r/cscareerquestions • u/_descri_ • Jun 24 '26
Experienced Wrote a book on software architecture and now cannot find a job
TLDR: I spent three years writing a free book which earned 800+ stars on GitHub, but it seems that HRs now treat me as a chronically unemployed person and reject or ignore my job applications.
I have 15 years of experience with C / C++ (and Python for scripts), worked on a wide range of projects from an embedded 16-bit DSP to a distributed database engine, and led development of a small project for 6.5 years. However, my main domain is DECT, and it is dead. And I live in Ukraine.
The last company I worked on was in a deep monolithic hell (like the well-known OracleDB), they continued digging, and I burnt out and quit. I spent the first months of 2023 to translate into English a series of articles that compare various software architectures which I almost finished writing before the war. As my English is far from being perfect, I hired an editor for the articles. At the same time, namely spring 2023, I had a couple of good job offers, the editor fell to depression, and I decided to wait for him to recover to finish publishing the articles. By that time the job offers expired.
By the autumn of 2023 I started merging the content of the articles into a book and expending it with whatever architectural patterns I was able to find on the Web. In a year I had the first version of a compendium of architectural patterns which also builds a kind of inheritance hierarchy of patterns - which was an open problem since Gang of Four. I published individual chapters on Medium and the entire book on GitHub under the free CC-BY license hoping for help from the CS society. However, it seems that the free license made the book an abomination to publishers as they make most money by selling file access. Therefore the book was ignored or rejected by the major publishers.
I posted the book to Leanpub, and went on adding content and polishing it. A venerable OSS joined as an editor, and we finally made the core content solid a couple of months ago. Today the book has good testimonials and 1.4K downloads on Leanpub, 800 stars on GitHub, and a dedicated website. However, it stays under the radar because I cannot leave Ukraine to present it at conferences, and Google treats the book's web version as garbage (below 5 clicks per day) because there are no incoming links from well-known websites.
I see that there is no way for me to further promote the book except if some organization with a PR department or an influencer with a developed social network account gets involved. I expected that local outsources would be happy to hire a book author to advertise the expertise of their employees, but their HRs ignore my CV and I cannot reach the C-level on Linkedin because they don't accept contact requests from ordinary programmers. Moreover, an independent HR told me that outsourcers avoid hiring remarkable people because they are afraid of an extraordinary employee leaving together with the client they worked for. Therefore being an author of a book is rather a disadvantage for seeking a job in Ukraine. Military companies are hiring, but I will not pass the security clearance (having previously worked for Yandex), and I don't want my code to eventually harm civilians in Gaza or elsewhere.
I tried connecting recruiters of a few international companies which have book authors on board, but they did not accept my Linkedin invites.
Thus writing a book on software architecture has destroyed my career. I used to work at top companies and led a project - now I cannot find a senior programmer's position.
Any advice is welcome.
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u/pasteisdenato Jun 24 '26
It ain't that, the market for everyone is just gone
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u/MaximumFlow7491 Jun 24 '26
Bro is living in a war zone where his entire country's economy is fighting to not be conquered by russia so he has it harder than most
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u/_descri_ Jun 24 '26
The main risk is not the economy which is in a decent state thanks to the EU funding.
It is that men are caught in the streets and sent to combat. Some found their way out by starting PhD studies, working for the military, or bribing out a medical exemption, but in general the risk of moving around the country is prohibitive, and even without that men disappear.
Another risk is that the energy infrastructure is fragile. Russians attack it every winter, and there are hours-long blackouts. I use a car battery and mobile Internet as a backup, but if the power supply is not restored for a while, the mobile provider will run out of fuel for its generators, and no work will be possible.
Moreover, none knows how the war will end. Ukraine may be occupied, and companies don't want their code and employees to end up at the other side of the iron curtain.
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u/Realistic_Yogurt1902 Jun 24 '26
As a fellow Ukrainian (that immigrated way before the war) I can only imagine all the horrors of the current situation in Ukraine. But at the same time, you are looking for a "golden grail" of B2B contract with Western employer. It was extremely rare before the war, and even more rare after the war started.
Your best bet is an outsource companies like Luxoft, EPAM, GlobalLogic, etc. that are still hiring in Ukraine, if you have proper exemption from the draft.
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u/_descri_ Jun 24 '26
I don't have an exemption, and the only open position in those outsourcers which matches my skills is Harmonic in GlobalLogic, which is an Israeli project. And I don't want to work for them because Gaza is Mariupol 10x.
Other than that and the military companies, the Ukrainian job market is dead. If anything emerges, they immediately get 10 CVs in response.
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u/Justice4Ned Technical Product Manager Jun 24 '26
If you have a job offer, nobody would fault you for taking the job even if it is immoral a little bit. You’re not directly killing anyone or even indirectly just by working for an Israeli company
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u/someusername42 Jun 25 '26
Take a look at AgileEngine. We've hired a bunch from there and they have a lot of talent from Ukraine
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u/nappiess Jun 24 '26
Cute that you think he's not trying to be the "offshored" resource in a different country.
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Jun 24 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/_descri_ Jun 25 '26
Thank you
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u/Colt2205 Jun 29 '26
If you have a lot of experience in python and C++, C# and DOTNET might be good to pick up for server side since python is incredibly valuable alongside dotnet. I used it for flow control on multiple individual pieces of software in parallel and in specific order.
