Ask HN: Getting a job with few references?
I've had my current job for the past year, and the work itself is great. Plenty of autonomy (I get to lead development), a project that is genuinely interesting, all open-source technology, etc. However, It's run by a very old-school fellow who has made things increasingly difficult over the past few months, gradually moving the goal posts when I'm already working out of my mind.<p>This is a startup (good), but the owner is not familiar with the challenges of development (not so good). This becomes an issue when he is unaware of the shoddy worksmanship of the previous developers (the last of them was gone before I started), who left for me a rat's nest of some of the worst front-end code that I've seen developed on a large scale. Rewriting this has been a considerable trial, with considerable intrinsic rewards so far.<p>The real trouble is that this company is small enough that I couldn't possible ask for a reference. Second, the job was a major step up, tech-wise, from what I was working on before, so I don't think that my references from previous jobs would contrast well with my current responsibilities. And because I've been so engrossed in my work over this past year, I don't have any new references from that time span. Having been in the industry for just under four years, this is a significant gap in my opinion.<p>Are there jobs available for a very skilled individual with solid experience but who is light on the references? How does one go about covering up that blemish when job-hunting? I interview well and seriously know my stuff, and I'm well-versed in a host of technologies, specializing in JavaScript development.