As a parent, I'm equally ashamed. We're probably moving our family to europe/dubai in the next decade. The quality of my wife and my education abroad was substantially better than what we've experienced in "blue ribbon schools" in california.
I've seen something similar recently online, someone talking about wanting to visit a certain adjacent middle eastern country for a holiday, one with a fairly notorious public image in other regards. I'm assuming the advertising those countries are pushing play a big part in the mind share of people.
There are many reasons why one wouldn't want to live in Dubai.
I was stationed in Dubai for work for two years, I know the place very well.
Overall, I would say Dubai is very different than how it is portrayed in western media. Personally I find it amazing how much the place has grown in such a short time span.
But I have chosen to live in Switzerland(not my native country), a country more aligned with my personal values. Freedom for the individual, a strong democracy, a diverse culture, with people who genuinely care about the planet and their neighborhood.
But I do think a person grows when they are forced to live in cultures very different from their own.
I'm sure your wife and daughter(s), if you have any, will certainly love Dubai and the UAE in general. And Europe has its own set of problems, it's a good idea to look at it without rose tinted glasses.
My sister has lived in Dubai for about a decade and just had her daughter there. Some of the best IVF facilities in the world are in Dubai btw. Dubai has changed a lot over the past 20 years.
As a kid I lived in Qatar and Oman in the 80s (born in Scotland but my dad worked in oil and gas), so I have experience with gulf states of the sort maybe you're thinking of in your mind. Yes - those places were often not great places to be a woman. But 2024 Dubai is a much different place. I visited my sister in 2022 when I had to travel to Abu Dhabi for work, and for the first time Dubai seemed like a place where I could imagine living on a long term basis.
It's still incredibly low pay, even in LCOL area, for what is (and should be treated more like) an important job. Houses also cost 200k-400k around me, and you can make more money than that working nearly any job.
It is worth unpacking that response a bit. $32k/yr is a signal that if someone has a choice between doing teaching and something else they should pick the something else. Which accounts for why and what Vogel did. That isn't a bad thing; there is some ideal number of teachers and it isn't good for everyone to be trying to become one if there are already too many.
There are other possibilities, for instance a disconnect between need and a willingness to pay to fill that need that is not economic in nature but political.
Public school teacher salaries do not usually adapt to market conditions on an individual basis like in other industries. If you needed to pay like $5k more to get a new hire, for example, you would have to update the pay schedule to pay potentially thousands of teachers each $5k more. That cost can be infeasible in the short term. There are also non-monetary considerations. If your city is known for terrible working conditions, teachers might refuse those jobs even if your pay scale is competitive.
I'm going to take the opposite view and say paying teachers 32k is a bad thing--here's an article from an hour ago saying that 90% of Illinois schools have a teacher shortage tied directly to low pay. Clearly this salary isn't signaling that the market is saturated with teachers.
Setting aside the merits of teaching and childcare on their own, failing to fill teaching positions now in favor of other jobs is going to lead to students who are unprepared to continue to fill said jobs in the future.
Illinois is welcome to pay teachers more. However, if there is literally no-one in Illinois willing to pay teachers enough to teach the kids, then I put that it isn't reason to be embarrassed by the education system.
Either Illinois is in a state of poverty where parents can't afford to educate their kids, the people of Illinois don't value education. They are, in practice, signalling quite clearly that they think there are more important things teachers could be doing. It isn't that hard in principle to set up a private school, you need a building, some desks, a chalkboard and a teacher. Pay 'em what you like. I'm sure there are a lot of helpful regulations to comply with too that'll push the complexity up but it isn't that hard.
This is the families with children making choices.
According to The Internet, the average teacher salary in IL is $72k per year.
No doubt that number is skewed by the Chicago region. School funding is dominated by property taxes; they are high in the Chicago area and significantly less in others. It is indeed a local choice being made.