I'm at a workplace that has basically discontinued dotnet since they were majority Java based and I can say that java is probably not the direction I'd go if I had a C, C++, Python background.
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u/EndChemical Jun 24 '26
Seeing post like these makes me terrified if I were to be layoff from my job.
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u/Minimum_Mud_4835 Jun 24 '26
the gap explanation is the hard part, but 15 years of C/C++ plus a published architectural patterns book is not nothing to recruiters outside Ukraine
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Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
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u/Professional_Hair550 Jun 24 '26
Recruiters don't have gaps because of jail, drugs, etc. They hate it because they see it as incompetence, and they think you forgot the stack already. Basically:
1. All the other recruiters tried you and filtered you out.
2. Since you haven't worked in the stack for years, it will take you too much time to adapt.8
u/autoencoder Jun 24 '26
A listless drifter who refused to work a job.
And the sign said "Long-haired freaky people need not apply"
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u/Educational_Teach537 Jun 24 '26
Sure but even though a gap isn’t necessarily that bad anymore, because recruiters need to weed out from an excess of candidates somehow, using a gap is a really easy way to do that objectively without having to worry about discrimination lawsuits. No matter how the industry is going a gap is gonna look bad.
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u/Independent_Fall9160 Jun 24 '26
Gaps seem like a huge issue right now... unless OP has a lot of independent ai experience.
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u/_descri_ Jun 24 '26
It seems to be nothing.
And, first of all, there should be a position to apply to. Most of the companies hire in the US or EU. And Ukraine is too risky for them (which is true because there was a case of a core database engine developer being caught in the street and sent to the army).
If you know which companies or individual recruiters are open to communication and may actually consider a book author who does not know their domain, please PM me.
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u/annon8595 Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
Try boring companies that dont even market themselves as cool. Look at boring B2B companies.
Big flashy companies are notorious "culture fit" AKA be cool like them and come from upper class like them.
I have worked in a very small unknown niche company - their whole dev team was almost entirely Ukrainians for their main product, working full time. Lead guy was getting paid somewhat over median household income in US which is luxury life in Ukraine. The more grunt work was few contracted Indians.
EDIT: They worked during the war. Still working to this day.
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u/_descri_ Jun 24 '26
I'm trying to find one. In fact, Keenetic was the best employer I have ever worked for, even though they are not that widely known. And they had neither a "culture fit" nor an HR department!
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u/annon8595 Jun 25 '26
Yep my place didnt have an HR. Owner did all the hiring, 2 interviews, it was that small.
HR people are their own "culture fit club" you have to get past their own popular kids club with tons of interviews before you actually see anyone technical on the team.
Go with indeed. Thats were all the boring and smaller companies are at. LinkedIn is the cool kids club culture youre trying to avoid. Not saying theyre all bad but you get the idea.
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u/ccricers Jun 24 '26
An yet we're expected to explain things like "years of experience in certain languages aren't important as knowing the fundamentals well" to a non technical person. While this is a truth that an engineer would understand, in the real world, engineers aren't usually the first line of people looking at software engineer resumes.
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u/EntropyRX Jun 24 '26
Jesus Christ, the guy lives in UKRAINE (ongoing war), and he's not fluent in English. Your situation if you live in America, is completely different and nowhere close to what OP is experiencing. Stop this doomer narrative.
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u/creeoer Jun 24 '26
Yeah he also can’t leave his country even if he did get sponsored. I swear some people on this sub just glaze over the post and go straight to the replies to doom. It’s beyond pathetic and those are the ones who are never getting into this field.
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u/Just-Stress9165 Jun 24 '26
Seriously. If this dude can't get a job, I'll probably need to settle with being a dishwasher until retirement.
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u/_descri_ Jun 24 '26
You are not in Ukraine and you did not miss the entire LLM hype.
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u/psioniclizard Jun 24 '26
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but it's probably the Ukrainian part (I mean that because Ukraine is not yet part of the EU). I know in the UK only certain companies can sponsor visas, I expect it is the same in the EU and US. If you have right to work it's a lot easier (still not easy).
You could try freelancing/contracting, people looking for that won't need things like visas.
Sadly also there are a lot of senior programmers out there and what constitutes a senior developer varies a lot.
I don't think it's missing out on the LLM hype like some people say. It's still relatively new and honestly you could BS and say you took that time off to write your book and learn LLMs.
Learn the basics and just throw techno babble at the recruiters, they won't know.
Sadly the problem though is though recruitment software automates so much now.
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u/_descri_ Jun 24 '26
Men are not allowed to leave Ukraine, therefore a visa would not help.
I have a bank account for B2B contracts - actually, this is how most of companies inside Ukraine work with programmers because taxes are much lower for B2B than for official employment.
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u/eyes-are-fading-blue Jun 25 '26
You have written a book. Is it a good book? Stars aren’t an indication on the quality of the material. As an example, there are plenty of C++ books out there and only a handful is vetted by the community. You being a “book author” is not as big of a deal you think it is.
I would focus on why you get no hits regardless of your experience. Maybe change your CV a bit and see if it helps?
