Let's talk about the new pocket Evercade: The HyperMegaTech Super Pocket.
Anyone else get one?
I was pleasantly surprised by several aspects of mine:
- I knew from early reviews, and the specs that the screen would be good. But somehow I didn't expect the screen to be this good.
- The sound stays muted between reboots. Many devices in this size and price don't remember their sound setting, and so make a boot sound every time.
- Most (all?) Evercade games save to the cart, not to the system. So I can resume my progress started on my Evercade VS.
- The built in games on the Taito model are all bangers.
- There's a lot of Evercade titles that really shine for playing for a few minutes while waiting in a doctor's office lobby or something. So much if this game collection shines in pocket form. Particularly Indie Heroes and Oliver Twins.
Disappointing:
- There's not a lot of Evercade games that use L1 through R2, but I am, so far, not enjoying the placement of those buttons. I'm happy to have the buttons there at all, at this price, but I hope future versions might move them up a bit for a more relaxed grip.
- The available cases for it spoil it fitting into a pocket. I'll probably add a screen protector instead.
- The included Taito games would be absolutely worth it to rebuy for playing on Evercade VS. I hope they get a cartridge release.
Overall:
I wanted this for it's pocket convenience, and it surpassed my expectations.
Let your mentors know you're looking for work, and how many hours you can work per week.
New programmers provide negative value, so there's not a lot of demand.
I'm very good and studied hard, but my first couple of programming roles I got entirely because a mentor of mine recommended me to someone who took a chance on me.
Also keep adding code to your public GitHub. Two of my top developers today I originally hired directly away from their retail roles. One had a ton of academic coding experience and had just not yet landed the right job. The other was just getting started, but posted a ton of low quality homework code to GitHub so I could read it and know who I was hiring.
Edit: In contrast, one of my other top developers has one of the top CS degrees in the world. So that works too.
And more than one of my top developers have IT help desk experience. I have had excellent luck when hiring folks with IT Help Desk experience.
Edit 2: As someone else mentioned - your long term goal is to connect with an IT Recruiter that you trust, and work with them to get your resume, and GitHub, and/or binder full of code you wrote into shape. I've hired more than one candidate who admits the simply presented themselves exactly as their recruiter coached them to. And I've hired candidates I would have skipped, because their recruiter was someone I trust and they asked me to take a second look at a candidate who made a poor first impression.
Edit 3: Since this is for newbies, some information about recruiters: we pay the recruiter in addition to what we pay you. The recruiter's typical pay for a rookie hire is around $50,000.00, if you stay for a full year. Half up front, in case you don't stay.
A few things you should know about recruiters: they only need to make a few solid placements each year to earn a living. As a rookie, you're the hardest to place, and the lowest layout when placed. But, programmers that are easy to place don't move often, so recruiters may still have plenty of time for you.
The recruiter is probably mainly placing you the first time in hopes that you come back later when you're worth big money. The initial payent is nice, but the real payment will be if/when you have 5 years experience and still work exclusively with them.
Hiring managers like me have recruiters we trust and reuse. If you can get recommended to a great recruiter, they will get you interviews at better places to work.
In contrast, there's lots of mediocre recruiters out there. Don't be afraid to switch to a new recruiter, if you have the opportunity, and your current recruiter isn't getting you interviews.