This is not entirely true, with a two party system and competing policy positions of relative importance coupled with party line voting, there are many issues where a majority of the majority, which only amounts to about 30% of the total population, can block changes that are popular with the 70%.
This leaves the 70% in a position where it takes extreme effort to move forward. Starting a new private school system is a big effort for a position that says teachers should get 50k instead of 35k.
As far as I can tell you've identified that you have limited ability to get what you want in the public system because of an intransigent minority. The obvious response is to move into a parallel system where the minority doesn't have to participate. That is fast, fair and and pretty easy to execute all things considered - if people are serious about wanting to pay teachers more, which I don't believe they are.
> Starting a new private school system is a big effort for a position that says teachers should get 50k instead of 35k.
It really isn't. Or more accurately, if it is then that is the problem rather than the salary being paid. Teaching kids to the standards of a system that is currently paying its teachers ~$35k is pretty straightforward when you get down to it; and improving on it would not be hard. The economy is made up of people continuously taking positions on these sorts of issues.
I spent decade(s) being educated, I've got a respectable number of letters I can put after my name and all the way through the capital costs outside a couple of science labs and the actual school building were negligible. And a big chunk of the important material is available online for free. Education in real terms is a really easy field to enter and compete in. But I think if anyone tried they'd just discover that people don't actually want to pay teachers money. They want someone else to pay teachers money. Because without that little rider there is only a rather small problem here to solve.
>I'm going to take the opposite view and say paying teachers 32k is a bad thing--here's an article from an hour ago saying that 90% of Illinois schools have a teacher shortage tied directly to low pay. Clearly this salary isn't signaling that the market is saturated with teachers.
Actually no, the low salary may simply be lagging slightly behind market conditions. Schools can't just magically pay all teachers more because of a temporary shortage of applicants, and paying only the new hires more would be unfair. Salary increases need to be well-justified and applied uniformly, as teacher salaries are some of the most structured in the whole economy and paid for by taxes that can't be changed quickly. So eventually, the salaries might go up, but the shortage might also lessen too as more graduates appear.
I don't have kids, I find children to be annoying at best but even I can not imagine not paying teachers so much as to make it a prestigious job that is tough to get.
From just a purely economic perspective, it seems like a trivial investment given the higher order effects.
Instead, we are going to suffer the higher order effects in the opposite direction.
Just insane but we seem to be getting really good as a society at making dumb decisions.
except the problem is the opposite, there is a shortage of teachers and student count per teacher is insanely high. (this is your brain on supply side economics)
The disconnect between what individuals actually think and what we do collectively is ridiculous. This isn't limited to education or salaries, from helping veterans in need to reducing our impact on the planet our collective actions very rarely match the opinions a majority strongly share.
Just about any US state legislature today with a Republican supermajority (such as Kentucky) prioritizes diversion of state and local education funds from public schools to private ones through the use of vouchers and charter schools. "Propping up" public schools is seen as a waste of taxpayer money. (I'm stating their position, not advocating it). Having said that, comparing public school teacher salaries to just about any other career outside government is highly misleading due to defined benefit pension plans, which in Kentucky include a health insurance benefit, and kick in fully without a retirement age requirement after only 27 years' service.
Jeff Landry in Louisiana said that the universities should produce “skilled labor” rather than research with the implication that all the people who had the nous to start a business in this state have already done so.
The sankey diagrams here are interesting, and a trend I haven't experienced, but have seen mentioned on /r/cscareerquestions quite frequently. As a Cal grad, cold applications have always worked for me, but it seems OP and newer grads are having a tougher time. I'm curious if Cal/top university grads are getting the recycling bin from cold applications as well (I also have 15+ yoe now, but it's never been an issue).
Also for new grads, the best advice I can give you: join a fortune 500 company. Startups are extremely cut throat and volatile, esp. in this environment where everything is under scrutiny, interest rates are high, etc. If you can get into a FAANG, Pintrest, xyz and climb the ladder, it's likely better than being taken advantage of at a startup - which I've seen more often times than not.
