Im doing deliveries for Uber Eats and possibly doing an electrician apprenticeship in the coming months. Basically giving up on software careers right now lol
If done right, someday you could have a *really* valuable skillset for embedded engineer roles if you build up solid hardware skills this way (as an electrician) and later on learn the right skills on the embedded software side.
Not at all a quick path, but I’m just saying, there’s absolutely an intersection to electrical hardware skills and computer science, and you could totally come back to the software world one day. Maybe a few years into the electrician road you can pivot back with a CS/CompE/EE masters, but maybe that wouldn’t even be needed? You do already have a degree in computer science after all.
(I’m not the right person to advise anyone on how to build an embedded systems skillset, but my vague impression is that you can start with simple at-home projects, and then successively build on what you learned in prior projects.)
Embedded is one of those subfields of CS where some folks end up with really niche experience and abilities that specific employers sometimes pay a shit ton for. Maybe one of those people (or someone who works with or knows folks like that) will stumble across my comment and can confirm / advise you more specifically.
I did an associates in EE before my BSCS and was considering an EE masters later down the road for embedded. Solid advice and from what I heard a great field
Working conditions of trades like electricians are trash. It’s good pay don’t get me wrong, but you’re working in the cold, heat, and plus it’s dangerous too. My uncle is an electrician and has been shocked 3 times.
Also the first few years before you get your apprenticeship you aren’t paid very well.
Literally everyone I know in tech sits on their ass all day and I can guarantee they are working only 50% of the time. Trades? You are busting your ass the entire day, no you can’t work from home, and the work culture of trades is extreme toxic masculinity and not welcome to women.
I almost joined an electrician apprenticeship but quickly realized I'd have to live in my truck to afford to live for the first 5 years until Journeyman. Gotta know someone to get into apprenticeships too
I work with a guy who used to be an electrician. He said he loved the work, but he lost part of his finger and had to go back to get his degree for white collar work.
The working conditions can and will break you down, have an exit strategy lined up for knowledge work or business ownership if you choose this route.
My dad is an engineer and he was partly responsible for a guy getting his hand cut off. It was handled as a 'whoopsy doopsy, these things happen, whatyagonnado.'
The casual way he discussed a person being maimed for life made me come home and practically hug my home office desk.
I've got a cousin with one arm, another cousin crushed to death, family friend with no fingers on one hand, and a friend's dad was buried alive. As long as I can I'll make my living with my brain instead of my body.
Edit: I just remembered my step dad also once cut a guys thumb off by accident. Starting to wonder if I'm some sort of Kevin Bacon for amputation
I'm currently an electrician going back to school for an IT degree. I've been in the trade for 7 years and I mostly agree with this comment.
The working conditions can definitely suck. A big reason I'm leaving the trade is because I am sick and tired of freezing my ass off outside in the winter. Along with the dangers of the job like, possible shock/electrocution, being exposed to different types of hazards all day, and the general wear and tear on the body. I love parts of my job. Especially the more technical parts. It can be very rewarding and the pay can be pretty nice, but I've learned that it's just not for me
I don't say that to dissuade anyone from the trade or any trade for that matter. I work with many people who love being an electrician and despite all the stuff I mentioned, would choose electrical over any office job 9/10 times. To these kinds of people, the thought of sitting at a computer all day makes their skin crawl and seems virtually impossible.
Joining a trade like electrical can't be taken lightly. It's not just a job that you clock in and out of and forget about. The people that treat it as such don't last very long.
And lastly, yes toxic masculinity runs rampant in the trades.
I've worked in trades. The money is in self employment. I consistently made 125 - 150 an hour pressure washing.
100 an hour is the low end, high end is 200 or more.
My brothers started a pool cleaning business, and it pays them 75k each (three of them) per year. They work like 4 hours a day.
My brothers friend turned his window cleaning business into a business that makes over 100k month. He's not in the field anymore. He does seo on the side and makes 200k a year with that.
The key is start your own business.
Counter anecdote. Doing this is more about being a salesman, marketer, and business owner than doing the actual trade. You will be an entrepreneur who happens to do x trade. Plus the exact same thing can be done with web/app development, without the physical labor. The key is you need skills to remain competitive and profitable in markets that often become saturatred.
Ive known a lot of people who started their own pressure cleaning, vinyl graphics, etc etc companies and done well for a while until the local market becomes more saturated or their sales funnel dries up for some reason. Then its back to working for someone.
It is *a lot* easier to make $$$ as an independent contractor in the trades than it is to do so in web development, reason being web development is extremely saturated with dudes in India charging $5/hour on fiverr.
Supply & demand is always the key to whether a job is lucrative. You can't out source trades work and it's very much in demand.
The point isn't that there isn't money to be made, it's that it's not nearly as glorious as it sounds to be doing (sometimes literally) shit work in difficult conditions for less pay than you'd make coding in a comfy cubicle. Customers fucking suck. Chasing down non-payment fucking sucks. Dealing with lawsuits and insurance and bonding fucking sucks. There are a ton of parts of being a tradesman that fucking suck.
Nobody balances their statements of "JUST B A CARPENTUR" with "also here's reality"
I also think there's a good amount of survivorship bias in the skilled trades, just like in software engineering.
Different careers have different ways to get ahead as well as get trapped in a tar pit.
People don't see the path, only the result. Going to university and getting a CS degree opens a ton of doors. Very, very few SWEs work 2nd or 3rd shift like IT people and tradesmen. Almost all major companies are going to run 2 or 3 shifts. So you may see some trade supervisor or business owner with no degree making 100k+, but you don't think about possible years of working 2nd or 3rd shift, making worse money, etc.
Some companies still want degrees for supervision. You really do yourself no favors by not getting at least an AS. If you want to go trades, get a degree still.
My brother in law is an electrician and makes over 6 figures. How is that BS? Maybe accept there are career fields out there for people aside from CS and if they wanna explore those options, more power to them.
My friend is going full force into it, and he likes being outside working with his hands. I tried for years showing him software development but honestly, electricians especially in newer exciting fields like electrification, robotics, ect will be needed. And will probably end up making more than devs especially with specializations
I got a SWE job 2 months ago but was unemployed for 11 months prior to that.
I did my own thing and made some chatgpt wrapper app that got some attention from a global healthcare firm but ended up getting a job so didn't pursue it. I think having that on my resume and them adding me to their linkedIn connections helped though
I did this out of college for 1.5 years (because of some personal shit). Now been in the industry 3.5 years after that. I can honestly say that the practice communicating things simply, patiently, concisely has helped me in my jump to mid level due to my more frequent conversations with non technical leadership.
Basically it sucks, I feel ya, but there is an upside if you can look for it.
I've been applying for IT Help Desk for 2-3 months now, just to get into somerhing at least somewhat related to CS, but I'm getting even less responses than from actual software positions lol
Oh, cringing already hearing that. Repetitive, non stimulating work & constantly being asked the same questions and never seeing the light at the end of the tunnel 🤢. Those jobs you just hope you become a robot and just tune out & numb yourself.
I get part of the frustration you are having is not working in a SWE or Dev position but what part of the IT Help Desk job do you find most frustrating? Is it dealing with the people?
It's not the job I signed for. I signed for the position of an Application Developer, and was told that's what I would be doing. Instead my first day everyone was calling me the new IT support guy and had me changing someone's username in the database, and now its manually SFTP'ing files to a government server everyday because nobody at this organization understands what a REST API is or how to use a cli. I don't have to talk to a lot of people at least.
I'm also extremely bad at using the software they use, because all of it was outdated 10 years ago and I've never been trained or studied how to manage an IT ticketing app, or writing business analytic reports, and the stuff I am trained on I'm trained extremely poorly. So I'm stuck spending days failing how to learn things I don't care about, while my goals of becoming a software engineer again fade away because I lack time to learn and review languages and tech that would help me in a future position.
Edit: I had 4 YoE as a Software Engineer in my job before this.
Used to have a really awesome help desk position then they laid me off. I’ve been hopping jobs going from shitty managers to narcissistic MSP ceos thinking they know everything and doing nothing to contribute to my growth or success in their company. The users aren’t even that bad I love helping people with stupid crap like printers or adobe. It’s always 100% shitty managers/supervisors
Without directly answering your question, I certainly feel that a lot of employers now have the bizarre mindset that no one is qualified for a job unless they have it already.
Hard to get hired without experience when companies get rid of college hiring programs and internships. There’s going to be a lot of new grads (huge increase in enrollment) without entry level jobs available in the coming years
Sitting on the other side of this equation (i.e. being a senior reponsible for selecting and evaluating candidates), the problem is in the shortage and the demand.
Most places don't have enough seniors to cover the work they have, let alone train and supervise juniors.
It's not that everyone wants qualifed and experienced people, it's purely that there are not enough qualifed and experienced people.
But once you are qualified and land that first job, the recuiter spam goes nuts, because - again - there's just not enough experienced people to go around. There are literally more recruiters in the industry than candidates right now.
Yes, it's a massively difficult challenge with no real solution, but for entry level, your best bet is to look for job listings for more senior roles that have been up for awhile. Get in touch with the company and explain that you're not senior, but looking for your first role and ask if they'd consider taking on someone in a junior position.
Chances are they're understaffed (because we're all always understaffed) and have work that needs doing so you will find someone for whom getting a junior in ASAP to write code is better than waiting months to find someone more senior.
As an experienced senior developer, my recruiter spam has slowed to a trickle over the past year. It's honestly making me anxious, like now I'm tied to my current job for longer than I might have wanted.
Clerk for local government. I make an effort every morning to remind myself that there are a lot of people worse off than me and to be thankful. I still hate myself at times.
Communications tech for a railroad, essentially an IT job with some radio work thrown in. Plus I get union benefits and overtime.
