I know most people are giving technical advice and it’s very sound. I also know the value of money to unblock certain things. Seriously if you need a couple of hundred dollars to get yourself some nice clothes, and put yourself together and remove the “homeless” label while you hunt for a well paying job, it’ll be my pleasure. I don’t know how we’ll verify your identity but hopefully HN isn’t full of imposters. Think about it as interest free loan that you pay in good faith whenever you’re back on your feet.

It’s absolutely a shame for us as a nation that well educated and qualified people have to go through this bull in the world’s wealthiest nation that is producing trillion dollar companies, but can’t have a decent safety net for it’s citizens.

A few spelling errors if you'd like to fix 'em:

"I'm Vinh, a husband, father & programming enthusiast" "I was lucky to have such a wife."

If you'd like, I can just rewrite the entire page for you.

Your NotyIM service is interesting. I'm building something similar at my current employer.

All the GitHub links on NotyIM's site are broken. Invalid cert at yeo.space, I'm sure you were aware.

Yes, I didn't have time to get to the cert automation yet :D. I promised to myself to do that this weekend.

And thank you so much :).

- Take advantage of any opportunity that sounds legit, like reaching out to leesalminen from this comment => https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17685318

- Work out a detailed, simple, and clear plan for you're going to practice coding as if it were your full time job, because you may need to ask people for help (access to a computer, a safe place to store a computer, a place to clean up & prepare for interviews, etc.)

- Never, ever get down on yourself for doing what you gotta do to survive & get back on your feet

- To the extent that you can, be careful about who you choose share the realities of your situation with, especially during interviews, as you need employers to think that hiring you is a good business decision, and being homeless (in my opinion) has nothing to do with that

- Despite the fact that many people might suggest you get a minimum wage job, that's going to be a big time suck, and if you can find a way to survive without the job, you may wanna use that time to practice coding & interviewing instead (it might be possible to work out a deal with a employer where you can work on a flexible schedule, but don't lose sight of the fact that flipping burgers will not do much to make you better at interviewing for coding jobs)

- Stay positive when telling your story, because the more people are blown away by how you can stay upbeat as you deal with some tough stuff, the more they're going to want to help you

- If you want to practice interviewing, hear some thoughts on how to attract recruiters, or just have someone listen while you vent, I'd be happy to carve out some time for you (personal info is in my profile)

- Go forth and kick ass

Thanks again!

Before everyone goes crazy, I am not saying that people should milk the benefits, but when you are struggling to make ends meet and don't have alternatives those benefits can be crucial to not only survival, but overall general happiness and feeling of security.

If you can’t make enough to live on otherwise, by all means milk the benefits. I’ll say it.

Basically, the benefits are so poor and inconsistent that you can't realistically aspire to live off of them.

I never qualified for welfare but had to claim 4 dependents and lie about my income (120% of which went to rent or late payment thereof) just to collect $600 a month in food stamps (which included 2 infants requiring non-dairy formula not covered by WIC), and they did their damndest to find a reason to kick me off the payroll every 3 months by constantly post-dating requests for documentation or conveniently losing documents I did send in on time. It worked quite a few times and we got nothing in those months. But the idea is that the benefits are enough to keep you/dependents from starving to death. You can't just collect benefits and not expect to supplement it with your own labor.

Too late :)

> the propaganda of people "abusing" welfare is a 99% political agenda.

I agree that this sort of message is crafted to create moral outrage and, thereby, an outsized negative response to welfare as a whole. I initially responded in this way, but I quickly changed my mind when I heard the message that it's just so little.

That is, even accepting the likely-inflated numbers claimed for the abuse, it's such a small percentage of overall tax revenue (and even of social programs), partly because the benefits are so meager to begin with, that it's simply not worth consideration or discussion.

The far more interesting (political/economic) question, to me, is whether it does more good than harm.

In this particular case, I absolutely agree with ancestor-comments that "milking" the benefits rather than risking losing them by working a low-wage job is best, and not just for the OP, but for society and the economy as a whole. The faster the OP gets back "on his feet" and is producing near full capability and is earning (and paying taxes on) full wages, the better it is for everyone.

Neither society nor the economy are a zero-sum game, after all.

Look for more boring jobs that require web development skills, unless you're really stuck on the title.