It's the year. I had cold applications too and worked in 2022. And I wasn't a UC Berkeley graduate which I believe is very well-know Computer Science school.
> Also for new grads, the best advice I can give you: join a fortune 500 company.
I think the problem is not that the new grads are not applying. They simply are not getting a chance. It's not a matter of choosing between F500 and startups.
I’ve applied to more jobs in 1 day than they did in 3 months. Ghosted 99% of the time while the other 1% is the automatic “Unfortunately, we will not be moving forward with your application, but we appreciate your time and interest” message from LinkedIn ~3/week
It’s no easier as a later career tech veteran - been laid off for over 6 months now and hundreds of job applications with a total of 3 interviews so far which have led nowhere - I’m running out of unemployment next month
I’ve got 20 years in tech: web, mobile, cloud and early in my career I won a NASA medal for software innovation - worked in dozens of industries and led teams of 40 people for MM$$ flagship applications
Tried my network but nothing so far and its been really frustrating
If he got 3 interviews off of hundreds of applications, he probably isn't having a lot of opportunity to revise his salary requirements. Unless it's just absurdly high, that probably isn't the issue keeping him unemployed.
This is the problem mostly from what I can tell. As a senior dev, if you applied for jobs at the same pay as a junior you’d probably be hired in an instant.
If I got laid off today, I'd use this to my advantage. Just apply for and work for two lower-paying jobs at the same time, cumulating in a high total comp.
I have ~10 years' experience and am finding the same.
It's reassuring to know that I'm not alone (so presumably it's not just because I'm a terrible developer), but disheartening at the same time because who knows when things will improve?
I'm in an ok situation financially (no mortgage, earning a little bit doing AI training) so have the freedom to develop a couple apps of my own. This is something I've wanted to do for ages, but they're a long way from making any kind of money.
I can't complain but I'd really rather have a stable income at this stage.
20 yrs here, going on my 2nd month. 300+ applications, about 1% return. I tell myself that after 6 months, I'll sell my house and buy a farm or travel for a few months or something. I can't imagine how many qualified people the market is losing to this line of thinking.
I feel you. 18 for me, with the axe falling riiight after I got married. Wedding was expensive, savings have long been dry. Only afloat because the wife has a job in TV. But of course during those months of Hollywood strikes, both of us were unemployed lol
We're all in it together, this won't last forever.
And yeah! Honestly it took a while for me to propose because we were having financial difficulties at the time, too, and I wanted to do things right. But even with hindsight, if I had known I would've run out of money after the wedding, I wouldn't have done anything differently at all. It was an amazing day and worth it all. Do whatever you can to make that day exactly what you want, there is no other feeling like it. Best of luck to you
Author here. I'm sorry to hear that. I've heard similar struggles from other experienced folks, and I get the impression that companies have been less eager to hire for upper-level positions such as staff or architect, relative to plain senior roles.
I've added a note near the top of my post clarifying that the "early-career" of the title is only because I'm speaking from my own experience.
Insane how much money juniors are making these days.
I'm a senior dev who started coding at 14, with university degree, with 15 years commercial of experience working on some large projects. I also worked on some high profile projects. I was raised in a small town and almost nobody knew how to code there and so I self-taught myself from books and online.
I after finishing university, I worked for various companies including a distributed trading platform handling 30k+ concurrent users. I designed and wrote (as leader of a small team) the P2P network layer of a Blockchain worth $300 million which has never been hacked and never went down (it's been over 5 years since my team's code was rolled out). I'm also a good team player.
I also built many open source projects including a successful one with several thousands of stars on GitHub.
Yet I can't even get first interviews for jobs. I never earned above $120k per year (USD). Even after 10 years and being the top dev in every company I worked at.
Then I read about juniors getting $160k straight out of uni and people changing careers into software development making the same as juniors.
I'm actually starting to believe conspiracy theories about targeted individuals. WTF.
