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 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.

Other urls found in this thread:

amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R15HQWY4KY4FOC/
joelonsoftware.com/2001/07/21/good-software-takes-ten-years-get-used-to-it/
github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

You gotta network my man. Interviews are for autists.
Although in saying that, white boarding shouldn't be hard...

I wish you luck user. I'm still a junior at my first job but getting it was 90% luck. If I ever get fired/want to move on it'll be very difficult because I suck at algorithm questions too. If you're applying for a senior position they honestly shouldn't be doing these questions. I recall a github repo that had a list of companies hiring without whiteboards, maybe look there.

>fake my smile up to CEO position
>insta-fire every motherfucker who recruited by means of networking

>by then you're 60 years old and they've all moved on

Reading these threads while I'm still in school makes me weak.

The job market is saturated. You will eventually land a good gig, but it will take time and persistence. Companies are looking for perfect candidates that will work peanuts and excel technically. I think you are just rushing and considering the fact that you may end up in a new job that is even less rewarding than your current one, as the saying goes the grass is not always greener on the other side. Good speed user, and remember to just not jump ship into another dead-end job, that will lead to even more frustration.

>You will eventually land a good gig, but it will take time and persistence.
1 year and 10 companies, I think OP has done his time and persisted enough.

I went through a similar routine as OP except it was only for 3-4 months and by that point I was exhausted and burnt out, back then I had better "luck" so I had a few job offers I had to turn down but I don't think I can do it again given I'm a few years older now.

If the market is saturated then why does all the data point towards continued job growth over the decade?

They are made up stories you fucking idiot. If you spend that much time here in the first place you are just setting yourself up to actually fail.

Because even job growth does not keep up with fresh supply of new CS graduates

I feel for you; I'm currently in such a situation only I've been going at it for 2+ yrs now. But mine is slightly complicated by the fact I'm trying to stay within the current hiring system (thereby keeping all my built up time/benefits/can retire at 50 w/full pension check) but yet get into IT within the government. Which on paper looks easy. But then you see that a lot has been dumped to contractors. So I put in application after application, waiting for the call "plz can you come in for an interview at such time". However my luck may be on the upswing, got an interview set up for Tuesday. They got two positions open so hopefully it'll lead somewhere

What percentage of those graduates actually have the skills to be competitive to recruiters?

They're not made up, they may be copypasta but that doesn't mean these stories are false. Ageism is a well known thing in the industry. The problem now is, ageism is starting to affect programmers even into their late 20s and early 30s with these brutal SAT-like whiteboard interviews.

amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R15HQWY4KY4FOC/

You gotta look at it like this to; a lot of those CS grads are "paper only" certified. A lot have no idea how to build a computer much less actually seen the inside and troubleshoot one hands on style. Reading how to do something is easy, actually doing it is another. Can your fresh faced CS grad say " yes I've setup and implemented an active working domain network environment on real hardware and expanded it to add a sub domain or two plus add a few backup domain controllers without the whole thing come crashing down" or "migrated from a 2k3 domain forest/schema to an 2008R2 based one with zero problems/downtime"

The golden age of programmers was after the great financial crisis 2008-2012 where you pretty much had a job offer if you applied to any type of programming position. Back then, many of us thought we would struggle to find a job for pennies, so you pretty much got into CS because you liked technolo/g/y and programming. And even then, you still had people that have no business being in CS. This is because many potential CS students didn't get into the field due to fears of offshoring and the bad childhood experience of the dot-com bubble. However, with the advent of Facebook, Apple, etc. we have all these kids going into CS when they really shouldn't, making it hell for everybody.

Thanks for the example. I'm in my mid 20s and going back to school for a CS degree. I know that if I apply myself well and do the right things I will really help my chances of landing a good job after graduating. One thing I do have going for me is that I take the academics much more seriously than my younger classmates. I'm still about 3 years out from graduating, so is there any advice you can give me to help me better prepare? I know that having an actual passion outside of class, working on various projects, and landing internships during school are all important.

>One thing I do have going for me is that I take the academics much more seriously than my younger classmates.
It one thing to claim that, but hopefully that will be reflected in your GPA.