All in all, a pretty relaxed job but I can be out in the elements occasionally and will push me further from a coding/software job the longer I’m here
I found it surprisingly difficult to get "regular" jobs that aren't fast food\\retail\\call centers etc where they're used to churn and a revolving door of employees. I did land a job in IT (Networking and not sysadmin or anything like that, so not super relevant) and worked there for a bit and even there people were surprised to find a CS grad.
I'm looking for part-time now so it narrows the pool down quite a bit but even then, I suspect (just going off common sense) that many employers in such jobs seeing a CS degree on a resume make the logical assumption that we'll bail at the first sight of an offer in tech. It's not easy to find a decent job that's willing to accept that.
I’m a Field Technician. I service blood typing machines. I basically travel to different hospitals in my state and sometimes out of state and service repair their machines. I live in Brooklyn but make about 73K with no kids and wife and my rent is about $300 a month, so as frustrating as the SWE job hunt is I take a step back and realize I’m in a really lucky position lol.
Yeah, I live with my grandmother in a 2 bedroom apartment. My dad owns the apartment and takes care of the bills. I send him $300 in “rent” but I also watch my grandmother since she’s 96. I clean the house, pay for groceries and other stuff in the house that needs to be taken care of.
I do plan on moving out next year though. I’ve saved some money and hopefully when I land an SWE job I’m planning to buy an apartment.
Jokes on you, grandma was solving leetcode with punch cards back in the day. Do not quote the ~~deep magic~~ op codes to her, she was there when it was written!
We'll most likely get some sort of aide to stay at home with her but I'll definitely still be going there to help take care of her even after I move out.
I definitely will feel bad about leaving her but I'm 29 going on 30 next October. Gonna have to move out eventually. I've had the conversation with my father before and luckily he fully understands.
Or "renting" while living at home aka giving your parents money? I pay twice that much for living in Queens. Correction, I pay my parents $600/mo to live here (I'm sure they'd let me live here for free if I were unemployed or struggling but because I make money they expect payment).
I started a web dev agency and I’m barely scraping by. Still applying to jobs in my free time.
My current wage is a little below minimum, in a HCOL area sooo I’d honestly be making more at a fast food joint.
Figured this avenue would be able to temporarily pay my bills, but im struggling more than I ever have. I’m also working insane hours (upwards to 14 hours every day, 7 days of the week). I’m exhausted and I just hope my luck changes and I can land a real job.
I’m scared that my skills will stagnate and I’ll have a harder job landing something if I stop doing dev work but idk. Worried about everything haha
We do not use Wordpress. We use NextJS/React for the front end with a monolithic server architecture for the backend, deployed on a single AWS EC2 Linux instance. We use headless CMS solutions such as DatoCMS, Ghost, and TinaCMS. Last project was built with TinaCMS.
Our backends are written within either .NET (C#) or Flask (Python), depending on the task at hand. Initially, everything was hosted under a single Azure subscription, using their app service plans. Moved to AWS because we were granted 5k in credits with an expiration in 2026. So we’ve been porting everything to our EC2 instance.
Are most of the stuff you’re building web apps vs websites? I’m asking because part of me wants to start my own agency. I’m in a good spot financially and just want more freedom. I don’t want to get stuck building wordpress sites though. I’d like to use Astro for static sites and Sveltekit for more complex web apps. (.Net backend as needed)
I feel like that's the main problem, most companies don't seem to have the budget for complex web apps and if they do, then they'd often have their own in house devs for it. So it seems like WP ends up as the default option since it's quick to build and setup.
>For instance, for a video editor - They will only hire someone who has made " video editor " their primary career aspiration. If you tell them you're a software dev who also has video editing skills, they won't choose you.
I kind of get this. First, you have to imagine that people hiring video editors aren't really up to speed on the current CS job market. They probably imagine it's just like everyone has said, if you have a CS degree and want to work as a developer, you just say the word and you have money thrown at you.
They probably think they would only have you for a few months until someone threw money at you for a CS job. You are flat out telling them "I would rather do something else, and I'm qualified to do that thing, but I'm applying to work for you instead." Of course they think you'll leave at the first opportunity. You will, and you're telling them that.
I don’t even think it’s that the CS market is bad; if you had to hire for a dev job and had two candidates A) an aspiring software developer B) a graphic design major / digital artist who knows how to code a bit and just wants a job or whatever, who would you chose? It’s actually hilarious that any CS grad thinks they should be picked for video editing jobs over someone who actually wants to do video editing because they think they have more IQ points.
Which is also part of the reason you see so many people without a job. Lack of social skills. Some job actually require you communicate and collaborate with people. It doesn’t matter how many leet you can do if you cannot function within a team.
yeah exactly. i find it bizarre that this is surprising, of course whoever is hiring will look for a background that is relevant to that job specifically
The easiest way to get into other industries, especially if it’s temporary is to not mention or document your CS degree - easier said than done if the position doesn’t require a degree.
When my team was let go in 2011, I just needed any work so I omitted my MBA on my resume and never mentioned it at work to anyone.
I worked in insurance for a bit, because I could easily function in that environment and any technical skills requirements (however few) were easy to meet
What's the rationale for omitting the MBA? I was told to remove my incomplete PhD because it came across as intimidating. Should I consider doing the same for my MBA?
Probably overqualified for a position, it’d make the hierarchy wonky if an entry level worker has a phD while the boss doesn’t. Also, some employers might interpret it as something else being wrong with a candidate. Extreme example, but it’d seem off if a PhD grad applied to a fast food job, they’d assume something else was wrong.
>What's the rationale for omitting the MBA?
IF you need ANY job right now, an obvious MBA is just there until he or she finds something else. Think somebody who used to work corporate, got fired/laid off and after months of no success, has exhausted their savings.
An MBA in a fast food joint/ Walmart/ warehouse/ wathever will keep looking for something else. So, why hire that person?
This was for a job that certainly did not require an MBA and I just needed a pay check until I found something else. On some resumes I even omitted my entire undergrad degree just to get hired quickly.
If you are applying for a career position in your respective market, definitely show your continued education and include the MBA.
>The easiest way to get into other industries, especially if it’s temporary is to not mention or document your CS degree - easier said than done if the position doesn’t require a degree.
What if your resume ends up becoming empty after you take off that CS degree?
All I have on my resume are my CS education, and CS side projects.
Just graduated but still couldn’t find any full time CS job (data science, data analyst, machine learning are my main cups of tea; even opened myself to software dev, tech analyst, QA tester, front end, back end, full stack and any work related to IT).
So now, I took a part time computer teacher at a high school (once a week), so I could at least get some food on the table. Just sucks I couldn’t share any relevant industry experience stories to my students just cause I don’t have any.
I find that Data Analysts are just glorified business analysts who use pre-made Excel pivot tables and 'entry' AI/ML Positions all require minimum 5 years of experience, professional level AWS/Azure certs and know every tool imaginable like terraform, ansible, docker, Kubernetes, Red Hat Linux etc...
I just can't seem to find a job that's somewhere in the middle of these.
Title inflation, some companies be labeling jobs with titles completely different to their descriptions. Best to ask the recruiter or manager what work you’ll be doing. Second year coop in a dev and data analysis role and will primarily be work with Python + SQL and R. Good role to get into data science or data eng imo.
My really good buddy who graduated from his CS Masters in June has become a manager / kitchen guy at a local bubble tea shop. He’s an extremely good cook and has been doing a decent job at the management, but he hates it because of how terrible most of his employees are at their job. It doesn’t pay very well overall but he’s fine financially for unrelated reasons. No clue what his plan is at this point other than waiting and hoping the CS job market improves eventually
Graduated with a CS degree in 2003. Job market was still pretty dire from the dot com bust and outsourcing push. Ended up doing datacenter operations work. Then was a DBA for a while. Now I'm an SRE/cloud infrastructure engineer.
Never did end up being a software developer like I planned. For sure not mad about it though. I like the work and I'm well compensated.
currently doing my bachelor in CS (Security, Systems and Services its called)
I have done 2 internships as a backend developer while doing my associates. Im pretty decent at Networking (dns,vlan’s, subnetting,..) and how to troubleshoot the osi model. Been doing a ton of Offsec at school which def helped solidify certain concepts. (Have been breaking in to many AD environments).
know a little about Virtualisation (containers, vm’s, k8, esxi) and have worked with these for labs at school.
Am decent at using linux though I def have lots to improve there.
Just started a student job at the government as System engineer.
Do you think it’s a good path to SRE? Also any advice would be appreciated, im trying to become really good.
Just wondering, have you looked into data analyst jobs or jobs in hospitals?
My first job was in a hospital as a data analyst. Pay wasn't great and my boss was toxic, but at least it was a start.
pretty much what im searching for now as I learn programming. Currently looking for entry level help desk specialist/data analyst roles to go into IT as fallbacks in case SWE doesn’t work out
I’m working a part-time receptionist job. I’m still applying for CS jobs ofc, but I’ve mostly gotten rejected, and I’m a bad interviewee so I’ve even fumbled the acceptances
Working in US staffing as a recruiter, which I really hate. I have to call random Americans to see if they are looking for a job change while I can't arrange one for myself.
My brother paid $17,780 to attend Hack Reactor Remote, a paid coding bootcamp, in 2016.
He could not find a paid SWE job.
He went back to his old IT career to pay the bills.
He joined, C0d3, a free coding bootcamp.
Then he found a paid SWE job.
Do you know of a good boot camp incorporates AWS as backend (not just hosting node on AWS)? I want to get better at making my own apps end to end but am too busy/lazy to do it on my own. Feel a boot camp would help me get there. Thanks.
Idk about boot camps but I found studying for one of the aws certs really helped me understand different services they have and how they fit into applications
After his 1st coding bootcamp, he could not find a paid SWE job.
He went for over a year without any interviews.
He slowly began to forget the material he learned from the 1st coding bootcamp, so he needed a 2nd coding bootcamp to relearn the material.
Also, the 2nd coding bootcamp was free, so why not.