It's disturbing because while all these people were out partying and having fun, I was teaching myself coding. Now they're all getting paid more than me.
Then people downvote me on HN when I tell my story. WTF.
> I never earned above $120k per year (USD). Even after 10 years and being the top dev in every company I worked at.
If your skills are as strong as you perceive them, then there is at least ONE valid reason you haven't landed a more profitable job, especially if you were applying between 2018-2022. I recommend paying for a reputable third party to review your resume, and your "about me" statement. They don't even need to be trained in cs. You'll also need to do so with an open mind and not be defensive about criticism. Good luck!
Not OP but do you know of any? Several years ago I was considering switching jobs and hired an independent. I could have done much better than the product they eventually gave to me.
I used one who has since retired. She was pricey but worth it. Also she had no programming experience. At first I was in denial of her feedback, but after applying it, saw immediate results.
Anyways unfortunately no, but look on LinkedIn and ask for references.
I did, I got advice from a HR professional, cleaned up my resume, combined my contracting positions into a single 'freelancing' role. Wrote an excellent cover letter, formatted. There's something off about the whole thing. My resume is stellar. Everyone who sees this tells me so. I know founders of companies who exited for millions of dollars and even they can't help me because their acquiring company doesn't let them hire me on a measly contract. People around me, including other developers cannot believe what is happening to me. I feel like I'm being gaslit by everyone. Even some of my family members are turning into conspiracy theorists.
I believe you- I have an elite undergrad degree, a couple years of industry experience and quite a bit of time in grad school/academia and coming out of my PhD I can’t even get an interview - the excuses given are the stupidest ones imaginable. I can only pinpoint it as rank discrimination against the geographical area I’m in at present.
Raise your standards, review your soft skills, review your technical skills, your self-marketing strategy, all of it.
> It's disturbing because while all these people were out partying and having fun, I was teaching myself coding. Now they're all getting paid more than me.
I'm sorry, but this statement is telling. Take some personal responsibility: the job market is much different today, and successfully navigating it without generational wealth takes a set of skills that you must develop.
A sister comment recommended a resume review, but I would suggest going further and looking into mock interview services where you can get honest feedback about your interview skills. I find interview/interpersonal skills to often be the choke point for many individuals who have a hard time navigating the market and don't know why.
I used to fly through the interviews. I ace all the interviews I'm given. Never had issues before. My interview approach didn't change at all, I just know more now. Last time I got to final stage of interviews at a major tech company a few years ago, I aced all the interviews and tech tests but for some reason, apparently at the last minute, the head of engineering didn't show up to the final interview which was supposed to be a 'just a formality'. My problems started happening in 2019, quite suddenly so the contrast was noticeable.
When I talk to recruiters, initially, they sound excited but for some reason ghost me or they invent new job tech requirements which were not listed on the advert (and which are trivial and I could easily catch up on). I've heard stuff like "Although this position is for a Node.js role, the head of engineering is particular and likes candidates who have some past experience with C#..." WTF!!
I think my problems may be related to my involvement in crypto. I tried to actually improve things there. Feels like what happens to heads of state in foreign countries who try to improve their people's lives to the detriment of foreign investors... But weird because I'm literally a nobody! I didn't get much exposure outside of my immediate community.
> I think my problems may be related to my involvement in crypto. I tried to actually improve things there. Feels like what happens to heads of state in foreign countries...
To be completely frank, this sounds like a paranoid delusion. But, I don't know you and I keep out of cryptocurrency drama, so I'll withhold judgement. Have you looked into work outside of that niche?
I worked directly in crypto for several years and still interface with crypto projects and that has never affected my employment as far as I'm aware. I doubt it's the reason for OP's struggles.
I forgot to mention that, at one point, my boss, who now controls almost 100 million dollars of crypto threatened to hire people sabotage my open source project. I thought he was joking at the time but now I'm not so sure.
