How do you ensure you are always employable?
Posted by jonathon8903@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 94 comments
So I have been with my current company for three years now. I don't really have any issues with them nor desire to leave. My days are rarely stressful, it's WFH, and my salary is about average for my skillset. That said, I am constantly nervous about the risk of getting laid off in this economy.
Most of my development has been for my company so nothing I can advertise on my Github page. My website currently is over 3 years old now and I'm working on a full refactor. Do you guys ensure that you have projects in your Github every so often? do you stay involved in OSS? Basically what do you do to ensure that even if you get laid off, you aren't panicking too much?
PoopsCodeAllTheTime@reddit
u/jonathon8903 I contributed to OSS long ago, those contribs age like wine, no one will look at them and then ponder why I didn't contribute any more.
Now I do personal projects or proprietary software, I don't need to show it to anyone, I can talk about it and it's easy to tell that it is true if you know about the tech. I am not going to strike a business suit in awe with my CV, and they won't be able to tell if I am telling the truth, but that's kind of the point, I am not going to work for that kind of person.
drguid@reddit
I always ensure I have an interesting side project to show off. Also I'm in my 50's so I make sure I can still do legacy stuff. I'm currently doing Visual Basic 6.0 (lol). It pays the bills.
hopbyte@reddit
W…wut? Why hasn’t it been rewritten?
geft@reddit
Cheaper to get a guy to maintain it than to set up a team to rewrite the whole thing.
wheelchairplayer@reddit
change your job 2 years most
TalesOfSymposia@reddit
A bunch of it comes down to complacency and luck. And not just the kind of luck that helps you avoid layoffs, but also the luck to get good advice and mentoring from an early stage. For example, if you didn't know how important it is to network, the longer you go without knowing that, the harder it is to catch up if you need to change jobs.
jhartikainen@reddit
I think the thing to understand here is that the more experience you have, the less your github etc. actually matter. Those are "social proof" in a sense of your ability to do stuff - once you have years and years of actual experience, you need less other kinds of proof.
No one has even wanted to see those for me for a long time now.
casualfinderbot@reddit
Idk I feel like it depends who’s hiring. As someone who does make hiring decisions, I don’t trust “experience” all that much, there are tons of people who have been in this field 10+ years who are not smart or not good teammates
If I had to choose between two people, one with 3 years exp and a github with a project with 2k stars, and one with 10 years exp but nothing to prove they’re passionate, I definitely choose the person with the github stars
1000Ditto@reddit
these days there's some with people buying github stars...
GoonOfAllGoons@reddit
Drink!
MrEloi@reddit
Anyone who has the word "passionate" in the their resume is a NO from me.
Sparaucchio@reddit
Yeh but once the company is big enough that the CVs go through ATS and non-tech people first, the rockstar with 2k star but "only" 3yoe will be filtered out before you see them
Economy-Beautiful910@reddit
Just curious, most CVs I see include some sort of "Projects" section. Would this sort of be replaced by longer "Experience" sections?
PressureAppropriate@reddit
"Projects" are for hobbyists. Professionals have "Jobs". Jobs don't generally involve a public GitHub repo so it's really not necessary.
corny_horse@reddit
100%. I have to massively truncate my experience sections as it is now with about 10YOE
gedrap@reddit
It's the same as editing and shortening descriptions for jobs you had 5 or 10 years ago. What you did as a junior developer in 2016 isn't relevant anymore, and the same goes for projects you did years ago unless they are still impressive.
timy2shoes@reddit
Yes, most of the projects you will be involved in will be at work. And no one who's working really has time for github projects. Unless your work is involved in open source projects or does some type of blog for marketing purposes.
