I think the best way to get over that is to make something on your own that is so great that everyone wants to hire you without even doing an interview!
The funny thing is that you may not even need a job once you do something great on your own :)
If you are short of money, you can always get a simple part time job to survive.
Last time I went out interviewing, I whipped up a fun little Android game, put it on my phone, and made a point of finding a way to slip it into the conversation. It was great because:
1) It let me set the tone and path for much of the interview, since so many places do unstructured interviews.
2) It was a concrete demonstration of my skills.
3) Java and mobile are both hot technologies, and the game also made effective use of other common stuff like Open GL, multithreading, network, database storage (via sqlite), etc.
4) Spending a few minutes playing a game sets a relaxed tone for the entire interview, which makes things easier for everyone involved.
Structured interviews really are a brilliant strategy. Whenever I interview, I do my best to subtly direct the interview in a way that exposes my strengths and leads the conversation into areas that I am most comfortable with (and trust me, whipping out a concrete example full of technologies that you're absolutely comfortable with helps). A structured interview, to an extent, would allow the employer to retain better control of the interview (whether or not the realize it), which is probably to their benefit. For instance, I teach Java, C#/VB, and some other modern languages at a local college after work, do tons of C / embedded / network / etc. stuff at work, and do digital electronics for hobby ... so if you let me push the interview in those technical directions, I'm at an advantage.
The game is called 'aqua balls' and is on google play. I haven't updated it in almost 3 years, though ... right after I finished it I started having trouble with my wrists and finger joints, which meant no more coding for fun (I took a team lead job and cut out a lot of typing at work too). My brother wrote and maintains the other app published by 'woggle' (he also did all of the art for aqua balls), so it is still updated regularly. He's actually a D.O. IRL, so this is 100% hobby for him.
> I think the best way to get over that is to make something on your own that is so great that everyone wants to hire you without even doing an interview!
This is a good idea.
I have no idea what people would want or what I could make that people would want or what open problems are there that I could make. Every idea I have someone else already has a better solution.
I keep trying and put it in github but it's mostly for me; no one looks at it.
The Julia people are complaining that their language is great but it is not being picked up because their standard libraries are missing a ton of functionality.
Start knocking out some standard library functionality.
Sure, you may not be interested in Julia. But there are plenty of other projects out there that are understaffed. IPython Notebook needs developers. Octave needs somebody to write a good front end. It goes on and on.
The advantage is that you don't have to be super creative (compare Julia's libraries to Python, and start implementing something that isn't yet in Julia), nor predict the future (meaning, you can make a brand new X, but if the world goes to Y, you will never get picked up). What you write will be used by (at least) thousands, and you will have to write production quality code to get your pull requests accepted. I'd be impressed with anyone that did that, even if I had no interest/need in the project that they contributed to.
I would like to proffer a different strategy: Pick something that you are passionate about, good at, and comfortable with. Then push your personal boundaries and learn something new while making some app/widget/whatever, even if it's been solved/done before. Why did you do it? You wanted to stay up to date, learn something, and it was fun (and all of this will be true).
Whatever you made will probably be something pretty sweet because you chose something close to your heart, not something that was simply 'unsolved' or 'needed doing'.
Employers will love that you chose to challenge yourself to build new skills as a hobby, and because you chose something that you are passionate about, you'll probably also have a good amount of enthusiasm while you talk about it, which is equally important.
Where is your github? People bothering to respond to your comments on HN might be the only ones you will be able to get to glance at your code ... but I bet they will. I would have if I had been able to find your github.
Pick an open source project that interests you, preferably one you personally use, and become active in their community. The issue/bug tracker of almost any open source project has a list of feature requests and bugs to work on. You get to add open source contributor to your resume, and become a "subject matter expert" by virtue of that.
For me University was my biggest mistake ever and if I could turn the clock around, I would not go to university. It took my most energetic and creative years and put them into useless work. I spent 6 years in University because I started in a terrible one and had to leave and go to Canada to get better education and still I think the University that I went to was terrible and ended up eating all my money, energy and time for a completely useless degree that no one even cares about. My degree was in Software Engineering and I believe if it was something else, it would have been 10 times worse. Maybe I could have used University to build a great Network but due to my introvert nature, I don't think I have succeeded and besides the city where I was in had an ok network.
So all that to say that it depends in my opinion:
If you are an introvert and your goal is to be a doctor, a lawyer, a physicist or a researcher or anything similar then University is a great choice. If you are however an introvert and only care about making cool stuffs then be prepared that school will take most of your time and energy and put it into something that has no value or meaning.
If you are an extrovert and your goal is to be an entrepreneur then take a major that doesn’t require much work and spend your time building networks and making stuffs.