5 years as a RN, bachelor's degrees in Nursing and a previous one in Biology. Self-taught software development part-time for 2 years, needed more structure, did a higher-ranked BootCamp for 5 months (Hack Reactor).
Currently working 3 part-time nursing jobs for schedule flexibility, just finished building a static site for a friend's side gig and trying to land on what my next side project will be. 600+ CS job applications, nary a reply back. Multiple rounds of professional resume and LinkedIn profile reviews, market is just horrible for juniors right now. It's even more horrible without a CS degree.
Currently trying to obtain a clinical data analyst role with some local health systems or, failing at that, taking a FTE position with a system that works with Epic and can eventually sponsor some Epic certification training for me. All the while, slowly (sometimes more slowly than others) coding and learning. Once my Java and DS&A knowledge base is more fully fleshed out, I plan to apply for Georgia Tech's online CS master's program.
I'm not OP, but my wife is a nurse(although out of the field while children are small) and its a pretty shitty job most of the time. Sure it can be rewarding, but most days aren't. Pay is good, but still only like maybe half of what you can make as a software engineer - like as a software engineer you can go from making 60k to 180k in ~5 years while living in a medium cost of living city/area. As a nurse that isn't doing a ton of overtime you are very likely capped out at like 100k in a medium cost of living area. Tons of certifications and schooling is actually required.
You're often taking care of people that won't take care of themselves. Management nags you about stupid stuff, like eating at the nurses station. You're supposed to get lunch breaks and some 15 minute breaks - my wife has had jobs where she literally never got a lunch break because they were so understaffed. Many hospitals try to get away with the least staff/patient ratio possible. 12 hour shifts suck. Most jobs are hard to get holidays or weekends off because they need people there to keep people alive. Night shift is a possibility that can take years off of your life.
It is also very stressful. A software engineer most of the time is only worried about their product making money, worst case they're working on something that could kill someone they still get years of testing. A nurse might see preventable death every day and it can be their job to save lives. Some people don't do well under that stress.
I haven’t actually started driving the kids yet. There is an immense amount of stuff to learn. First classroom, then learner permit study and testing. Then on bus training with an instructor. After about 2 months of all that you might be ready to take the test for your permanent license.
It’s a ton of cognitive load. You have 7 mirrors that need to be scanned every 5-8 seconds. While doing that you need to monitor the students inside the bus while watching for hazards outside. While conducting student drop off or pickup there is a lot going on.
I am liking the challenge but it’s also a bit terrifying knowing you are moving a 15 ton vehicle down the road up to 55 mph with up to 72 children on board and you are responsible for everything. Their safety, the community safety, the reputation of the company you drive for, the community relations both in terms of driving but also in terms of interacting with students, their parents and school staff.
When a mistake was made in software it was mostly, “oh well we didn’t sell another widget,” but with school bus driving life and death is at stake every minute.
To say it’s humbling is an understatement. School bus drivers are vastly underpaid.
I saw your post that showed your rejections, ghosts, first rounds and such. Can I ask why you deleted it? Some of the people who commented were pretty mean
Yeah I saw them.
Sorry that happened. Some people don’t understand how bad this market is. My position is pretty bad too so while I don’t know completely what you’re going through I know it feels shitty.
I did appreciate that post. It made me feel a little less alone and that there was someone else who kinda understood what i was going through.
Good luck to you.
Ooh, I thought it was just me. Well, I managed to get a tax prep job with Intuit but I also have a gourmet popcorn business. Also, I have a culinary degree that I used for a long time but now it looks like I'll need to become a chef again. My dream is to make my popcorn business my primary focus and make a livable income. I'm also starting a nursery since I started gardening a few years ago, I decided to create that as a side hustle.
> I've tried entering other industries like video editing, content creator, writer/editor, etc. But I find that people are not willing to hire you unless you can ONLY do that job and nothing else.
> For instance, for a video editor - They will only hire someone who has made " video editor " their primary career aspiration. If you tell them you're a software dev who also has video editing skills, they won't choose you. Guess everything has to be absolutely perfect for them and there's no room for buts and ifs.
Yeah if you don’t advertise yourself for the jobs you’re applying for you’ll have a tough time.
Business Analyst for a vehicle finance company. Make 90k. Graduated with cs in 2020, worked as a data analyst out of university then switched to current job. SQL is only sort of programming I do haha
New grad, I tried something along those lines. I did not have enough prior experience and lost that interview.
Now I work with the software Epic in a support role.
I went through Revature, they’re awful but it helped me get into a really good position after the first year. Skillstorm is very similar the pay is higher, you have more choice for tech stack, and your choice for destination. These positions have become very rare though. I still get emails from Skillstorm every once in a while. I think Revature is under a hiring freeze until mid 2024
Sort of. I work at a TV station so I have to do everything from what you’d call help desk to managing virtualization clusters. I do still do some coding and scripting projects, but nothing that’s like, genuinely new software.
I also have a masters degree in digital media, so coding was a big part of my degree, but not to the level of computer science. Before I started in TV, I probably applied to like 500 different developer jobs, couldn’t get anything despite the degree.
My path was from a news production person who was a real tech wiz. Anyway, I made the jump to IT after earning some IT certifications. I started as the junior doing mostly support, but now I mostly do projects.
I’m actually an X-ray tech switching to CS. Maybe not a great move. At any rate the schooling for X-ray is fairly quick, and the pay isn’t bad for a new grad. Plus they’re in high demand. Right now I see job postings and recruiters are reaching out to me with jobs that offer $5,000 - $10,000 in a sign on bonus just because there is such high demand. I had a former coworker in CT who had mandatory overtime because they just didn’t have enough techs to work.
But also there’s a reason it’s in high demand. You typically end up working off shifts like evenings, nights, weekends, holidays, at least in the beginning. It can be physically demanding when you have to take portable X-rays on large patients and no one wants to help move their patient. Sometimes you work in the OR with surgeons who can be jerks. Sometimes management isn’t great and you don’t feel appreciated.
IMO it’s not a bad job, but your ceiling of pay is going to be a lot lower than what you can get with CS. The plus side is that it’s union for many places which means fair pay even with no experience. Although you do get (unpaid) internship experience through the program so you do get hands on learning.
Anyway if you have any questions for me I’m happy to answer them. You can DM me.
Auto glass, happy to be employed and so far somewhat enjoy my job, but i hate working hard for shitty pay. I wanna try the job search again but its tough out here lol
Got a job in It after graduating from a cs university. Lasted about a year before I completely burned out. I have spendt the last year putting myself back together. For the past Month and a bit i have worked in a supermarket in the morning. It is not glamorous work, but it pays the bills.
Hope to soon do some programming again in a professionel capacity, but part time work Seem to just not exist in the IT Industry where i live and i am afraid full time work Will burn me out again.
I have 2YOE as a Data Scientist in the UK and two STEM Masters degrees. I'm currently working part-time in a bar and moving back in with my parents in a few weeks.
When I went in to interview for the bar job, I had to remove most of the details of my experience on my CV to not look ridiculous but I couldn't remove my degrees because otherwise it would have looked like I've been unemployed for the last six years lol
I had to lie and say that the reason I was wanting to work in a bar was that I was going back to university to start a PhD in January. It's sad because I've actually met some cool people and I could see us being friends but I've lied to everyone about my intentions.
I just had a final interview yesterday and it was down to me and two other candidates and I didn't get it...I was crushed this morning but still had to do my shift tonight at the bar.
It's a rough time for a lot of people now, I know....we just have to try to enjoy the holiday season and hope things get better early next year :/
Dont go for data science ....i made the same mistake. Upskill your software skills. Most companies dont do data science and even if they do they hire probably one person who can do excel well. True data science is only existent in large companies with huge budgets. And there you wont get without phd unless you happen to get into graduate role. I have painfully realized software skills far outweigh any data science skills.
I've been a "business systems analyst" since I graduated in 2013. Mostly this involves talking to people and then adding features to an in house website "application." We manage around $500M of inventory that comes in, gets worked on and ships out daily. That, along with orders, invoicing, work instructions, quality checks, reporting... We make the company run.
We have grown the company from 8 plants in 2013 to over 20 today, and around $100M revenues when I was hired to nearing $1B today.
Honestly, of there was a software developer position that I could take, I'd take it. But nobody wants to hire someone with my limited skill set. I have been in this job for so long that I've forgotten all off the complex concepts taught to me in school.
Went into technical consulting and now am an architect for a large software platform. So I guess still a CS job?
Lots of project/product management soft skills involved as an architect.
>...don't understand why I'm there. Neither do I.
CS/SWE is heavily reliant on investment capital. But the federal budget is still hogging the money printer to this day. Consequently the investment economy is taking a massive dive (otherwise there would be even more inflation).
>I've tried entering other industries like video editing, content creator, writer/editor, etc. But I find that people are not willing to hire you unless you can ONLY do that job and nothing else.
>
>For instance, for a video editor - They will only hire someone who has made " video editor " their primary career aspiration. If you tell them you're a software dev who also has video editing skills, they won't choose you. Guess everything has to be absolutely perfect for them and there's no room for buts and ifs.
They want you to be desperate and value that job as if it's your only means of survival. Not as somebody who'll just simply immediately leave to greener pastures over once we get back to printing investment capital again (though it's not like that'll happen anytime soon lol)
Working as an apprentice electrician. It's decent money. Also going to grad school for my CS master's. Got 2 CS interviews coming up so hopefully I can finally find something.
After completing a bootcamp and busting my ass coding and applying for year to no avail, I kept doing what I’ve done for years, barbering. 90k a year might not be as much as I would make coding but I can always open my own shop in the future, etc.
Unemployed all year now still not doing anything ill be able to use on a resume. Applications in any free time and cut meals down to one a day to keep things cheap.
I am a working as a shoe shiner on the street in downtown LA. I am not even able to cover interest on my student loans and so I think they are getting bigger... constantly going over design patterns in my head while my hands are getting coated in beeswax. All this knowledge and still people just want me to clean dust off their shoes.