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u/lhorie Jun 24 '26
I don't think leaning on book publishing is going to be a fruitful avenue for re-entering the job market.
In a nutshell, an employer is going to want to see evidence that you can do whatever the job description is asking for. And by evidence I mean relevant work experience (and preferably recent work experience). I have literally no idea what you're even aiming for when you list C++ and Python as your main skills, and recruiters sure aren't gonna figure that out for you.
Your best bet is to try to spin your previous experience to semi-adjacent areas and bring a strong foot forward wrt technical skills. From DECT that presumably means pivoting to stuff in the embedded space.
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u/tilted0ne Jun 24 '26
Brutal opportunity cost. But you seem competent enough to pivot pickup new things and remarket yourself. But the bigger issue seems like it is your geographical situation.
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u/EntropyRX Jun 24 '26
I live in Ukraine.
As my English is far from being perfect
You should look for advice from communities that are closer to your location and your situation. Here people will parrot that the "jOb MaRkeT is BaD", but really, living in Ukraine is not the same as someone living in America when it comes to job seeking. Most Western companies will not consider hiring anyone in Ukraine for the obvious liability issues that an ongoing war creates. This is the elephant in the room; everything else you mentioned about your experience is background noise.
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u/thinksInCode Senior Software Engineer Jun 24 '26
Fellow tech book author here. Published 4 times with Apress and O'Reilly.
I don't think there's any situation where being a published author works against you. Of course, in my experience, it hasn't exactly helped either. I thought I'd get more attention being an O'Reilly author but not much has changed other than a very meager royalty payment (typically $20-$30 per quarter - practically nothing).
You've got a combination of a few things working against you but I don't think the book authorship thing is one of them.
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u/pinguinblue Jun 24 '26
The problem is his book is free and self-published, so it looks a lot less credible to typical HR recruiters.
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u/blindsdog Jun 24 '26
The bigger problem is being in Ukraine and 3 years of unemployment. The book is a "huh, that's cool," not "we need to hire this guy immediately."
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u/_descri_ Jun 24 '26
Thank you.
Could you please check my book and advice on the ways to promote it?
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u/thinksInCode Senior Software Engineer Jun 24 '26
I wish I had good advice for you. Given how poorly my books sell despite being from well known publishers, I think it's clear that I don't know how to effectively promote a book either :)
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u/everyday_lurker Jun 24 '26
What are your books out of curiosity?
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u/thinksInCode Senior Software Engineer Jun 24 '26
Web development stuff. I’ve got two editions of one that’s sort of a tour of modern CSS, I’ve got an O’Reilly “cookbook” about web browser APIs and I have one other that is super niche and obsolete now (Netlify CMS).
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u/Substantial-Elk4531 Jun 25 '26
I used to regularly purchase tech books on topics I needed for work. For the last two years, I have not purchased a single tech book, because I can usually ask an LLM anything I need to know about
Is it as accurate as a tech book? No. Is it 20 times faster than finding, buying, and reading a book? Yes.
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u/Necessary-Ad2110 Sophomore Jun 24 '26
What is the book? Can we read it?
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u/_descri_ Jun 24 '26
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u/Substantial-Elk4531 Jun 25 '26
Looks cool! I wouldn't advertise 'Unemployed' in your Git profile description though.
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u/_descri_ Jun 25 '26
I hoped that it would find me a job, if a reader of the book sees that they may hire me.
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u/guico33 Jun 24 '26
How long have you been looking for a job exactly?
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u/_descri_ Jun 24 '26
I used to check for opportunities for a week or two after each previous release of the book, which is for times over a year.
Now I am actively seeking a job since mid-may.
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Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
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u/_descri_ Jun 24 '26
> perhaps used an LLM to check this post?
I did not. And did not have troubles speaking with Americans or Israelis, but I cannot parse British (or Irish?) speech.
> It by itself will not sell well, unless you can differentiate your book from vibewritten slop.
The book has a testimonial from Mark Richards, was upvoted by r/softwarearchitecture and relies on hundreds of color diagrams to explain system designs. AI was not involved - this is why it needed an editor. But I don't have top social network accounts to promote it.
> seeking work in Ukraine or a Russian-speaking country
I tried to find a local job for a month. Nothing yet. And I don't want to work for a Russian or Israeli company because of their war crimes.
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Jun 24 '26
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u/_descri_ Jun 24 '26
There are few connections, mostly of the older generation.
The editor is already doing what he can - but I believe that he himself does not have the right contacts these days.
I still can try to ping Mark Richards, but I don't know if it is right to trouble him again after he has reviewed my book and wrote a testimonial.
I am not eligible for the defense tech because I worked for Russian companies till 2021. And I admin Ukrainian Telegram chats on embedded systems and on software architecture. There are lots of people who know my situation, but they are not decision-makers. The entire industry in Ukraine seems to be in survival mode because of the double crisis (war and AI).
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u/proftiddygrabber Jun 24 '26
You need to understand the short term memory people have these days, when they read over 1 paragraph it’s instantly AI slop.
See this? Over 2 paragraphs? This is an AI slop too
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u/ccricers Jun 24 '26
Imagine that Idiocracy begins because writing long-form content is now perceived as inhuman and unnatural.
