An easier alternative - I'm really surprised that out of work graduates from the US aren't getting Australian working holiday visas and flooding down here. Due to a resources boom (thanks China) unemployment is only 5% here. There are skills shortages in most technical areas and particularly mining. The Reserve Bank of Australia just raised interest rates again because it was worried about the economy overheating.<p>The working visa has some restrictions - you must be between 18 and 30. It's only valid for 12 months and you can only work for a maximum of 6 months for any one employer. The last provision is a bit tough, but there are still plenty of 6 month contracts around.<p>Why do Americans have such a strong reluctance to travel abroad for work? I've never understood it. It's a great opportunity to get some work experience, live a little and, particularly for the mid-west and east coasters, skip winter!
Actually, that's a 103 step program, but I agree with the advice. If you want to get a job, you need experience... And the internet is full of projects that need bugfixes. That stuff looks -great- on a resume. Take that from someone who interviews hirees.
<i>But there are a few fields that are hiring like crazy. One of them is mine: software engineering. Major tech firms cannot hire fast enough. It's so competitive that you do not need to have a degree (I don't).</i><p>Was this written in the late 90's?<p>I follow job listing sites almost daily, and I'm just not seeing this. I'm also not seeing it in the volume of headhunters contacting me.<p>And thirdly, what job listings I do see, they have absurd ideas of what qualifications they require. Yesterday I saw a job listing for perl scripter for system automation tasks requiring a BSCS, MS preferred, and a little while ago I saw a sysadmin job requiring a BSCS.<p>I'm not in the middle of nowhere, I'm in the Boston/128 area.<p>So do I have the worst job hunting skills ever or is this guy living in a bubble?
If this article is targeted at people with no experience (ie it mentions learning how to use IRC), is recommending that they fix bugs in C++ code really the right answer?<p>Why not start with a Python project or something more realistic?
Advice is to contribute to Chromium, fixing 50 bugs over the course of a year or so. Might not be an easy path though, personally when I tried to compile Chromium, it took my PC 8 hours compiling before coming up with a fatal error. Been thinking about getting EC2 instances to compile it, has anyone tried that? Software license costs for Visual Studio put me off a bit.
It's great that the community is giving advice on what steps to take for getting a programming job, but I would like to add that finding a job is a short term fix. If one is only trying to work out how to get a job for the sake of getting a job, it will only be a matter of time before one is bored. But then again, you'll probably only realise this only having gone through the process. Try to find something that interests you, which may or may not be programming.
Great advice, but two caveats:<p>1. Employers are often focused on hiring very specific skills sets. Having fixed a C++ bug in Chromium should impress them, but if they need a Django expert they still see you as a novice. It can be hard to present yourself as a well-rounded candidate if all your experience is with one project.<p>2. In a couple of interviews I've had, I've noticed a distinct bias towards valuing paid work more than open source contributions. It's often hard to get interviewers to understand that something I've done for free is on the same scale (or greater) than things I've been paid for.
This article is like a breath of fresh air. One of the few things you read about the industry that doesn't make you feel vastly underqualified. I'll definitely take aboodman up on his offer (coincidentally I logged onto freenode for the first time in my life a few hours before reading this...), although I expect he's inundated with responses right now so I'll leave it a few days.
This is an interesting path to get a good software job. I agree that when it comes to software jobs, a good resume with a lot of techno buzz words does not mean anything. An interview that gives coding puzzle can easily tell a person if he's capable or not. But a non-tech hiring manager will not be able to carry one out, a few references of open source projects, bug fixes definitely boost up your scores quite a bit. I've hired some good people and some bad before, at the end of day, your project success is not based on how many PhDs there are on the team, but how many coders that can deliver.
What's the most effective way to mention open source work on resumes? I generally mix it in with other non-school- or -work-related stuff in a "projects" section, but is there a smarter way to emphasize it?
Part of me loves this kind of inspiring advice ("you too can grow up to be president"). And it certainly is true for some people.<p>But the truth is that most people who try this will fail. Very few people have the right combination of aptitude and attitude to do this (especially considering that the intended audience is people without an IT background).<p>[edit] Perhaps the message to take away is that there is a low barrier to entry in our field, so it's worth giving it a shot.
"Work for me for a year w/o salary and I'll help you get a job." /jk<p>There are better routes for new programmers IMHO.<p>Start at <a href="http://rubyonrails.org/" rel="nofollow">http://rubyonrails.org/</a> and build a website you find useful.<p>Learn SharePoint or BizTalk, those are boring but in very high demand now.<p>Even more boring, sing up for a cheap 6 month Cobol course in India.