You have a comp sci degree, I would just start blasting out resumes in all of my free time regardless of no experience. Also the person who says lie is right, just lie, doesn’t NonCompete still do fake references for people?

The next step of the plan is already daunting to me. I need to write a resume. How to do this thing with no experience?

You don’t have no experience. You have tonnes and tonnes of self employed experience running a family business and can embellish it with unverifiable made up shit like claiming management experience with time schedules for others you supervised on the stalls.

I know plenty of people with high paying jobs that are incapable of demonstrating the kind of introspection you’ve shown in your post. Seems to me that you’ve already grown up, you just have some hurdles to overcome.

I need to write a resume. How to do this thing with no experience?

Shit I wish somebody had drilled into my head when I was in middle/highschool. Maintain a journal that is just a record of things you’ve done for work, or done to make money, or just things you’ve done. Then use those items as headings and then you’ll fill out specific tasks related to the headings.

So you said you worked a booth at a flea market. Okay…

Fanny’s Flea Market, Booth Worker (part time) —Jan 1992 ~ May 1997 (relevant point of contact, if available) Fanny’s Flea Market, Booth Worker (full time) —May 1997 ~ December 1999 (relevant point of contact, if available)

What did you sell there? How did you get the stuff that was sold? ~Things I did when working at Fanny’s Flea Market~~

Received donated items for resale Sorted sellable from un-sellable items Cleaned items for resale Priced, stocked and organized displays in retail areas Removed damaged items from sales areas Mopped/swept/dusted/etc sales areas Completed customer transactions, making change, accepting checks, handling card transactions Balanced till Prepared deposit for (daily, weekly, monthly sales) Answered customer questions about products and the booth’s policies. Worked with minimal supervision (I"m sure you family pretty much trusted you to do things on your own pretty fast)

So, from there, you’d look at a job posting and when filling out your work history pick a few of the ~Things I did when working at…~~ to add under the headings of each item in your work/education history.

If you have a recent academic history and the job posting is specifically asking for academic stuff, put that at the top of the resume. If your academic stuff is pretty old, put it at the end of your resume.

Dont forget to look in places with limited distribution for jobs (physical papers that have “Help Wanted” adds). My current job with the local post off was from me seeing a “Help Wanted” add taped on the front door of the post office. Talking to my current boss during an interview, they said that the job had been available and unfilled for about 6 months due to nobody applying but got 10 applications in 2 weeks when they put a fucking sign in the window. (USPS has its own internal job posting website that you aren’t allowed to see jobs until you make an go through the hoops to create an account and make a profile. Outside of mail drivers, it seems like all the other Job Posting websites don’t see most of the USPS job openings)

Totally anecdotal, every job I submitted applications to but DIDN’T check the boxes for being available at all times/hours at a moment’s notice, I got no response from. The only job that I said I could be available all days/all hours was the post office job so I don’t know how much was a fluke or not.

You sound like you’re awesome and you’ve had a really rough time of it but you will do great if you keep your head up. Great job helping keep a cat alive. Always commendable. o7

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You write well. Maybe this is related to your academics or maybe it was parallel to them, but you’re able to tell your story in a concise and compelling way. You’re capable of being bluntly honest with yourself without going overboard on beating up on yourself. This speaks to a very deep emotional intelligence.

I was well into my twenties before I had a formal job that fully supported myself. The one piece of advice I would give you is “don’t box yourself in”. You have coding skills that will start to come back as soon as you use them. But there are lots of other things you can do too. There is no wrong choice of occupation (besides cops lol), if you start something that doesn’t fit well, just move on, and it’ll be just more context in your life story.

If you like I can help a bit with CS/programming topics and a little with the job hunting for a web dev job, though I’m not from the US and the market differs quite a bit

Don’t discount your work experience. Sounds like you have over a decade of retail-like customer service experience.

I haven’t properly read this whole thing but just from skimming I relate. All I can input is that our current mode of production and labor is literal hell and it makes complete sense to be avoidant of it. I think it’s actually somewhat insane that the majority of people are able to get themselves to go to work every day and actually do it.

Of course, we still HAVE to work, and that’s something I’m struggling with myself. For now I’m just assuming I have intense ADHD due to my horrible attention span, and seeking treatment for it. That honestly might be a good place to start for you, too. We avoid stuff we don’t like doing, and being yelled at repeatedly for not paying enough attention is a pretty uncomfortable experience, so that would probably go a long way explaining why we’re so work-avoidant.

Of course, if it isn’t ADHD, the rest of my points still stand.

The largest hurdle I can see is my complete lack of experience. I graduated almost a decade ago. I’ll be starting from the bottom way later than I should have. Looking at local job openings on Indeed, it seems my best bet will be some sort of IT or Help Desk role.