You know PHP. I did too, once. I made the mistake of taking on a Magento project a decade ago, suffered through it, and I still get hounded by recruiters desperate for PHP developers who know Magento. That fucking platform still powers 99% of the entire e-commerce space; version 2 was released recently and by many accounts it's even worse than v1, which means people who made the mistake of using it are going to need support for it. The demand for PHP developers is still very much there.

You know Python. You can get jobs knowing just that. There are lots of relaxed junior-level *-analyst positions in many domains requiring nothing more than scripting skills and a brain, which you clearly have. I see job postings all the time looking for Django devs. Lots of businesses need reporting-type stuff done, business analytics, ETL, that sort of stuff. Shady businesses always want web scrapers written.

With 10+ years in web development, you might also want to take a shot at jobs involving web application security-- either securing or breaking it.

Just to put it in perspective-- my job title has nothing to do with web development, yet it is an incidentally significant portion of what I do. Best job of my life, and I never would have found it looking for "web developer" jobs, since that's not what they thought they needed when they hired me.

Crawl LinkedIn, not Craigslist. All you'll get from Craigslist are couches, crabs, and people who want you to build out scalable PCI-compliant e-commerce solutions with a full complement of product photography for their hobby business for $500, payable upon delivery. And when they sense your desperation, they'll withhold even that until you go away.

Best of luck to you.

Think about it, if two or more applicants have experience, but one also has experience in the exact technology already used at the place, that person is ahead in the game.

I frankly would keep quiet about the personal situation, I think everybody understands if you do. He's not looking for charity because he's homeless, he wants a job because he's a professional developer.

The idea that you should learn modern JS and then react to apply for react jobs with no real world experience is a bad one for someone with work history in 2 languages that are in the top 10.. Particularly if they are in a rather desperate situation.

"I have extensive front end experience with Javascript as well."

"No one is really looking for a PHP developer right now. And all the front end jobs want React/Redux experience or Angular."

So, not learning React doesn't seem like a good call unless he wants to stay in the backend. No matter what he will be learning now, he will not have "real world experience" with it. All he can do between jobs is learn. What's your advice exactly? What does "looking at how Python has progressed" even mean?

Take an existing project you wrote in python and modernize it for newer style, maybe it was in legacy 2.X for compatibility with something and needs to be updated. Maybe convert to a python framework that is popular now (there's not so much churn in python so a past framework might just be updated.)

I'm sorry that isn't as dramatic as taking some knowledge of past JavaScript, learning additions that introduce a different paradigm and then an entire new style of development complete with transpiling and maybe typescript.. and then trying to keep it running with churn in the whole bunch of libraries and tools that are in that bizarre front end process.. While not seeming to have any previous experience with compiled languages and related development processes.

Taking a past project and modernizing it allows you to mix discussion of real world experience with your understanding of new things. Where things are just updates you blur perception and significance of the age of your real world experiences.

But switching completely to patterns, code and development processes you have never used before even by analogy is taking that to the most tenuous extreme..

Who knows maybe the OP's past JS experience was in SPAs in a functional style using node tools and an IDE and react is almost reasonable.. But that seems unlikely if python and php were the first languages the OP thinks of.

It makes more sense to milk and refresh past connections to Python to find a new subfield than to try to stay in web development by switching to JS (if it was your 3rd language from 3 years ago) to move from Backend to frontend in the months right before almost every language will get an opportunity on the frontend..

This is not true. I think you'll find a lot of new projects being written in PHP 7.2 and/or using some newer framework, like Laravel.

There is nothing wrong with getting PHP work. PHP is not going away anytime soon, and the language has improved a lot since 5.6.

For a past python developer, trying out something like Django a bit with converting a past project would be less work than react for a js developer and probably a good refresher.

But, if Facebook actually hires react engineers everywhere and just doesn't like their own job platform, then they probably hire php engineers everywhere as php is the platform they are the most famous for sinking money into modernizing.. So again, I'm left to wonder why anyone who already knows php would be told to learn react before looking for a job.

It's a lot like always being told to learn Ruby on Rails a few years back even if you knew nothing at all about ruby. I wonder where all those ruby illiterate RoR engineers ended up.

Granted, I don't know your market, but if it's outside the typical 5-10 cities, that might be the problem.

Ok, so let's assume Facebook is hiring today and for the last 5 years in 10 job markets.

Damn hard to find a company actually using it in many markets for most of that time.

The unpopularity of PHP actually means there are more PHP jobs emerging. Nobody wants to swap out of a functional old system, but the younger folk are going to go after new, sexy, technologies.