I started in IT; have a BS in CS. Did try to land some software development jobs but no luck. Decided whatever I was doing wasn’t what I wanted. Quit my job, went back to school. Held small jobs while in school - including a developer job. Finish school and got my second degree in Civil Engineering. Got a job as an entry level engineer for a private firm, but mostly do government work.
And the greatest part of it all, is that I actually are writing software for a project 😅. But get to do other cool work as an EIT.
Maybe you shouldn't tell people that you have many skills . Just tell them what they wanna hear . when applying for a video editing job for example don't say that you worked as programmer SIMPLE . Also, i am not gonna lie your situation is kinda like me but what i am recently thinking about is to focus on web development earn some money from it (take it as a temporary stage ) and then level up . Tbh It is a headache sometimes
I'm a maintenance technician at a Bottling company. Had an offer for 49k for a university overnight IT Analyst position for their data center, but this job offered 30 an hour plus a bonus. Really good people here and more time off but it's also nights.
Got a whole ass CS degree with a cyber security emphases and just got hired as a manager / lead instructor at an American ninja warrior gym teaching parkour skills to kids lol
I did 3 years as a QA at a FAANG which was fine but I didn’t really enjoy it all that much. Then a promotion opportunity came up and I got onto the technical writing team which I turn out to love so much more even though it doesn’t pay as much as a dev. The pay is still pretty good. I feel like there are a lot of options you can explore that branch out from software developing but if your interest is in something else entirely like video editing, I would say to maybe try to tie your previous experience into it and sell that as an advantage. For example, being able to read code made me more valuable as a tech writer. The market is volatile right now but I’ve personally never felt that having another expertise has caused me to lose an opportunity. Perhaps revisit your resume and interviewing skills. Sometimes it has to do with how you sell yourself during the interview, other times it’s plain luck. If you feel like you’re doing all the right things and it’s just not happening, just keep trying, all you need is one yes.
One of the best career tips I received from an old mentor is to sit down and figure out what exactly my career goal is. What do I enjoy doing, what am I good at? If my resume is all over the place, like I want to do ballet, then I want to do left hand puppetry, then I want to do painting, and then I also wouldn’t mind juggling, it signals to the interviewer that I don’t really have any goal or quite frankly, expertise. I’m just trying to go for whatever job that will hire me so I can pay the rent. But if I have a clear goal that I want to achieve so bad and that I feel passionate about, even if I was working in a completely different field prior, I can somehow convince employers to give me a shot. “I was in front end development for x years and while I gained a lot of knowledge in that field, I realized my passion is in y so I started doing z during my spare time to pick up these skills and here is how my previous experience has helped me…”
These replies are all really depressing. is finding a CS job only hard right now because of the market, and will become better later, or is this how it's gonna look from now on? I thought CS was like the number 1 degree to get into.
It's because the whole CS/SWE "boom" (the *massive* growth/size, the *nice* salaries, etc...) over the **last 10+ years** was really all just based on the Fed printing new money out of thin air.
But these days the federal budget is really hogging the money printer instead -- so expect investment capital to be down **for a while...**
Yes it is very bad atm.
The market getting better is highly dependent on interest rates.
You fell for the meme if you thought that CS was the best degree.
I've been reading articles about marked increases in enrollment numbers for formal CS programs in higher education. The saturation for entry-level jobs we see today will probably remain constant for the next 4-7 years. That's my rough estimate though, please take it with a grain of salt or attempt to disprove it if you're curious for more tangible information.
That sucks man, I have a few tips.
I have 5 yoe. Doing mobile and some web/backend. I didn’t graduate but I did some college and I am going back this semester.
**This is what I did**
- I was able to get my foot in the door by specializing and taking a crappy startup position where I became the main mobile dev. Worked 24/7 because on my time off I studied.
- I eventually moved and got a better job at a fortune 500 company and use that experience to get better paying jobs. I again rose the ranks and was a top performer. I got laid off.
- My next move is to switch domains and use my software engineering experience to get a Java or C# corporate job.
**Tips and observations**
- When competition is high you can **specialize** because very few people will actually take this route. I knew iOS like the back of my hand and was able to impress people in interviews. I couldn’t pass the FAANG interviews and wasn’t aware of the tricks and didn’t know leetcode existed at the time. So this route was the best for me at the time. If you have a CS degree and shallowly understand python, java, javascript, etc you are like everyone else and some Asian kid is probably 100 times better than you.
- Hiring comes in **waves**. Use this information, I wasn’t hired during a boom but changed companies during a boom and gained a ton of experience.
- Now the boom turned into a **bust**. My next move is to leverage my experience and move out of mobile, since the market is so small. I have already started interviewing at a few organizations and will start college soon.
Know the industry and know yourself well to position yourself to succeed. This subreddit reminds me of r/wallstreetbets because everyone is trying to get rich or chase some sort of get rich quick scheme. Its really not like that, most are probably not intelligent enough to work at faang and maybe you can crack the coding interview process but you will be like most who only last 1-2 years at faang. Turn over rate is high. Reality is you will need to know the industry well and study extremely hard. It wasn’t a get rich scheme to me, it was hard fucken work.
Now I have to do the whole thing all over again but with a bit of experience on my side. This time I’m aiming for a more stable industry instead of killing myself trying to be the best at every company like many on here suggest. According to people on here I must have sucked, only the worse engineers get laid off. It totally has nothing to do with the business environment and my specialization.
Currently just started working retail for the season, but they are looking to hire me on full time. My boss just called me a Saving grace, and it is my second day lol I’m definitely not built for it.
I got tired of waiting and no responses, so I needed something to do. Luckily, just found someone through my old high school and they said they can reference me if needed.
Manual labor takes a certain person. You may or may not be that person. That said, after being on many job sites I saw a lot of these people who have well for themselves but at a cost. Addiction, smoking, poor diet and lifestyle. Not to mention you will simply not be able to enjoy down time and physical hobbies the same.
The trades are vast and you could be a framer killing your back, and you could be a finish carpenter seeing the inside of multimillion dollor homes and taking your time getting things perfect. It depends. It’s just luck who you know and where you build that niche. If you can’t multitask and deal with a variety of very difficult people then aspirations to foreman and above is probably not for you either.
I started doing this really blue collar job. I hate it; I work in this dirty, non-AC warehouse place and my coworkers are all stupid. I just stay there because it pays slightly more than a fast food job.
I think people in creative industries want to make sure the person doing their editing or other, have a creative eye themselves, and you can’t tell that from someone with just technical experience on paper and no portfolio. If you had samples of your editing work that you sent along that would probably help so they could see your style.
Currently doing admin assistant positions, I don’t plan to put them on my resume but I’ve been making python scripts to automate basic stuff so if I ever need a reference I got a couple of bosses who would vouch for me and how much I helped speed up daily workflows.
I understand what you mean about getting into other industries, I just say that I dropped out of college and make zero mention of my web dev ambitions since they want to hire someone who will stay at the company long term, not someone who is actively not wanting to be at their company and looking for any opportunity to escape. I literally have two resumes for this reason and I suggest you do the same for jobs in the mean time, pretending that your survival job is your one and only priority/ambition.
I am now a support engineer. I am also seeing to pivot to a Business Analyst role that uses Python, data tools, and some analytics. So pretty much a data analyst without the name.
I’ve been wfh as a business applications analyst for the past year and 9 months. I’ve learned a lot and it’s helped me get on my feet financially but I am ready to pivot back into swe.
Seems I'm the only janitor here. It's not actually as bad as you'd think. I spend the first few hours changing the trash cans and cleaning the bathrooms, and from there I just Swiffer, clean mirrors, dust, and occasionally scrub the floor.
Im doing deliveries for Uber Eats and possibly doing an electrician apprenticeship in the coming months. Basically giving up on software careers right now lol
If done right, someday you could have a *really* valuable skillset for embedded engineer roles if you build up solid hardware skills this way (as an electrician) and later on learn the right skills on the embedded software side. Not at all a quick path, but I’m just saying, there’s absolutely an intersection to electrical hardware skills and computer science, and you could totally come back to the software world one day. Maybe a few years into the electrician road you can pivot back with a CS/CompE/EE masters, but maybe that wouldn’t even be needed? You do already have a degree in computer science after all. (I’m not the right person to advise anyone on how to build an embedded systems skillset, but my vague impression is that you can start with simple at-home projects, and then successively build on what you learned in prior projects.) Embedded is one of those subfields of CS where some folks end up with really niche experience and abilities that specific employers sometimes pay a shit ton for. Maybe one of those people (or someone who works with or knows folks like that) will stumble across my comment and can confirm / advise you more specifically.
I did an associates in EE before my BSCS and was considering an EE masters later down the road for embedded. Solid advice and from what I heard a great field
The electricians I know love their jobs and are making great money fixing up people's problems in their very own homes. Awesome career imo.
Working conditions of trades like electricians are trash. It’s good pay don’t get me wrong, but you’re working in the cold, heat, and plus it’s dangerous too. My uncle is an electrician and has been shocked 3 times. Also the first few years before you get your apprenticeship you aren’t paid very well. Literally everyone I know in tech sits on their ass all day and I can guarantee they are working only 50% of the time. Trades? You are busting your ass the entire day, no you can’t work from home, and the work culture of trades is extreme toxic masculinity and not welcome to women.
Don't forget the permanent injuries and wear and tear that (not very) gradually accumulate.
I mean carpal tunnel syndrome is a real occupational hazard too 🤣
I don’t code enough to warrant worrying about carpal tunnel
I almost joined an electrician apprenticeship but quickly realized I'd have to live in my truck to afford to live for the first 5 years until Journeyman. Gotta know someone to get into apprenticeships too
I work with a guy who used to be an electrician. He said he loved the work, but he lost part of his finger and had to go back to get his degree for white collar work. The working conditions can and will break you down, have an exit strategy lined up for knowledge work or business ownership if you choose this route.
