Ask HN: Which skills best enhance career prospects?
My startup has failed miserably and I've lost all my (and my wife's) money - I need to get a job, fast. The problem is my CV/Resume is unconventional. I have a degree from a top-tier university but in Physics rather than CS. My first job was unconnected to the tech scene (7 years in military intelligence) and although I've been coding since I was a kid, my only "commercial" coding experience is 3 years in my own 1-man (failed) startup so I don't even have someone to approach for a reference. Therefore, as well as searching for jobs, I need to learn some new skills to become a more tempting prospect for employers. Which skills offer the best employment prospects? Should I learn new languages and frameworks or instead deepen my language-agnostic knowledge (e.g. algorithms, Big O, etc)? My current primary skills are javascript, AJAX, OO PHP, MySQL, MVC frameworks (I've written my own as well as playing with others) and HTML/CSS (incl canvas, etc). My best skill is that I learn quickly, but clearly I don't have time to replicate an entire CS degree and so need to focus on the skills that will help most.
Alternatively, given that I have leadership training and experience managing teams (approx 25 strong), would I be better off focusing on non-coding skills/methodologies and trying for a product manager role?
(If it matters, I'm in the UK but presumably the same skills are in demand everywhere.)
4 comments
1. Create Linked in profile with all your skills and work experience.
2. Create github and upload some of your personal projects, etc. or create some code there.
3. Read books on big data, data analysis, machine learning algorithms and learn some of the libraries and search engines (Lucene/SOLR/ElasticSearch) - create some simple applications with them and upload to github.
4. Polish up basic communication skills if required.
Apologies if this doesn't directly answer your question, but it sounds like the immediate problem is financial - are you able to quickly get a contract in an area relevant to your experience (project management, perhaps?) to tide you over while you work on your CS skillset on the side?
Being in the UK as well, cwjobs.co.uk has been my best source for contract jobs, though I do get some good offers through LinkedIn every now and then.
Being in the UK as well, cwjobs.co.uk has been my best source for contract jobs, though I do get some good offers through LinkedIn every now and then.
I was having a dark day and after a weekend off have realised my startup is not so doomed after all. However, many thanks for the tips - hopefully they'll be useful to others in a similar situation.
Are you based in London? If so drop me an email at the address in my profile. I am looking for javascript developers for a team I lead.