indamez

I never stated I don't want a boss, because I actually DO want one. A boss denotes a full-time job which is what I want most. I am missing out on health insurance and retirement benefits big time. I miss the interaction with co-workers. It also gets lonely when you are the only US developer in the company and the others are offshore. I never had that experience of being in a room with other developers that are wiser than me and bouncing off ideas with them and I would like to have that experience.

When I was very much doing 90% PHP work in my agency days (WordPress, Magento, Joomla...) I got some offerings for Magento but I mostly did front-end work in Magento and found it to be an easily breakable and over-engineered piece of work.

I didn't use Drupal at work but I was more interested in it. The Drupal job listings I have found were weird: They all required previous Drupal experience. I need a job to get Drupal experience but I cannot get it because I don't have it. I don't doubt that it would be a lot more versatile than WP though.

Not interested in founding a business with a partner or continuing freelance because it's too much uncertainty and risk for my taste. Just need a 9-5 with more stability. Permatemping gives me the worst of both worlds. You have to pay more on taxes, get no benefits, and you get paid less than you would if you were contracted from an external agency.

I'm not much of a social person, and since 2014 I started working remotely 100% of the time. I guess that physical isolation from co-workers was affecting my interview performance somehow?

Because the main issue is those 9-5 full-time jobs have super hard interviews, including the ones that don't ask you algorithmic questions. It's like they're on a different planet with how they evaluate me.

In most cases I would be fine with Hacker Rank tests, but including a full test suite sounds too much for a coding assessment. Also I guess they don't have many Ruby experts at DRW so it took them longer to dissect your code. "Languages don't matter because a tool is just a tool" says the developer... until it's not. Oh well.

Despite my inclination to coast, when it comes to finding work, I've found out that I do better in "trial by fire" situations, than the traditional round-after-round of tests method of evaluating a candidate.

Taking a startup job I had, for example, I was contracted for 40 hrs/week work with just my resume and an informal interview at a coffee shop. No code tests- the founder just wanted to know me in person and I got the job in a week. The pay was low, but the pacing was pretty relaxed for a startup. I can't find many places that hire programmers that easily anymore and that's what makes this so tough.

Some people have trouble learning how to code. I have trouble learning how to interview better.

the easiest path is to pick "boring" technology that still super valuable to the business, with a long shelf-life, but not sexy.

Would PHP and Ruby still fit this? Not just the "boring" part but also the long shelf life? These have been my main standbys but a lot of things in the web are moving away from them. Should I jump back to things I haven't used in a long time? I don't know how much Magento has changed over the years but I get some recruiter emails about it, even 8 years after I last used it on the job.

?? Not once have I mentioned my recreational activities as I really don't use social media much, or play MMO games.. regardless, such activities are as much a part of life as anything else.

I have worked 40 hour/week jobs but they're not really "full time" in the legal sense- I don't get benefits nor other employee-related perks as I am mainly hired to be a permatemp and been trying to build my career as a permatemp.

If those are the only ideas you have, then I would have to at least counter with the possibility there are other (legal) ways to find work, discover the places where interviewing is not important and find work as a programmer there.

Duly noted, I am just surrounded myself with so much fintech and prop shop business in my city that I've mixed it up with banking.

What are you trying to accomplish right now, other than to keep your head above water? Why do you think your tenure of roughly 20 years hasn't been good enough to carry you into a better point in your career?

What's your experience with EU jobs? I do get the idea that they are not really fanatic about chasing the latest tech at least in my view.

However, I do spend only 1-3 years with each job. Generally I work as a permatemp worker where promotions aren't expected of me. So I'm usually in a position where it's easy for the company to lay me off (as it has happened before).

I apply to those kinds of companies sometimes (I apply to tons of different places, almost indiscriminately) though I don’t see banks and insurance companies ever get back to me.

I hear their interviews must be very easy to pass. The interviews that I do tend to get never result in offers, though I can go anywhere from 1 to 4 rounds.

I won’t and it sounds just as unstable as my last jobs. Even if I wanted to I certainly don’t have that kind of money to throw (monetary net worth < last stimulus check)

I come across some companies from the financial industry when I’m sending in online applications. Places like DRW, which by the way never replied back and I sent in my application two months ago. Same story with state jobs, I never hear back from them.

How does one usually get knowledge in niche and very old areas? I don’t know anyone personally that works in mainframes or systems. My professional knowledge is focused on vanilla JavaScript, PHP, MySQL and Ruby. Not too current, but also not old enough to be associated with retirement age devs.

It would be awesome if a firm would let me work on a MS on the side and have it paid for but that sounds like a unicorn scenario. In my experience most companies neglect training on the job.

(EDIT) I also applied to WITCH firms as I hear second hand they hire any warm bodies and train you to fill the gaps. It's also been quiet on that front, with the exception of Infosys who told me they won't be moving forward with my application for a full-stack developer.