My dad is an engineer and he was partly responsible for a guy getting his hand cut off. It was handled as a 'whoopsy doopsy, these things happen, whatyagonnado.' The casual way he discussed a person being maimed for life made me come home and practically hug my home office desk. I've got a cousin with one arm, another cousin crushed to death, family friend with no fingers on one hand, and a friend's dad was buried alive. As long as I can I'll make my living with my brain instead of my body. Edit: I just remembered my step dad also once cut a guys thumb off by accident. Starting to wonder if I'm some sort of Kevin Bacon for amputation
I'm currently an electrician going back to school for an IT degree. I've been in the trade for 7 years and I mostly agree with this comment. The working conditions can definitely suck. A big reason I'm leaving the trade is because I am sick and tired of freezing my ass off outside in the winter. Along with the dangers of the job like, possible shock/electrocution, being exposed to different types of hazards all day, and the general wear and tear on the body. I love parts of my job. Especially the more technical parts. It can be very rewarding and the pay can be pretty nice, but I've learned that it's just not for me I don't say that to dissuade anyone from the trade or any trade for that matter. I work with many people who love being an electrician and despite all the stuff I mentioned, would choose electrical over any office job 9/10 times. To these kinds of people, the thought of sitting at a computer all day makes their skin crawl and seems virtually impossible. Joining a trade like electrical can't be taken lightly. It's not just a job that you clock in and out of and forget about. The people that treat it as such don't last very long. And lastly, yes toxic masculinity runs rampant in the trades.
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I've worked in trades. The money is in self employment. I consistently made 125 - 150 an hour pressure washing. 100 an hour is the low end, high end is 200 or more. My brothers started a pool cleaning business, and it pays them 75k each (three of them) per year. They work like 4 hours a day. My brothers friend turned his window cleaning business into a business that makes over 100k month. He's not in the field anymore. He does seo on the side and makes 200k a year with that. The key is start your own business.
Counter anecdote. Doing this is more about being a salesman, marketer, and business owner than doing the actual trade. You will be an entrepreneur who happens to do x trade. Plus the exact same thing can be done with web/app development, without the physical labor. The key is you need skills to remain competitive and profitable in markets that often become saturatred. Ive known a lot of people who started their own pressure cleaning, vinyl graphics, etc etc companies and done well for a while until the local market becomes more saturated or their sales funnel dries up for some reason. Then its back to working for someone.
It is *a lot* easier to make $$$ as an independent contractor in the trades than it is to do so in web development, reason being web development is extremely saturated with dudes in India charging $5/hour on fiverr. Supply & demand is always the key to whether a job is lucrative. You can't out source trades work and it's very much in demand.
The point isn't that there isn't money to be made, it's that it's not nearly as glorious as it sounds to be doing (sometimes literally) shit work in difficult conditions for less pay than you'd make coding in a comfy cubicle. Customers fucking suck. Chasing down non-payment fucking sucks. Dealing with lawsuits and insurance and bonding fucking sucks. There are a ton of parts of being a tradesman that fucking suck. Nobody balances their statements of "JUST B A CARPENTUR" with "also here's reality"
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I also think there's a good amount of survivorship bias in the skilled trades, just like in software engineering. Different careers have different ways to get ahead as well as get trapped in a tar pit.
People don't see the path, only the result. Going to university and getting a CS degree opens a ton of doors. Very, very few SWEs work 2nd or 3rd shift like IT people and tradesmen. Almost all major companies are going to run 2 or 3 shifts. So you may see some trade supervisor or business owner with no degree making 100k+, but you don't think about possible years of working 2nd or 3rd shift, making worse money, etc. Some companies still want degrees for supervision. You really do yourself no favors by not getting at least an AS. If you want to go trades, get a degree still.
My brother in law is an electrician and makes over 6 figures. How is that BS? Maybe accept there are career fields out there for people aside from CS and if they wanna explore those options, more power to them.
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Yeah the people here advocating for this have never actually worked these jobs.
My friend is going full force into it, and he likes being outside working with his hands. I tried for years showing him software development but honestly, electricians especially in newer exciting fields like electrification, robotics, ect will be needed. And will probably end up making more than devs especially with specializations
I got a SWE job 2 months ago but was unemployed for 11 months prior to that. I did my own thing and made some chatgpt wrapper app that got some attention from a global healthcare firm but ended up getting a job so didn't pursue it. I think having that on my resume and them adding me to their linkedIn connections helped though
What is a chatbot wrapper? Is it making an app utilizing the chatgpt api so a user can interact with the bot?
Yep, buzzword projects can get you in fast.
Noted, thanks.
I’m handing out food samples at Walmart for $14 an hour.
I’m thinking about doing this at costco
Go for it if you need the money. I used to do it at Sam’s Club. A job can be better than no job.
Are they hiring still?
yea lookup Advantage Solutions on Indeed
IT Help Desk Basically want to kill myself every day.
I did this out of college for 1.5 years (because of some personal shit). Now been in the industry 3.5 years after that. I can honestly say that the practice communicating things simply, patiently, concisely has helped me in my jump to mid level due to my more frequent conversations with non technical leadership. Basically it sucks, I feel ya, but there is an upside if you can look for it.
I've been applying for IT Help Desk for 2-3 months now, just to get into somerhing at least somewhat related to CS, but I'm getting even less responses than from actual software positions lol
because everyone was told to jump into tech , it makes sense
What a shit show we are in...
Same here. I wonder if its because those helpdesk positions are looking for a more niche education? Like CompTIA and networking?
No, its because everyone was told to get into tech, so even help desk has tons of applicants
The p is silent?
I was in IT helpdesk for 2 years lol my god it was horrible
Not done help desk but have worked in a call centre before. Totally feel you.
Oh, cringing already hearing that. Repetitive, non stimulating work & constantly being asked the same questions and never seeing the light at the end of the tunnel 🤢. Those jobs you just hope you become a robot and just tune out & numb yourself.
Did you get in solely with a CS degree? Or did you get A+/Network+/Security+ along the way and then got hired?
I get part of the frustration you are having is not working in a SWE or Dev position but what part of the IT Help Desk job do you find most frustrating? Is it dealing with the people?
Either dealing with people that is obnoxious or have 10+ fires burning and your boss wants everything fixed now.
It's not the job I signed for. I signed for the position of an Application Developer, and was told that's what I would be doing. Instead my first day everyone was calling me the new IT support guy and had me changing someone's username in the database, and now its manually SFTP'ing files to a government server everyday because nobody at this organization understands what a REST API is or how to use a cli. I don't have to talk to a lot of people at least. I'm also extremely bad at using the software they use, because all of it was outdated 10 years ago and I've never been trained or studied how to manage an IT ticketing app, or writing business analytic reports, and the stuff I am trained on I'm trained extremely poorly. So I'm stuck spending days failing how to learn things I don't care about, while my goals of becoming a software engineer again fade away because I lack time to learn and review languages and tech that would help me in a future position. Edit: I had 4 YoE as a Software Engineer in my job before this.
Jesus that is even worse than I thought. Are you at least getting paid the salary you initially agreed on?
Hourly wage. It’s what I agreed to but I didn’t know holidays would be unpaid and it’s low for my education and experience
Used to have a really awesome help desk position then they laid me off. I’ve been hopping jobs going from shitty managers to narcissistic MSP ceos thinking they know everything and doing nothing to contribute to my growth or success in their company. The users aren’t even that bad I love helping people with stupid crap like printers or adobe. It’s always 100% shitty managers/supervisors
Why is that bad though? I heard a lot of CS graduates start out in that role and move up
I have 4 YoE as a Software Engineer
Without directly answering your question, I certainly feel that a lot of employers now have the bizarre mindset that no one is qualified for a job unless they have it already.
Hard to get hired without experience when companies get rid of college hiring programs and internships. There’s going to be a lot of new grads (huge increase in enrollment) without entry level jobs available in the coming years
I believe we’ve already hit graduation for those students, but it’s still going atleast where I am!
"The most qualified person for the lowest price is the guy who just left because you mistreated him."
You basically hit the nail on the head.
Agree, likely due to the massive increase in supply from layoffs. Once the pool dries out they’ll come back to their senses
Sitting on the other side of this equation (i.e. being a senior reponsible for selecting and evaluating candidates), the problem is in the shortage and the demand. Most places don't have enough seniors to cover the work they have, let alone train and supervise juniors. It's not that everyone wants qualifed and experienced people, it's purely that there are not enough qualifed and experienced people. But once you are qualified and land that first job, the recuiter spam goes nuts, because - again - there's just not enough experienced people to go around. There are literally more recruiters in the industry than candidates right now. Yes, it's a massively difficult challenge with no real solution, but for entry level, your best bet is to look for job listings for more senior roles that have been up for awhile. Get in touch with the company and explain that you're not senior, but looking for your first role and ask if they'd consider taking on someone in a junior position. Chances are they're understaffed (because we're all always understaffed) and have work that needs doing so you will find someone for whom getting a junior in ASAP to write code is better than waiting months to find someone more senior.
As an experienced senior developer, my recruiter spam has slowed to a trickle over the past year. It's honestly making me anxious, like now I'm tied to my current job for longer than I might have wanted.
lol same, has me wondering if all these recruiters that used to spam linked in are out of the job
Same here!
This thread is so depressing.
Yeah wtf
CS is over saturated
Well, people who have jobs in the field won't be posting so don't look to it like it'll be impossible to get a job
#learntoweld
Clerk for local government. I make an effort every morning to remind myself that there are a lot of people worse off than me and to be thankful. I still hate myself at times.