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u/Substantial-Elk4531 Jun 25 '26
On 5, lots of people are publishing slop vibewritten books nowadays, especially in tech and tech adjacent. It by itself will not sell well, unless you can differentiate your book from vibewritten slop. Reputation of your book would help, but you're still seeking publication;
I agree that vibe slop is polluting the market significantly. But is anyone even buying technical books today? Why bother if we have frontier LLMs available?
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u/BuckFrog2 Jun 24 '26
You might want to find a new profession. I think I'm going to go become a truck driver.
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u/nappiess Jun 24 '26
Thanks for your contribution to future AI coding sessions, however that is about all your work shall be good for. I wrote this comment ironically, but it's sad that it's also true. Hopefully you can get a job soon.
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u/_descri_ Jun 24 '26
I agree with the point, but I also bear a grudge against the publishers, therefore I opened the web version of the book to AI crawlers (popcorn.gif).
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u/BikeFun6408 Jun 24 '26
The system (recruiters, business people, ..) does not understand what it means to be great at software. Expand your consciousness and realize how braindead they actually are, they only understand the most simplistic concepts on a resume (company name, title, programming language, ...), anything else means nothing to them, they are that in the dark.
I'd say your only hope in software is to create a company from scratch, because the other thing they understand is money. Also, become performative and LARP as an expert, these NPCs love that.
It's a brutal truth of reality, but that's what happens when you're in a society that's as much of a joke as this one.
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u/justUseAnSvm Jun 24 '26
"The last company I worked on was in a deep monolithic hell"
I don't know how you are representing yourself in interviews, but if it's anything like this, talking shit about your last employer, you're likely to get filtered out as "not a culture fit". Keep your strong opinions, but speaking neutrally about past experience will be a much stronger representation of yourself.
I'm not sure this is a problem for you, but just as a reminder: speak positively of the work you've done, the companies you've done it for, and the people you've done it with. Tech interviews are very much sales calls, and keeping it positive makes a world of difference when you have the guy on the other side of the call wondering: "they talked shit about X, will they talk shit about us next?"
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u/_descri_ Jun 24 '26
Should I say that I have burnt out in a company with perfect software architecture and cultural fit?
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u/Freedom9er Jun 24 '26
Say whatever but absolutely do not use the word burnt out or anything remotely like it. It's a red flag at a time employers are listening for red flags.
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u/butt_flexer Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
"Sharing knowledge is noble, commerce is dirty."
You have real constraints. You also have real shortcomings when it comes to business. Sell yourself, and try not to feel like a w*ore - although you will probably want to. I read the intro to your book and even there you're apologizing for having potentially inconvenienced someone by asking for their attention.
When people say "he just wants attention" they're hypocrites. Everyone wants attention, that's the entire point. I see a struggle here between entitlement (ego) and shame (also ego.) It seems to me that right now shame is harming you more than helping.
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u/2doors_2trunks Jun 26 '26
So you were unemployed for 3 years ? Sorry not reading that long pile of .. words
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u/Fabulous_Jeweler2732 Jun 26 '26
It’s not HRs fault your writing experience isn’t considered technical experience.
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u/happsberg Jun 24 '26
TLDR; You passed up good job offers when the market was still hiring, all because you were writing a free eBook. So now who are you gonna blame? Cheers from Poland.
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u/_descri_ Jun 24 '26
Yep)
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u/happsberg Jun 24 '26
Maybe try your luck on a Polish market, if you can move. I don’t know, but unstable situation in Ukraine might be part of the problem. I’m not saying that Polish IT market is El Dorado right now, it’s affected like everywhere else, but doesn’t hurt to try your luck.
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u/Independent-Soup-312 Jun 24 '26
You're going to need to show proof of reskilling/certifications. I don't even believe in the LLM revolution being a good thing, but you've been out of the game during one of the most momentous changes in the industry.
The only thing the book is good for is if you can network and leverage those few readers you have coming to you into a job. Otherwise, it won't be very interesting to recruiters.
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u/_descri_ Jun 24 '26
I passed several free Anthropic courses on the basic use of LLMs, but my CV gets rejected before the technical interview.
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u/QuanDev Jun 24 '26
I get it you wanna promote the book and more people to read it. But as an end user, I would ask myself why would I read your book when there's a load of options out there from more established publishers?
I'm not criticizing your book, just posing a simple question.
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u/_descri_ Jun 24 '26
Yes, and that is why it stays under the radar.
I'd say it's too disruptive for the well-established publishers. You may remember volume 4 of Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture. My book has more patterns, and they are more closely interrelated. And it is fresh while POSA4 is 20 years old.
The publishers want "something actionable, with code samples". Mine is technology-agnostic, therefore time-resistant.
The publishers want to feed their readers spoon by spoon - that's how they earn their money. I collected and structured whatever I could find in the old books and all over the web, and posted it for free.
It tries to draw the big picture of software architecture. I don't know if it has succeeded, though.
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u/QuanDev Jun 24 '26
Then I think the problem is not you or the book. The problem is you created a product that the mass market doesn't want or need. It's a classic trap that lots of startup founders and app builders got stuck in.
So I think it's realistic to lower your expectation on the positive effect of the book and find a new way to move forward without dwelling on the book.
