Ask HN: Advice for finding an entry-level remote job?
740 points| AskHNremote2021 | 5 years ago
I realize this isn't super on topic but I also feel like this is the best place I know of to ask for this advice, so here goes. I need some entry-level, remote-based work. What should I do? Help desk work seems the most promising / practical, but I haven't been able to find anything yet. The remote jobs I see posted are nearly all for higher-end positions.
I live in the poorest region of the United States, but I do the best with what I have. I’ve worked on my family’s farm and done a couple stints at retail beauty supply shops that friends own. I helped open two of those shops. That’s the extent of my non-existent resume. Given a chance to interview, I believe I would do ok. Maybe even exceed expectations for the sort of job I'm looking for.
I need to work remotely for family reasons. I have a special-needs sister and I look after my youngest brother. They are what's most important to me, which is why I don't want to relocate. I have another brother who was helping me, but he accepted a job offer far away. Now I am the only relative near who'll be able to care and look over them. I have time for a full-time job, though, and I need a way to support us.
I do have a job offer that would require me to move by March 13th. The problem is that it is far from my family, and with my brother gone, I would be leaving them on their own. The job is at is an auto body repair shop paying minimum wage. I would be stressed every day worrying about my family back home. What I want is a way to work that lets me stay at home, fulfill my family responsibilities, and make money to keep things afloat.
I am a techie at heart. I’m a Linux/MacOS person, but I easily adapt to other technologies. My first PC was a Compaq Presario that ran Windows 3.1. My father saw the ‘future’ in it, and he hoped I would be part of that future. To use it, you needed to enjoy torture to some extent. Still, it sucked me in. Something about that mysterious DOS prompt promised treasures if only I learned its magic. A few years later, I was dual-booting an ugly Dell machine (Windows 98 SE and Ubuntu). In between that time, my school still had an Apple IIe on which I loved playing Oregon Trail. I bought one a few years back for nostalgic reasons, but I had to leave it behind at my old residence. I miss it a lot. I hope it got a good home.
I am currently working through the freeCodeCamp course and intend to pick up Eloquent JavaScript by Marijn Haverbeke soon. I use VS Code and Spacemacs as my editors. I google like a madman. I have fun playing ukulele and guitar, and I’m teaching my youngest brother about the different parts of a Raspberry Pi. Oh, and I love to read. I am a habitual reader. There’s a lot more, but those are the kind of things that interest me.
I learn quickly, I am flexible, and due to working in customer service (beauty supply shops) I have a calm and understanding demeanor. I am a friendly person and I am always willing to find a solution, even when a solution seems impossible.
I would be grateful for any advice, and I am particularly thankful for dang's / Daniel's time in editing this to be a better Ask HN submission.
I can be contacted at [email protected] and I can provide my GitHub as well, which is mostly documentation editing. I have been told I am a competent writer, if that counts for anything.
Edit: I know that this is an unusual Ask HN post and I am grateful to anyone who takes the time to read through it. I'm curious how others in my situation managed to find remote work. I feel lost in all of this. To say that this has been a stressful time would be an understatement, but I'm turning to HN in the small chance the right person sees this and can give me suitable advice or point me in the right direction. I have always found comfort in this community, so this is where I've turned. Thank you.
[+] [-] geocrasher|5 years ago|reply
Now that that's out of the way: You need to focus. You've described your abilities and that's fine, but you lack focus. Your qualifications are great, but your presentation is all over the place. You need a single one page resume that focuses on one aspect of your knowledge and experience, and lightly mentions the others. Make multiple resumes, each with a focus on one thing. Use the resume that's best for the job. I recently saw somebody who must have had 20 different resumes to match the jobs they were applying for. It worked.
Also, you might consider looking into the Web Hosting business. If your temperament is as you describe, and you like talking on the phone or live chat, most web hosts will overlook any technical gaps. Those can be taught. In fact that can lend to your focus! Focus on the fact that you know things that can't be taught: Customer Service, talking down angry customers, talented writing, friendly and always willing to find a solution under dire circumstances. Those are GOLD. Once those are on the table, the rest is negotiable. I'll email you a link to at least one that is hiring full remote entry level.
Additionally, you need to step up your confidence level. Let an employer know that your family is important to you and that you're dedicated to working hard so that you can support them- and leave it at that. They don't deserve the other details, and they aren't relevant.
I hope this helps.