In 2007/2008, I'd been doing PHP for 11ish years; started in early 96 with PHP/FI, with vb & notes in the early 90s before that. I kept doing some PHP, but moved primarily to spring/java (via grails). enjoyable, learned a lot, but it always felt clunky and convoluted (I never became as proficient as I wanted in that stack). After several years, I 'came back' to the PHP world. A lot of the early warts/problems were still there, but you could avoid them more or less entirely if you chose to build with the new crop of composer packages and psr-compatible frameworks.

The speed of PHP7+ is comparatively amazing (which, arguably, shows how 'slow' it was before!). PHP 5.6 (2014) was roughly twice as fast as PHP 5.3 (2009). PHP 7.2 (2017) is roughly 2-3x faster than PHP 5.6. In the 8+ years I 'left' PHP (was still using it, just not as primary day to day), the performance doubled, then doubled again. Still not as fast as 'pure' java/c/whatever, but incredible improvements all the same. Given that the majority of my dev work involves a lot of 'line of business' stuff with a SQL database as a central piece, db queries are almost always the biggest performance issue, the relative speed of PHP vs other stacks was even less of an issue for my real world scenarios.

Upcoming experimental JIT stuff looks to make an even bigger improvement in some areas.

Some comparisons were from memory, some from https://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/493-php-performance-evo...

This is true in most settings, from office jobs to the service industry.

Always good to remind yourself that usually professional respect comes from your salary, not the other way around.

I share office space with a company that does SME consulting work and they do heaps of Magento, Wordpress and the like. Everyone's getting paid and nobody is complaining.

Word won't get around. You won't get a job you don't apply for though. And if they just do skills tests without any other consideration they're probably not an ideal workplace.

Everyone wants senior level guys in React and other frameworks I do not have. (Though I am currently teaching myself React and do know a good bit now.)

Of course they do. Everyone wants React guys with 20 years experience in it, Java guys with 120 years experience. And they'd like to pay in aspiration and a twice yearly packet of macadamia nuts. But they can only choose from those who apply with all their varying experience and salary demands.

If you've got 10 years experience you've got enough to apply for a senior role (arguably more than enough in many places) and if you've got your head around the basics of React you can tick that box too. Just be honest that you've looked at it outside of work, understand it but haven't had the chance to use it professionally yet. Senior roles may be preferable to you, where there's less emphasis on churning out code and more on getting the most out of the team as a whole, as well as rewards commensurate with your experience.

I saw a guy interviewing on YouTube the other day for a React job who didn't know the difference between componentDidMount and componentWillMount and the interviewer seemed to think he did well - so if you've got that far, you're good to go!

Just apply for enough roles and you'll find one that works for both sides. Don't be put off by barriers in your own mind, make employers tell you you're not the right fit and ideally why, then move on until you land one.

Good luck.

His videos are actually a good resource to the OP. This video is kinda the exact answer to the queston: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70Wcm5c7AF0

I can confirm this is true - explained this exact thing to the place i'm working at now... also, react is just a framework. if you understand JS, then you just need to wrap your head around the way it is being used in this particular case... just build a few small sites with it and you'll be further along than a lot of other people.

We actually have a nonprofit fund dedicated to helping homeless software engineers land jobs. If you’ll email me austen@lambdaschool.com I would love to put you up in an Airbnb and connect you with our career services department.

We have a full-time program called “Lambda Next” that steps you through what it takes to get a job step by step with full support, code reviews, interview practice, salary negotiation, etc. Normally it’s reserved for our students (since we don’t get paid until students are hired), but we can have you participate at no cost.

Let’s see how fast we can get you hired! Happy to take care of housing and help you focus.

PS. if anyone at airbnb has a way to let us buy gift certificates bigger than $500 it would save me a ton of time

Good luck, pdxHomelessDev. While not a programmer/dev, I work in IT as a system admin and have been homeless myself. It is a hard thing to pick yourself up out of.

I know what it’s like to be homeless, keep your head up.

Email me. Seriously.

Edit: imo, Also don't deal with recruiters they'll plug anything/anyone for a CTO position if they can pull the commission, although I guess maybe as a way to practice interviewing.

Calling myself out here. I was half asleep when I wrote the parent comment. Nicer language would be:

My feeling is that recruiters can be great partners is you learn to work with them effectively.

