Regarding LeetCode: I made it seem like I am bad the problems themselves, which is not the case at all. I can solve most of those problems in a whiteboard interview because I can always talk to the interviewer. It's when I'm given to a problem alone with just a timer staring me in the face that I freeze up and no matter how hard I try I can't get over that seemingly silly little hump.

Thanks a lot for your advice!

How about advent of code then? There's no time limit. Make sure you upload your solutions to a public github repo.

It won't get you a job immediately, but it's something to show.

It's not the LeetCode problems themselves but the time element that makes me freeze up. Not to toot my own horn but I'm quite good at solving LeetCode-type problems, if only there wasn't a blinking time indicator counting down like some foreboding doomsday device.

I'll just send a bunch of applications and see what comes of them. If nothing materialises, I'll definitely apply to Recurse Center.

Thanks!

I can understand your point-of-view but honestly, working in the tech industry is all I've ever wanted to do. My poor health resulted mainly from my last job where I worked 17 hour days for around 10 months before my body and mind just gave up. I know now not to push myself that hard but evrn so I can't imagine myself working in anything except tech. :)

His advice is probably the best in the thread, everything else like 'build a bunch of projects' or 'study leetcode every day' is going to lead you to 6 years unemployment unless you're one of the few highly self-motivated, which you're not, given you've been able to go 4 years unemployed already. At least a job gets you waking up at consistent times every day and people to talk to. You could try gatehouse security or help-desk and try to do the leetcode/project stuff on the job while you earn, then eventually get back into tech.

The thing that worries me about the gap and short bursts of employment is me getting filtered out before I even get to speak to a human being. But I don't think there's any way of getting around that short of lying, which is something I'm absolutely unwilling to do.

Thanks for your response!

I don't use any networking sites such as LinkedIn etc. but I've kept in touch with a couple of people from each of the places where I've worked. The biggest challenge with getting them to recommend me is that most of them have moved to a different country (mainly Canada and Germany). I'm not really keen on moving to another country, hence my apprenhension at having to apply cold.

Reconsider it, the network effects are undeniable. And if your former coworkers are international, believe it or not your network is even better (in the sense of blind opportunities coming your way). Don't discount LinkedIn just having a basic profile, albeit scarce, will be good enough. The value is reconnecting and gaining information of value to your goals (opportunities, recommendations, and getting a job in this case)

> I don't use any networking sites such as LinkedIn etc

Reconsider that. You can try to add everyone you remember from previous companies or school, and you'll be more available to recruiters. "Luck surface area."

Oh I wish I had the confidence to say something like that!

The burn-out happened to a major degree at my last place of employment. I was an early employee at an electronics startup and I was working around 17 hours a day migrating an early version of the web application from PHP into Node, programming arduino and raspberry pi boards, adding various payment modes to an android application, and writing server code in Haskell (a language chosen for no good reason other than it sounded cool and nobody except me could even read the code, the person who wrote it initially having left). 10 months of this ultimately took its toll.

Ya you're fine. Seems like you're someone who's been through some trials, I'd be happy to work with you. That's a series of messy problems and you learn a lot, including humility.

My advice as someone with perhaps a less intense but similarly tumultuous history, is that you should learn to tell that story in a concise and useful way to a variety of types of people and on your resume. Practice with any random recruiter call. Anyone would agree with why you left the industry for a bit. Also try to concisely describe what you genuinely want to be doing now, which I can provide some examples for if you like.

Recurse Center seems interesting. If my job applications don't work out, I'll definitely consider applying.

Thanks!

Barring some serious illness, neither I nor the doctors I've been consulting see any future events of such sort. The only thing I've worked on these last 4 years is getting to a point of career-sustainability. All I can do is tell whoever asks that I won't be needing such an extended break and maybe, if pushed, get a doctor's note signing off on my health. But that seems a little school-like :)

I'm not by any means bad at ds/algo. Back in university I worked on pretty much all the CLRS problems. It's just that I freeze up in time-bound situations and outside of actual interview situations I don't know how to get used to solving those questions under pressure.