Economy-Beautiful910@reddit
hmm interesting
I think I'm at the crossover point where my experience is starting to maybe trump my projects..
mostly because I don't have time/energy because of work
AnimaLepton@reddit
The one exception I've seen is open source companies, or solutions architect positions at a startup where you might be expected to write some technical communication/docs and blog posts. Not the actual backend/technical docs specifically, but more like walking someone through a project or deployment example. But I think even for them it's a nice to have/helps standout or edge out other candidates, not a hard requirement
criticalseeweed@reddit
This. Saw a post on X where a guy boasted about the number of repos he has. He said he wouldn't hire anyone who didn't have public repos but X was quick to educate him that most company's GitHub repos are private.
thelochteedge@reddit
Yup. We have a co-op at my work right now and we had a meeting earlier where I told her that doing these workterms is some of the most vital work you could do before you graduate. You get actual work experience which looks good on a resume and you can make network connections... I hate saying that as an anti-networking kinda guy but it's very important. My last job, I definitely got fast tracked because a guy I'd done a co-op term with years ago was still there and he recommended me.
jonathon8903@reddit (OP)
Thanks, I have to admit I don't have the experience of multiple interviews.
Drauren@reddit
What I recommend to people is if you can become a part of your company's/team's interview process, you should. It teaches you a lot about being on the other side of the table and what people look for.
Friendly-Example-701@reddit
Following
fortunatefaileur@reddit
you should interview at least once a year so you don't forget everything, and you should try to stay vaguely aware of things in your niche, and use them a bit. if your company is just "Write COBOL 40 hours a week" then yes, that unfortunately means doing things outside of work if you want to be employable outside of the COBOL micro-niche.
unduly-noted@reddit
Do you actually interview once per year?
fortunatefaileur@reddit
Only on average, it’s definitely easier advice to give than to take.
Obviously all advice like that should be weighted by your own sense of hireability and fireability - when I’ve been more nervous about either, it’s been more often than once a year.
unduly-noted@reddit
Yeah, it's something I'd like to do more but it's so much effort on top of work, studies, life, etc. Maybe I'll do it soon.
xlb250@reddit
Learn how to sell yourself and interview well.
Northbank75@reddit
I’m more worried about being seen as old :) sneaking up on my 50s. I used to contribute to open source projects and think about things portfolio projects. I worked for one company for 21 years before they punted me, I was terrified because I’d gotten comfortable and ever seemed to have moved to other languages outside of my own.
I guess I landed on my feet, and I’m right back where I should be … but I did promise myself I’d never rest on my laurels again. I do absolutely stay on top of my game and skills every day. Never quit learning and you’ll always have a shot.
Potential-Papaya-501@reddit
Projects and websites may matter for some positions. What matters most is your network.
danielrheath@reddit
First decade of my career: Industry events (network at conferences, speak at meetups, etc) Second decade of my career: Riding on the networking I did in the first decade Third decade of my career: Hoping to stay in the role I'm at / be sufficiently financially independent that a couple of years unemployment won't be a big issue.
broken-neurons@reddit
Soft skills, networking and specialization. Make sure you’re the only person that knows X. Ideally X, Y and Z.
roger_ducky@reddit
Always employable is a tall order. Main things to keep in mind: * Look around on job boards to see the skills they hope for. * Try to make sure you have those skills, preferably with actual projects you’ve done at work with them.
I started off as an assembly/C developer, which let me go do C++ in embedded systems later.
After I got laid off as an embedded developer about 4 jobs later, I tried all the major job fairs and got consistently rejected for not knowing the stack. Jobs around where I was were mostly Java, Python, and SQL, so they look at job title and referred me to their mobile apps teams. They didn’t want me either, obviously, since they don’t need C++ people either.
Luckily, at the last job, I had set up a ticketing system written in Python. So I can add that to my resume. After all, I did customize a few screens here and there.
That allowed me to get into a “we’re all family here” Python shop where everyone’s basically replaceable and didn’t get paid much, but I learned everything I could and more about Python and their more “legacy” Java code there, plus experience with MySQL where I used to only have SQLite listed.
That lasted about a year, and I got into a graduate school’s IT department and wrote Java web apps and some Python and PHP. This lasted 2 years, and was quite enjoyable, I just wasn’t happy with the commute.
But, at that point, with 3 years of Java, SQL, and Python experience, the nearby employers finally took notice of me and let me work there.
So, that was how I was finally “good enough to hire” by my local employers.
