ninja_to_be

Your boss comes to you with some highly improbably task and you say YES.

Your Project Manager comes to you asking if something could be done and you say YES. And then you have a unbelievable deadline looming over you for the next few days.

Your peers ask you for some help on a task that they had been struggling with - for days. You say YES and then you end up having to feel the burn for their complete workload.

Your subordinates ask you for help every five minutes and you always say YES and end up helping them and sometimes end up doing all the task yourself - veiled under 'mentoring'.

How do you say NO? How did you learn to say NO?

I am a software developer with varying levels of interest and proficiency in front-end/back-end development. I am would consider myself very good at Python & MySQL. I do data analysis and visualization. I have been writing quite a bit of code in JavaScript/NodeJS in the past few months. I am good at HTML and I would be able to find my way through CSS layouts and the likes. Would I be considered a full-stack dev?

At what point would you call yourself a full-stack developer? Are there Full-Stack devs here who can provide an insight into what your regular work looks like and what it takes to be one?

I am an excellent coder. But I am not a rockstar/ninja/10x dev. I don't consume code all the time. I don't breathe out code all the time. I don't have pet projects to show. I don't have a project portfolio. I don't contribute to open source projects. I like to explore, travel, run, hike, kayak and a bunch of other things whenever I am not at work.

I just completed my Masters degree in Computer Science. Before that I worked for 4 years dishing out high quality code as a software developer. I have been searching for jobs for the past two months.

Most companies ask for my project portfolio or my Github profile link. Though I submit links, they are nothing more than a deserted island. More often than not, companies reject my job applications saying something like: "Unfortunately, your skill sets were not a match for this position", when their job description is an exact match for my skill set, the exact work that I have been doing for 4 years prior to my Masters.

What are the companies expectations when it comes to recruiting software engineers?