Admittedly, that will be tough. So if you aren't able to do that, then you need to build up a history of good, recent work. Take advantage of being homeless, and offer your services to local non-profits who work with the homeless. They almost all need some tech help, even just to organize and report on their data. Helping out will build up a track record of getting things done, and a network of people who can give you references for your capabilities, as well as let you know who else need help. It is possible that starting a small consulting service doing such things is easier than landing a full-time coding gig.

In times like this, any reasonably competent programmer who doesn't come off as a total a-hole during the interview will have a job. It might not be the most glorious job in the world, but our OP doesn't seem to care because homelessness.

first off, I don't have a degree so that's one battle, but i'm an isolationist so that's battle #2 and its much harder to win.

During the first half of my career it was easy to find work because i was green and not charging much. towards the middle part i relied on a network of contacts and finding work was super easy. then i decided to isolate myself - i dropped all my contacts, deleted everything i had ever created (several websites that i ran for years), removed myself from social media and now work is very difficult to get. I didn't even realize this was the issue until recently.

In order to fix this:

1. I have started to rebuild my social network and have set up references

2. I now view social media apps as Personal Branding applications and use them as such

3. I built a portfolio site and added a bunch of my old projects to it

4. Look for little projects i can knock out in a few hours or days, work on them, and add them to my site

Your story hits close to me. I have never been homeless but I have been through excessive dry spells of no work (I think taking a remote job 5 years ago was a mistake in some ways because it killed my interviewing skills) and had to move back to living with one of my parents. At my mid-30s it feels like your life is a shit show. The jobs I get now have been via "non traditional" means, that is very informal chats instead of lengthy interview processes, and only for short gigs and not long term arrangements.

When I have been out of work for over a year, I too just stopped everything, shut myself in more, thinking that going into "silent mode" and avoiding most contact with friends was gonna help me concentrate more on the job hunt. But it doesn't.

I can tell you to continue what you're doing, building a network and finding ways that people can refer you.

You might think that referrals are a cheese way to short-list your way into an interview, but think of referrals as a trust metric- a quantity that convinces people that you're worth the words you speak.

Can you show us your portfolio site? Honestly I got some of my interviews just from things I had on Github that caught soemone's interest. But I believe they need some kind of novel quality to them- a rehashed tutorial app won't cut it.

I'd love to be really strict on my reviews of the code but I don't have that luxury because the majority of samples fail one of the following tests:

1. Don't compile 2. Crash under trivial input 3. Have trivially detectable race conditions

I spend alot of time recruiting for remote golang developmers who will be working at a fairly massive scale (not Google but a fortune 50/top 50 Alexa rank). I can't say that I've ever had 20 candidates in front of me who could write race free code with the bare minimum of tests.

It's not necessarily thinking you are not good at anything, but believing that there is nothing you can be tops at, and just want people to accept your as being good but not amazing.

<insert Uncle Sam recruitment poster>

You see a job you like, you apply. Maybe you get an offer, maybe you don't. If you do, great! If you don't, free practice and maybe even a free lunch.

Companies aren't gossiping about candidates, so get that thought out of your head. It just doesn't happen.

Write an email describing your situation (possibly with some photos) to tech agencies around you, there are usually plenty and let them know that if they require an extra helping hand, or take on additional projects, you'll be able to do it.

You'll be surprised how many agencies will get back to you. It worked for me when I was in a similar situation where I had to quit my day job as the company I worked for was on the edge.

Also, start a blog, update your LinkedIn, cold message people on email. LinkedIn really works if you don't listen to haters.

Good luck, my friend. Please let us know once everything's back to normal.

I think your best course of action is to spend time preparing for interviews and take any that you can get. Part of this preparation includes learning the popular JS frameworks, but a lot of companies need PHP developers too.

Hopefully you will interview well, but if you don't, word doesn't "get around" between companies as much as you think -- they are afraid of being sued if they talk about why they passed on a candidate.

There are other upsides to interviewing, even if you fail. One is that you get some practice. Another is that you got your foot in the door, and even if you weren't suited for a job you interviewed for, someone at the company might know of another opening that is a better fit.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you should get in touch with any connections you have in tech, such as old coworkers, and let them know you are looking for a job. A personal reference is by far the best way to get your foot in the door.

As you've worked contract jobs recently, I agree with the sentiment others have already mentioned regarding working on applications or open source projects to build a portfolio.

I had an operation because I had a 7mm kidney stone that was stuck in the tube from my kidney to the bladder.

