So what happens at this point? I’ve been trying to get a software related job for around three years without luck. It is kind of hard to describe the mentall toll this has inflected in me. There has been very bad moments, when I feel like not doing anything, or giving up. Days where I can’t get out of bed in the morning and do nothing productive all day. But there has also been moments when I decide not to give up by any means. Days when I get up early, exercise a little, and study hard. Unfortunately my programming projects are not very advanced, or not interesting enough to impress the recruiters of any company, or at least so it seems, but the effort is there. Not to mention, these positive moments driven with energy and purpose, are maybe the majority of my time in the last two or three years.
But still, what happens now? I am buried in debt, the bank started calling my phone today asking for payments to my credit cards. I told them I’ll try to make a payment by next saturday, for one of my three credit cards. I just hope I will get a $100K a year software engineering job by then!
On the other han, I’ve been in and out of the programming train for a while now. Last two or three weeks I was very excited because I found myself diving deeper into the Systems Programming world. I was finally starting to understand that kind of programming and it was amazing. I felt like a completely different, and more skilled programmer than I was through my entire career. But then some day I just lost all focus and drive. Then I decided to, once again, language hop. I am currently trying to get familiar with and write some Rust. It is a pretty cool and modern programming language althought it feels like an authoritative regime. I wish I would have sticked with C++ but for some reason, despite being more or less familiar with C++, it feels kind of harder to learn or master. Even the whole “ecosystem” feels so, weird. But maybe I’m just talking out of ignorance and lack of practice and familiarity. Anyway, that’s the current state of my studies.
So the thing is, the industry is kind of dead at the moment, or at least the recruiting culture. Seriously what the hell is going on? 500 (or maybe more) job applications in two - three years only to get reply from maybe 100 and at most five interviews? I keep being told many of the following, at different moments:
- Your resume needs polishing I’ve updated my resume hundreds of times. I have one (the main one) in english and one in spanish. I modify stuff around maybe once a week. Sometimes the changes I make are direct contradictions to what some other savvy guy told me to do. I still try both approaches.
- You need to keep growing your network on LinkedIn I try to add or follow a lot of people and of course, I get ghosted. LinkedIn is starting to feel like a (somehow) dumber Facebook.
- Three job applications a day? You need to pump those numbers up, those are rookie numbers in this racket Alright there has been times when I apply to more than ten jobs, every day, for weeks. I get it, this might be the only way to move forward but hell, is it tiring. Not tiring in a physical way, but in a mental way. The effect it has on you to apply literally everywhere and get one (negative) response per 20 applications? That’s some cold blooded, hard to swallow rejection.
- You pretty much just need good english So yeah I’m Mexican, I hear this all the time. “You just need english and you’re set!”. Never heard a bigger lie in my life. I’ve had conversational english ever since I was in high school or before. I talk daily with friends on the internet, I’ve read whole books in english. But oh well. One time I was rejected of an application that I thought was going great, because I had “bad english”: I never spoke a word of english with anyone in the recruiting process. Everything was in spanish.
- Just write projects bro Well I’ve done so, but apparently they’re too noobish or not “advanced” enough not even for a junior role.
And then AI comes around. Oh no don’t worry, AI won’t take Software Engineering jobs! Except well, no one really knows about that. And actually, many people in the industry believe it actually will. But even if it doesn’t take our jobs, it is 100% changing the industry. Programmers are being laid off, while less programmers are being hired. The process is extremely hard with rounds of three or way more interviews and oh God, don’t even let me start with the coding challenges, with which thousands of programmers (including me) completely freeze and forget all programming skills, as if we had a lobotomy.
Today I, at 31, very scared of incoming ageism, find myself to feel a very weird set of feelings. I have to be honest about one thing: I currently have a job, and it pays decently. However it is a job I got thanks to my father, and it has nothing to do with computer programming. I can’t shake the feel of not achieving anything by my own merits. And everything I mentioned earlier through this post has me in some kind of doomer mindset, but at the same time, I feel good, kind of optimistic. I can’t quite explain it and I feel stupid because this is starting to not make any sense. Am I falling into doomerism or do I feel optimistic?
For now, I’ll just try to keep showing up to my current job. Have a good attitude towards my boss (my father). Do everything that is asked of me efficiently. Keep studying and practicing programming every day and try to come up with more interesting projects. That’s all I can do, I suppose. But I wish I could ask for help. I wish someone could help me.
Stay Medieval ️❤️🔥
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