Ask HN: How am I supposed to start over as an amnesiac ex-software developer?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5542925
by Tabula_Rasa • 13 years ago
109 57 13 years ago

I’m a late 20s female ex-software developer. What happened? Well, not going to go into details, but I ended up with retrograde amnesia about a year ago. The memory of the last 4 years was most heavily affected, which sadly were the most prolific for me in terms of my graduate education and job-wise - I’d worked my way up to an actual developer job, and was doing quite well for myself.

It’s been an incredibly difficult year, and I’ve really had very few advocates along the way. My past employer failed to communicate with me properly post-amnesia, and I’m currently in bureaucratic hell trying to work with my University to see if I can retake the classes that I now can no longer remember.

I’ll often get something like, oh, jump on CodeAcademy/etc., get right back into things! But it’s not quite that simple. It’s - for back of a better word - downright PAINFUL, and I feel like I need more support going forward.

I feel like the best options for me would be some kind of class, workshop, or internship, but I’m having trouble finding the right fit. It’s going to be hard for me trying to find the right level, given that I’ll probably be rolling my eyes at how simple some things are but also getting stuck on relatively basic things until they click again.

An internship could be great for me, but I don’t have any contacts, let alone any contacts who would be able to place me at a company that understood my situation. For example, how am I supposed to explain a resume that I know nothing about? It’s pretty unavoidable, and I’d need a company that was understanding about the situation.

I just want to make it clear I’m not looking on advice on how to deal with the burden of this, but any advice you would have for me to get back into the field given these bizarre circumstances. Maybe there’s some avenue that I’m just not realizing? Thanks so much!

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