LIE. Lie on your resume. Look for the highest paying job for someone who graduated from your year with that many years of experience and use an AI like chatgpt to tailor your resume for that job. Don’t use your real name, just tell the AI: “create a hypothetical resume that would be perfect for this 150K+ comp sci job” and it’ll give you a good idea. As for the actual companies you “worked for,” there are so many defunct IT companies that you can say you worked for. And just use a friend as a reference. Better yet, find defunct contracting companies that the big name companies use to hire contractors and then just say you “worked for microsoft for 2 years” etc. If they ever try to check, just say you worked at Microsoft, but it was through a third-party contractor (which no longer exists) and boom it’s all good. I’d say your goal isn’t to go after the “big tech company” jobs like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc, but rather to lie about working at those places and then aim for a small-ish company that will still pay you a lot and give you a lot of leeway. You can always spin it as “man I used to work at big tech but I’ve realized that life is about more, so I wanted to work for a smaller, more tight-knit company” type of BS. I say this because at the big tech companies, they’ll either know you’re lying in the beginning or find out pretty soon. Whereas at a smaller company, there might be some completely tech illiterate dumbass hiring manager that says “we really need a computer person cuz I have no idea how to use MS word!” and it’s the type of job that still pays a lot. They won’t have the resources to background check you too hard and if you’re the best tech person there then no one will question you. If you land a higher level job where you don’t really have to code but just do bullshit paper pushing, you can basically get a remote gig and make bank while doing absolutely nothing and working only like 4 hours a week. Then you can travel, do hobbies, etc. all while “working.”

I’m not entirely sure if I was ever actually able to write any code or if just I bullshit my way through everything in life to protect my fragile ego

felt this (although I don’t write code, but for other stuff)

I’ll be there with you, also trying to grow up this year good luck comrade

I feel such immense gratitude towards you all.
Your kind words are balm to a listless spirit.
You afford me a perspective on life unseen by me.
I will be closely following your advice.
A thousand thanks

I believe in you. You’re already stronger than a lot of people. Don’t be too hard on yourself and you don’t need to frame this kind of thing in terms of maturity. It’ll be ok.

I suspect I am somewhere on the autism spectrum and/or suffer from ADHD.

Don’t forget that there’s the neurodiversity comm if you think that you’re neurodivergent.

There are also some good creators and books out there on these topics, although there’s a significant proportion of creators (especially autistic creators) who are part of a lifestyle industry which market bullshit to neurodivergent people and who tend to talk over the top of neurodivergent folks with higher support needs.

For autism, there isn’t any particular treatments that are effective. It’s almost exclusively about adapting to the condition, although there are a couple of medications that can be used especially to aid with autistic agitation, although that’s likely unsuitable if you’re undiagnosed as an adult for reasons that I’ll skip over here. In many ways an autism diagnosis can come with significant downsides and often there are few perks so there’s probably little to be gained by seeking out a formal diagnosis.

As for ADHD, there are treatments for it and these can be crucial for functioning as an adult. The obvious ones are the classic stimulants that come to mind and these are generally strictly regulated and require a diagnosis before you can access them.

But not all of them.

A lot of ADHDers do really well with norepinephrine reputake inhibitors and there are a few dopaminergic meds out there which aren’t part of the first-line ADHD meds (i.e. the classic stimulants). Many of these are of the antidepressant class of drugs (mostly SNRIs and NDRIs.)

If someone said that they don’t have an ADHD diagnosis and that it’s out of their reach but they wanted to try some medications for ADHD, the easiest thing to try would be amantadine - this is a medication which has a very low side effect profile, treats a range of mental illnesses, but which also appears to be about as effective as methylphenidate (Ritalin) for ADHD. It’s not a stimulant in the classic sense, it isn’t tightly controlled, and it isn’t addictive. Honestly I have no idea why this isn’t prescribed more, especially to kids with ADHD given the side effects of Ritalin.

There’s also guanfacine, atomoxetine, bupropion, and modafinil. Modafinil is probably fairly tightly controlled in your country, but unlikely as strictly as amphetamine-based meds. It’s often imported on the grey market and used as a study drug.

All of these aside from maybe modafinil would likely be within reach of a typical doctor to prescribe to patients (i.e. you likely won’t need an ADHD diagnosis or a psychiatrist to prescribe them.)

Getting your life together if you have untreated ADHD can be extremely difficult, if not borderline impossible for some people. Don’t pin all your hopes on medication as a magic bullet in this regard, nor on an ADHD diagnosis, but keep in mind that it might be the missing piece. For a lot of late-diagnosed ADHDers it really can be.