Some of the issues most FAANG people might run into is, those companies basically created 100% internal tooling that depended on nothing anyone else is using. This made them “unproven” the way I was with just my embedded programming experience. So, definitely try to have something the other employers wants.
xKommandant@reddit
Be able to interview well and hold a conversation.
ComprehensiveWord201@reddit
I was largely dismissive of the layoff culture two years ago. I told myself, "only incompetent devs get laid off. That won't happen to me!"
... And then it happened to me. Maybe I am incompetent, it's hard to say. That said, I got a job last March 3 weeks after I was laid off. Pay raise and everything else. I took a week off to decompress and murn the loss of my job and then I applied all day every day. ~100 applications later and I was back at work.
So, why am I sharing all of this? I guess theres a moral here, somewhere... I had 3ish years of experience at that point and I was terrified. No GitHub, poor leetcode skills, etc. fortunately I know how to do my job and can talk to the profession at large. Sometimes that's enough. Today I do leetcode to assuage anxiety but it's probably not necessary. Try not to sweat it too much.
drew_eckhardt2@reddit
originalchronoguy@reddit
No github or any of that. After a certain level of tenure, you should have developed a reputation. Your biggest champions will be former employers, co-workers, managers, clients, stakeholders.
Reputation yields more dividends. If someone vouches for you, that to me is more valuable.
MrEloi@reddit
After a certain level of tenure, you should have developed a reputation.
Exactly - and not just in your current firm.
MrEloi@reddit
Being a workaholic and most importantly "A safe pair of hands" worked for me.
Managers - especially senior mangers - simply want people they can assign tasks, and know that it will be delivered on time and in a good working state.
This does not mean that you will be overloaded - management will accept an honest "No" or "Sure, but it will take 6 weeks" as as answer. They can deal with that. They simply want predictability and reliability.
Once you get a widely known name for this reliability and productivity - and you will get known - then you will always have work ... especially when the headhunter/executive search firms hear of you.
HoratioWobble@reddit
I don't think you can. I've seen people with all sorts of experience, struggle to find work and lose their jobs.
In fact, I've seen more people with longer tenure struggle to find a new job than I do some less experienced people.
The industry is a hustle, you have to keep networking, keep saving, keep moving around.
People who think they are secure or won't struggle to find work at some point in their career are naïve.
NormalUserThirty@reddit
i dont, i just hope for the best
StolenStutz@reddit
The first priority is networking. Many of my jobs came this way, and most of the better ones. And that's a two-way street. One of my best opportunities started with me leaving a nice review of an ex-coworker on LinkedIn. A conversation followed, and then we were coworkers again.
As someone who does technical interviews, I like seeing someone's GitHub. It's a way of learning a bit of who they are and how they operate. But it is certainly not a requirement. To put it another way, having some small side projects on GitHub is helpful, but not having a presence there is not harmful.
Ok_Put_3407@reddit
That's for juniors tbh
wallyflops@reddit
Look on linkedin for the next job you want. What skills are you missing? desperately learn them. Repeat.
thodgson@reddit
At your current job, always volunteer for the hardest tasks/projects even if you don't know what to do or how to do it. You will inevitably learn something new and become an invaluable part of the team/company. When it is time to move on to your next job, you will have a new skill. Granted it may not be the most "in demand" skill, but it is one more thing for your resume.
SillAndDill@reddit
I don't worry about my GitHub profile.
When my company interviews devs we make it clear to everyone in the recruitment process that looking at public code contributions is something that we can do when comparing evenly matched junior devs - but when it comes to senior devs we have zero expectation of their Github profile. A senior dev could be the most productive dev ever with zero visible public contributions, it depends entirely on their style.
Particular-Walrus366@reddit
I never had any personal projects on my GitHub nor do I have a portfolio or website. As much as I appreciate that these things are valuable I think they are overrated in terms of the effect they have on employment. I’ve found that a good CV listing my skills and important projects I’ve worked on (no links) and a relevant cover letter has been all I needed to land my last 2 roles (well, to get a callback). In terms of remaining employable, I think that depends on what sort of stack you use and work you do at your current company. If it’s in line with the last 5-years trends and good engineering standards you’re pretty much guaranteed to have marketable skills. Otherwise it would be a good idea play catch up on the side. Another one I can think of is to practice System Design questions/DSA as a hobby to keep those skills sharp for interviews (something I regret not doing).
