Mid-level software dev, losing hope

It's been almost a year of looking, and I'm losing hope.

I currently have a decent job, and about 6+ years of experience. I've applied to so many places in my area, but I can't seem to seal the deal. I've literally interviewed with 10 companies by this point. It's taking it's toll on me - I can probably hold it together for another year or two without freaking out at work.

I'm not sure how much I can press on. I feel like I'm trapped at my current job, and I so desperately want to move on. It's always the technical part. Whether it's trivia or whiteboarding, I can't ever get it down perfectly. I get it - I need to study and practice. But it's as if everything I know and the years of experience that I have mean literally nothing. I'm frustrated as hell. It's not helping my situation but I guess I wanted to see if anyone can relate. I never thought it'd be this hard to find another job (would be my 5th), especially in this market.

Focus on your failures and make them work.

Do Leetcode so you can look decent at coding interviews and work on your social skills so you're not a mumbling wierdo

Honestly just looking confident and being pleasant and likable in the interview almost alone will get you in when so many other applicants will be socially inept CS grads and "self-trained" JS brainlets

How skilled are you?

And do not lose hope. If you are skilled, you will get hired. I am looking at your peers, and they are mostly trash.

If you are not skilled, then you need to work on that.

>user your portfolio is empty except for a hentai dick girl generator in c+=

I've spent a year on this, honestly I'm burnt out and starting to freak out. What if my company goes down under? What if I get laid off? What if I get managed out? Honestly, I'll end up in the streets like Terry if I won't even be able to snag a programming position...

HackerRank+CTCI is poisoning the well. It eliminates mobility for employees in favor of new grads who can spend 3+ months grinding 300+ leetcode. There is no practical expectation that anyone can do 5 DS/Alg questions in 2 hours that fits all the HackerRank requirements with the crazy outputs and stuff. I'm doing my best, but I'm starting to foresee a career change in the near future.

Well clearly I must suck and should shove that shotgun barrel into my mouth if I'm getting repeatedly rejected, but there are many mid-level engineers like me facing the same problem. Sooner or later, you'll be in my shoes if you've already have a job. I think that the market is just getting more and more saturated. And the process of filtering and selecting candidates needs to be a little more streamlined. Hence you get these technical whiteboarding leetcode interviews. I'm continuing to try. It stings when that 73rd rejection letter lands at your inbox with a generic sorry but not sorry note, but don't take it too personal.

Don't you understand what it means to have a salaried full-time job...

Lemme let you in on a secret. You think it's about just solving these abstract problems, but the real thing that interviewers are after is to see how to approach problem solving (and yes, also to see if you know basic algos/DS). Sure, there are shitty startups that ask you to convert a linked list into a hash map at O(n) complexity because they heard the big 4 do it, but that's not the point. When you're in these situations, are you dialoguing with your interviewers, asking them questions, explaining your thought process as you go step by step, or are you just meekly staring at a whiteboard/IDE and shriveling inside?

They want you to have a competency at coding, that's obvious, but more than anything they want to see you think. If you can think, you can learn, and you'll be able to get up to speed on what you need to know. Sure, they'd love if you aced every question they had, but so long as you make progress and show thought process, they will still consider you.

>Well clearly I must suck if I'm getting repeatedly rejected
You suck at interviews, yes. That can be fixed, and with ease. But what about your programming skills? Do you suck there too? That can also be fixed, but it is much harder.

I'm well aware of your "secret" and I've been on the other side as well you stupid SDE 1 junior dev. Wait until you get up on my level and see what I'm talking about. CTCI book is a pathetic excuse for the industry. Its existence is an abomination and the author is always trying to make excuses for its existence to benefit herself.

>I've been on the other side as well you stupid SDE 1 junior dev. Wait until you get up on my level and see what I'm talking about.
That is a great attitude. I am sure everyone who interacts with you will want you for a colleague.

Then I don't really know what to tell you, since it doesn't sound like you want to make the effort, rather just get a better paying job because you deserve it or something. Try dressing nicely and being more sociable. I got my position by being friendly and showing interest in the company's work, not through wowing them with my hacker skills or some shit. Stop being so desperate for money and think about why a company should invest its time training you and bringing you up to speed.

I don't excuse my behaviour, but when you get this desperate I hope you only understand my situation. The problem with these interviews is it doesn't even show you're good at knowing algorithms. You're just good at memorising. 99% of the time these algorithms have been done before and their solutions, optimisations have been recorded online. There's so much of the human aspect that these interviews skip. It seems you lucked out without having to go through this grind, but that's what I'm up against and time is running out or I may literally end up in the streets.