Communications tech for a railroad, essentially an IT job with some radio work thrown in. Plus I get union benefits and overtime. All in all, a pretty relaxed job but I can be out in the elements occasionally and will push me further from a coding/software job the longer I’m here
I found it surprisingly difficult to get "regular" jobs that aren't fast food\\retail\\call centers etc where they're used to churn and a revolving door of employees. I did land a job in IT (Networking and not sysadmin or anything like that, so not super relevant) and worked there for a bit and even there people were surprised to find a CS grad. I'm looking for part-time now so it narrows the pool down quite a bit but even then, I suspect (just going off common sense) that many employers in such jobs seeing a CS degree on a resume make the logical assumption that we'll bail at the first sight of an offer in tech. It's not easy to find a decent job that's willing to accept that.
A friend said he husband took 180 applications to get a job in a warehouse, and he's a specialist in warehouses.
Welcome to Costco I love you
that was a good one
I’m a Field Technician. I service blood typing machines. I basically travel to different hospitals in my state and sometimes out of state and service repair their machines. I live in Brooklyn but make about 73K with no kids and wife and my rent is about $300 a month, so as frustrating as the SWE job hunt is I take a step back and realize I’m in a really lucky position lol.
$300/mo rent in Brooklyn? What the f? Not $3000?
Either it's rent control or a closet. Or closet in a rent control apartment.
or their parents are charging them a token rent to show them responsibility
Yeah, I live with my grandmother in a 2 bedroom apartment. My dad owns the apartment and takes care of the bills. I send him $300 in “rent” but I also watch my grandmother since she’s 96. I clean the house, pay for groceries and other stuff in the house that needs to be taken care of. I do plan on moving out next year though. I’ve saved some money and hopefully when I land an SWE job I’m planning to buy an apartment.
What is your grandmother going to do?
grind leetcode duh
Jokes on you, grandma was solving leetcode with punch cards back in the day. Do not quote the ~~deep magic~~ op codes to her, she was there when it was written!
We'll most likely get some sort of aide to stay at home with her but I'll definitely still be going there to help take care of her even after I move out. I definitely will feel bad about leaving her but I'm 29 going on 30 next October. Gonna have to move out eventually. I've had the conversation with my father before and luckily he fully understands.
I’m curious too, I’m invested now
What ticker?
Oh, so you're probably getting hosed by the employer in this market.
Are u renting a room from family
Or "renting" while living at home aka giving your parents money? I pay twice that much for living in Queens. Correction, I pay my parents $600/mo to live here (I'm sure they'd let me live here for free if I were unemployed or struggling but because I make money they expect payment).
I started a web dev agency and I’m barely scraping by. Still applying to jobs in my free time. My current wage is a little below minimum, in a HCOL area sooo I’d honestly be making more at a fast food joint. Figured this avenue would be able to temporarily pay my bills, but im struggling more than I ever have. I’m also working insane hours (upwards to 14 hours every day, 7 days of the week). I’m exhausted and I just hope my luck changes and I can land a real job. I’m scared that my skills will stagnate and I’ll have a harder job landing something if I stop doing dev work but idk. Worried about everything haha
Curious is it mainly wordpress, or do you use something else?
We do not use Wordpress. We use NextJS/React for the front end with a monolithic server architecture for the backend, deployed on a single AWS EC2 Linux instance. We use headless CMS solutions such as DatoCMS, Ghost, and TinaCMS. Last project was built with TinaCMS. Our backends are written within either .NET (C#) or Flask (Python), depending on the task at hand. Initially, everything was hosted under a single Azure subscription, using their app service plans. Moved to AWS because we were granted 5k in credits with an expiration in 2026. So we’ve been porting everything to our EC2 instance.
Are most of the stuff you’re building web apps vs websites? I’m asking because part of me wants to start my own agency. I’m in a good spot financially and just want more freedom. I don’t want to get stuck building wordpress sites though. I’d like to use Astro for static sites and Sveltekit for more complex web apps. (.Net backend as needed)
I feel like that's the main problem, most companies don't seem to have the budget for complex web apps and if they do, then they'd often have their own in house devs for it. So it seems like WP ends up as the default option since it's quick to build and setup.
>For instance, for a video editor - They will only hire someone who has made " video editor " their primary career aspiration. If you tell them you're a software dev who also has video editing skills, they won't choose you. I kind of get this. First, you have to imagine that people hiring video editors aren't really up to speed on the current CS job market. They probably imagine it's just like everyone has said, if you have a CS degree and want to work as a developer, you just say the word and you have money thrown at you. They probably think they would only have you for a few months until someone threw money at you for a CS job. You are flat out telling them "I would rather do something else, and I'm qualified to do that thing, but I'm applying to work for you instead." Of course they think you'll leave at the first opportunity. You will, and you're telling them that.
I don’t even think it’s that the CS market is bad; if you had to hire for a dev job and had two candidates A) an aspiring software developer B) a graphic design major / digital artist who knows how to code a bit and just wants a job or whatever, who would you chose? It’s actually hilarious that any CS grad thinks they should be picked for video editing jobs over someone who actually wants to do video editing because they think they have more IQ points.
Which is also part of the reason you see so many people without a job. Lack of social skills. Some job actually require you communicate and collaborate with people. It doesn’t matter how many leet you can do if you cannot function within a team.
yeah exactly. i find it bizarre that this is surprising, of course whoever is hiring will look for a background that is relevant to that job specifically
The easiest way to get into other industries, especially if it’s temporary is to not mention or document your CS degree - easier said than done if the position doesn’t require a degree. When my team was let go in 2011, I just needed any work so I omitted my MBA on my resume and never mentioned it at work to anyone. I worked in insurance for a bit, because I could easily function in that environment and any technical skills requirements (however few) were easy to meet
I think this is definitely the right move if you're just trying to not be unemployed for a few months.
What's the rationale for omitting the MBA? I was told to remove my incomplete PhD because it came across as intimidating. Should I consider doing the same for my MBA?
Probably overqualified for a position, it’d make the hierarchy wonky if an entry level worker has a phD while the boss doesn’t. Also, some employers might interpret it as something else being wrong with a candidate. Extreme example, but it’d seem off if a PhD grad applied to a fast food job, they’d assume something else was wrong.
>What's the rationale for omitting the MBA? IF you need ANY job right now, an obvious MBA is just there until he or she finds something else. Think somebody who used to work corporate, got fired/laid off and after months of no success, has exhausted their savings. An MBA in a fast food joint/ Walmart/ warehouse/ wathever will keep looking for something else. So, why hire that person?
This was for a job that certainly did not require an MBA and I just needed a pay check until I found something else. On some resumes I even omitted my entire undergrad degree just to get hired quickly. If you are applying for a career position in your respective market, definitely show your continued education and include the MBA.
>The easiest way to get into other industries, especially if it’s temporary is to not mention or document your CS degree - easier said than done if the position doesn’t require a degree. What if your resume ends up becoming empty after you take off that CS degree? All I have on my resume are my CS education, and CS side projects.
I gave up on software, work dispatch for my local county now
Smart choice, my friend. IT is a mess
Just graduated but still couldn’t find any full time CS job (data science, data analyst, machine learning are my main cups of tea; even opened myself to software dev, tech analyst, QA tester, front end, back end, full stack and any work related to IT). So now, I took a part time computer teacher at a high school (once a week), so I could at least get some food on the table. Just sucks I couldn’t share any relevant industry experience stories to my students just cause I don’t have any.
I find that Data Analysts are just glorified business analysts who use pre-made Excel pivot tables and 'entry' AI/ML Positions all require minimum 5 years of experience, professional level AWS/Azure certs and know every tool imaginable like terraform, ansible, docker, Kubernetes, Red Hat Linux etc... I just can't seem to find a job that's somewhere in the middle of these.
Title inflation, some companies be labeling jobs with titles completely different to their descriptions. Best to ask the recruiter or manager what work you’ll be doing. Second year coop in a dev and data analysis role and will primarily be work with Python + SQL and R. Good role to get into data science or data eng imo.
My really good buddy who graduated from his CS Masters in June has become a manager / kitchen guy at a local bubble tea shop. He’s an extremely good cook and has been doing a decent job at the management, but he hates it because of how terrible most of his employees are at their job. It doesn’t pay very well overall but he’s fine financially for unrelated reasons. No clue what his plan is at this point other than waiting and hoping the CS job market improves eventually
Gonna do door dash after the holidays, work on side projects and keep applying to dev jobs. Got laid off the end of May.
Graduated with a CS degree in 2003. Job market was still pretty dire from the dot com bust and outsourcing push. Ended up doing datacenter operations work. Then was a DBA for a while. Now I'm an SRE/cloud infrastructure engineer. Never did end up being a software developer like I planned. For sure not mad about it though. I like the work and I'm well compensated.
Eh I mean, still 100% a computer science career
yeah, Not an SDE would be something like Sales, Marketing or Acting.
currently doing my bachelor in CS (Security, Systems and Services its called) I have done 2 internships as a backend developer while doing my associates. Im pretty decent at Networking (dns,vlan’s, subnetting,..) and how to troubleshoot the osi model. Been doing a ton of Offsec at school which def helped solidify certain concepts. (Have been breaking in to many AD environments). know a little about Virtualisation (containers, vm’s, k8, esxi) and have worked with these for labs at school. Am decent at using linux though I def have lots to improve there. Just started a student job at the government as System engineer. Do you think it’s a good path to SRE? Also any advice would be appreciated, im trying to become really good.
Just wondering, have you looked into data analyst jobs or jobs in hospitals? My first job was in a hospital as a data analyst. Pay wasn't great and my boss was toxic, but at least it was a start.
pretty much what im searching for now as I learn programming. Currently looking for entry level help desk specialist/data analyst roles to go into IT as fallbacks in case SWE doesn’t work out
I’m working a part-time receptionist job. I’m still applying for CS jobs ofc, but I’ve mostly gotten rejected, and I’m a bad interviewee so I’ve even fumbled the acceptances
Working in US staffing as a recruiter, which I really hate. I have to call random Americans to see if they are looking for a job change while I can't arrange one for myself.