The therapist would think I'm being reasonable if they heard the full story. My ex-colleagues would back me up on that.
If the problem is crypto, leave crypto out of the resume and say that you became a monk or took up sailing or volunteered overseas or something during that time and see if it helps.
My advice: if you're not applying for a crypto job, scrub all crypto terms from your resume. Most people aren't going to understand what it is beyond criminal activity (scams, drugs, money laundering), HR might think you're a liability. People who don't assume it's criminal activity will most likely be confused about why you applied to a non-crypto job and find it an irrelevant useless skill they don't want to pay a premium for. In the last year, public opinion on crypto has tanked, so there is incentive to pretend you were actually doing AI or anything else the whole time. Having a hole in your resume is a bad idea though. Most likely you can describe crypto work in non-crypto terms.
Make sure you’re using an objective lens. I don’t know you, but I do know my co-workers. One of my co-workers in particular talks a very big game. According to him he’s the best coder in the company, and at every company he’s ever worked at, but his soft skills and social skills are so bad that no one wants to work with him. I also don’t think he’s as good as he claims… he only seems to know 1 language and refuses to improve shortcomings of his code, always pointing the finger at others.
I’m not saying this you, it’s just an example from my life. If your experience is in sharp contrast to how you see yourself, it’s worth taking a look at how others might see you.
If you are low balling yourself on salary in a cheaper cost of living area you can't compare yourself against someone in San Francisco who is good at negotiating and bragging about it online.
One aspect that I find discouraging is the significant opportunity cost associated with the time and effort required during the job search process. Instead of using this time for skills development, exploring new technologies, or excelling in a current role, it's consumed by:
- Tailoring resumes to suit ATS systems (now with AI/other automation)
- Leetcode and study for live interviews
- Identifying suitable positions on job boards for cold applications
- Probing your network
- Responding to unsolicited contacts
- Chasing ghost recruiters
It's disheartening and frustrating to remain unemployed for an extended period, especially when I possess relevant experience and expertise, yet continually face rejections due to the challenges of navigating the recruitment pipeline.
The ATS stuff in particular is a real pain, and I wonder how much of that is companies overtuning their application process instead of adapting to the realities of a remote workforce. It feels bizarre to be ghosted or summarily rejected by 97% of companies and yet very easily pass through multiple interview rounds with the remaining 3% who actually read my resume.
The consequence of this is cynicism and the use of AI on both ends. Applicants are using AI assisted tools to apply because of the sheer quantity of jobs they have to apply to to get anywhere and recruiters are using AI assisted tools to screen because of the sheer quantity of candidates they have. It's robots talking to robots and everyone is miserable.
The jump to $105k was from teaching to their first software position, and was at the peak of the 2022 tech bubble. Not bad timing, although the market is not so great now of course.
I was laid off in January here in London, UK and it's been a wake-up call as well. In 2021 you could turn up at the wrong building for an interview and still walk out with a job offer.
Someone who tried to hire me in 2021 (I turned them down), went seeking themselves in 2022 and had 8 offers. They went seeking again in 2023 (they chose poorly, hated it) and it took them 6 months and dozens upon dozens of interviews to secure something.
I was job hunting in 2021 and put in 30 cold applications before I had 2 offers. I've been job hunting after being laid off in late 2023. I am currently at around 110 applications and have only gotten a handful of interviews with no offers.
I applied to AWS and Microsoft last summer and I directly got invited to interviews for jobs here in Finland. However, I decided not to proceed and took a break from working and studying (I've returned to the country from Germany for doing my Master's degree). This year, since graduating just now and after many applications I've had a couple of interviews – one with a large consultancy and another one with a smaller boutique firm.
Generally, the AWS listings for the country are suddenly zero – nil. Microsoft's are close to zero and I haven't heard back from them at all. I saw one Google job ad in a smaller hometown of mine where this region's GCP servers are located which I applied to and came across later on LinkedIn, but it showed that the job had over a hundred applicants in under a week.