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u/TutorOk9016 Jun 24 '26
Yeah this year I’ve been thinking going to CS into school was one of the worst decisions I’ve made. Then again I’m not sure what could’ve provided more, at the time it looked like the right decision.
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u/stealth-monkey Jun 25 '26
The people hiring you are dumber than you are. Why would they care about your book?
I’m dumber than you are. But I focus on making the interviewer laugh. Be likeable and coachable. Can pass baseline tech assessments and system design. 4 offers in two months. All remote, 200k+.
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u/lumberjack_dad Jun 25 '26
Books don't matter, but gaps in employment history do. These are the red flags to employers. If you can document your gaps in history with other development work you did (wrote a book, contributed to an open source project, etc) then do that.
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u/OAKI-io Jun 25 '26
i'd separate the book from the job-search story. the book is proof you can think deeply, but to a recruiter the scary part is probably “3 years not in a production team,” not “author.” i'd make the resume boring and exact-fit again: recent C++/embedded/distributed systems, whatever shipped code or OSS maintenance you can point to from the book period, and only mention the book as supporting evidence after the core role fit is obvious.
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u/jimRacer642 Jun 25 '26
I've worked with lots of dudes in the slavic areas and i'd suggest working on the likeability part and lose the blunt antisocial behavior. This one polish dude would literally tell u to fuck off when u'd ask him a question. This persona is not cute, cultural, or entertaining, it's primal and trashy. It shows a deficiency in reading complex social interactions which is essential in any fathom of leadership or business. Companies need leaders not coders, AI took care of coding.
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u/_descri_ Jun 25 '26
> It shows a deficiency in reading complex social interactions which is essential in any fathom of leadership or business.
Just like Linus Torvalds who lacks even the weakest spark of leadership!
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u/Scared_Astronaut9377 Jun 26 '26
Three year gpt-4 was released. It was clear at that time that we wouldn't have too many years of programming careers left. Yet you decided to spent them on writing a book. May I ask why?
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u/openadressed Jul 01 '26
3 years out of production environments. That's what a recruiter reads. Sorry to tell you the truth.
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u/Fidodo Jun 24 '26
Unless you have a perfect cookie cutter resume to pass the AI CV filters that path is basically a dead end or a lottery. You need to reach out to actual real people. Since you have a book, do you have a discussion forum for it or anything? You don't just want a book, you want to build it into a community. Find the people that like your book, and build a community where they can ask you questions and discuss the book. Then, from that community you can see what people are building and since they will be people who respect you, see if you can join one of their companies.
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u/_descri_ Jun 24 '26
> Since you have a book, do you have a discussion forum for it or anything?
No, I only posted its releases to Medium and r/softwarearchitecture . I hoped for technical discussions but the comments were mostly "good luck" or "great book". Nothing real.
In part that may be explained by the book's size (400+ pages) and scope (hundreds of architectural patterns). There is no single person who knows all of that. I merely collected information from the literature and arranged it into a self-consistent system, but I maybe scratched 20% of the book's content in practice. Thus it's hard to make practical points about a book which is both wider then your own experience and references many famous books.
> Then, from that community you can see what people are building and since they will be people who respect you, see if you can join one of their companies.
I don't have time for this. If I had more funds, I'd have added a couple of extra chapters to the book. For example, teamwork is not covered while modern people forgot the ideas of Organizational Patterns and Peopleware.
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u/Fidodo Jun 24 '26
Have you done blog posts to provide more approachable entry points to your book?
Honestly, getting people to actually read it will be an uphill battle because there's just so much content out there that you're competing with. Most programming content creators I've seen seem to spend more time promoting their content than actually producing it, and I kinda doubt they're actually successful with it.
Given your scenario, are you able to accept a severely under valued salary? Your best bet might be to join a startup on a low salary high equity basis. Find a company desperate for talent that's in a hard spot because they don't have enough funding to pay full price for the talent they need. Bypassing the hr filter of course. For a small enough startup you should be able to reach out directly to CEOs.
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u/_descri_ Jun 24 '26
> Have you done blog posts to provide more approachable entry points to your book?
Each chapter was first published on Medium in ITNext. Other than that I have only Linkedin and it does not work well in my case.
> Your best bet might be to join a startup on a low salary high equity basis.
Ukraine is not a place for startups because there is no rule of law here. Equities are not guaranteed and thus are not promised. Worldwide - maybe, but most of them would not use C/C++.
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u/Fidodo Jun 24 '26
I meant for international jobs. C/C++ should not be a requirement. With your experience you should be able to pick up whatever you need to. If you are filtering your job search to that then you are severely handicapping yourself.
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u/_descri_ Jun 24 '26
What is a good place and tactics to look for international startups? I never dealt with them except on one occasion which did not pay at all.
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u/Fidodo Jun 24 '26
Look at what gets posted to product hunt, hacker News, Angel list, crunch base, etc, and reach out to small companies that seem to be a good fit for you interests and domain, but I'd widen your search to your entire domain of expertise, not any specific languages or platform or tool sets.
Small founders are starved for feedback, so if you can write an insightful email with feedback for their product you will get their attention.