Aggravating-Kale2414@reddit
Whether for two minutes or two hours, I do some personal coding daily. Nothing crazy, mainly tech that interests me - a couple frameworks, a bit of cloud/serverless, some IaC, a bit of front-end, etc. I plan to build something, whether simple or mildly complex, and try to contribute to it Mon thru Fri. I might even have two or three things going and alternate working on them. The point is not necessarily to show anything on Github, although I do check everything in, but to keep things fresh (these tend to be tech I've worked with but not in my current role) as well as expose myself to new things.
defluiIw@reddit
Get on your hands and knees and lick some boots.
flavius-as@reddit
Both at the same time.
bluetista1988@reddit
Keep your technical skills up to date.
Build your network of colleagues who know you are skilled and can vouch for you + open doors for you.
Don't burn bridges. If you can't play nicely with everyone at least keep it professional because you never know when you're going to run into that person again.
Mentor juniors and always be willing to lend a hand to them. If you decide to stay technical for the course of your career then you may wind up having one of them as your manager someday.
You can't control if you will be employed forever but you can do the work to make sure those periods of unemployment are brief and that you have options.
eloel-@reddit
I am confident I can nail any leetcode interview, which means I can always find a job.
swapripper@reddit
Teach us how, master
BusinessDiscount2616@reddit
Easy, tell them hey an LLM can do this one sir here you go in 5 seconds.
Seriously though 90% of coding interviews I’ve done are ridiculously simple FizzBuzz, averaging two lists. Anything beyond that and something an LLM would struggle more with, well, education and years of studying algorithms, understanding real implementations in tools we use everyday. Even at big companies the questions are often not that challenging, maybe because they understand it’s draining and they can’t just spitball design questions more easily? Idk.
BestPseudonym@reddit
Are these for 70k a year on-site positions or something? I swear the only places that I interview at require me to do 2 take home tests, a phone screen, and then an 8 hour interview where I have to design Netflix, know the solution to some obscure prefix trie problem and do a behavioral interview in front of a panel of 3 people.
BusinessDiscount2616@reddit
No, 200k+ jobs in HCOL. Anecdotal experience, 100s of interviews.
I don’t do take homes, for the same reason solving a tough problem in an interview isn’t that common, you’re giving away free work. If they knew how to do it themselves they wouldn’t hire you for a job in this range.
BestPseudonym@reddit
Very interesting, I guess I've just hit some landmines.
The homework wasn't production-ready code or anything. Things like a simple API implementation where you have to ingest some data and transform it and display it, sometimes with a skeleton of the code provided. The most I've ever spent on a take-home was 4 hours which was a mistake because I ended up rejecting the company anyway for being extremely unprofessional.
How many YOE do you have? Maybe your resume or the position you're applying for comes with a lot of assumed prestige or skill? I've mostly been applying for senior dev positions.
BusinessDiscount2616@reddit
I’m a senior developer with 8 years of experience. I’ve interviewed many companies and have jumped positions every 2 years in big companies.
I also had a take-home interview and turned it down. Some companies just want to know your tools, not hire you, because maybe they can just copy what you do at your company. The real interviews I’ve had were with people who get technical skills and can tell if you know what you’re doing, and they let you do that there’s no micromanaging. There’s minimal job security but you’re paid well.
Many business folks want to hire junior engineers, and don’t share equity or revenue. Seniors are more expensive. I love tinkering with electronics and open source on weekends and evenings, it’s the only reason I can compete and contribute with people who’ve been doing this for 20-40 years.
BestPseudonym@reddit
Ah, I used to contribute to OSS but I've lost a lot of passion for coding in the past couple of years. I imagine a large part of my issue is a lack of motivation as well. Appreciate you sharing your thoughts with me
BusinessDiscount2616@reddit
No, 200k+ jobs in HCOL. Anecdotal experience, 100s of interviews.