On a much better note. Austen from Lambda School has been in contact with me and has been so great about getting me out of the shelter so I can concentrate on getting the next job.

With that being said, and I am a bit embarrased to do this, but I put together a GoFundMe campaign as I still need a few extra things that would really help me out. Please read the summary at the page here: https://www.gofundme.com/homeless-dev-support

P.S. I have an interview with a startup on Friday (8/10).

Thanks for any and all support.

Everyone, let's make it happen so he can get ready for interview on Friday.

During that time I took it on myself to get into a college and find some scholarships. I had to do multiple years of back taxes for her to complete the fafsa.

When I finally moved away I had about 2 garbage bags full of clothes to my name. I wish I would have done great at school, but a wave of depression hit me and I stopped going to classes. I eventually got evicted and was homeless. My scholarship was put on hold and I couldn't register for classes.

I was still a curious person and I guess not very practical. So rather than fix my problems I just read books at the library and used their computers to learn things. I worked my way through Feynman lectures on physics and TAOCP.

Eventually I did get a job at a electronics factory so I wasn't homeless anymore. I bought some library surplus books for 0.50 (including "the c programming language" and a book on XHTML). I used that to get a part time web dev job for $10/hr. It was actually a higher rate but less hours. I was on food stamps for a couple months. I still feel kind of bad about that.

I learned alot, worked my way up to $14/hr. I used that knowledge to get a "real" full time dev job for $50k/year around 2008.

After that my story isn't really affected much by how I started. I switched jobs every few years. I'm now pretty highly paid and work remote for a bay area company.

I'm not sure if this is helpful. The fact that I was just starting out helped me get that stepping stone student job. If you already have the experience I'd say it's like riding a bike. Just build a couple projects on your own and you'll get up to speed pretty fast.

I hope it's helpful knowing that you can go from homeless and learning in the library to highly paid engineer.

https://weworkremotely.com/remote-jobs/ipresence-php-develop...

https://weworkremotely.com/remote-jobs/x-team-php-developer-...

https://weworkremotely.com/remote-jobs/onthegosystems-senior...

https://www.upwork.com/o/jobs/browse/?q=%22php%22

https://www.indeed.com/q-PHP-jobs.html

(Just a few examples)

Just make programming your life until you land a job. No one cares about your personal life if you can get the job done. Don't let it hold you back.

Feel free to apply to https://boards.greenhouse.io/followupboss/jobs/84965

or reach out to me directly at anthony at followupboss and we can chat further.

While you may be senior level to a recruiter, what we consider senior is usually quite different. Regardless of your situation, you would be competing against other potentially more qualified candidates.

I just did a phone screen with Amazon today as well in which I am going to have a follow up phone interview that will last 60-75 minutes. If that goes well I have to prepare for a whiteboard interview.

I am still very much in need to reach the final $200 of my campaign located here -- https://www.gofundme.com/homeless-dev-support

Thank you again for everyone reaching out and all of the feedback. I am almost there!!

Just read up on some QA terminology/buzz words and I'm sure you'll be hired in a heart best. It's not a minimum wage job, you'll be around development and this will buy you time and sanity till you get a development job...you would be able to easily automate QA and make yourself valuable there too.

I'm a senior developer with a crap load of Dev and non Dev responsibilities. Sometimes I just want to be QA so I just test crap all day long, and have no prod issues or other accountability.

I would suggest looking into these 2 platforms:

- https://hired.com/ - http://alist.co/

You should also spend time practice https://leetcode.com/problems/

Practice extensively and in 30 days you will be able to pass any interview because from my experience, a lot of company pick some random medium/hard questions from there.

When people asks about what you do in 3 years, just say you do free lancing work or that you take the time to travel and learning.

I will also see what my current company can do and will put you in contact.

Super immersive and effective. They put you up in housing, give you a laptop, work with you to master every subject, and help you get placed. When you find you first 100k/year job then you pay back at 15% you salary for 2 to 3 years and that’s it.

Have you tried going to tech meetups, every other meetup I go to there is always someone that says "We're hiring for XYZ talk to me after the meeting". In my area tech companies are always having a hard time hiring

Did you have a portfolio site as well? Update linkedin make a blog etc?

If you take a minimum wage job aim for it to be only temporary

Also, reach out to your local community centers I do nonprofit work the resources they have for the homeless is phenomenal. This must be true for oregon as well

I am redoing my website as well as working on some demo pieces.