[+] [-] fecak|5 years ago|reply
For most people, different resumes for different roles (web dev, mobile dev, etc.) make sense, but if you have 20 resumes for different roles you're probably applying for jobs that you are highly unqualified for - nobody has expertise in so many areas where they need 20 resumes. 2-3 for most is probably plenty.
The key difference in most resume customizations is how you define yourself to the reader. I use summaries to tell the reader who I WANT them to think you are. If the job is "web developer", I want to tell the reader right away that you are a web developer right in the summary. You've defined yourself as what they are looking for, checked their first (and most important box), and they will now keep reading.
If that summary said "embedded developer", they may stop reading. If there was no summary and your first job title is "data analyst", they may stop reading.
[+] [-] AlexDanger|5 years ago|reply
I'd like to second this methodology. It is a very effective approach. I've worked across multiple specialties within technology and I always tailor my CV to the job I am applying for. I highlight the most relevant experience and skills required and remove (or summarize) experience that is not relevant to the position.
Matching your CV to the job can be as simple as updating it to use the same keywords that you see on the job advert. It sounds trivial but many recruiters will filter job applications with a keyword search. If they dont see the exact keywords they are expecting, your CV will be thrown away.
Good luck!
[+] [-] audiometry|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattbee|5 years ago|reply
If you know Linux well enough to configure Wordpress, how about tech support for a hosting company? Try making some short email approaches to old-school hosting companies (I used to run one). They might be flexible enough to take a chance depending on how confident your approach is.
They have lots of customers bashing away at Linux, making mistakes, often without the patience to see their own problems through. Their business problem is that these customers need hand-holding but only pay a fixed, monthly fee. (the hope is eventually they stop asking and keep paying for years).
The combination you can offer those companies could be basic Linux knowledge (no need for advanced cloud stuff) and whatever flexibility you can offer them - especially if they're not in your time zone.
The larger ones might be a tall order, all listing locations by default (Gandi, Leaseweb, GoDaddy, Hetzner etc.), but maybe someone here will have an inside track.
I agree with other posters - never mention difficult circumstances in a job application, particularly a cold application. Just talk about how keen you are to solve their difficult customers' problems, how well you work in a team, and keep the initial approach brief.
Good luck! And please update us if you can.
[+] [-] whoknew1122|5 years ago|reply
Once you get that first job, just soak up as much as you can. And keep studying on your offtime. Learning AWS is very valuable.
[+] [-] colllectorof|5 years ago|reply
Note how this path wouldn't be possible if all these hosting companies went out of business thanks to competition from big cloud providers. Then think about what this means for the future we (in IT) create for ourselves and for newly minted IT professionals.
I commonly see people on HN deny that there are any major shifts in overall system complexity happening right now. "Everything always seems complex if it wasn't created when you started in IT". Ok. If the complexity of newer tech stacks is an illusion, why don't you hire the OP to manage your containerized micro-services via Kubernetes? He's starting his career in IT right now, so he should have no preconceptions you allude to.
[+] [-] leesalminen|5 years ago|reply
I just wanted to say to keep your head up, remain persistent, keep learning and stay curious. It can be done and hard work (usually) pays off.
Stay flexible - even if a job doesn’t seem super relevant to your core interests you never know when it’ll come in handy later. For example, my experience in fast food gave me great insights into POS systems (which I ended up building) and my time working at a luxury boutique hotel taught me how to provide excellent customer service even in difficult situations (one time I didn’t call a customer’s room at the request wake up call time and he missed his flight- eek).
Best of luck to you!
Ps- just sent you an email
[+] [-] mkoryak|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xupybd|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scomp|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lynguist|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lukasdanin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomcam|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] playingchanges|5 years ago|reply
Instructions on how to bootstrap a software portfolio:
Pick a language (sounds like you chose JS which would be my pick as well), buy a copy of cracking the coding interview, make a leetcode.com account, make a codepen.io account, and get to work.
If you’re smart and dedicated you can teach yourself this stuff and these are the best tools to help you in my opinion.
Spend your time solving problems on leetcode and then utilizing these techniques in codepen portfolio pieces.
In my opinion with serious dedication you can have a junior swe worthy resume and portfolio put together within a year.
[edit] since the question inevitably comes up with JS in my opinion you should not spend any time focusing on front end frameworks. Learn Vanilla JS, HTML and CSS, you will blow your interviewers away if you can solve their problems without a framework and it is overhead you don’t need as a beginner.
[+] [-] _drimzy|5 years ago|reply
In my opinion this is a pretty bad advice and I see a lot of entry level programmers struggling for a long time because of this. A basic algorithms and data struture book (something like Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen, and Data Structures by Mark A Weiss) is a must before jumping into leetcode/cracking the coding interview. One needs to have a foundation before diving straight to interview problems.
[+] [-] onion2k|5 years ago|reply
If you're applying to somewhere small it's less important to demonstrate you're already a good developer, and more important to demonstrate that you're interested in learning what the company can teach you, you're a decent human being who the company will want to be part of the team, and that you're not going to give up after a few weeks. Tools like leetcode won't teach you those things.
[+] [-] kitsune_|5 years ago|reply
Sure, algorithmic thinking is valuable, but linear programming and complexity theory has no bearing on 99% of all web development jobs that require JavaScript and in this context I think this fetishisation of Informatics Olympiad style puzzles is the wrong advice for someone trying to enter the field. You do not need an in-depth understanding of computer science to get started with programming or survive in the field, especially not in an enterprise environment. I met Java developers who I suspected didn't even know what class is to be honest. But people like this can thrive at big corps.
In the first year of university I had Prolog, EBNF and partial derivatives, theoretical foundations of computing, linear algebra and stochastics but how much of that stuff do you really need when programming a UI? The complexity lies elsewhere, understanding business requirements, talking to people, avoiding technical debt by talking PMs out of weird requirements, structuring your application in a modular fashion, staying up to date with the eco-system etc.
I agree that focusing on HTML, CSS and vanilla Javascript before jumping into React, Vue or whatever is a good idea tho. For frontend development job, the best thing in my view would be a solid understanding of the web fundamentals + experience in one of the big three frameworks. Outside of that, I think there are probably a lot of jobs where being able to just work with Wordpress templates is good enough tbh.
Anyways, when I'm hiring "juniors" or I'm looking for something that tells me the person a) actually likes programming b) has some demonstrated talent (problem solving, compositional thinking, whatever you want to call it) and is able and willing to learn and c) is able to work together with people (which is the biggest problem with self-taught solo-devs, not having worked in teams before) d) is not an asshole
[+] [-] divbzero|5 years ago|reply
This is how I got my first job in the industry. I built software and websites to solve problems that I personally found useful. Though the solutions were (in retrospect) rather unpolished, they were good enough that a team saw some potential and were generous enough to take a chance on me.
[+] [-] blackrock|5 years ago|reply
It’s irritating as fck that these FANG companies are so brain dead, that this is all that they can focus on.
[+] [-] agumonkey|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iainctduncan|5 years ago|reply
- figure out for whom you are a good fit based on your experience - for whom and what are you a good solution?
- create a professional, to the point resume, highlighting your unique value prop for these people, and your experience that they will care about
- write a really good cover letter about it, and say in it "I realize you may not have considered remote, but I think I am a very good fit and would be a benefit to your company, would you consider discussing this possibility"
- go through stack overflow careers making a big list of everyone you'd be a fit for, regardless of whether they think they will hire remote. The whole world is your oyster.
- send out applications TWENTY TIMES A DAY. <--- THIS IS WHAT MATTERS
- follow up: after a few days, after a week, after two weeks, then drop them if you haven't heard.
That's really all there is to it, it's a sales grind. You get up and you do your TWENTY calls every damned day and you will find work.
Some folks might think these are high numbers, but here's the rub: when the answer come in, you want options. There's a sales saying: the best negotiating tool is a fat pipeline. If you get a hundred applications out in a week, and they take a few days to a week to get around to them, the following week you have a bunch to look into. But don't snooze, keep firing out another hundred that week until you close! That way, you get not just a job, but one that is actually good for you. You can do it, it's a sellers market in tech! So grind the numbers. Good luck! :-)
[+] [-] sokoloff|5 years ago|reply
Focus on achieving some initial level of “proof” that you can perform in an entry-level software (or help desk) role. If you can’t ever visit the office, you’re competing against a worldwide set of candidates, but you can still bring something that distinguishes you. That you work in US time zone and make it easy for someone to employ you are surprisingly strong benefits to an employer who has so far only employed US people.
If you want to break into programming, go after that rather than help desk or sanding body panels. If your next best alternative is moving far away, renting a place there, and doing auto body work for minimum wage, you can probably come out after-everything even by staying put and doing a mix of online learning and even terribly paying gigs on fiverr/ upwork/ etc.
Once you get to the point where you have the basics down and are the equivalent of a boot camp grad, you have more options for full-time employment. Even at bootcamp grad level, most companies are losing money on you for a year, so before that point, it’s a really tough sell.
Maybe consider Lambda School as well. They’ve got a repayment program that scales with income, so if you don’t manage to make the turn and break into coding somehow, you’re pretty much off the hook after some time. (Obviously read their terms, don’t rely on my summary.)
I applaud your focus on your family; I’d keep that out of the interview process. If I’m hiring an entry-level remote employee, I don’t want to worry that they’re taking care of a family member most of the time and trying to fit my work into the gaps. If that’s what is happening invisibly behind the scenes, great, but it’s irrelevant or negative to the interview.
“I have strong ties here and am only open to remote work” is all I need to know as an interviewer.
Best of luck; once you hit the “I am at a boot camp grad level or better”, we have remote-only positions available (as do many companies). Provided you’re in a state where we have the ability to hire, I’d be very happy to have you apply.
Best of luck on your journey!
[+] [-] virtuous_signal|5 years ago|reply
I learned javascript + basic web development stuff like everyone else, because that's where the most beginner resources are. But the job offers I actually got were due to my learning Java (with some Java enterprise edition mixed in) and having some book knowledge about it. There are vast swaths of industries that will help you enter the middle class, and then some, by working on their old Java or C# applications. A ton of career advice out there is targeted towards the 1% who are shooting for Silicon Valley. We don't need that.
Also try to get proficient at Leetcode and come off as intelligent. A lot of your competition is computer science majors.
Lastly, and this might involve some conscious or unconscious deception: Make it sound like you intend to move to wherever the job location is, post-COVID. This works better if you are already in that state. Once you land the first job, maybe they'll offer the remote option eventually; otherwise keep applying to a couple jobs per day; this job search will be slightly easier and you will actually have the leverage to ask for a remote option when it comes up.
[+] [-] whoknew1122|5 years ago|reply
The second job I landed in tech was a FAANG. I completely agree that you shouldn't target FAANG type jobs for your first job. Not because of the other applicants. I could care less about the other applicants.
Where I work and do tech interviews (AWS), it's not about the other applicants. We don't look for the best person out of a pool of applicants. There's one question and one question only: Is this person better than half of the people currently doing this job.
If you're better than half of the people currently doing the job, you're hired. If not, you're not. And the issue is that it's really hard to have the breadth of knowledge necessary to meet that bar without previous experience.
I work in premium support for security. To be better than half the people already here you have to know the following really well: Linux or Windows; Networking; DNS; Encryption; SSL/TLS; Network/OS Troubleshooting; Web App Vulnerabilities; DDoS attacks and mitigation; and more. It'd be very hard for anyone who hasn't done this professionally to be exposed to enough tech to have that sort of depth.
[+] [-] agumonkey|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rmk|5 years ago|reply
Another alternative is to join up as a sales person at an enterprise company. Look for companies that are growing at a rapid clip; they will often hire people whose sole qualification is that they have a body temperature of 98.6 F. Sales includes helping people do POCs and such, which is part of the sales process for complex enterprise products. Once you start there, you can work your way into Software Development if you wish and can find helpful colleagues. The advantage of Sales is that they require a regional presence, and there is a chance your location will work out to your advantage (typically enterprise companies have sales forces organised by vertical and/or region, including regions of the United States).
The last option is to join an enterprise company as a Customer Support person. Once again, you can develop basic skills and become a helpful person by trying your hand at scripting to help perform minor tasks support people do when troubleshooting customer issues. I see plenty of bright Customer Service people move into Software Engineering proper after they have demonstrated intelligence and a willingness to help the customer by going a little above and beyond the immediate problem.
Most of my advice is centered on Enterprise companies because that's where a large workforce comprising people with a variety of technical skills can be found. Consumer web or mobile type companies are a bit too narrow in the types of people they hire, and frankly, the variety of interesting coding and problem solving opportunities at such companies pales in comparison with Enterprise shops.