I don’t do take homes, for the same reason solving a tough problem in an interview isn’t that common, you’re giving away free work. If they knew how to do it themselves they wouldn’t hire you for a job in this range.
The interview cycle you’re describing is also true, but the algorithm interviews significantly vary, prefix trees or what have you are mostly about problem solving and collaboration in my experience than getting the perfect performance in a running solution.
eloel-@reddit
My current (non-FAANG), fully remote company pays several times that and does phone + 4 hours with pretty straightforward DS/A questions you should be able to solve if you worked a real job for more than a year (like, "implement insertion sort" level DS/A).
Where are you finding the insane interviews?
BestPseudonym@reddit
I'd describe the type of company I usually interview with to be FAANG wannabe's, usually non-prestigious tech companies. I had a string of really demoralizing interviews that were this involved and frankly extremely exhausting and it put me off from interviewing for a bit, but I'm starting to think I may have just had an unlucky streak.
marxama@reddit
Cracking the Coding Interview is actually a really great book. Highly practical, and teaches you interesting stuff you might've forgotten/never gotten to.
eloel-@reddit
I honestly don't have anything beyond "I listened when the profs were teaching ds/a in school".
PotentialCopy56@reddit
Aaand there's that over inflated ego. Haven't done and dsa since college ten years ago but absolutely confident they can ace leetcode interviews. Wow. What a trash industry.
eloel-@reddit
I'm sorry that you feel the need to project, but I've changed jobs without issue multiple times in that timespan thanks to the dsa interviews.
BusinessDiscount2616@reddit
Right? Where’s the hostility coming from 🤷♂️
Busy_Quality561@reddit
Become an expert at something in the codebase or process within your company. Not a guaranteed protection, but reduces the chances you get laid off as it adds a layer of job security.
Significant-Leg1070@reddit
Yeah I think it’s a normal feeling for any career that isn’t tenured. It’s a bit more troublesome in software development because there’s a huge breadth of knowledge and we get tested for raw ability and fact recall during interviews.
Obviously, not every company does technical interviews and some just do the normal talk about your resume war story style but you never want technical skills to preclude you from an offer.
For me, I am working on a daily coding practice routine that has my toes always at least dipped in the leetcode/system design context. I do an easy problem or watch an example systems design interview on YouTube
jonathon8903@reddit (OP)
Yeah, that's fair. I think I need to do more leetcode practice.
Significant-Leg1070@reddit
Anecdotally, I have passed technical interviews by just being honest when I got stuck on a leetcode problem and working through it with the interviewer. These were roles for smaller teams where it was more about personality and culture fit rather than being a 10x engineer.
It is good to have at least seen the patterns before so you aren’t a deer in headlights if it comes up. When my kids are older maybe I’ll grind it out on leetcode and try to increase my TC by moving to a bigger tech company but for right now I need WLB
thelochteedge@reddit
Same here. I sorta bombed the leetcode part of my current job but because I was honest and talked about it with the interviewer, who helped me through it, I think they appreciated that.
Significant-Leg1070@reddit
Yeah when I interview people I can always appreciate a humble person who can be coached or isn’t completely lost and is able to learn. You can also tell if it’s something they know but haven’t touched in 6 months so it’s rusty vs if they’re BSing straight up
DeterminedQuokka@reddit
I almost never add anything public to GitHub. And I’ve had pointed out to me twice that doing so actually makes it look like you are currently applying for jobs.
I think the thing that makes you employable easily is good contacts. I have several friends who periodically ask me if I want a job. If I did I would ping one of them.
I don’t actually do anything to maintain my skill set. I assume that doing the job means I’m qualified for the job.
I don’t know if I’m just lucky but I’ve never had difficulty getting an offer and the more years I have the easier it gets.
I find from interviewing the most important thing for me to give someone an offer is for them to have consideration into what they are building. Like if I ask why they did something and they say “bob told me to” I’m not a huge fan. Even if Bob did tell you ask bob why so that you have a real answer. Even an answer like that”it was a short deadline and I already knew Python” is significantly better.
