What you're doing is the secret sauce already, you're just missing luck. Obviously take whatever job you need to pay rent in the meantime, but if you keep it up then I think you'll get something eventually.

It is the worst time in all of history to be a software developer looking for work, so don't internalise it.

I've started working in IT over 20 years ago. In my humble opinion, one of the keys is being specialized on something that not everyone else can do. Become proficient in a certain area - devops, quality assurance, security, whatever.

On top of that, try and acquire a niche skill that makes you the type of employee that's hard to find and replace. For example, banks are really desperate to find Cobol experts because most of those are pensioners now.

I know it's tough, and I wish you had it as easy as I did back in the days, but it's all I can tell you, unfortunately.

No way man. I thought this entry barrier was 'only' in my country. We are all on the same boat, then...

It's not your fault.

https://youtu.be/CZd8sDquNYw

Found the computer-science major.

Most of this is due to Xitter didn't collapse spectacularly after only a skeleton crew were left working overtime (crunch), so others followed suit, then kept pointing at AI. What we need is strikes, building alternatives so we can actually boycott, etc.

Man, I hope so. I've been job hunting after my position with a government contractor was eliminated in February, and despite a decade of experience, I can't even get to the first round of interviews.

I think we're going to see a big shift towards small to medium IT/dev companies, and a ton of freelancers. I'm one of those, because I'm about to start doing IT work for businesses in my small town.

I see a lot of people blaming this on AI and raised interest rates.

The real reason for this stagnation is Section 174 of IRS code that was added by the 2017 tax cut bill. The section took effect in 2022 and was added to balance the budget.

This section basically doesn't allow to deduct cost of the software engineers and they are amortized over 5 years (10 years for international engineers). This puts some strains to regular businesses, but it kills start ups, as they are required to pay taxes even when they are still not profitable and might not even pay 5 years.

Lack of start ups means there is smaller number of openings which is lower mobility. Combined with amortization, it discourages hiring new people as again it requires 5 years.

I see this being dismissed and "it is definitively the interest rates and AI" AI is nowhere close to replace software engineers, in fact from the coworkers that enthusiastically embraced it I see lower quality of code. Interest rates actually came back to what they originally were before 2008.

The hiring issues started exactly when section 174 went into effect. I think the hiring craze in 2021 was only because companies realized that with slim margins in Congress a bill won't pass that will repeal it so they were hiring like crazy before it become a law. Indeed Democrats were trying to repeal it, it even pass the house, but it was blocked by Republicans in the Senate. Because God forbid they would help Americans and in turn let economy to look good under Biden.

This happened to me. I did a couple years of Java web dev work right out of high school from 2001 to 2003. I used to love programming, but doing it full time completely ruined it for me. After all this time, I still haven't even done more than start and immediately delete projects.

A piece of advice I wish I had listened to is “don’t turn your hobbies into a vocation”.

The roasting I got the one time I put the box in front of the wrong house and the lady was there to see it.

I know what electrons do in transistors

Computer science and programming are two different things. Computer science started as a branch of mathematics, looking into calculability: what problems can a computer even solve. I had a course on algorithms by a professor that had never programmed a line of code in his life, everything he did was in pseudocode.

Computer degree

Got a degree in not a real science to do not real engineering.

I went to school for Rocket

Yeah that's like how I dance with my cat lol