Title: (using a throwaway account)<p>I'm in the middle of a very painful job search in London and here for help. My background is Java, I used it for 10 years in a very latency- and performance-critical environments, so I can say I'm very familiar with the nuts and bolts of language and the JVM. As any HN oldie, I know that just doing your job is not often enough, so in parallel I launched my own iPhone app (which as of today grew to 20 KLOC of C and Objective-C) that was covered by major news outlets and featured by Apple themselves in the Education category. I'm very proud of the work I've done. I can do Python (wrote a Twisted-based backend for collaborative app) and Haskell (when asked, can code on a whiteboard). I did Andrew Ng's course online last year. I REALLY can deliver.<p>At the moment, I work for a major bank in a position that drives me nuts. Everything about this job is wrong but most important is that I don't feel that I use my skills at all. I started my job hunt this spring, applied to all attractive companies I know of in London and pinged every available contact in my network.<p>The results were underwhelming. Google UK rejected me after an on-site interview. Twitter UK were hiring for a very relevant position but listed Scala as a requirement — I wrote a small RE matcher in Scala in a few hours and sent the code and my resume directly to their engineering manager whose contact I got from my network. No reply. Facebook UK and Amazon UK didn't want to even do a screening interview with me. 90% of other companies didn't bother replying. As a net result I got one offer from a startup I liked but refused it because I didn't feel we're on the same wavelength with the founder who interviewed me.<p>I'm pretty desperate at this moment and feel that I'm doing something wrong. If you're running a cool software company, what do you think a senior guy from a major bank must write in his resume to stop you from shredding it on the spot? Thank you for any advice.
Upvote: