79. Why Won't Employers Hire Me?

[@homeofcreation]

I took a customer support job with no formal IT training whatsoever. And after showing some of he stuff I developed in my own time, they asked me to join the dev team.. I kindly passed because I din't feel I belonged there, but took the invitation to drop by for a cup of coffee anyway. They told me they were fed up with people with huge resumes that could not do the job because they thought there was nothing left to learn. They'd rather want someone humble but enthusiastic whom they could teach. So here I am developing API's, .Net back ends and Angular front ends for the Dutch Government.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Awesome! Thanks for sharing.

[@oligreenfield1537]

Today I become the tech lead .NET off a 7 people team and I'm here to say THANKS YOU TIM. 4 years ago I found your channel looking for a WPF tutorial. I was switching career from marketing to programming so was a little lost. I'm here thanks to your time all the free content that you given us so once again thanks

[@V4624N7]

Hi. Congratulations on this big achievement. I have being working with .net for a couple of years now and i want to improve my skills. Do you have any additional material that you can recommend? Maybe other youtube channels, books or courses? Thanks.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Awesome! I'm so happy for you.

[@Zencoder720]

@@V4624N7 this is totally up to you and your own path. A classic book that is recommend to most programmers is The pragmatic programmer. My advice would be to choose some project you want to do personally that is meaningful to you. Then choose which language you would like to focus on. You can choose rails, C#, or even assembly depending on where your interest lies. For me I have been interested in project management and infrastructure design so I got a lot of books by Uncle Bob aka (Robert C Martin). Honestly there is so much content online that whatever path you do take I'm sure you will find the content you need to learn along with passionate people willing to teach you

[@rajm1976]

Great video. Definitely about expanding on your technical knowledge and also architectural knowledge. Knowing how to code is fine, but knowing about design patterns and how to work with common platforms. If you can demonstrate even a slight knowledge it can lift you above others. Also at interview, don't he afraid to admit you don't know something but are willing to learn

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thanks for sharing!

[@rajm1976]

@ghost mall congratulations 😁

[@williamFrSFO16]

Hi Tim! Thank you for the great tips! I might add “practice with your focused language, during your down-time” to the list. It’s important in staying sharp. Thanks!

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@LukeAvedon]

Excellent advice Mr. Corey!

[@spquest2386]

Thank you so much tim sir. I recently got hired as a .Net developer and it wouldn't have been possible without your videos. As you always say "My goal is make c# development easier" and did make it for me. Can you make video on "Software developer stereotypes"? I'm a young developer and my parents didn't want me to be a developer. They said, - It's not good for you. - you will become unsocial - you will be always busy -you will be spending a lot time alone with computers. - you will have less friends But I didn't quit regardless what they said. None of these stereotypes are true. I'm having awesome fun in my company. I'm communicating with a lot of people out there. People out there are almost like a family to me.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Congratulations! And thanks for the suggestion.

[@andywalter7426]

One question I would like to have addressed in a future episode of the dev question series is this. If a person works for a company where the employee has to pay to have the information in the cloud and the employee agrees to it (because the employee enjoys the job and they at least make more than they have to spend), is it right for the employee that if something happens and the employee eventually is no longer working for the company is to stop paying for the cloud services? Because obviously if for example, the cost of the cloud was 1000 dollars a month and they no longer have the job, then it would be really depressing if the employee has to always pay the 1000 dollars a month even though they have no money coming in to pay for it. i would think in most companies, the employee would have to pay for it if they want it on the cloud. otherwise, it would be impossible to deploy to the cloud unless they have the companies credit card information which would not make sense for a company to give out credit card information to the employee.

[@IAmTimCorey]

This is a bad scenario all around. You should not put yourself in this type of situation. If a company requires an employee to pay for the company's resources, run. That's not a real company. The only scenario where this is kind of, somewhat a thing is if you were hired as an independent consultant and you used your cloud resources as part of what you offered as a consultant. It still isn't a good scenario, but it is at least theoretically possible. In that case, you should have a VERY clear contract on who owns what. If a company owns something, they need to pay for it. If a consultant leaves the company, there needs to be a transition plan. That should include moving all company-owned resources to a company-controlled (and paid for) cloud service (or local storage). An employee should never be paying for company resources and a consultant should only be paying if they are in turn getting paid. One final note - it makes absolute sense that the company would give the employee the company credit card to pay for resources the company needs in the cloud. I do that for my employees. I've had the company credit card in previous positions. That is how it works. You get a company credit card and you make purchases for the company. Either that, or you send the PO to the purchasing department to pay for.

[@LuciferTheBloody]

I think it would be great to do a video running through some actual resumes, ideally these could be a selection from community submitted with details redacted or modified, explaining points that are good and not good on each for a theoretical opening.

[@oguzhanozgul]

How about a person with 17 years of experience (up to and incl. director level) in another proffession but trying to change careers to development/IT? Add to that being over 40 y.o., too. Any advice on this?

[@keshavkadambi]

Thank you! Can't go wrong with your advice! This is for an entry level. How would this be different for a senior professional like a project manager or software manager?

[@cysecgnz]

My problem is I just can’t seem to find a way to gain the skills I need.

[@NikeTMC]

He already answered your question in a perfect way in the other video.

