Thank you, everybody - y'all touched a nerve
At times I feel myself unemployable, and I haven't really needed to think about it until recently, being sort of happy enough with a few months work each year from a client where I am really respected as the cat's meow - but where they can't afford me full time, and they're struggling more and more to keep their business. Made for a smallish but acceptable income, going down the last few years, action is needed, and my own business (non IT) is not yet going well enough.
So I went through two revisions of my CV this last month, as two very different jobs came up as possible. One of my problems is that, by now, as a consultant and etc., I've simply done too many things, so it's hard to focus on what is relevant, cover reasonable options of what I know and can do, yet stay within two pages. Nobody cares for a "generalist", right? The other problem, you guessed it, I'm self taught. So give me some stupid test where you want some official classwork definitions, it won't do. However, if yours is a real world problem that you need solving, you will not be the first that set me aside at first as an also-ran, but then give me a phone call a couple weeks later because your expert certified degreed wonders couldn't actually find their behind with both hands. For crying out loud, when I was a kid I built a LOGO programming environment within the 16K of a ZX81, because I didn't know such things were supposed to be difficult, etc. Created an inter-office messaging system using a Windows 98 IIS (had to reboot the server often, would fill with crud). At some moment later, was hired to develop a University's coursework for Mechatronics, because their previous teams couldn't get the job done - I learned later that my proposal has been implemented and is the current coursework. Was doing IoT years before that expression became popular, with encrypted communications, natch! (C, of course) Nowadays building an app to directly handle data within a database, right now taking a break a few minutes 'cause tired.
Who knows, 5% by now? of my current useful "knowledge", besides a lot of trivia, comes indirectly from ElReg, ideas I've picked up here, mistakes to avoid, etc. For example, today I learned about cybra.it right here in this comments section. I need to really work on my resume, straighten up my genius with a bit of boring "normalcy", because I need to figure out how the 2019 Christmas presents will be paid, and so far my CV is essentially unbelievable, employers must think it's blown up beyond any reality and/or they think I'm overqualified?
Also, here in the comments section I find people who can run circles around me "genius", and that feels good, I'm tired to be the only one that knows the right thing, and has to struggle in convincing others, or just move on because they'll never get it. I just want to be coding, peacefully, hopefully within a decent healthy team, hopefully not for a Facebook or Google or Microsoft (the later quite unlikely, I know I'm blacklisted there). I've coded myself out of a job too many times, and it just looks weird in my CV... Oh well.
Ok, back to my coding. Once I finish this, in a week or so, will need to find something else, sigh.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
