Yes, it's broken.
It's an employers market and each employer has ridiculous demands. They expect homework, code tests and phone interviews with various team members. All that just to get your foot in the door. They don't value your time or efforts. You don't get any respect at any point. And if you do make it through their process, you will just get an insulting low-ball offer. Some companies are not like that. But the vast majority is.
IT is becoming more and more a robot-slave market. Companies are hiring profiles and specs, not people. They don't care about what you can do. All that matters is how you fit in their factory and how low their cost will be.
And the best part is, none of that is happening in the other areas. We're engineers. We could have easily become bankers, doctors, lawyers, rocket scientists or whatever else we wanted. We can still make the change if we want to start from scratch. The pay is better, you get infinitely more respect and nobody treats you like a criminal when trying to find work.
So stop pouring your energy into an IT job. Nobody cares. And you're definitely not going to be rewarded for it. Instead, you should leech off of any company and focus your attention on yourself and your future. That's what your manager does. That's what your CEO is doing. And that's how most people think. Juggle some simple office politics, work as little as you can and go build a startup in your spare time.
Fuck the IT job market. Start working for yourself.
