I need to find a recruiter that is really hands-on with their candidates as you say though it takes effort. Most recruiters I've met just want to fill the role regardless of who it is because why would they spend time trying to improve someone's pitch when better candidates come along that already did the hard work for them.

But what I would be more interested is a talent agent model where agents represent you, the worker, unlike the recruiting model where they represent the companies hiring. However, they seem to be practically nonexistent in the field of software development.

I am seeking an individual contributor role and did not enter this career to get better at sales pitches. IC is the safer route, after all.

Let me worry about sales skills when I decide to take on the riskier path of entrepreneur or leadership roles.

You have to look at who pays recruiters. They optimize their business for quickly filling open jobs. They work on commission (or salary plus commission) so they try to put as many candidates who look good in front of hiring managers.

I'm not aware of reputable recruiters who represent people looking for full-time employment. You would have to pay for that service if you can find it.

I freelance through an agency, 10X Management. They represent freelancers as talent agents (the founders come from a sports and entertainment talent agent background).

The same founders have a salary/perks negotiation agency, 10X Ascend. You might want to look into that, though I don't believe they offer full recruitment/placement services.

Have you looked at contracting/consulting firms? You still have to interview there, but then they'll assign you to contracts. Depending on the contract terms, the client may be able to hire you out of the contract, or not, if that's something that would be useful to you.

I have applied to consulting firms, although just sparingly in the past. Didn't put a hard focus on them.

Several months ago, I sent cold applications to two software developer positions at Deloitte, and one at Infosys. They were all rejected as saying I did not meet qualifications for these positions or simply were "not moving forward".

For me it sort of fell on my lap as I wasn't really going out of my way to find a remote job. I was just in need of more work. It was 2013 and was still using Craigslist for job hunting, mind you. I was looking for a better opportunity as I was "benched" a lot with an agency that didn't provide constant weekly work.

The key was probably that they were a small startup with some degree of desperation because they were ghosted by a previous developer and needed a replacement quick. I also had fit the tech skills they needed (experience in a particular PHP framework, CodeIgniter). The founder was pretty flexible and forward thinking, as, probably from being a former developer himself, let all his developers work remote. The pay wasn't that good but the work was comfortable and got me familiar with web app development in a company that actually uses their tech product to make money for them.

Presumably a Masters (but not PhD) might be suitable as a "booster" for an ailing career, on top of being a career-changer. But I also see OP doesn't seem to doing terrible on their own. I only suggest it as a way to pull yourself out of a dump and have nowhere else to turn for help.

How do you find discipline without structured education? Especially when you lack anyone else to keep you accountable for your work?

Like the author of this article, I have a bad sleep schedule. It's something that came about from over 2 years of unemployment (and still job searching).

I kept a log of my job applications from last year. Going over them recently, I noticed that the timestamps gradually creeped up from afternoon to late evening as the year ended. I had a set "application window" of an hour but that window gradually shifted more and more into the night. I now go to bed very late around 4am and usually wake up at 1pm.

For some reason I find it hard to give the morning a "greater purpose" when you don't have a 9-5. There's not much in outdoor hobbies that I want to do (or afford to do) and I clean sporadically, no set schedule. I feel much less worse being awake and inside in the late night hours than to be up in the morning hours with nothing productive, so I just sleep through those morning hours. My peak energy has shifted more towards the late night.

Looking to see if I perhaps need an accountability partner. I am single and don't talk to close friends as much and even if I did they wouldn't be available most of the day because of their work schedules.

  Location: Chicago
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: Yes (conditional)
  Technologies: JavaScript, Node, PHP, MVC frameworks, Ruby, .NET, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Git, Docker (basic), Apache
  Résumé/CV: on request
  Email: chris.cajas.m@gmail.com

College graduate with no formal CS education. I've been freelancing for roughly 10 years, working as an independent contractor for boutique digital agencies, early startups and other small businesses. Even some game dev for indie game studios.

I want to transition from a freelance dev/webmaster type of role, to a better-paid and more formal SWE career. Collaborating with and learning from a team of engineers, to build and deploy products at larger scales.

On the tech side of things, I've been very much been a "code only" person. Usually working independently (sometimes alone, sometimes in a small group of developers) with feature work and closing tickets with little regard to formal processes. Hopefully this can be counteracted with my soft skills client-facing experience from agencies and freelance work, having spoken directly with clients to better understand their problems in high-level discussions to meet their goals. I am open to learning from more experienced engineers to obtain more marketable skills in automation, testing, and cloud services. And understanding the team dynamics of a larger company.

Not interested in contract work or high-risk ventures.

I will never learn anything for free or paying money for it again because it has become ineffective from my own experience. Now, I require a binding guarantee that something has to pay off.

Web design agencies and software body shops like WITCH are also tech companies.

They may not 100% own their own software work, foster a poor software development culture and probably build on spaghetti inherited from some offshore firm they paid no more than a few grand for. And I know many software developers that would advise against joining these companies. But still, these companies would not exist without computing or the internet. Therefore, they are tech companies.

It's especially worse when they are required by TOS to not engage in communication with bidders/clients outside the platform.

This would be like, for example, if you set up a job interview from a listing at Indeed, and then Indeed demands that you do not use regular email to stay in contact with the employer, you must use their own messaging system. And you can't even voice chat elsewhere unless it's a link that is provided by Indeed so they can be aware of it.

Just the walled garden aspect of freelancer websites is what turns me off.

It does happen a lot in physical collectible markets. It is what happened with WATA Games and the lawsuit against their employees for market manipulation through auctions. Or the Nike scandal with a VP's son using her CC and employee discount buying massive amounts of hyped sneakers and reselling them, which just made everyone more aware.