Why would someone do that? Go on the internet and tell lies?

LARP

All I'm saying is, it's one thing to talk the talk, but it's another thing to walk the walk.

Having gone through both undergrad and grad (both in CS), I can tell you there's a lot of busywork in school and it'll wear you out, but you gotta do it for the GPA because all the smart kids will do very well on the assignments and on the exams, and you're competing against them for a top spot in some company. It's a lot of BS what you have to do, but you gotta do it because that's the way the game is played. It's of my opinion the school system is primarily broken because it's become a weed-out institution, rather than an institution of genuine higher learning. For example, I have both an undergrad and grad degree, but I feel I learn more on my own being an autodidact after I have graduated with a degree, but you can't reasonably do both since you need to devote as much time as you can get pump up your GPA.

My point is, you gotta play the system and play along with the game and get a high GPA. I guess many students flip out once they realize school is a waste a time and they ask these stupid questions like "will I ever use this in real life?" Believe it or not, the primary purpose of undergraduate education is to prepare you for graduate school where they will eventually do research in certain sub-fields. That's all there is to it, and a lot of it happened to be that way simply because that's how it organically grew from the beginning. I'm going off tangent here but hope this somewhat helps.

I do understand that. At least with my life experience I can put myself in the shoes of someone evaluating me and saying -- why do we hire person A over person B? A lot of the skills that translate to good grades, the organization, time management, willingness to put in the work, the ability to work in groups, those seem like decent predictors of success in addition to having already solid technical skills. I've taken enough bites of the shit sandwich that is life to understand that I have to play the game and get through this.

...

>It's been almost a year
Get in line pal.
It's only going to get harder because recruiters are seeing more candidates.

It's a shame. I genuinely love this field but the capitalism surrounding it is revolting.

>trivia
>whiteboarding
share the questions that stumped you because trivia is esotericism but whiteboarding typically implies its more problem-solving based

what's funny is that I typically find the more competent places care less or outright skip technical questions outside of asking about your technical background/interests

unless you want to stay in academia, work significantly harder with your job counselors (you should have some if your school is worth the tuition) than you've ever had with any of your professors
once you're on track stay on track

I feel you bro I'm in the exact same shit idk how I even got here in the fist place

You've had 6+ years of tech and you're getting burned out. What you should do now is go to a different industry. Be a forest ranger, or a electrician, or plumber.

Tech job burnout is very real. You might be able to stave it off by switching to another tech job, but within a year or two the burnout will be back.

Get a more outdoorsy job and spend all your free time doing tech for fun instead of money. Your quality of life will go up

If the school isn't complete garbage they're
A) encouraged to get an internship (AND research experience if they want to pursue advanced degrees)
B) doing class projects that rely on a modern stack
combined it's more than enough to pass the bar on a typical entry/junior position

Everyone here is lying. Well, except about the neckbeard kissless Virgin part.

Sad, I like IT and the field in general. Grew up tinkering with computers at a young age (Dos/Win 3.0) and realized I had a "knack" for it, kinda like instinct you know. So as years went by I took all computer classes I could in school, and later took and passed the A+ and Network+ exams. PC Tech/basic network tech was all/is all I want to do. I know nothing about programming (don't really interest me to be honest). Anyway, took some cisco networking classes at my local comm college, but quit after 8 hrs (2 classes) cause the meat of it was all programming cisco routers and that just ain't for me. Life happened, got to be 30 yrs old, decided to get my CCNA and I-Net+ that I didn't get around to getting in my early 20's. Went to online cert site, got those two certs and and said fuck it, went and got certified as a Windows System Administrator. Now I'm 35, still trying to get into IT, got a interview setup for tomorrow. If I land it (2 openiings) I'll finally be in IT, Desktop Support, which is cool, I'd rather start out at the low end rather than up high and risk looking like a fool and having to deal with all the administrative bullshit/paperwork that comes with being up high in such positions

>what's funny is that I typically find the more competent places care less or outright skip technical questions outside of asking about your technical background/interests

You and me brother, our childhoods were marred by the dot-com bubble bust in 2000 and the ever-looming threat of outsourcing, but we still prevailed and went head-first into CS only to enter the workforce during the Great Recession of 2008-2009. Ten years later and we have to battle the relentless hordes of fresh grads that majored in Facebook. We will survive and make it, keep it up brother and Godspeed.

