HACKER Q&A
📣 atdrummond

How to help a friend “break into” tech?


I recently met a new friend who is in her early thirties. She has done a boot camp and in my opinion has a wonderful portfolio compared to many other boot camp graduates I’ve met. Unfortunately her organization seems to have done basically nil for job placement.

I’ve referred her to a few openings in my network and either they replied back that she was too junior or that she was too old (always in a euphemistic way, of course) to join their junior dev track.

I’m working on trying to get her into a returnship programme or an apprenticeship programme such as Microsoft’s leap. Any other advice? She’s an extremely hard worker, does pair coding every night after a 10-12 hour work day, and honestly puts me to shame when I look back at my early coding efforts. She’s the type of candidate (female, PoC, untraditional background) that companies claim to want - so how do I help her get her foot in the door?


  👤 gardenfelder Accepted Answer ✓
One thought: if she has a github (or similar) repo showing her work, use the "Show HN" tool here to mention her repo, speak to her skills and passions, and ask - herself - for internship or employment leads.