I don't get it. You're already having difficulty now and you want to move onto another, more difficult job?

Or do you think you should be easily able to get a more well-paid easier job? (It's probably possible, but in general it's not supposed to be the same but easier).

99.99% of Sup Forums are like you: Not being Bill Gates' children, we have had our hardships. But when you are in a hole, you should not dig yourself deeper. Being desperate is fine; acting desperate will cost you a potential job.

You still have not answered if your programming skills are good or not. Perhaps that does not matter now. Work on your people skills first, so you do not fail your interviews based on that.

Best of luck, user.

> It eliminates mobility for employees in favor of new grad
If you can do everything the new grad can do and more, you should not have any problem.

If you can't, where is the surprise? It sounds pretty bad if after many years you can't do something that young people learned in 2-4 years.

If you're a software dev who's on the verge of losing your home, you're either vastly underpaid in which case your problems run deeper than being able to code, or you're in Silicon Valley in which case you should get the fuck out of there ASAP. The place is poison to the human spirit.

>If you can't, where is the surprise? It sounds pretty bad if after many years you can't do something that young people learned in 2-4 years.
I've had tests expecting me to spit out a highly optimized Dijkstras in 35 min when even the text input was taking up half the alotted execution time. You simply can't do this unless you've memorized the algorithm and optimizations. I think you'd have to practice even to get your typing down that quickly. You need to grind 300+leetcode, hackerrank now. And you need to get lucky. That's just how it is now. There isn't going to be any change in this until we start to push back.

Think about it, in what conceivable job situation would you be solving 5 DS/Algs in 2 hours? You wouldn't. It's not even reasonable to expect an engineer to get anything done in 2 hours. Sprints are measured in days.

PS: If employers want these skills, then for fuck's sake why don't you try to learn them, maybe even at university if they rely on them to certify these skills?

Sure, you can try without with more employers, but after 10 or 20 attempts, that MAYBE is a hint to you that you might have to get qualifications like they're asking you to have.

Sounds like you are or used to be in Silicon Valley, tell me about your experience in that hell-hole.

Thankfully I'm not, I'm a Portland-region dev, but everyone I've known who's been employed in the Bay Area has said that it's a rat race between foreign wunderkinds, adderall-infused maniacs and algorithmic geniuses for the top positions so that they can afford to actually live close to their work and not commute an hour plus from Concord or Hayward or something. Condominiums that would go for 200k elsewhere sell for a million plus. It's inhumane living there, not to mention the cultish obsession with youth and "culture" that a lot of those corps have.

> You simply can't do this unless you've memorized the algorithm and optimizations.
Unless they announced that they'd only test this one, I figure they wanted you to at least know the typical undergrad algorithms by heart. Maybe more than that?

> There isn't going to be any change in this until we start to push back.
Lel, forget it. Employers will continue to select candidates that can type faster an remember their algorithms & data structures if that's what they're looking for.

>Think about it, in what conceivable job situation would you be solving 5 DS/Algs in 2 hours?
The one they offer. Or maybe one that requires you to be able to relatively quickly understand algorithms that were published in academic releases / written into source code - if you could do it for your studies, you can probably still do it for your job.

> Sprints are measured in days.
And you're aiming for a highly paid job, so employers want you to get pretty reliably more than one poorly running python hack done for two days of wages. They want good code for their money, and plenty of it, so they sift for the clever, able to memorize anything, fast, and motivated people as much as they can.

You got many things wrong in your post, many false assumptions that you've made. Anyways, it's clear by this point you're more interested in opposing whatever point I'm making rather than engaging in a clear and thoughtful discussion. End.

> it's a rat race between foreign wunderkinds, adderall-infused maniacs and algorithmic geniuses
You can also consider this "you get to work with a competent team". Not nearly every engineer wants to be management.

But yes, it's a stiff pace. Lots of money involved, so they'll ask for lots of work and skills. Not surprising, is it?

> Condominiums that would go for 200k elsewhere sell for a million plus.
There are more expensive places in the world with worse salaries.

> cultish obsession with youth
No.

> "culture" that a lot of those corps have
Pretty necessary to reduce the churn a bit among all these high stakes high pressure work situations.

Are you an american?

>tfw pretty much in OP's situation, except I got my first job and want to move on.

I get fucked at whiteboard/paper programming. I simply don't code on these things, it's not how I work. I need to be in an environment I'm familiar in. I had a test the other day where they actually gave me an IDE and internet, I did pretty well.

But in all honesty, the main issue is not knowing anyone op. The tech industry is 90% who you know. Think about it, you said it yourself. You can just memorize solutions. How do employers really know? Through other people vouching for you.