[@cysecgnz]

Wish that were the truth. It’s not though.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Here you go: kzbin.info/www/bejne/ooDSppiVrtuGetU

[@matthewsmith1500]

Hey Tim I started learning C# 3 weeks ago looking at your website could you recommend a course for beginners and then after one for a lil more advance. Trying to learn on my own so your direction would be much appreciated. Also gearing towards automation. Thanks in advance

[@IAmTimCorey]

Here is one course that will cover both: kzbin.info/www/bejne/iZqamZhrgLt7bdk

[@obeddanso4310]

Thanks very much Tim

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@TheSjoerd]

Good one, again!

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thanks!

[@BahawalTV]

Over qualification is as bad as under qualification.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Not really, no. It can be a problem but not as big as not being qualified.

[@morgadoapi4431]

Thans for the video

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@adam-xt8te]

Speak to people like Tim Corey speaks and you'll get every job you wish

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thanks.

[@drdexter33]

Move to India

[@IAmTimCorey]

Why?

[@drdexter33]

Last year I was laid off from a multinational CRO where I worked for almost 20 years as a developer/support engineer and application manager. During this time I witnessed the gradual offshoring of IT jobs through the aquisitions by private equity and corporate mergers. While I was still working there, if an American developer left, management were forbidden to backfill developer jobs with "U.S. Resources" and were forced to hire only developers from India. So that's where we are for the most part and I don't see this trend slowing down since it's basically the same business model that the steel industry and American manufacturers followed in the 80s and 90s. I went back to school in the early 90s to get a degree in IT so I'm old enough to remember the collapse of the steel industry while I was living in Pittsburgh in the early 80s. I also understand the effects that NAFTA had on the middle class in America. Now Corporate America is playing the same card with not just IT jobs, but with legal, HR and accounting jobs, only this time there's likely not a union protecting the workers who's jobs are being off-shored, so no one says anything. And if they're management or executive level, they keep feeding the crocodile hoping it will eat them last. After the steel industry collapsed in Pittsburgh, I recall Ronald Reagan coming to town to lecture steel workers on retraining for high-technology jobs for the coming technology boom in Amerca. What was Reagan’s message to unemployed steelworkers during his visit? America was now in a transitional phase from a manufacturing-based economy to a high-tech, service-based economy and that displaced steelworkers needed to train for the coming high-tech economy that will be creating high-paying jobs. To drive his point home, Reagan visited Control Data Institute, a two-year trade school located in the basement of the Allegheny Center Mall on Pittsburgh’s Northside where many displaced steel workers were attending classes to help them make this transition. I was there. In November of 2023 US Steel laid off 100 IT workers at their Southside offices. One month later US Steel, once a backbone of the American economy, was sold to Japan’s Nippon Steel. The gradual slide towards capitalism that began in the middle-ages in Florence Italy with the Medici Family and as the Moral Law gave way to free-market capitalism, labor went from being esteemed as the store of all value to becoming another line item in a ledger. Once labor is de-humanized and thus appropriated as capital, it can now be off-shored to any third-world country where they can pay workers a fraction of what American workers make and are treated accordingly (recall the suicide nets at FoxConn) and wealth is concentrated into fewer and fewer hands and the middle-class is ground into dust. The title of your video is "Why Won't Employers Hire Me?" My answer was: "move to India" Bill Joy was right when he said "The Future Doesn't Need Us".

[@IAmTimCorey]

I understand that this is your experience, but that does not mean it reflects the market as a whole. I know plenty of companies that tried the offshoring thing and ended up either giving it up or using it as a supplement to their currently-growing US-based staff. Just like consumers, companies will chase the cheapest option. However, there is more to software development than just hiring the cheapest option. Change is always going to be present. That means that jobs that were relevant today might not be tomorrow. I'm sure the whole transportation industry grumbled over cars when they first came out. They put drivers, stables, and many other people and businesses out of business. They also created new businesses. In the software industry, we see this a lot with who is hiring, how much they are paying, and what they are asking us to do (languages, scope, etc.) Now with the rise of AI, more companies will expect more efficient developers because they have AI to help them (AI won't replace them, though). We need to adapt through those changes. The US job market for software developers is growing. Moving to India would be a major mistake. Here is the actual data from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics for the US: www.bls.gov/ooh/Computer-and-Information-Technology/Software-developers.htm For a better look at where the jobs are, how many there are, and more, go here: www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm I know that statistics don't help your specific situation, just remember that a specific situation does not mean that it equally applies to everyone else.

[@drdexter33]

@@IAmTimCorey Respectfully I must disagree with your fallacious argument appealing to authority by using government BLM statistics. Is this the same government that cooks the CPI and tells us that inflation is currently at 3.5%? My argument stands. If economics do not have morality as a guiding principle and simply acts with lowest costs as a motivator, history will repeat itself again and the American middle-class will continue to suffer. I understand the need to justify your position based on the nature of your business, however the facts are, that Americans are no longer represented faithfully by our elected representatives. Because of this, market forces that key on wage differentials as determinants for hiring workers will result in a continued off-shoring of jobs, not just in IT but for any job that can be put on a wire and offshored. This is the nature of the pseudo-science of economics that is devoid of morality, and it has turned America into a Plutocracy. I do not wish to engage in inflammatory rhetoric in a KZbin comments section, since there's far too much of this already, however I will simply re-state that I respectfully disagree with your opinion. As a side note, I will continue to update my skillset(s) post-layoff as I continue to search for work in the IT world. Either that or I’ll go to work at Home Depot. I wish you and your business well.