The salary ranges mentioned to me during my interviews I did have, e.g. for the larger consultancy role taking place at the country HQ in the capital city were abysmally low (like ridiculously low), so I guess they went with someone more eager to work for what they were willing to pay. That is, earning half of what the local junior factory welder does here in northern Europe (they do night shifts though etc.). The title for the role was: Data & AI Consultant, and it's one of the Big4 accounting / audit / consultancy firms. Anywho, they were telling I'd be working at 100% capacity without a lot of time for self-development or anything else for that matter, which is fine, but in essence, and to summarize, I've personally seen a huge shift downward in the last year in the job market and frankly, it looks rather terrible right now.
I have no visibility into the layoffs happening in the industry, but looking from the outside it does indeed seem grim. By now I'm actually thinking I should've seriously considered taking anything they were willing to offer me at all, or even working half-free to get myself back to working again! Well, I guess I'll just continue looking, but my expectations have been calibrated in a major way, that's for sure... So I guess we're all sailing in the same boat right now job-market-wise.
Hey, author here. I'm in central Kentucky. There aren't a lot of in-person developer jobs in my area, and I ended up applying only for remote roles. I've added that to my post.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 171 ms ] threadDo not look any further into it, there are no other reasons one might not want to bring their family there or live there onesself.
Probably clean streets too.
There are many reasons why one wouldn't want to live in Dubai. I was stationed in Dubai for work for two years, I know the place very well. Overall, I would say Dubai is very different than how it is portrayed in western media. Personally I find it amazing how much the place has grown in such a short time span.
But I have chosen to live in Switzerland(not my native country), a country more aligned with my personal values. Freedom for the individual, a strong democracy, a diverse culture, with people who genuinely care about the planet and their neighborhood.
But I do think a person grows when they are forced to live in cultures very different from their own.
As a kid I lived in Qatar and Oman in the 80s (born in Scotland but my dad worked in oil and gas), so I have experience with gulf states of the sort maybe you're thinking of in your mind. Yes - those places were often not great places to be a woman. But 2024 Dubai is a much different place. I visited my sister in 2022 when I had to travel to Abu Dhabi for work, and for the first time Dubai seemed like a place where I could imagine living on a long term basis.
I took a look at realtor.com and homes there and in surrounding areas are like 200k to 400k.
In Bay Area homes are like 1.5 million plus. And unlike LCOL areas the prices here will continue to go up.
I grew up in Midwest. It’s quite cheap to live there. Homes where I grew up still cost like 200k.
The increasing of class sizes refutes the claim that low teacher pay is due to too much supply of teachers.
Setting aside the merits of teaching and childcare on their own, failing to fill teaching positions now in favor of other jobs is going to lead to students who are unprepared to continue to fill said jobs in the future.
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/illinois-teacher-shorta...
Either Illinois is in a state of poverty where parents can't afford to educate their kids, the people of Illinois don't value education. They are, in practice, signalling quite clearly that they think there are more important things teachers could be doing. It isn't that hard in principle to set up a private school, you need a building, some desks, a chalkboard and a teacher. Pay 'em what you like. I'm sure there are a lot of helpful regulations to comply with too that'll push the complexity up but it isn't that hard.
This is the families with children making choices.
No doubt that number is skewed by the Chicago region. School funding is dominated by property taxes; they are high in the Chicago area and significantly less in others. It is indeed a local choice being made.
This leaves the 70% in a position where it takes extreme effort to move forward. Starting a new private school system is a big effort for a position that says teachers should get 50k instead of 35k.
> Starting a new private school system is a big effort for a position that says teachers should get 50k instead of 35k.
It really isn't. Or more accurately, if it is then that is the problem rather than the salary being paid. Teaching kids to the standards of a system that is currently paying its teachers ~$35k is pretty straightforward when you get down to it; and improving on it would not be hard. The economy is made up of people continuously taking positions on these sorts of issues.
I spent decade(s) being educated, I've got a respectable number of letters I can put after my name and all the way through the capital costs outside a couple of science labs and the actual school building were negligible. And a big chunk of the important material is available online for free. Education in real terms is a really easy field to enter and compete in. But I think if anyone tried they'd just discover that people don't actually want to pay teachers money. They want someone else to pay teachers money. Because without that little rider there is only a rather small problem here to solve.
Actually no, the low salary may simply be lagging slightly behind market conditions. Schools can't just magically pay all teachers more because of a temporary shortage of applicants, and paying only the new hires more would be unfair. Salary increases need to be well-justified and applied uniformly, as teacher salaries are some of the most structured in the whole economy and paid for by taxes that can't be changed quickly. So eventually, the salaries might go up, but the shortage might also lessen too as more graduates appear.
From just a purely economic perspective, it seems like a trivial investment given the higher order effects.
Instead, we are going to suffer the higher order effects in the opposite direction.
Just insane but we seem to be getting really good as a society at making dumb decisions.
Also for new grads, the best advice I can give you: join a fortune 500 company. Startups are extremely cut throat and volatile, esp. in this environment where everything is under scrutiny, interest rates are high, etc. If you can get into a FAANG, Pintrest, xyz and climb the ladder, it's likely better than being taken advantage of at a startup - which I've seen more often times than not.
> Also for new grads, the best advice I can give you: join a fortune 500 company.
I think the problem is not that the new grads are not applying. They simply are not getting a chance. It's not a matter of choosing between F500 and startups.
Maybe if you went to an elite university and live in the Bay Area, but realistically I'd suggest new grads apply to non-tech companies.
Not every developer job is at a software company.
I’ve got 20 years in tech: web, mobile, cloud and early in my career I won a NASA medal for software innovation - worked in dozens of industries and led teams of 40 people for MM$$ flagship applications
Tried my network but nothing so far and its been really frustrating
It's reassuring to know that I'm not alone (so presumably it's not just because I'm a terrible developer), but disheartening at the same time because who knows when things will improve?
I'm in an ok situation financially (no mortgage, earning a little bit doing AI training) so have the freedom to develop a couple apps of my own. This is something I've wanted to do for ages, but they're a long way from making any kind of money. I can't complain but I'd really rather have a stable income at this stage.
It sucks but now but it won't be forever
Congrats on getting married though! It’s why I’m trying to find a job haha.
And yeah! Honestly it took a while for me to propose because we were having financial difficulties at the time, too, and I wanted to do things right. But even with hindsight, if I had known I would've run out of money after the wedding, I wouldn't have done anything differently at all. It was an amazing day and worth it all. Do whatever you can to make that day exactly what you want, there is no other feeling like it. Best of luck to you
I am starting a new job in April with a company that contacted me via LinkedIn in December.
I've added a note near the top of my post clarifying that the "early-career" of the title is only because I'm speaking from my own experience.
I'm a senior dev who started coding at 14, with university degree, with 15 years commercial of experience working on some large projects. I also worked on some high profile projects. I was raised in a small town and almost nobody knew how to code there and so I self-taught myself from books and online.
I after finishing university, I worked for various companies including a distributed trading platform handling 30k+ concurrent users. I designed and wrote (as leader of a small team) the P2P network layer of a Blockchain worth $300 million which has never been hacked and never went down (it's been over 5 years since my team's code was rolled out). I'm also a good team player.
I also built many open source projects including a successful one with several thousands of stars on GitHub.
Yet I can't even get first interviews for jobs. I never earned above $120k per year (USD). Even after 10 years and being the top dev in every company I worked at.
Then I read about juniors getting $160k straight out of uni and people changing careers into software development making the same as juniors. I'm actually starting to believe conspiracy theories about targeted individuals. WTF.
It's disturbing because while all these people were out partying and having fun, I was teaching myself coding. Now they're all getting paid more than me.