Thank you for your comment. :)

Also check out your local library, they usually have free subscriptions to pluralsight and lynda.com among others so you can learn places other than youtube. There should be like 10 to 15 in your city given its size.

Checkout couchsurfing.com to potentially have someplace to stay on someones couch. Portland is full of hipsters that would probably be more liberal and open to this kind of thing too.

I didnt think about curfew times but yeah thats something too. If you need other essentials checkout any nonprofit community centers that can help you out there. Usually you'll get assigned a case manager who can help you stay on track too, or redirect you to other resources you may need.

Lastly local churches are really helpful too. Consider reaching out to them even if you arent religious, most churches have meal outings once or twice a week

As Dostoevksy wrote "...I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men..."

Another option you may consider is workaway. Volunteer some time, work for a few hours a day, in exchange for a room. You can read reviews / comments of the host so there is information to help make a decision. The ones I have seen require working 5 hours a day, that should leave enough time to do some tech work (project, finding a job, etc).

If things go well with the host, you can ask them for a recommendation. Even if its not tech, its demonstrates character and ethic.

Have you figured out what you're doing for your address? Do you have a nice set of clothes, haircut, and shave before interviews? If you don't put a residential address on your resume, it isn't going to help you.

I am sure you're already getting enough advice on the technical aspect of finding a job in this thread. You can know anything, but if you can't get through the door because humans are superficial you're still screwed.

I would do this: hit up freelancing websites and make enough money doing small gigs online to get an apartment or rent a room with somebody. Those sites have a bad rap, but I promise you I've done well enough on them to say it's worth your time. Accept a low rate at first to get feedback and ratings on whatever site you choose. Better freelancing companies also poach people from those sites. If you have a good profile, someone will ask you to come work with their clients instead. It happened to me.

Worry about creating a marketable image: your online profiles personal website, github, stack overflow, linkedin etc, your appearance (fitness will make you more marketable), and your sales pitch. Write a pitch and rehearse what you're going to say in interviews. They're going to ask you what you've been doing! My advice: don't tell them about your recent misfortunes. It might be true, but would you want to buy a car that had mechanical problems and was found abandoned on the side of the road, three years later? You'd want to buy a shiny new car. You need to become a (good) used car salesman and you will find yourself in a job.

Good luck in your search.

I have never had a problem with my address not being on my resume. Though I am having problems making contact via phone as 1) My phone is an old junk Android. 2nd Gen 2) I can only make and receive calls over wifi (had to cut cell service)

I am planning to work on my stackoverflow and other online profiles.

Thank you for all of the advice.

Also, don't worry about companies or recruiters bad-mouthing you to one another. It rarely happens for legal reasons.

About phones:

For phone issues, consider using google voice on your laptop with a headset ($10) and fixed Google voice number instead- this will be hard when you're on the move (can forward calls), but it will make sure you can occasionally have high-quality phone calls. I almost never needed to accept or make non-scheduled phone calls during my job search. To sign up unfortunately you'll need at least temporary access to get a verification call on a mobile or landline (but hopefully the shelter or a public phone can help with this).

Depending on how big a volume of possessions you need to carry with you, scout out all the Starbucks (which now allow use of their wifi and bathrooms without purchase) in a reasonable distance, to find one or two with quiet corners where you could take an interview. If the interviewers hear sound in the background, tell them you're in a Starbucks. If they ask why, say your roommates are loud so you tend to work from Starbucks. There shouldn't be any further questions about that.

Unfortunately, though, @jl2718 is right that many employers won't look upon OP's situation positively, and it's hard to tell if any will (except @leesalminen, who apparently will). Therefore some strategic non-disclosure of circumstances is advised.

Have you tried doing what David did? Anything that could help you stand out would attract employer's attention.

I am a little too anxiety ridden by that idea, but not completely against it. Obviously worked out well for David. Thanks for the link. :)

The questions in a whiteboard interview have little in common with real world experience. But they're one of the hoops you have to jump through.

Sign up with a website like LeetCode (https://leetcode.com/) or hackerrank (https://www.hackerrank.com/programming-interview-questions/) that give you technical problems, let you practice them, and show how well your programs work. Practice one of those exercises every day while you look for work.

Good luck.

Just learn React. With PHP stuff you will get is kind of terrible. Find place that will get you and give you space to learn what you need.

It is strange that recruiters doesn't want to profit from you. I would ping startups, go with what you are good at, don't focus too much on your woes.

On other hand, ideal for you would be huge corporation, those usually have showers and spaces to relax, they are do things slow and care about your wellbeing.

Wish you luck. Consider another city as well if you can find good opportunity.

I'm not sure if they still do it, but there's a dry cleaning place in Portland that will clean your clothes for free for interviews, if that's an issue. I'm spacing out on the name, but I saw the sign downtown once while walking by.

Best of luck.

http://portlandtech.org/ - this is a great resource, job listings are categorized along a number of facets (by language, by experience, by focus), they have a calendar of events, and they link to lots of other job hunting resources.

http://www.indeed.com/ - Indeed is my go-to search engine when job hunting. I've found my last three jobs using it. You can create alerts and get emails when new positions matching your criteria are posted.

Also, there is never any harm in applying for a job. Let the recruiters submit your resume for senior positions. Consider roles with "lead" or "engineering manager" in the title, where your experience will assist you but your focus will be more on coordinating the work of your team rather than on your own technical chops. Or, apply for QA jobs, which are often a good gateway into developer or UI/UX roles. There are lots of ways to get your career back on track if you broaden your focus.

Nick [at] <hackernews username>.com

I went into *nix, Python and C instead. Hanging on IRC taught me hacker ethos and the lingo that comes with the work. Made friends, embedded myself in various communities. Got job offers through some communities.

First job was doing 50% support (servicedesk) and 50% Python. It was horrible at times. But I did have a job. I met a guy there that went out of his way to personally get me up to speed with Python/Linux - like a mentor. I worked there for a year but we always kept in touch since.

Fast-forward 8 years later; I can now actually code some decent stuff and that mentor just joined my team and we're reunited again. But that's off-topic.

TL;DR: Learn something that is in demand and be prepared to make sacrifices.

2 - Prepare your linkedin and set up a curriculum that will understand what you want at this point in your career, an idea would be in the summary part of what you are looking for to return to the area.

3 - Look for freelance jobs to get money and get some experience, this is a time to prepare your portfolio. There are platforms that provide this support.

4 - Make as many interviews as you can, but do with the thought of this re-learning to be interviewed. Study about selective processes, and celebrate failures. You probably will not be hired at the first chance.

Note - All of above is what applied to my situtation. And I apologize for not posting links for references. Thought I must share my experience.

If I were in your shoos I would accept any programming jobe, and after a year may be you can change your jobe.

Some work places may not ask you for skill tests. If I were in your shoos I would apply to all of them. Go to the the interview even if you have very low chance to be recqruited. At least you will learn what is asked and next time you will have some idea about how to reply.

You can accept low salary if you want to increase your chace.

You could look for contract work to rebuild your skills

PHP skills are needed on that site quite a bit. It may not be posh but it will get some money in your pocket and give you something to do. Look at ziprecruiter and see if there are any jobs in your area that you would fit. Also check linkedin and see if any of your old workmates can throw you some freelance.

It would be a mistake to ask people about problems they can't comprehend.

You have some things to do - sort your life out, get a job, any job, then progress your career.

The people who can help you with your career might not be the people who can help you with the other stuff.

Learning technologies, getting a position, moving up are all things that take time.

Sorting your life out, earning some money, having fun are what you can do immediately.

I really hope you can get things back together, and come back and tell us how you got on.

He said the state or organizations helped him get a bed, shelter, food, medical attention, and even nice work clothes. He also has a laptop and has been trying to get back up to speed.

I think in this case, it's mostly just putting himself out there. If you have 100 interviews, and 99 are unsuccessful, the one win is enough that the expected value of applying is worth it.

Good luck!

Put your resume on LinkedIn.

Please share the links & many of us we'll re-share them on social media.

apart from programming you could add a remote part-time job, look at positions available at:

https://appen.com/ or http://www.ai-media.tv/

I was in a similar position about a year ago, having no home, but landed a job and found my way!

This is very obvious, but science faculties often need python programmers. If not done yet, you could use the bulletin board to start building a small local net of contacts.

You need to rebuild your confidence. Providing that you are reasonably competent at development (which I assume you are), I would focus on learning React and applying for mid-level jobs related. Don't apply for a junior role, you are selling yourself short. You are not a junior.

- I wouldn't be too afraid of "Word getting around" - that sounds like fear driving you rather than faith.