>Get in line pal.
>It's only going to get harder because recruiters are seeing more candidates.
I'm a senior with 11+ years and I've had the same experience myself this past year. I had my hysteria a few months ago and that has basically hardened into cold steel hate. 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. 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. Regardless, I will probably be forced into some career change sooner rather than later.

I mean, think about it. Every time you want to find a new job (in the tech field) these days, you pretty much have to do the equivalent of studying for the SAT/GRE/MCAT and you're stack-ranked against the entire labour market. Essentially, you're pretty much forced to take at least 3 months of your life away just to grind for these tests, and a new job isn't even a guarantee as OP put it as he's been doing so for an entire year. He's lucky he currently has a job, what happens when the next market correction happens and pink slips are handed out? What do you do then?

try moving to DC if you have the ability, I'm on a large govt project and we are basically begging for bodies, half the engineers we have are lazy pajeets or africans but the work is pretty cool.

Thanks, I uploaded my resume to usajobs but I guess I should start actively applying there. Go USA, lol.

It's so weird for me personally because I never was the kind of person to look at something and go
>Yup, that's what I want to do for the rest of my life
but then I grow up, still fiddling with games and computers but knowingly not in a rigorous capacity, take CS courses as an elective, realize a sizeable amount of CS students can't handle the abstraction and rigor, realize not even all my Mathematics, Physics and Engineering classmates can even think about programs the way GOOD software demands and it all comes to me like "Fuck, if anyone should be doing this, it should be me right?"
Even Stallman agrees that education is about good citizenship and being a good citizen implies if I have a skill I can contribute, I should do so. Especially since we can all see how good software is vital to society.
>Regardless, I will probably be forced into some career change sooner rather than later.
I feel like this is becoming a pervading thought among the people who should be staying and when they go all that's going to be left is an industry of "fakes" who can't perservere through the "til they make it" part outside of grinding job hunt prop.

>It's not even reasonable to expect an engineer to get anything done in 2 hours.
Underrated.
joelonsoftware.com/2001/07/21/good-software-takes-ten-years-get-used-to-it/
This new expectation arose because of startup culture where a majority want market share NOW, everything else be damned.
I sometimes work on open source projects out of coffeeshops and I get approached by people wanting to do a startup. It bothers me the most when it is clear the only value in the product is being the first to market.

How is DC? How interesting is it compared to the fun parts of the coasts? What's the cost of living and what's the compensation for the roles you're "begging for bodies" for?

Why not learn how to network? Easier and a hell of a lot more fun that figuring out how to pass whiteboard exams.

This stuff is getting ever closer to the cram school insanity of Asian countries.

>I feel like this is becoming a pervading thought among the people who should be staying and when they go all that's going to be left is an industry of "fakes" who can't perservere through the "til they make it" part outside of grinding job hunt prop.
So what's going to happen to the "real" pro/g/rammers, it's not like we can exactly retire early or anything like that.

>I feel like this is becoming a pervading thought among the people who should be staying and when they go all that's going to be left is an industry of "fakes" who can't persevere through the "til they make it" part outside of grinding job hunt prop.
I've sorta seen the "end-effect" of this game. Basically, you'll end up with a team full of lightweights bickering and not really knowing how to accomplish anything. Petty politics will arise, and management will become increasingly less trustful of you leading to micromanagement. They'll have to outsource some of their work to some third-party company and pay $500k (no joke) for "consultation." On top of this, they recruit programmers solely based on their Hackerrank score and ask questions straight out of CTCI (like inverting a binary tree, etc.), even though I'm sure none of the engineers on the team really would know how to do one on the spot. This leads to an exodus of talented engineers on the team, and turns experienced and seasoned programmers away from the industry and you end up hiring entry-level undergrads who managed to get lucky they studied for the right problem they ask on interview day.

Companies hiring without the whiteboard bullshit.
github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards