Apologizing on behalf of exploitation is unbelievably weak.
What do you like to do?
Bike? What if one company controlled all bike sales and bike lanes, bikes costed $20,000 and you needed to pay every time you go on a ride?
Programming? What if one company controlled all computer sales and internet access, they costed $50/hour to use and each program is another $10/hour and it costed another $200/month to host anything publicly?
ha, I'm working on a dev-side version similar to this (mostly just for me, but hopefully publishable). I opted for an entirely pre-deplopyment build tool, where you just put
<custom-tag custom-param="value"></custom-tag>
in your HTML, run the build and it outputs the filled in file somewhere else. I know its functionality is very similar to many web frameworks (e.g. React, handlebars) but it does one thing.
I don't question that is takes hard work, even for more senior devs like the author, but 30 apps leading to 3 offers is a dream. Most early-career people are probably at >100 app with maybe a few interviews and hopefully one offer.
The author has 30+ years of experience and was applying to jobs paying less than 6 figures a year (USD). His expectation were modest, compared to the average US developer.
This is also not realistic (if other people in his position aim for much more). Wouldn’t you wonder “why is this person with 30 years of experience applying for this role? Maybe got confused? Maybe they’re troubled in some way? Maybe they’ll stay for 2 months and get bored and leave?”.
>> This is so sad. If I ever had to get paid 5 figures after 30 years I worked literally switch careers.
It's Sweden / Stockholm, not Silicon Valley / San Francisco.
I've looked up real estate there just to point out how ridiculously inflated prices are here. A nice looking 67 square meters apartment, 15 minutes from city center, was selling for some €190,000. By comparison a 50 square meters rather communist-looking apartment here (Romania) sells for €160,000 - €180,000.
A 5-figure salary in the €80,000 - €90,000 range is fairly outlier both there and here. €7,500 gross translates to about €4,400 net both in Sweden and here. To buy an €190,000 apartment here, the mortgage is in the €1,200 per month. In Sweden as far as I know, a rent is in the €600 - €1500 (depending how far from Stockholm city center). So a 5 figure salary goes a long way: you can buy, rent and live, on a single salary. If your wife is also getting top 5 figures, you're settled.
This is pretty accurate. Price/salary ranges are much more stable than the US. His salary ask for 30 years is not as far fetched as the Americans here think. Source: live in Norway.
I guess I got lucky in when I started out as a career switcher in 2017. Iirc I applied 6 places, had 4 interviews, got 2 offers. Mind you this was as an effectively junior person applying to mid-level positions. I like to think that having so few interviews allowed me to concentrate my enthusiasm and highest mental energy into the interviews I had, but maybe it's just survivors bias.
Since then I've taken 3 interviews and gotten two great offers in the 50+% percentile for US based software engineering roles. I'm a not-that-bright grug-brained developer, so I'm sure it wasn't because I was blowing people out of the water with my brain power.
I'm not sure I have the energy to do a numbers-game applicant strategy. I hate interviewing generally, and live coding causes my brain to lock-up. So I only apply places I am genuinely excited to work for, and places that I reason would be generally excited to have a good team player who is nonetheless a grug-brained developer.
I can get genuinely excited about pretty run-of-the-mill work though, and have strong opinions very loosely held. I think maybe those two qualities are my secret sauce.
> I'm not sure I have the energy to do a numbers-game applicant strategy.
Neither did I until it became a neccessity. Did 4 job interviews in 7 years and got them all in one go. Then I quit, and there was a long drought of people just not wanting to hire me for 6 months. The first rejection I took personally, but after 10 interviews with crazier and crazier questions you can’t do anything other than see it as a numbers game. Anything else destroys any sense of self worth you have.
Can confirm. Energy is about the only way I could rely on myself to crack open a totally foreign job market with less than a year of experience under my belt when I was starting out. I set myself the goal of 10 applications a day, every day, anywhere in Finland was acceptable -and within 3 months I had my first offer.
2017 through to around 2020/21 was insane worldwide .. All the big co's soaked up the talent, then that sucked the air out of the market worldwide. We were getting people outside of the US headhunted from the US, which had constant ripple effects. Now it seems the rebalancing is definitely taking hold and times are a lot tougher for devs world wide.
Trying to hire in 2020-21 was impossible. You would get people between interviews get massive offers (days/week apart). 50/50 whether even after accepting the offer they'd actually turn up... If you saw someone that had a decent shot at coding you needed to hire right then and there. Reddit/HN was absolutely filled with devs making hay while the sun was shining job hopping and say things like 'if you're not getting a 30% payrise...'
Now the credit crunch has just switched the tap off. I'm about to contract out a small bit of work via one of the freelancer sites and I'm going to be very interested to see what it's like getting freelancers now....
For the sake of comparison, I applied for jobs mid-2022. I applied for 12 positions and got 5 offers, and explicitly rejected by 2 - the remaining 5 I either rejected myself or didn't have time to complete the process. This was also in Stockholm, same as the OP.
This market is far worse to be looking for a job in.
I guess I got really lucky - I just talked to friends and found three different jobs through their recommendations.
Never had a proper job application or interview in my life - I reckon this will bite me in the ass sometime
I don't disagree with your first sentence but your last paragraph...uhhh.
1) Do you think there's nothing to say about this (or any other album) than "fans of the genre will like it and others will not"? There's plenty of insightful things to say both to familiar audiences and others.
2) Do you think this Tool review was the first (or even first larger scale) criticism of metal fans?
Perhaps an edge case, but what about all the commands you mistype or use the wrong flags for etc. If I want to recall a niche or complex command I used months ago I probably won't remember which of the 10 results that pop up was the right one.
While this problem is growing for younger people, there are still many many many people who live reasonable non-scoial-media-driven lives. You probably just won't hear about them because...they don't promote themselves on social media. Social media both purposefully by the companies, but also by the nature of the content, depicts a world where everyone is on it. Everyone is doing this new trend, or is aware of this new meme, or has heard about this drama. It's toxic, it gives you FOMO to even think about stopping. It's messed up. It's sad to see it in my friends and family.
Looking for a software job now, I'm wondering if I'm more of a home chef than a commercial cook...But when commercial cooking is fully remote and pays well...what to do...
What do you like to do?
Bike? What if one company controlled all bike sales and bike lanes, bikes costed $20,000 and you needed to pay every time you go on a ride?
Programming? What if one company controlled all computer sales and internet access, they costed $50/hour to use and each program is another $10/hour and it costed another $200/month to host anything publicly?