in life challenges that are genuinely stressful, rather than the putative 'chemical imbalance' sort of anxiety/depression. And a pen is no magic wand -- it cannot erase your debts, or restore your sense of ease.
But it can open up a bit of wiggle room. A space to turn the thoughts around.
I also recommend long walks and cooking.
6. When you're feeling a bit better, start applying to more jobs. You can do it. <3 You should be able to apply to one or two every day, and take a couple interviews a week. You got this.
Signed,
A currently un-depressed ("pressed?"), non-anxious ("enxious?"), and happily-employed engineer, who was not that way 12 months ago.
P.S. talk to a therapist. IANAT, IANAD.
P.P.S. if you're not already on them, and your doctor thinks it's ok, take antidepressants. They are symptom relief, but again, you're looking for wiggle room.
Doing anything might help with self-confidence, might knock the rust off any skills and provide exposure to new stuff, plus networking. And the money doesn’t hurt.
Maybe ETL stuff at mid-sized companies. That crap’s everywhere, is always bad anyway so who cares if you fuck it up (I… half-jest) and often uses Python. Most of it’s very simple if you get over the hurdle of fancier-sounding-than-it-is terminology.
(I have no specific advice on the broader mental health front aside from emphatically echoing “talk to a professional”—but if you’re feeling ready to work and the lack of it’s making things worse, the above’s what I’d suggest)
Good habits, antidepressants, etc. may not fix the underlying problems, but they may turn the teaspoon into a tablespoon into a shovel.
What I'm going to tell you (but I'll try to summarize here!) is
No two employers are the same!
That is, if you go to 10,000 interviews -- no two employers will be the same!
No two employers will be the same in terms of:
-Interviewers' personalities
-Interview questions
-Previous experience expectations
-Job Expectations
-Salary
etc., etc.
In other words, if you have no other barometer, no other tool, no other filter condition available to you other than to apply for as many jobs as possible, and taking as many interviews as you can get (and as I'll explain if you email me, there are many tools that can help, both seen and unseen, both readily available and yet-to-be-realized -- but I can't enumerate/explicate/elaborate these concepts here for lack of space!), then minimally speaking, No two employers will be the same.
In other words, it's a numbers (statistical!) game!
Compare to dating, compare to sales...
Those are also statistical, AKA numbers games!
That is, the more "chaff" you can sort through -- the more "wheat" you can find.
Phrased another way, the more Willy Wonka candy bars you can open -- the greater your chance for finding a golden ticket!
But you will probably not need to go to ten million job interviews to generate a winner!
In the real world, in the absence of other factors which change the statistics; which change the odds -- 20 (twenty!) -- is a good number!
That's because there's something called "The Law Of 20"... basically in the absence of other factors which will change the odds, statistically if you go to 20 completely random people with a proposition (or groups -- in this case, the groups are hiring companies, employers) -- then on average, 18 of those will tell you to "go to hell" in no uncertain terms (AKA, give you a "no" answer with your proposition, in this case, for them to hire you), 1 of those will say "maybe", and one of them will be an enthusiastic "yes".
You go with the person or group (in this case employer) -- that's the enthusiastic "yes" vote.
This is, incidentally how Venture Capitalists do business -- for every 20 investments in companies, they know that on average 18 companies will fail.
One will moderately succeed but not pay off the other investments -- but one company (the 20th!) will be so wildly successful that it will completely pay off the lost investments in the other 18 companies AND make a ton of additional money!
So that's the "Law of 20"...
Shoot me an email (peter.d.sherman@gmail.com) (if it takes more than 3 days for me to respond then you've hit my spam filter -- don't send any links or email addresses in your email -- just a simple hello and greeting should suffice!)
Or reply with your email or some other contact method here on HN...
Anyway, I'm looking forward to meeting you!
-Peter
It seems a lot harder to get depression when people used to be outside all day in the sun. I always feel happier and brighter when I'm in the sun.