Then people downvote me on HN when I tell my story. WTF.
If your skills are as strong as you perceive them, then there is at least ONE valid reason you haven't landed a more profitable job, especially if you were applying between 2018-2022. I recommend paying for a reputable third party to review your resume, and your "about me" statement. They don't even need to be trained in cs. You'll also need to do so with an open mind and not be defensive about criticism. Good luck!
Anyways unfortunately no, but look on LinkedIn and ask for references.
> It's disturbing because while all these people were out partying and having fun, I was teaching myself coding. Now they're all getting paid more than me.
I'm sorry, but this statement is telling. Take some personal responsibility: the job market is much different today, and successfully navigating it without generational wealth takes a set of skills that you must develop.
A sister comment recommended a resume review, but I would suggest going further and looking into mock interview services where you can get honest feedback about your interview skills. I find interview/interpersonal skills to often be the choke point for many individuals who have a hard time navigating the market and don't know why.
When I talk to recruiters, initially, they sound excited but for some reason ghost me or they invent new job tech requirements which were not listed on the advert (and which are trivial and I could easily catch up on). I've heard stuff like "Although this position is for a Node.js role, the head of engineering is particular and likes candidates who have some past experience with C#..." WTF!!
I think my problems may be related to my involvement in crypto. I tried to actually improve things there. Feels like what happens to heads of state in foreign countries who try to improve their people's lives to the detriment of foreign investors... But weird because I'm literally a nobody! I didn't get much exposure outside of my immediate community.
To be completely frank, this sounds like a paranoid delusion. But, I don't know you and I keep out of cryptocurrency drama, so I'll withhold judgement. Have you looked into work outside of that niche?
The therapist would think I'm being reasonable if they heard the full story. My ex-colleagues would back me up on that.
I’m not saying this you, it’s just an example from my life. If your experience is in sharp contrast to how you see yourself, it’s worth taking a look at how others might see you.
- Tailoring resumes to suit ATS systems (now with AI/other automation) - Leetcode and study for live interviews - Identifying suitable positions on job boards for cold applications - Probing your network - Responding to unsolicited contacts - Chasing ghost recruiters
It's disheartening and frustrating to remain unemployed for an extended period, especially when I possess relevant experience and expertise, yet continually face rejections due to the challenges of navigating the recruitment pipeline.
Someone who tried to hire me in 2021 (I turned them down), went seeking themselves in 2022 and had 8 offers. They went seeking again in 2023 (they chose poorly, hated it) and it took them 6 months and dozens upon dozens of interviews to secure something.
They don't call it a job market for nothing.
Generally, the AWS listings for the country are suddenly zero – nil. Microsoft's are close to zero and I haven't heard back from them at all. I saw one Google job ad in a smaller hometown of mine where this region's GCP servers are located which I applied to and came across later on LinkedIn, but it showed that the job had over a hundred applicants in under a week.
The salary ranges mentioned to me during my interviews I did have, e.g. for the larger consultancy role taking place at the country HQ in the capital city were abysmally low (like ridiculously low), so I guess they went with someone more eager to work for what they were willing to pay. That is, earning half of what the local junior factory welder does here in northern Europe (they do night shifts though etc.). The title for the role was: Data & AI Consultant, and it's one of the Big4 accounting / audit / consultancy firms. Anywho, they were telling I'd be working at 100% capacity without a lot of time for self-development or anything else for that matter, which is fine, but in essence, and to summarize, I've personally seen a huge shift downward in the last year in the job market and frankly, it looks rather terrible right now.
I have no visibility into the layoffs happening in the industry, but looking from the outside it does indeed seem grim. By now I'm actually thinking I should've seriously considered taking anything they were willing to offer me at all, or even working half-free to get myself back to working again! Well, I guess I'll just continue looking, but my expectations have been calibrated in a major way, that's for sure... So I guess we're all sailing in the same boat right now job-market-wise.