Quoting: BrassGearIn the last few months I have kept busy writing custom software, however finding opportunities has proven difficult. Does anyone know any good strategies to finding work, both on contract and commission? What are good places to look? Is LinkedIn really the only game in town when it comes to this?

What are things to avoid? What is the prevalence of scams?

A little bit of context: I have mainly worked in Object Pascal, both FreePascal and Delphi. Lately I have been doing a lot of PHP and pure Javascript, I do find it quite enjoyable. I am quite fond of compiled languages, especially Borland ones. I have also worked with C++, and a bit of C# with .net, and others. Learning a new programming language is not a major challenge.

At my previous job I was responsible for, among other things, maintaining and expanding a custom programming language, a bespoke IDE for multiple languages and a fully-featured internal messaging system.

Linkedin is certainly not the only game in town.

• Most self respecting potential employers run their own website with listed job opportunities.
  pro: most private and pretty responsive.
  con: quite involved.


• You can also send open solicitations.
  pro: Bigger employment potential and less effort.
  con: Low reaction tendency.


• There're networking events.
  pro: actually pretty responsive and easy searching
  con: expensive and tiring.

For avoiding scams I advise this.
Make certain to not pay your employer or any of their partners in currency for things even remotely related to the job.
If there are tools or skills required for the job you don't already have, they should either give you them for free or tell you the type of tools or skill, so you can find a seller on your own initiative.


A few links for potential employers:
https://jobs.gem.com/bluesky/am9icG9zdDq9bSdDydlgQJSSbawvMU2C
https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/
https://www.nasa.gov/careers/


Last edited by LoudTechie on 6 September 2024 at 9:18 am UTC

You can mark your profile as open-to-work on LinkedIn. When you do that, your profile picture will get an #opentowork water mark. Then recruiters will start messaging you directly.

Quoting: LoudTechieLinkedin is certainly not the only game in town.

• Most self respecting potential employers run their own website with listed job opportunities.
  pro: most private and pretty responsive.
  con: quite involved.

These are the job openings I would most like to find. The only problem is, finding each of these individual sites with the job listings.

I've already sent feelers to all the cool/small games companies I could think of and would most like to work for. Like the people that make My Summer Car. But as you say, the potential for these is lower.

Quoting: LoudTechieA few links for potential employers:
https://jobs.gem.com/bluesky/am9icG9zdDq9bSdDydlgQJSSbawvMU2C
https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/
https://www.nasa.gov/careers/

That BlueSky one looks good, thank you for that. As for the others, are you having a laugh, as the English say?

I don't like Steam, but I'd quite like to work for Valve. Maybe I could talk some sense into them. As far as I know, they only have ~400 employees, which makes me like them even more.

Quoting: BrassGear

Quoting: LoudTechieLinkedin is certainly not the only game in town.

• Most self respecting potential employers run their own website with listed job opportunities.
  pro: most private and pretty responsive.
  con: quite involved.

These are the job openings I would most like to find. The only problem is, finding each of these individual sites with the job listings.

I've already sent feelers to all the cool/small games companies I could think of and would most like to work for. Like the people that make My Summer Car. But as you say, the potential for these is lower.

Quoting: LoudTechieA few links for potential employers:
https://jobs.gem.com/bluesky/am9icG9zdDq9bSdDydlgQJSSbawvMU2C
https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/
https://www.nasa.gov/careers/

That BlueSky one looks good, thank you for that. As for the others, are you having a laugh, as the English say?

I don't like Steam, but I'd quite like to work for Valve. Maybe I could talk some sense into them. As far as I know, they only have ~400 employees, which makes me like them even more.

Ah, discovery.
I've the following suggestions:
Make up a few industries you would like to work in and start searching as if you want products from that industry for inspiration for search terms and companies.
Go to a networking event. Job hunting ones are sometimes free for Job hunters.
Go to the registration page for companies your country keeps and attempt to get access to the names list(in my country that costs money, but many different countries have many different rules).


On the links.
No I'm shooting in the dark as the people on the island far away like to say.
I don't know you well, so I'm using all I know about you to find PEs(potential employers).


NASA got suggested, because you're experienced with PASCAL and thus probably well versed in scientific software development.



more links based on your last comment:
https://www.bitwavegames.com/jobs
https://itch.io/jobs (this is a list of jobs of several game companies)
https://www.gog.com/en/work
http://www.bonfirestudios.com/careers
https://hoodedhorse.com/jobs/
https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/jobs/

On the discovery problem I've more advice:
Drink your coffee awaken your mitochlorians, scream for a few hours, pull out all your "practical research skills"(googling) and treat it as if you're trying to discover a new tool to do a new job.
You're a programmer and a Linux user, if you want to find something even remotely related to computers on the web you can probably find it.

Last edited by LoudTechie on 7 September 2024 at 5:40 am UTC

Approaching it from a different angle seems like good advice, thank you. And thank you for those links.

That is Pascal the Borland language, not the scientific database PASCAL. I did used to work on medical software though, but it's not like MatLab or something. It has a slightly different syntax to C variants and very nearly as fast as C. I like it a lot. In practical usage it is a much cleaner-looking syntax than something like C#, and even C++.

Ah. Delphi! That was my first introduction to object oriented programming. I still have version 7 installed on my IBM Aptiva.

Nowadays it's more C# which is asked for. Where I live that is. And yaml pipelines to bring everything to the cloud.

Front-end development is also very much asked for.