[+] [-] grumpwagon|5 years ago|reply
Obviously you didn't lay out all the reasons why you couldn't move, and I don't expect you to, but I'd also REALLY strongly consider the implications of what a steady, well paying job can do for a family. Relocation opens up a world of opportunities for you, which opens up support and services for your family (paid and otherwise) that just aren't available in the poorest places. You don't have to be away from the people you care for if you can bring them along. I understand that leaving a support structure, even a flawed one, may not be possible, but think about that REALLY hard before you rule it out, especially if you're young. Some initial pain may transform lives. There's a reason so may people move away from the places they grow up. Plus, if you move for your first job, you always have the option of moving back after a year or two if it doesn't work out once you've established yourself in the career, which would make finding remote work much easier.
[+] [-] exdsq|5 years ago|reply
Regarding finding work, I’d go on remote-focused job boards and look for any junior support or QA roles. Email the hiring team directly saying hi along with your CV to try beat any filtering systems. If you can’t find many of these, or work through all the ones you can find, try messaging small companies hiring onsite and see if they’re up for remote work anyway.
Persistence goes a long way, expect to be told no a load of times but I hope you’ll be able to land something. Good luck!
[+] [-] marcusverus|5 years ago|reply
It's also important to do a bit of research and understand the huge variety of jobs which will come with titles like 'Remote Support' or 'Remote Support Analyst'. An IT Helpdesk job, a Software Application Support job, and a Zappos customer service job might all share the exact same generic title. So do some googling to figure out what is what, make yourself a list of titles that match the jobs you're looking for, then troll the job boards for roles with that title. Based on the post, I would target jobs with titles like "Application Support Analyst". If you search for remote only with no geographic constraints, you will find an absolute ton of jobs.
As a former recruiter, I think it's worth noting that job hunting in this way is absolutely a numbers game. When I was looking for IT work with little/no experience, I would generally get my first interview after ~50 applications. My point is that you shouldn't get your hopes up with each application, and you shouldn't feel let down if you don't hear back on a given job. If you go in knowing it will be a bit of grind, it will be much easier on you. Set yourself a goal of 2-3 applications a day, and get that many done, every single day. Given the huge number of fully remote roles out there, I'm confident that you would be hard pressed to apply for 100 of them without getting an offer.
With that in mind, get your resume all set, write out a couple of cover letter (your writing is solid, so this will help. But don't write an original letter for each application.) and then apply for everything that looks like a fit. Ignore experience requirements for roles that aren't "senior" or "manager" roles.
Best of luck!
[+] [-] germinalphrase|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pfarrell|5 years ago|reply
I would recommend that you develop some project on your own which you can speak to and talk about struggles with. Depending on the position and the company, demonstrating and talking about personal experiences on a project can go a long way towards showing your passion and determination. This isn't the way in to every company, but it is a way to ensure you have something to talk about that will help you stand out during an interview.
[+] [-] curiousllama|5 years ago|reply
OP, you're trying to do 2 things here: (1) get a job, and (2) learn a trade. Those are different, though related pursuits.
The ideal is you can find a job that will teach you the trade; in other words, you're looking for an apprenticeship. There are often gov programs for tech apprenticeships (typically state level, so I can't link a definitely-relevant one), but [1] may be a place to start. Also just google "[state] IT Apprenticeship." There are also corporate programs at IBM and Accenture you should look at.
Second, even if you can't get the tech job immediately/this round, don't give up. Google needs IT support folks enough that they started a new education program to teach people enough to work for them [2]. If you have to get a different job, look at that. It is a bit pricey at $49/month, but Google says they'd consider completion to be equivalent to a bachelors.
Finally, every CV you submit should have a cover letter, consisting of the paragraphs you wrote in this post from "I am a techie at heart" to "solution seems impossible."
Good luck!
[1] https://www.apprenticeship.gov/apprenticeship-industries/inf...
[2] https://www.coursera.org/professional-certificates/google-it...
[+] [-] mceoin|5 years ago|reply
Since you have limited time to find a remote job and nobody has mentioned it yet: HTML/CSS still pays pretty well, is fast to learn, and may be even easier to get paid for than Javascript or other coding work since a lot of "better developers" do not want to do it. I would start by building yourself a personal website and using that as your portfolio, and then expand that portfolio as quickly as you can while hustling for work.
On the hustle side, if you're looking for an entry level job in tech that you can do remotely and doesn't require much experience, you can also use Google Maps and Google to get lists of consulting shops in every major city in America (dev, design, marketing, etc.) and just work your way down the list until you have sent a brief email to every single one of them letting them know that you're looking for work.
Plenty of other techniques in this thread as well.