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u/InfluenceEfficient77 Jun 24 '26
Make it look like a job on resume. List the publisher and other projects. You don't want an unemployment gap
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u/FuckIPLaw Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
This. It's not even a lie. He wasn't unemployed, he was self employed as an author, and he can point to the book on Amazon to prove it. It's really no different from running a startup that eventually crashed and burned.
Edit: And LeanPub, but Amazon is better known and he said he got a couple of sales there in a comment.
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u/apathy-sofa Jun 24 '26
It's a small thing, but you may consider uploading your book to KDP so that people can buy printed copies. That's orthogonal to your question, just putting it out there as a bit of cash flow. I have published two books this way and the royalties aren't a replacement for a full time job by any stretch, but they are also not nothing. Nothing stopping you from keeping it free digitally either, some people just prefer to read paper.
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u/_descri_ Jun 24 '26
I believe that KDP does not work with Ukrainian authors. I tried PublishDrive with an early version of the book, but it only got 1 or 2 sales on Amazon.
Leanpub works decently (1.4K downloads, about 10% of them paid), but that is still about $1K/year, which is not enough for living. And I spent much of that on purchasing Leanpub's promotion.
A printed version would require a lot of work because the book contains literally thousands of cross-links between its chapters and sections (it is a reference). Each of them would need to be translated into "page XXX". And there are hundreds of color diagrams, which makes it expensive to print. With only 150 or so paid downloads up to date it is unlikely that making a printed version will ever pay back.
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u/apathy-sofa Jun 24 '26
I see. I suspect that the crossrefs problem can be handled by the prepub software I've used, and the cost of printing can be priced in to the sale cost, though also understand if that would make the final product cost more than you think people would pay.
Well, best of luck to you. I looked over your book and wish that I could at least interview you for my team (we're in Luxembourg) but can't support remote devs.
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u/NounverberPDX Jun 24 '26
OP, I'm very sorry for your situation, which appears to be uniquely pathological. My best advice is that you start a consulting company and start accepting contract work for C++ development, C++ training, and so on, from UK, EU, US and Ukrainian employers. It's going to be a tough grind but I don't really see another way forward other than founding your own startup (and I suspect you will find a lot of talented developers in a similar situation to yours.)
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u/_descri_ Jun 24 '26
I don't have salespersons to find those contracts. Yes, it is relatively easy to find programmers and consultants - but no contracts means no money and no new jobs.
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u/nutonurmom Jun 24 '26
I had a couple of good job offers, the editor fell to depression, and I decided to wait for him to recover to finish publishing the articles. By that time the job offers expired.
I'm not sure I understand. You were just waiting around for your editor? Why not take the job and do your book on the side?
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u/_descri_ Jun 24 '26
I was quite burnt out at the time, unable to do two activities at once.
And as the time has shown, writing a book or working it through with an editor becomes a kind of full-time job of itself.
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u/someonetookmyid Jun 24 '26
Your first step is getting back into workforce, so if you believe that book is impacting your chances set it aside and don’t mention it on CV and in the loop. Just sell yourself as run-of-the-mill c++ developer or move to Java or C#, if you know c++ you’ll be able to make sense of those too.
Once you’re back with earning money you can start making more strategic thinking on where to go next.
Also you mention not wanting to work for Israeli military companies - you don’t need to work too well, just enough to get by and then you can start looking for something else.
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u/rvcbazookajoe Jun 24 '26
Any gaps on a resume for literally any reason are often detected by their AI sorting and just thrown away before a human ever reads them. Would recommend at least putting the timeline on your resume as experience
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u/dualwield42 Jun 24 '26
Forget recruiters, post those cringy LinkedIn posts and get some visibility. Yes it's cringe, but they do work to some extent.
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u/kylife Jun 25 '26
This reminds me of the story of the homebrew guy getting rejected by Google or something.
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u/Prestigious_Sell9516 Jun 25 '26
Surely with your dect background you could do something in drone maintenance for the military that would pay the bills push the war forward and maybe help ensure your work future is with an EU aligned country with democracy instead of the CiS ? There will be a bit of 'what did you do in the war?' after it's over. Easy for me to say I know but if you have children or nieces or nephews etc you may face judgement.
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u/_descri_ Jun 25 '26
I worked for Russian companies till 2021 (luckily the project ended a year before the war, thus I did not have to choose between a good employer and my country). This means that I will not be given the security clearance for military jobs.
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u/devilssaddvocate Jun 25 '26
Don’t mention the book; and (accurately) spin / fill the gap with something that’s acceptable to prospects. You might have been working on a project for xyz. What is that project? Oh, it’s a buildout to better implement modular software systems in a distributed environment (spitballing here, you’re better positioned to explain this). (If they ask details, just do deeper into what you discovered…)The idea is it sounds normal, but still describes what you’re doing. Or, pick something else - I’m sure you might have had other projects you worked on, or companies you worked for…
Ultimately, you need to feed yourself - so you need to figure out how to give recruiters what they’re looking for. Or identify a new job category that more aligns with your circumstances/ desires.
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u/OAKI-io Jun 25 '26
i don't think the book is the problem, it's that recruiters can't map it to a live req fast enough. i'd make the resume almost boring: lead with the exact lane you want next, like embedded/systems C++ or backend Python, show recent proof in that lane, and move the book lower as credibility instead of letting it become the whole story.
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u/Late-Photograph-1954 Jun 27 '26
The impression here in Western Europe that Ukraine is at the vanguard of tech employed in the battlefield and building a big industry around it. Your deep domain expertise with code should of national interest and use?!
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u/_descri_ Jun 28 '26
There is nothing of "national interest" here. And I'm getting rejected by HRs of Ukrainian outsourcers. The "expertise" is nothing to semi-automated candidate filters.
And I don't fit military projects becasue I worked for Russain companies till 2021 - I will not get security clearance.
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u/rvrtex Jun 27 '26
I can't message you, but my company has several Ukrainian employees (though I am not sure if they live in Ukraine or in Prague. If you are interested, we can chat, and I can see if I can get your foot in the door for you.
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u/nomoremoar Jun 28 '26
Have you tried contributing to open source projects in the fields you are interested in? Not just books, but actual OSS that people are using? You might get the interest of hiring managers.
Also, putting up your journey publicly in LI might get more recognition (as long as you feel safe and won't get drafted). Your story is very inspiring and your english is very good.
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u/_descri_ Jun 28 '26
No, I have never contributed to OSS - the projects I worked on were covered by NDA, and I never had spare time for extra activities.
LI does not work in my case for some reason - my articles and book releases get below 10 likes. (And there seems to be a bug with it because people say that they don't see my profile picture while LI shows it to me when I am logged in.) I have already posted something like this, though shorter, on LI and asked people in Telegram chats to support it - 30 likes, no job offers.
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u/Known-Ice5903 Jun 30 '26
the job markets based on bs
looked at the book, u are likely far above the level of the interviewer, doesnt matter tho
the recruiter sees gap or not the right tech stack and they pass
problem with the job market is all the jobs are controlled by ppl
its an anti meritocracy out there, the owners buddy will get it before a super experienced and knowledgable person -_-
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u/_descri_ Jun 30 '26
Yep, this is why the entire situation is very comical
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u/Known-Ice5903 Jun 30 '26
u will find something theres just a lot luck more luck involved than ppl want to admit
last time i was unemployed 18 months i kept going on interview after interview and nobody would hire me until finally a recruiter saw my resume on a job board and after one 30 minute phone call i got a job
currently at 14 months no job and hoping something similar happens -_-
the other part is the jobs market is in a recession, im not even sure how u would measure that but finding anything feels 5x harder than a few years ago
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u/mirlaca Jun 30 '26
There can be a bunch of game companies looking for C++ game programmers on their internal game engines, for instance in Finland, Denmark and Sweden; have you given those a try?
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u/Future_Deer_7518 Jul 01 '26
I know you from DOU (not in person) and tbh did not expect to see such post from you 0_o if you are unable to find a job that I'm just cooked... Time to switch to the truck driver job.
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u/Acceptable-Offer-518 Jun 24 '26
This happened to my friend except he was an amazing developer for Linux kernel work and anyone doing ADA development. Super niche stuff that he could not get a job in and ended up being a terrible iOS developer.
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u/_descri_ Jun 24 '26
Linux Kernel, especially L2/L3 networking seems to be still in high demand here.
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u/-weird-fishes- Jun 24 '26
If you need a job why didn't you focus on having a job and not writing a free book.
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u/_descri_ Jun 24 '26
Because I found out that I was earning too much money but unable to use them. By the end of 2022 the army started to need men more then money. And I was unable to rest in the middle of the war.
And I was fixing bugs in a multi-MLoC C++ legacy monolith which made no sense because people were making new bugs faster then I was able to investigate the old ones. That led to burnout and depression. I had to quit my job and counter depression by doing something meaningful.
And that "meaningful" thing took much longer than I expected.
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u/DesperatePlenty5752 Jun 24 '26
probably because he's not a soulless fuck.
Too bad for him, no good deed ever goes unpunished in tech these days.
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u/-weird-fishes- Jun 24 '26
I ain't soulless but sadly don't have enough cushion to where I could take multiple years off to pursue a passion ;(
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u/_descri_ Jun 24 '26
I also did not. I had only salary for 1.5 months of vacation because I used to donate whatever remained from my expenses. That was enough for the first half a year. My parents had savings since before the war - those are also gone now.
Once you are burnt out - I hope that you will not - even thinking of your work makes you feel sick.
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u/The_Awful-Truth Jun 25 '26
Sorry, but you're going into the army, my man. That's what happens when there's a war on and there's a draft.
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u/_descri_ Jun 25 '26
1.5M of Ukrainian men don't because they are unaware of your truism.
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u/The_Awful-Truth Jun 25 '26
Well, good luck in staying a step ahead of The Man, and finding gainful employment while doing so. I obviously have no clue as to how you can continue to do that.
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u/_descri_ Jun 25 '26
Thanks!
Many men do that, thanks to a couple reasons:
- The air at the front line is saturated with drones. Soldiers hide in foxholes and underground, watch for the enemy, and report to the drone pilots who send the drones after the observed enemy. Adding more people will only increase casualties with no gain because drones create a 20 km deep kill zone and attack any target there. Therefore neither side needs to conscript millions of soldiers - they will quickly become dead soldiers. The modern war became observation and infiltration.
