Help Me Out:
I left academia to come to Silicon Valley into a non-technical role, but I want to get back into technical work.
The help I need is mainly in how I should market myself to prospective employers.
I have a technical background, mainly in support and quality assurance, but I'd like to get my hands more dirty with a full software engineering role.
I need some guidance with deciding what to focus on when preparing for interviews, what kinds of projects to work on in my free time, and what kinds of positions I should be looking for that will be willing to interview/hire someone who hasn't had a software engineering role despite being a bit older.
Help You Out:
I am pretty good at finding bugs, testing software, and writing. I can proof read documentation, resumes, cover letters, or any other text written in English, or close to English. I'm not judgmental about the idiosyncrasies non-native writers/speakers have, and I am happy to point out that they speak/write English better than I speak/write any other language, but I'm also happy to identify and correct those idiosyncrasies if you want.
From working at Quora, I have some good insights about how startups scale their infrastructure (I also helped to write a long polling back-end in Go for an "off road" project), and I can offer some minor insights.
My experience with most hiring processes is that you should learn about classic CS stuff (data structures, algorithms, Big O, etc). Unfortunately, my experience is also that these things are not of much use during day-to-day web development.
If you want some help with brushing up on actual web dev skills, email me: hello at duncanmsmith.com. I'd be happy to do a Skype/Google Hangout/phone call sometime this week, and point you to some great resources that helped me a lot when I was first getting started. I can also help you compile a list of topics to research so you can build your knowledge base (the body of knowledge required to sound smart in a room full of web devs is INSANE).
The help I need is mainly in how I should market myself to prospective employers.
I have a technical background, mainly in support and quality assurance, but I'd like to get my hands more dirty with a full software engineering role.
I need some guidance with deciding what to focus on when preparing for interviews, what kinds of projects to work on in my free time, and what kinds of positions I should be looking for that will be willing to interview/hire someone who hasn't had a software engineering role despite being a bit older.
My older resume: http://jclo.co/john-resume.pdf Github and LinkedIn, as well as contact email are in profile.
Help You Out: I am pretty good at finding bugs, testing software, and writing. I can proof read documentation, resumes, cover letters, or any other text written in English, or close to English. I'm not judgmental about the idiosyncrasies non-native writers/speakers have, and I am happy to point out that they speak/write English better than I speak/write any other language, but I'm also happy to identify and correct those idiosyncrasies if you want.
From working at Quora, I have some good insights about how startups scale their infrastructure (I also helped to write a long polling back-end in Go for an "off road" project), and I can offer some minor insights.