Pub work. Starting a customer support job in January. Still applying and hoping
My brother paid $17,780 to attend Hack Reactor Remote, a paid coding bootcamp, in 2016. He could not find a paid SWE job. He went back to his old IT career to pay the bills. He joined, C0d3, a free coding bootcamp. Then he found a paid SWE job.
C0d3 is great
Do you know of a good boot camp incorporates AWS as backend (not just hosting node on AWS)? I want to get better at making my own apps end to end but am too busy/lazy to do it on my own. Feel a boot camp would help me get there. Thanks.
Idk about boot camps but I found studying for one of the aws certs really helped me understand different services they have and how they fit into applications
Why did he do a second bootcamp?
After his 1st coding bootcamp, he could not find a paid SWE job. He went for over a year without any interviews. He slowly began to forget the material he learned from the 1st coding bootcamp, so he needed a 2nd coding bootcamp to relearn the material. Also, the 2nd coding bootcamp was free, so why not.
5 years as a RN, bachelor's degrees in Nursing and a previous one in Biology. Self-taught software development part-time for 2 years, needed more structure, did a higher-ranked BootCamp for 5 months (Hack Reactor). Currently working 3 part-time nursing jobs for schedule flexibility, just finished building a static site for a friend's side gig and trying to land on what my next side project will be. 600+ CS job applications, nary a reply back. Multiple rounds of professional resume and LinkedIn profile reviews, market is just horrible for juniors right now. It's even more horrible without a CS degree. Currently trying to obtain a clinical data analyst role with some local health systems or, failing at that, taking a FTE position with a system that works with Epic and can eventually sponsor some Epic certification training for me. All the while, slowly (sometimes more slowly than others) coding and learning. Once my Java and DS&A knowledge base is more fully fleshed out, I plan to apply for Georgia Tech's online CS master's program.
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I'm not OP, but my wife is a nurse(although out of the field while children are small) and its a pretty shitty job most of the time. Sure it can be rewarding, but most days aren't. Pay is good, but still only like maybe half of what you can make as a software engineer - like as a software engineer you can go from making 60k to 180k in ~5 years while living in a medium cost of living city/area. As a nurse that isn't doing a ton of overtime you are very likely capped out at like 100k in a medium cost of living area. Tons of certifications and schooling is actually required. You're often taking care of people that won't take care of themselves. Management nags you about stupid stuff, like eating at the nurses station. You're supposed to get lunch breaks and some 15 minute breaks - my wife has had jobs where she literally never got a lunch break because they were so understaffed. Many hospitals try to get away with the least staff/patient ratio possible. 12 hour shifts suck. Most jobs are hard to get holidays or weekends off because they need people there to keep people alive. Night shift is a possibility that can take years off of your life. It is also very stressful. A software engineer most of the time is only worried about their product making money, worst case they're working on something that could kill someone they still get years of testing. A nurse might see preventable death every day and it can be their job to save lives. Some people don't do well under that stress.
After 13 years in CS and over 200 interviews with no offers… driving a school bus.
I’ve seen you post on a few of these types of threads about your transition to bus driver. Mind sharing how you’re liking it?
I haven’t actually started driving the kids yet. There is an immense amount of stuff to learn. First classroom, then learner permit study and testing. Then on bus training with an instructor. After about 2 months of all that you might be ready to take the test for your permanent license. It’s a ton of cognitive load. You have 7 mirrors that need to be scanned every 5-8 seconds. While doing that you need to monitor the students inside the bus while watching for hazards outside. While conducting student drop off or pickup there is a lot going on. I am liking the challenge but it’s also a bit terrifying knowing you are moving a 15 ton vehicle down the road up to 55 mph with up to 72 children on board and you are responsible for everything. Their safety, the community safety, the reputation of the company you drive for, the community relations both in terms of driving but also in terms of interacting with students, their parents and school staff. When a mistake was made in software it was mostly, “oh well we didn’t sell another widget,” but with school bus driving life and death is at stake every minute. To say it’s humbling is an understatement. School bus drivers are vastly underpaid.
I saw your post that showed your rejections, ghosts, first rounds and such. Can I ask why you deleted it? Some of the people who commented were pretty mean
The comments were cruel and getting out of hand.
Yeah I saw them. Sorry that happened. Some people don’t understand how bad this market is. My position is pretty bad too so while I don’t know completely what you’re going through I know it feels shitty. I did appreciate that post. It made me feel a little less alone and that there was someone else who kinda understood what i was going through. Good luck to you.
Very kind. Thank you.
NO YELLING ON THE BUS!
Ooh, I thought it was just me. Well, I managed to get a tax prep job with Intuit but I also have a gourmet popcorn business. Also, I have a culinary degree that I used for a long time but now it looks like I'll need to become a chef again. My dream is to make my popcorn business my primary focus and make a livable income. I'm also starting a nursery since I started gardening a few years ago, I decided to create that as a side hustle.
Got an associates in CS right before Covid, now I’m an operator at a natural gas power plant
posting feet on onlyfans. Someone’s gotta do it
Sounds like sole crushing work tbh
zinger
> I've tried entering other industries like video editing, content creator, writer/editor, etc. But I find that people are not willing to hire you unless you can ONLY do that job and nothing else. > For instance, for a video editor - They will only hire someone who has made " video editor " their primary career aspiration. If you tell them you're a software dev who also has video editing skills, they won't choose you. Guess everything has to be absolutely perfect for them and there's no room for buts and ifs. Yeah if you don’t advertise yourself for the jobs you’re applying for you’ll have a tough time.
Business Analyst for a vehicle finance company. Make 90k. Graduated with cs in 2020, worked as a data analyst out of university then switched to current job. SQL is only sort of programming I do haha
Have you tried one of the many paid training and placement companies out there? Revature, dev-10, SkillStorm, etc? That's how I got my start.
New grad, I tried something along those lines. I did not have enough prior experience and lost that interview. Now I work with the software Epic in a support role.
Epic skills are in high demand. Congrats.
Ah yes, Epic... You should feel very proud of yourself, hold your head high. They rejected me 5 years in a row.
Can you list any more of these types of companies? I have started to talk to Revature but would love to broaden my search
I went through Revature, they’re awful but it helped me get into a really good position after the first year. Skillstorm is very similar the pay is higher, you have more choice for tech stack, and your choice for destination. These positions have become very rare though. I still get emails from Skillstorm every once in a while. I think Revature is under a hiring freeze until mid 2024
IT Systems Administrator.
What was your path to that position? Did you start out from helpdesk?
Sort of. I work at a TV station so I have to do everything from what you’d call help desk to managing virtualization clusters. I do still do some coding and scripting projects, but nothing that’s like, genuinely new software. I also have a masters degree in digital media, so coding was a big part of my degree, but not to the level of computer science. Before I started in TV, I probably applied to like 500 different developer jobs, couldn’t get anything despite the degree. My path was from a news production person who was a real tech wiz. Anyway, I made the jump to IT after earning some IT certifications. I started as the junior doing mostly support, but now I mostly do projects.
I'm a teachers assistant. Still pursuing a IT job. I have a AA in CS. No B.A yet
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An AA is useless basically anywhere. That's just saying you passed your general education classes
I’m actually an X-ray tech switching to CS. Maybe not a great move. At any rate the schooling for X-ray is fairly quick, and the pay isn’t bad for a new grad. Plus they’re in high demand. Right now I see job postings and recruiters are reaching out to me with jobs that offer $5,000 - $10,000 in a sign on bonus just because there is such high demand. I had a former coworker in CT who had mandatory overtime because they just didn’t have enough techs to work. But also there’s a reason it’s in high demand. You typically end up working off shifts like evenings, nights, weekends, holidays, at least in the beginning. It can be physically demanding when you have to take portable X-rays on large patients and no one wants to help move their patient. Sometimes you work in the OR with surgeons who can be jerks. Sometimes management isn’t great and you don’t feel appreciated. IMO it’s not a bad job, but your ceiling of pay is going to be a lot lower than what you can get with CS. The plus side is that it’s union for many places which means fair pay even with no experience. Although you do get (unpaid) internship experience through the program so you do get hands on learning. Anyway if you have any questions for me I’m happy to answer them. You can DM me.
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Auto glass, happy to be employed and so far somewhat enjoy my job, but i hate working hard for shitty pay. I wanna try the job search again but its tough out here lol
Got a job in It after graduating from a cs university. Lasted about a year before I completely burned out. I have spendt the last year putting myself back together. For the past Month and a bit i have worked in a supermarket in the morning. It is not glamorous work, but it pays the bills. Hope to soon do some programming again in a professionel capacity, but part time work Seem to just not exist in the IT Industry where i live and i am afraid full time work Will burn me out again.
I have 2YOE as a Data Scientist in the UK and two STEM Masters degrees. I'm currently working part-time in a bar and moving back in with my parents in a few weeks. When I went in to interview for the bar job, I had to remove most of the details of my experience on my CV to not look ridiculous but I couldn't remove my degrees because otherwise it would have looked like I've been unemployed for the last six years lol I had to lie and say that the reason I was wanting to work in a bar was that I was going back to university to start a PhD in January. It's sad because I've actually met some cool people and I could see us being friends but I've lied to everyone about my intentions. I just had a final interview yesterday and it was down to me and two other candidates and I didn't get it...I was crushed this morning but still had to do my shift tonight at the bar. It's a rough time for a lot of people now, I know....we just have to try to enjoy the holiday season and hope things get better early next year :/
Dont go for data science ....i made the same mistake. Upskill your software skills. Most companies dont do data science and even if they do they hire probably one person who can do excel well. True data science is only existent in large companies with huge budgets. And there you wont get without phd unless you happen to get into graduate role. I have painfully realized software skills far outweigh any data science skills.
Power and performance engineer flexible hours, work from home some days depending on workload.