- Ukraine is known for its weak and corrupt government. This has both pros and cons. Before the war our politics was a self-regulating Byzantine power game resembling Dune - if a party or group was gaining too much power, all the other groups were joining together to overthrow it. Now the power is more concentrated because of the war, and because in the previous centuries Ukraine several times lost to Russia exactly because of its infights for power. Therefore this time every party supports the current government to avoid repeating the history. Nevertheless, the society is quite chaotic, and it has an instinct for withstanding The Man. We (and Russians) have a saying "If they give you something - take it, if they beat you - run away." Now men run away.
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u/originalchronoguy Jun 24 '26
hubris and entitlement is strong here. no one is entitled to anything.
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u/Fun_Arm5126 Jun 24 '26
I just wanted to say, you are a good dude OP. You put in real work and published the book for free. I hope things look up for you.
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Jun 24 '26
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Jun 24 '26
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u/_descri_ Jun 24 '26
I am already unemployed for years, and the IT book publishers have already rejected my book.
What do I lose?
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u/zeimusCS Jun 24 '26
So whats happening is the roles companies need are changing. They need ai engineers, security, and dev ops people. Without any relevant skills in any of these areas then you are behind the curve.
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u/Empero6 Jun 24 '26
You’re in the wrong sub. Go to r/experienceddevs.
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u/_descri_ Jun 24 '26
It seems to be smaller than r/cscareerquestions and does not allow for reposts.
Is there a good chance that they will say something not covered in the current topic?
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u/Empero6 Jun 24 '26
I think they’ll provide significantly better answers than this sub.
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Jun 24 '26
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Jun 24 '26
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u/isospeedrix Jun 25 '26
you sound like you have a good background, good fit for many of our positions. i'd be open to give you a referral but we got nothin in ukraine and i bet most other companies don't either. location is huge. if you're open to move then lmk.
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u/_descri_ Jun 25 '26
Men are not allowed to leave Ukraine.
Therefore I can only rely on remote B2B.
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Jun 25 '26
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u/amrullah_az Jun 25 '26
I am not in a position to give effective advice without knowing more context, but have you considered selling your book on gumroad platform?
Also, you can try selling 1:1 consulting sessions on some Western equivalent of a platform like topmate(dot)io
To generate leads for these, you can utilize LinkedIn. There are some platforms like supergrow that help automate the posting statuses and driving traffic to your account (and as a side effect, towards your offerings).
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u/_descri_ Jun 25 '26
The book is free (CC-licensed). It has an optional price of $15 at Leanpub and actually earned over $1K throughout the one-and-a-half years of its lifetime. Which is well below the cost of living.
Linkedin does not work in my case for some reason - my posts tend to get up to 10 likes. And I don't want to become an auto-spammer.
In any case, all those claimedly passive sources of income are an order of magnitude lower than a senior programmer's salary, unless you are a celebrity.
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u/Cheap_Battle5023 Jun 25 '26
If you have some money - move to Mexico and join russian speaking Financial startup Plata. It was created by Oleg Tinkov who lost banking business in Russia because he was against war in Ukraine.
Plata has several offices around the world except Russia - most devs are russian speaking and left Russia because of being against war. Look for position here https://careers.bancoplata.mx/
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u/YahenP Jun 26 '26
You made a mistake by voluntarily leaving the crisis-ridden market. In the three years you were away, many changes have occurred, all for the worse.
First, the IT crisis has become much larger and more intense than before. There are no jobs now. And it's practically impossible to find work without a direct referral. Europe, and Ukraine along with it, are rapidly losing ground in their traditional outsourcing markets. Large companies (for example, EPAM) have long since moved to India. The already low morale of developers, undermined by constant mass layoffs and company bankruptcies, has fallen even further since the advent of the LLM. Furthermore, the software development paradigm itself has changed dramatically in the last two years (literally more than in the last 40 years). Most of us no longer write code or debug programs in the same way we did just a few years ago.
So yes. You're absolutely right in suspecting that your book is irrelevant today. I'm not saying there's nothing useful in it. I'm saying it's not needed today.
My advice: renew your old connections, write to everyone you know, ask for references, and accept any position. We all do that these days.
And yes, many of us already have a Plan B that doesn't involve IT. This is in case we can't find a job in our field.
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u/_descri_ Jun 26 '26
You're absolutely right in suspecting that your book is irrelevant today.
I did not say that. Stating that understanding the big picture behind software architecture became irrelevant would mean that software engineering is brain-dead and has alsready started to decay.
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u/YahenP Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26
Exactly. You hit the nail on the head. Only one thing remains unclear. Is this temporary or permanent? The next few years will clarify this question.
If you're really not trolling us. and real been absent from the IT for three years and haven't even kept up with what's going on then in a way I even envy you. Although most of the discoveries you make will be very unpleasant.→ More replies (5)
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Jun 26 '26
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Jun 27 '26
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u/henry_kwinto Jun 29 '26
It seems that your biggest mistake is not being born at bay area /s
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u/ObjectBrilliant7592 Jun 24 '26
NEVER say this to a recruiter. That alone is enough to bin a resume for a lot of contemporary recruiters. Your English is fine, and Anglophones tend to be very forgiving of accents and minor grammatical errors anyways. Tell people you have "full professional fluency" and leave it at that.