As I become old it looks like I am vastly out growing software as a profession and will probably need a masters to become management, a principle, a product owner, or just go do something else. Software, at least web development, feels like a game nobody wants to play without either unrelated technologies and/or massive third party tools to do all the actual development. That means being between the concerns of a legacy tech stack or decisions dictated by expert beginners… just to get hired.
The job market is filled with scammers and really low offers.
One way to go is to bite the bullet, as others mentioned, and go through the 18 interviews, pointless ridiculously difficult tests and whiteboards, 3-days long code projects, all that to be accepted into a codebase full of legacy tech, bad team practices and 36 meetings per week. Then you spend a year working your * off trying to convince them to improve, until their funds run dry, they fire you, and the whole thing starts anew. Only this time everything is aggravated because of the recession.
Quite frankly, the whole thing is quite tiring. A career should sum up to something more than that. This can't be it. This whole process is flawed. It's a self serving loop, sub product of greedy business practices.
The world is full of problems, there has to be a better way to contribute, to be productive to society without wasting oneself to all that. I don't know which better way that is. It's all just exasperating.
I've said this before elsewhere, but I'm starting anew. I'll be studying the classics and will tend bars/sweep floors to make ends meet if necessary. I'm lucky to be in EU where education is nearly free.
At the same time I’ve started attending local networking events and meeting businesses (chamber of commerce, meetup, etc) and I’m working on some simple items for friends to get testimonials and portfolio.
It is kind of annoying looking back at more than a decade of work and not owning anything of it! Sure, I got paid, but so what?
Heh, don't worry you'll see plenty of those.
If things don’t shape up this month, I’m preparing for the worst and possibly giving up. It probably hurts a lot, but I’m still preferring remote. I had a lot of bad luck at the beginning of the year and had to hemorrhage a ton of money on emergencies and am steadily bleeding mostly through rent and bills. I really do not want to pay for moving expenses right now.
Just in the past month, I've been, at two separate interviews, told by the interviewer:
"There's been a lot of layoffs lately teehee"
"I'd never apply for jobs. I need to be headhunted"
You give people the least bit of power and they quickly show their true colors...
I hope you find a chair somewhere soon, but tbh it feels like most of us will have to drastically rethink viability of our careers in coming years if not immediately. It comes for us all, its just a question of time...
Plus there's so much negativity the last couple of months, just because the market is tight and no more easy job hunting.
its not really encouraging when the career you threw your life to may change from ground up into something you may not even enjoy and like (due to AI etc)
lets have at the popular horse analogy; sure people could have always retrained to be "taxi drivers" but what if some of them just enjoyed riding the damn horses and feeding their family at the same time? and did the 20 years of horse riding on the prehistoric CV really translate well when applying for the new fancy taxi driver positions?
Having friends in the industry helps tremendously.
I wish it would slow down.
December - February I searched as I would years ago - respond to a recruiter here and there and apply to a couple of great roles every week. Usually this would result in several offers.
I never got so few responses, so in March and April I went all in, and applied for 50+ jobs (not sure how many exactly, but a lot). Got a couple of offers well below my day rate.
I got tired of it and just emailed some of my ex-colleagues. Got the job at a place where I already worked within a week.