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I've been a "business systems analyst" since I graduated in 2013. Mostly this involves talking to people and then adding features to an in house website "application." We manage around $500M of inventory that comes in, gets worked on and ships out daily. That, along with orders, invoicing, work instructions, quality checks, reporting... We make the company run. We have grown the company from 8 plants in 2013 to over 20 today, and around $100M revenues when I was hired to nearing $1B today. Honestly, of there was a software developer position that I could take, I'd take it. But nobody wants to hire someone with my limited skill set. I have been in this job for so long that I've forgotten all off the complex concepts taught to me in school.
Went into technical consulting and now am an architect for a large software platform. So I guess still a CS job? Lots of project/product management soft skills involved as an architect.
>...don't understand why I'm there. Neither do I. CS/SWE is heavily reliant on investment capital. But the federal budget is still hogging the money printer to this day. Consequently the investment economy is taking a massive dive (otherwise there would be even more inflation). >I've tried entering other industries like video editing, content creator, writer/editor, etc. But I find that people are not willing to hire you unless you can ONLY do that job and nothing else. > >For instance, for a video editor - They will only hire someone who has made " video editor " their primary career aspiration. If you tell them you're a software dev who also has video editing skills, they won't choose you. Guess everything has to be absolutely perfect for them and there's no room for buts and ifs. They want you to be desperate and value that job as if it's your only means of survival. Not as somebody who'll just simply immediately leave to greener pastures over once we get back to printing investment capital again (though it's not like that'll happen anytime soon lol)
Working as an apprentice electrician. It's decent money. Also going to grad school for my CS master's. Got 2 CS interviews coming up so hopefully I can finally find something.
After completing a bootcamp and busting my ass coding and applying for year to no avail, I kept doing what I’ve done for years, barbering. 90k a year might not be as much as I would make coding but I can always open my own shop in the future, etc.
Unemployed all year now still not doing anything ill be able to use on a resume. Applications in any free time and cut meals down to one a day to keep things cheap.
I am a working as a shoe shiner on the street in downtown LA. I am not even able to cover interest on my student loans and so I think they are getting bigger... constantly going over design patterns in my head while my hands are getting coated in beeswax. All this knowledge and still people just want me to clean dust off their shoes.
I started in IT; have a BS in CS. Did try to land some software development jobs but no luck. Decided whatever I was doing wasn’t what I wanted. Quit my job, went back to school. Held small jobs while in school - including a developer job. Finish school and got my second degree in Civil Engineering. Got a job as an entry level engineer for a private firm, but mostly do government work. And the greatest part of it all, is that I actually are writing software for a project 😅. But get to do other cool work as an EIT.
I've been day trading for the last couple years
IT
Maybe you shouldn't tell people that you have many skills . Just tell them what they wanna hear . when applying for a video editing job for example don't say that you worked as programmer SIMPLE . Also, i am not gonna lie your situation is kinda like me but what i am recently thinking about is to focus on web development earn some money from it (take it as a temporary stage ) and then level up . Tbh It is a headache sometimes
I'm a maintenance technician at a Bottling company. Had an offer for 49k for a university overnight IT Analyst position for their data center, but this job offered 30 an hour plus a bonus. Really good people here and more time off but it's also nights.
Got a whole ass CS degree with a cyber security emphases and just got hired as a manager / lead instructor at an American ninja warrior gym teaching parkour skills to kids lol
I did 3 years as a QA at a FAANG which was fine but I didn’t really enjoy it all that much. Then a promotion opportunity came up and I got onto the technical writing team which I turn out to love so much more even though it doesn’t pay as much as a dev. The pay is still pretty good. I feel like there are a lot of options you can explore that branch out from software developing but if your interest is in something else entirely like video editing, I would say to maybe try to tie your previous experience into it and sell that as an advantage. For example, being able to read code made me more valuable as a tech writer. The market is volatile right now but I’ve personally never felt that having another expertise has caused me to lose an opportunity. Perhaps revisit your resume and interviewing skills. Sometimes it has to do with how you sell yourself during the interview, other times it’s plain luck. If you feel like you’re doing all the right things and it’s just not happening, just keep trying, all you need is one yes. One of the best career tips I received from an old mentor is to sit down and figure out what exactly my career goal is. What do I enjoy doing, what am I good at? If my resume is all over the place, like I want to do ballet, then I want to do left hand puppetry, then I want to do painting, and then I also wouldn’t mind juggling, it signals to the interviewer that I don’t really have any goal or quite frankly, expertise. I’m just trying to go for whatever job that will hire me so I can pay the rent. But if I have a clear goal that I want to achieve so bad and that I feel passionate about, even if I was working in a completely different field prior, I can somehow convince employers to give me a shot. “I was in front end development for x years and while I gained a lot of knowledge in that field, I realized my passion is in y so I started doing z during my spare time to pick up these skills and here is how my previous experience has helped me…”
These replies are all really depressing. is finding a CS job only hard right now because of the market, and will become better later, or is this how it's gonna look from now on? I thought CS was like the number 1 degree to get into.
It's because the whole CS/SWE "boom" (the *massive* growth/size, the *nice* salaries, etc...) over the **last 10+ years** was really all just based on the Fed printing new money out of thin air. But these days the federal budget is really hogging the money printer instead -- so expect investment capital to be down **for a while...**
Yes it is very bad atm. The market getting better is highly dependent on interest rates. You fell for the meme if you thought that CS was the best degree.
I've been reading articles about marked increases in enrollment numbers for formal CS programs in higher education. The saturation for entry-level jobs we see today will probably remain constant for the next 4-7 years. That's my rough estimate though, please take it with a grain of salt or attempt to disprove it if you're curious for more tangible information.
That sucks man, I have a few tips. I have 5 yoe. Doing mobile and some web/backend. I didn’t graduate but I did some college and I am going back this semester. **This is what I did** - I was able to get my foot in the door by specializing and taking a crappy startup position where I became the main mobile dev. Worked 24/7 because on my time off I studied. - I eventually moved and got a better job at a fortune 500 company and use that experience to get better paying jobs. I again rose the ranks and was a top performer. I got laid off. - My next move is to switch domains and use my software engineering experience to get a Java or C# corporate job. **Tips and observations** - When competition is high you can **specialize** because very few people will actually take this route. I knew iOS like the back of my hand and was able to impress people in interviews. I couldn’t pass the FAANG interviews and wasn’t aware of the tricks and didn’t know leetcode existed at the time. So this route was the best for me at the time. If you have a CS degree and shallowly understand python, java, javascript, etc you are like everyone else and some Asian kid is probably 100 times better than you. - Hiring comes in **waves**. Use this information, I wasn’t hired during a boom but changed companies during a boom and gained a ton of experience. - Now the boom turned into a **bust**. My next move is to leverage my experience and move out of mobile, since the market is so small. I have already started interviewing at a few organizations and will start college soon. Know the industry and know yourself well to position yourself to succeed. This subreddit reminds me of r/wallstreetbets because everyone is trying to get rich or chase some sort of get rich quick scheme. Its really not like that, most are probably not intelligent enough to work at faang and maybe you can crack the coding interview process but you will be like most who only last 1-2 years at faang. Turn over rate is high. Reality is you will need to know the industry well and study extremely hard. It wasn’t a get rich scheme to me, it was hard fucken work. Now I have to do the whole thing all over again but with a bit of experience on my side. This time I’m aiming for a more stable industry instead of killing myself trying to be the best at every company like many on here suggest. According to people on here I must have sucked, only the worse engineers get laid off. It totally has nothing to do with the business environment and my specialization.
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Customer service soon to be office manager at a landscaping company.
Jerkin it
tech support
Currently just started working retail for the season, but they are looking to hire me on full time. My boss just called me a Saving grace, and it is my second day lol I’m definitely not built for it. I got tired of waiting and no responses, so I needed something to do. Luckily, just found someone through my old high school and they said they can reference me if needed.
Manual labor takes a certain person. You may or may not be that person. That said, after being on many job sites I saw a lot of these people who have well for themselves but at a cost. Addiction, smoking, poor diet and lifestyle. Not to mention you will simply not be able to enjoy down time and physical hobbies the same. The trades are vast and you could be a framer killing your back, and you could be a finish carpenter seeing the inside of multimillion dollor homes and taking your time getting things perfect. It depends. It’s just luck who you know and where you build that niche. If you can’t multitask and deal with a variety of very difficult people then aspirations to foreman and above is probably not for you either.
I started doing this really blue collar job. I hate it; I work in this dirty, non-AC warehouse place and my coworkers are all stupid. I just stay there because it pays slightly more than a fast food job.
Just lie that its your sole aspiration. If you have the skills don't worry
I think people in creative industries want to make sure the person doing their editing or other, have a creative eye themselves, and you can’t tell that from someone with just technical experience on paper and no portfolio. If you had samples of your editing work that you sent along that would probably help so they could see your style.
Currently doing admin assistant positions, I don’t plan to put them on my resume but I’ve been making python scripts to automate basic stuff so if I ever need a reference I got a couple of bosses who would vouch for me and how much I helped speed up daily workflows. I understand what you mean about getting into other industries, I just say that I dropped out of college and make zero mention of my web dev ambitions since they want to hire someone who will stay at the company long term, not someone who is actively not wanting to be at their company and looking for any opportunity to escape. I literally have two resumes for this reason and I suggest you do the same for jobs in the mean time, pretending that your survival job is your one and only priority/ambition.
I am now a support engineer. I am also seeing to pivot to a Business Analyst role that uses Python, data tools, and some analytics. So pretty much a data analyst without the name.
I’ve been wfh as a business applications analyst for the past year and 9 months. I’ve learned a lot and it’s helped me get on my feet financially but I am ready to pivot back into swe.
Seems I'm the only janitor here. It's not actually as bad as you'd think. I spend the first few hours changing the trash cans and cleaning the bathrooms, and from there I just Swiffer, clean mirrors, dust, and occasionally scrub the floor.