Getting your foot in the door is the hardest part. Good luck!
[+] [-] mrzool|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hosh|5 years ago|reply
However, what you have going for you is that you can speak and write English well. You do not have to (and should not mention) where you live, or your own circumstance. Most people are looking for someone cheap to do short projects.
The goal here is to bootstrap your experience with paid projects, even if the pay is low. You use that to then get in front of larger projects or part time work.
Pick a tech platform or a platform family and stick with it, at least initially. You’re looking for projects that, after completing them, will get you in the door with stuff that pays well.
Anything that you develop that you can put into github, you should. Usuallly, contracts are done as work-for-hire. You might be able to negotiate keeping copyright. You might not. However, tools and scripts you write to assist with it should get posted. Your hobby projects should go there too.
Now, to talk specifically about your strengths. If you love teaching and you are good at writing, one thing you can do is to start blogging about your projects, or writing tutorials. It is a kind of psychological or marketing jujutsu. Teaching something implies expertise and authority, so long as the content is competent. You can even frame this as documenting your experience learning something. Just make sure that you brand this as you authoring the thing.
Last, give some thought to speciality. If you are known to be able to solve problems in specific areas, people come to you. Some people write web apps. Some people do devops/sre/infrastructure. Some people write low latency multiplayer game servers.
[+] [-] karaterobot|5 years ago|reply
Take on a freelance contract and kick butt on it while simultaneously looking for the next contract. Eventually you will will either get offered a position by one of your clients, or you'll have enough of a resume to start applying in other places (or you'll like freelancing enough to stick with it).
[+] [-] tkgally|5 years ago|reply
A couple of years ago, I farmed out some small web design, programming, and proofreading jobs through Fiverr. The price competition among the people who bid for the jobs was brutal—people were bidding from some of the lowest-income countries in the world and seemed desperate for work—but it soon became clear that I would just be wasting my time if I went with the lowest bidders. Your writing skills will do a lot to attract jobs at decent pay. Good luck!
[+] [-] hosh|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbreit|5 years ago|reply
https://weworkremotely.com/
https://www.tecla.io/
https://remote.co/
https://www.flexjobs.com/
And if you're up for it, I highly encourage trying to try Zapier which is an amazing company and has terrific remote recruitment. Even if you don't get the job, great experience.
https://zapier.com/jobs/
[+] [-] nec4b|5 years ago|reply
I've just check their job openings. In their application form they are asking questions about race, ethnicity, gender,... Is it legal to ask such questions and what is the relevance of such questions?
[+] [-] throwaway5752|5 years ago|reply
This may be overly personal, but I would consider contract/temp work, too, to build up your professional experience. That would also reduce the risk of losing your existing full-time job and ending up in a financial hardship.
Also, apply to non-developer roles. There is a bit of complexity to working in a software company, more than just writing code. Consider a support or other development adjacent field that is still technical.
[+] [-] asidiali|5 years ago|reply
Feel free to shoot me an email with your resume or Github/LinkedIn, and I'll send back a few openings I know of right now if it seems a good fit. My email is in my profile.
Wishing you well on your job hunt!
[+] [-] AskHNremote2021|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gwbas1c|5 years ago|reply
(I already gave a career-focused response in this thread.)
Can you send one of your siblings to live with your brother? Can you move with the other sibling?
What if you took a job near your brother, and all four of you lived together?
If you move with one of your siblings, will the situation be better for the sibling? (Better schools, better special needs programs?)
Can you and your brother send money back to your parents or another caregiver?
Whenever I hear an "I live in a poor area" story, I always suspect that the situation is more unreasonable than recognized.
Is this whole situation to keep your family farm afloat? Remember, a farm is a business. It's not fair to you to have this kind of impact to your life if your parents (or whoever is running the farm) are working dawn 'til dusk on a failing business.
[+] [-] f1gm3nt|5 years ago|reply
When I’m hiring for positions I cross out the school or bootcamp “education”. My top priority is to see what you’ve done in the past and what you’re passionate about. If I like a resume I want a code sample, most have their GitHub in it. I review the code and see how well it’s formatted and how it’s organized. It takes awhile, but I think it’s worth it.
So, keep at it, do some small projects on GitHub you’re proud of. Bonus if you can find a project and contribute to it, even documentation counts in my book. Mentors are also helpful.
You got this!
[+] [-] timeyyy2|5 years ago|reply