That’s the way I see it, I may be wrong but my personal life experience has led me to believe that.
University was a pretty big waste of 8 years for me as well.. Some people are just better at learning on their own, and with the number of online resources available, many of them from top-tier universities providing better instruction that you are likely to get at a lower-tier university, I don't think university is the right choice for many aspiring software developers.
I just don't understand you guys - I'm an introvert, and University exposed me to concepts and ideas I NEVER would have sought out on my own. And through that process I was introduced to people I NEVER would have met otherwise. Would I have met people just as awesome as the people I did meet, if I didn't go to school? Maybe, but judging from my friends in high school who didn't take "The Path", I think the answer is no.
I never would have written an OS kernel, I never would have built an ALU (and gained the deeper understanding of computer architecture as a result.) I never would have learned anything about AI.
Can I do those things, without going to school? Yes, absolutely. But I wouldn't have done it, and that's the point. Would I have met awesome mentors without university? Maybe, but maybe not. And the best part is I didn't even have to go out of my way to try and force it to happen. Going to university, it just happened because of who I am (a geek, smart, and a person who cares about good results.) It didn't matter that I was socially awkward, my work spoke for itself and others came to me.
Graduate work is something I never continued on to; once having my bachelor's, I went ahead and charged into Industry. And I'm totally, 100% OK with that choice.
So it makes me wonder - what were you doing for 8 years?
That is why I specified it depends, it depends on personalities, the school, your goals in life and much more. My university for instance was terrible, I think I have spent 30% of my time filling out lab reports because they were so many! Took many courses that made no sense and that I had no interests in. I think perhaps 10 Software Engineering courses were plain repetition, some professors didn't even speak English nor knew what the heck was going on, We didn't get the chance to code much, most concepts were outdated, The network opportunity was very poor, I can keep going lool. I actually had to unlearn many things when I started working.
I'm a type of person that likes to get information and knowledge only when needed so it made absolutely no sense to learn stuffs and fill my head with knowledge without having a specific goal to reach. If my goal was to build an OS, then I would read about OS Kernels and start experimenting otherwise it's irrelevant to me.
For my personality, my goals in life and much more, school was a complete waste and a big regret. So suggesting it to someone else without knowing their goals or personality is dangerous because it could ruin them like it did to many.
I'm not necessarily an introvert, but I didn't gain anything from attending university that helped my career in anyway (besides the CS bachelors degree, which is arguable). I spent 8 years attending school part-time while working in the service-industry. I did very little extracurricular programming, because I was busy with my classes and work. When I graduated (from a mediocre school, with less than a strong GPA), I learned that my degree was not very helpful, and I hadn't learned any of the things that are actually used in the industry.
I've spent the 2 years since graduation teaching myself whatever has caught my interest, and have learned way more applicable to the majority of entry-level/junior-level jobs than I ever did in school.
Did you go to a 'top-tier' school? If so, I'm sure your experience was much different, as the online classes I've taken provided by schools such as Stanford and UC Berkeley have been orders of magnitude better than the ones I took in school.
I did not attend a top-tier school, but I did attend a new school with something to prove. I feel like I got a great education. (University of Northern British Columbia, by the way.)
Same here, really. Although I intentionally avoided most of the non-critical CS classes. I too wrote an OS kernel and all of that, but I made sure to take as many political science, economics, and sociology courses as I could. Learning tech is fine and all, but becoming a well-rounded person is what a degree at a decent (not great, not expensive) school did for me.
Plus, there were girls outside of the CS classes. That didn't hurt.
I actually have discovered this about myself recently. I have left my full time job not long ago so I can start a business and initially was very optimistic about the future and I was taking my time in every task and enjoying the moment but when my worries have increased I started envisioning worst case scenarios in my head and that's when I started getting things done much quicker. Looking back I also think I did well in school thanks to my worries but that also made me lose hair due to stress lol, so it's not always good to worry and a good balance is perfect.
I'm building my product on top of Firebase using AngularFire and this news worries me so much. At first I thought it could be great but after reading all the comments here I'm not sure what to think anymore. The CEO is saying that they will continue developing the platform but apparently history shows that such promises are not always kept. Firebase is such an awesome product that it will be really terrible for Google to shut it down. I come from a Ruby On Rails and SQL background and as soon as I saw an app running with Angular and Firebase, I fell in love right away. I have already put too much time and effort into making my product with Angular and Firebase that it is too late to go back now, I will have to take the risk. Honestly if Google shuts it down, I'm sure they will release the source code at the very least. I think I'm going to be optimistic and hope that Google makes the right choice.
The funny thing is that you may not even need a job once you do something great on your own :)
If you are short of money, you can always get a simple part time job to survive.