- Try to find a family or friend who will allow you to register at their address for tax/banking purposes. You will need to get paid and you need these systems in place in order to do so.

- If you can get a registered address (even if you aren't officially living there), I wouldn't even tell them about your current situation of being homeless, unless of course you have no choice.

- Look for 'nearly' successful startups. From my experience startups generally have less weighted interviews, more casual recruitment processes, my last two contracts I have landed have paid really well but I didn't even have my references examined. Most people in the startup scene (at least in Europe) don't care about references, they just look at the work you do after a couple of weeks and let that be the deciding factor on if you worth the money or not.

- Become a great React developer (or Vue.js) if you want to get involved in startups, this is because its the 'coolest' technology going around and most CTO's choose the most popular tech stacks. Familiarize yourself with the related technologies so you know what you are talking about in an interview. I would get familiar with Redux, but I would personally use Mobx for state management. I would also look at Next.js and know about SSR apps. Formulate opinions of these technologies so you can talk about these to your interviewer.

- Formulate opinions about emerging technologies, such as Rust and its implementation in Firefox, hence which is why i use firefox over chrome today.

- Familiarize yourself with basic AWS, gcloud, k8s, so at least you have touched on these technologies and you are aware of them. You don't need to be an expert.

- Setup a portfolio website! You can get free 1 year hosting with AWS. I would setup AWS with SSL and host a next.js React application on it, using the latest design ideas etc. Look at other developers portfolios for inspiration. This is a great way to have a nice portfolio piece using the latest tech, it illustrates that you can do your job.

Believe in yourself. The biggest obstacle in this world, is no other, is no grand oppressive state, it is yourself. You must redefine who you THINK you are. You are not a homeless person, but a person in transition. You are not poor, but a person about to find truth and wealth. Be thankful and grateful for what you have, however little that may be. Be thankful that you have a skill that is highly sought after and highly lucrative. You can make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year if your redefine the image of yourself. Use your experience on the streets as a strength, rather than a weakness.

You are a versatile person. I have no doubt you will make it to where you need to go.

I was able to avoid becoming homeless by using services the city offers (food stamps, a one shot service that helped with rent during the month it mattered most, unemployment until it ran out), borrowing a small amount of money from family, wife was able to get a part-time job -- this got us out of our immediate scenario of living on the streets or in a car but we were literally 1 week away from that happening.

Finally after months of applying for jobs I was able to land one a week ago.

What I have done to get back on track:

1. put together a good portfolio: i built a few react sites, made some 2d games and converted a few interesting problems found on hackerrank into little applications so that I would have some diverse projects to show off. created social media accounts to showcase my work as well and linked all of those from my portfolio site.

2. prepared mentally: with each job interview that I failed I paid close attention to what went wrong and what I could have done to prevent it from failing and then adjusted my next interview based on that information.

3. put in 15 resumes per day: there are lots of job sites (angel.co weworkremotely.com and remoteok.io to name a few) -- once i ramped up to 15 resumes a day I had at least 3 calls a week with prospective employers. I also didn't limit myself to CO -- i now have a remote job.

4. don't kill yourself or give up: for me this was the hardest part of the process. i suffer from bipolar disorder and was on the verge of suicide for the better part of this year. each failure during the process made me sink further into depression, though keeping my mind occupied with my own projects helped immensely. staying positive through this sort of thing, even if you're lying to yourself and faking it, seems to be one of the keys to success because other people can pick up on your mood.

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I am assuming that you have very limited funds and thus might not know where to host a website for cheap -- this can be accomplished for 1 or 2 USD per month on AWS using a serverless infrastructure. You can also host free static sites on github pages with custom domains (get one on namecheap for $9 per year). Whatever you choose has the added benefit of being something you can talk about in a job interview and showcase on your site.

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i don't know how your javascript skills are, but if you have extensive front end experience:

1. update your knowledge if need be to the latest JS syntax

2. spend a weekend learning react

3. start playing with node

javascript is in demand and i have seen Jr devs (1 or 2 years of react and node experience) being billed as either "fullstack developers" or even worse "senior fullstack developers". With your current skill set and a bit more knowledge you should be able to land a JS job pretty quickly.

I’m also in Colorado and have seen evictions happen in just days. It’s pretty appalling.

See if you can land some of the typical tools of nomads...a PO box, a mobile #, then be the person they are looking for

This is important, watch https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454921/?ref_=nv_sr_1