@thedavidmeister actually my comment was addressed to you

What is the market like for fresh college grads and entry-level developers? It seems like every published opportunity is a mid-to-senior role. E.g., I see a particular Clojure job listing for which the main requirement is 8+ years' work experience; it doesn't even require knowing the language.

Probably it has to do with the 10000 hours rule. After that amount of deliberate practice you are an expert of a certain skill.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)

Now that you mention it, I don't think I have seen many entry-level clojure positions either

now you got me counting my clojure-hours, @mozinator

nope... not even close to 10,000

I think it applies more on programming in general

ah phew! 🙂

then I should be good 🙂

the beatles-in-hambur number seems fishy to me by the way

if you play music 8h/day (unlikely!) for 240 days per year, it'd take you 10000/(240*8) = 5.2 years

I guess it’s assumed that they started practicing before as musicians

no singer can sing for so long every day, or I think even a guitarist practice

there is a section on the page regarding criticisms and reaction on how they arrived at that number... i think it is open to interpretation

jsmul, don't take this 8+ years so strict. if you really like the company, just go for a open solicitation. show initiative and make it interesting for the company to hire you

The original researcher for the 10,000 hour thing doesn’t like the way outliers portrayed it

tell them that you are passionate about Clojure but don't have a lot of experience yet

It was supposed to be about deliberate practice to be a master in the field.

yep, Robert Greene in the book mastery explicitly says that its about deliberate practice.

and that its closer to 15k hours

Gladwellean hyperbole I guess

I also think that programming might be too broad a concept to consider it in the same vain as practicing violin and having great technique.

I agree

and it changes all the time, so by the time that you are at 10K hours. the whole industry is changed

Well I think the generalizable part is problem solving. And I think saying someone is a master at problem solving is weird.

Like I think someone can be a master at GoF design patterns.

its not just problem solving, its also about finding out what's the problem

I encapsulate that into solving it

wait I am a master at problem solving

that's how I sell my services 🙂

Is that you Rich?

Its actually what I do 😄

I might be being overly pedantic on the whole thing

back to jsmul being fresh out of college and no Clojure experience my idea is that you have to see yourself as a value creation machine and your job is to convince the company how they are going to benefit when they hire you

and maybe they are not going to earn money on you in the first year

you are an asset for a company, which they spend money on... I know this sound a bit strange, but it is

Well, I have functional programming experience as an academic and some personal experience with Clojure on practical applications, but I've never shipped software as a pro.

I don’t think it’s hard to provide value to an organization if they’re structured in a way to help you succeed.

if your concern is showing experience, maybe you could contribute to open source or throw up non-trivial projects on Github?

I would just apply to the mid-level jobs and be transparent but say you know how to program just not tons of professional experience.

Have something on your github that you can show works.

you can always learn as you go

you could also start with freelancing

find some small / medium businesses with some problems that need automating

its great, you learn lots of skills. negotiating, shipping software, eliciting requirements, make trade-offs between different solutions.

my customers dont care if I use clojure for programming solutions for them. they just want their problem solved

As a hiring manager with an open Clojure req right now, I’d say, “yes definitely” to getting some credits for Clojure work on GitHub, whether it’s your own projects or contributions to other open source projects.

If you don’t have actual, production-level Clojure on your résumé, you need something that can be used as a filter to get you past that first check “Do they know Clojure?”.

Just saying you’ve learned Clojure for fun / as a hobby is not going to be enough.

If you’re applying for a job, make sure that you hit enough of the requirements that being “light” on Clojure isn’t going to disqualify you.

@seancorfield has good points, as always

For example, our job req has these requirements:

• 4+ years of professional development experience
• Ability to write quality, clean, solid, readable and maintainable code that scales and performs well in Clojure
• Knowledge of Relational and NoSQL Databases (MySQL and MongoDB)
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Experience with creating and maintaining REST services
• Strong problem solving and decision-making ability

And a cover letter is very important. It introduces you. It tells me why you’re interested in this job at my company.

If we get an application with no cover letter, that’s pretty much an immediate “no” from my VP (and from me too)

what exactly does qualify as a cover letter?

Basically read the job spec and be honest about where you fit and where you don’t — and why you think you can compensate for the current lack of fit.

A cover letter should accompany your résumé. It should be tailored to the job / company you’re applying to. It should tell me why you’re applying — what interests you about the position, why you’re a good fit. It only needs to be a paragraph or two. Keep it simple and to the point.

Cover letter thing is interesting. Almost no one I work with uses them.

I guess I should start.

I tend to write a couple of paragraphs taylored to the offer when I apply

but it’s generally email or some online job service

nothing with special format

I'm curious to know if what facundo describes is suitable... I typically do the same.

That’s fine. An email “cover letter” to go with your résumé is fine.

Whew 🙂

And I’d recommend sending your résumé as a PDF, not a Word doc — less risk of formatting glitches.

Uh, are there really developers that send word docs?

We got a .odt file the other day… the VP and I were like “what the…?"

(We could open it just fine, but really…?)

We all use LaTeX, right? 😅

😄 at least .odt. Better then some Wordpress 3.x format 😄

And on the subject of résumés, keep them short — one page, two at the most. Start with a sentence about your goals or the position you’re looking for, followed by a brief summary of your key skills. Then list relevant work experience (and/or education) in date-descending order.

For each job list your title, the company, the location and then a brief overview of your responsibilities and/or what you achieved there.

I get multi-page essays… not going to read them. I can’t tell what you actually did at a company, you’re not going to get an interview.

Oh, and this may seem blindingly obvious but… don’t list your Microsoft Office skills (you’re not applying to be a secretary!), or stuff like Photoshop etc if you’re applying for a developer / coding job. In addition to tailoring your cover letter, consider tailoring your résumé too, to better suit the position.

^^^ this! what you actually did at a company

But that brings us back around to never having worked at a company, besides maybe an internship...

honestly for the last couple of years I just keeo an updated profile in stackoverflow jobs and generate a pdf there

Good to keep in mind for the future.

which shows that working during your studies in a field relevant job is a big advantage

I used to have a nice tex cv but it didn’t seem to make sense to keep updating it

If you’re applying for your first job in programming, you’ll need to show how your education applies and what “hobby” projects you’ve done. And have a well-crafted cover letter.

Another good option is pay for yourself to attend a conference and network hard with people. If you can get someone’s attention face-to-face, you can often side-step that awkward nothing-on-the-résumé issue 🙂

Or join local meetups / user groups

which is a good idea anyway, for networking in your field of interest

people like to think of hiring as a rationale process of matching requirements to candidates, but it usually seems to come down to a gut feeling of whoever is doing the hiring. And that gut feeling is not something you can control, no matter how much you match the requirements. So I recommending ignoring the requirements as much as you can (I find this really hard to do), focus on presenting yourself as a positive eager beaver

I live in Mississippi, I wonder how many of us are here. Ha... ha......

Very easy to feel out of touch with tech world.

apply early, apply often, to the job you want, not the one you think you can get, and you'll eventually hit a hiring pipeline were everyone is having a good day

Tech is sort of like a club, if you are working for a tech company you are part of the club, and since you are part of the club any other company thinks you are a good candidate and will actively recruit you. If you are not actively working for a tech company you are outside the club

it is an often repeated saying that the best engineers are never on the market because they just move from position to position. so of course if you are on the market you are not the best, and everyone in tech says they only hire the best

If you can afford to not work for a while, maybe spending time programming open source, reading books, writing blog posts, etc can help to increase your chances of getting hired

if you’re active enough in certain communities and show you’re good I’m pretty sure you’ll start receiving good offers, regardless of your formal experience

Yes, getting a good reputation in an online community can definitely help! It’s a form of networking and it can let you show that you know your stuff and/or you are willing to put in work to learn.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect the more familiar you are to people, the more likely you are to get a good gut reaction