I also want someone to show comparison thought processes. Like if I ask why is mongo better than Postgres it’s nice if someone knows. A lot of that just comes from being slightly interested in technology. You don’t have to build a mongo to know what it’s good for just watch a couple YouTube videos.
Also 100% I get this is the opposite of what people usually say. Be super careful when you lie on your resume. If you tell me you built a kinesis pipeline I’m going to ask you about it and finding out you don’t know what you are talking about will go poorly. You can do the white lie and say I instead of “the team”. But make sure you actually know how the thing works.
FinalEstablishment77@reddit
I just study up on the latest interview questions/strategies/tec for a couple weeks and jump in. I don't keep up with tech in my day to day life, otherwise I won't have enough time to go touch the grass.
AggressiveAsk1337@reddit
Leetcode(not as important depending on years but if you can't do mediums easily, you need to get at it),new projects with new tech stacks, podcasts/blogs to stay up to date, and system design/understanding big picture stuff. All the things I wish I was doing the past two years before my team was let go R.I.P.
General_Explorer3676@reddit
Im employable as long as i do a good job while employed… I’ve learned to stop worrrying about the economy and if it happens it happens
Crypty@reddit
Soft skills!!! Be charismatic, eager, and engaging to talk to. It goes a long way with how introverted and awkward many engineers are. Soft skills appeal to hiring managers and HR/Recruiting. Convey this not only in conversations but in your resume, application, reach-out attempts etc.
Ok-Influence-4290@reddit
You’ve got three years of experience no one really cares about your projects.
What you need to do is make sure you put the correct details in your CV.
sound_px@reddit
if you're under 35, you should be fine 🙃
TopOfTheMorning2Ya@reddit
Oh no… I’m above that number
startupschool4coders@reddit
Well, you can’t, not really.
There’s 2 dangers:
You let your SWE skills go because you warm a seat at your current job and don’t do any SWE
A technology shift happens and, after a few years, nobody wants your obsolete SWE skills
You might be able to do LC but, if you don’t get any interviews, you’ll be unemployed.
Also, a bad job market is troublesome for even the best SWEs. A bad job market is irrational so it’s possible to do everything right and be unemployed.
hola-mundo@reddit
The best thing is being subject matter expert. So you can add value to any kind of project, specifically for your domain. Github could be a private one. Set one up and work on any ideas you have (long) pending in a issue-tracking system such as Jira (free version)
kevinkaburu@reddit
Collect and save positive feedback from directors, managers, clients, and peers on past projects. This will show that your performance was recognized.
Also keep an updated list of your accomplishments for your resume/portfolio and share it online and with your network.connections.
It saves you time/effort when you eventually start looking for new positions.
Noway721@reddit
None of that. A job is a job and I clock out after 5. Nothing more, nothing less
jonathon8903@reddit (OP)
Interesting, so if you get laid off after a few years of working for a company, how do you prove to new employers that you have the skills they require?
xt1nct@reddit
Build a decent emergency fund.
Take it easy when employed. Take few months to sharpen leetcode and system design.
A little of truth and a little bullshit on resume.
Profit.
stochastaclysm@reddit
Interview
stuuuuupidstupid@reddit
My resume highlighting projects I did for my job
Noway721@reddit
By telling them what I worked on....
themooseexperience@reddit
I don't have a ton of work experience, but I think I'm beginning to understand that if your goal is to just always stay employed at a decent-to-good job, all you need to do is
My semi-hot take: these are both much harder to do when strictly remote, leading to a direct tradeoff between remote life and future job security. I'm not saying remote is bad, just that there's tradeoffs.
jonathon8903@reddit (OP)
Yeah I think about your second point often. One of the main reasons I'm WFH is I live in a rural area and the commute would be over 4 hours of driving a day, plus most of my company's software team is not in my state. So it definitely makes career progression difficult at times.
I've considered going to some conventions and meetups to help fill that gap.
mkdev7@reddit
Leetcode