Tell HN: Falling into “shitty FIRE”, or involuntary sabbatical with few savings
More a vent than anything else...
I am 40 and sort of stumbled into a weird "comfortable but still poor" loop which for me meant working low paying developer jobs on and off, until one final job three years ago where I got laid off, no longer able to get hired again and now just living frugally off the small savings from my jobs.
As far as catching up with others in the field, I have put that aside and given up for now. I'm only learning new stuff for personal recreation projects so long as I still have money left.
Been applying for jobs and practicing interview for 2 years in my 3 year unemployment gap and still got nothing so far. I even took a $5k interviewing course. The 3 year gap is surely a killer at this point.
Also, don't take the title too seriously. I don't plan to retire indefinitely, and I'm just living this way as long as I have personal funds. I estimate about 10 months before my savings run out so long as monthly expenses continue the way they are now.
Some key things about my development "career":
- Graduated with an unrelated degree, so I started with jobs at local small companies, not aiming for big names
- Got fired from my first two junior-level jobs for performance-related reasons
- Majority of jobs are contract or so-called permatemp jobs, the business' intent being to cut corners in product development as much as possible
- Save for one jump from an agency to a startup, I always lose my current job before finding a new one
- My highest annual compensation was $50k
I get that a 3 year gap looks really bad, but all suggestions to fix that lead down a path of solitary effort with structure that you must set up yourself, and that sounds just as depressing. Nothing in the way of having someone else to keep you accountable, as I am single and the closest contacts I have are a few family members over the phone and occasionally meet in person. They are unable to help my job search because they're completely removed from the tech industry.
As someone who's often been told I have basically junior-level skills with senior-level years, the idea that you should up-skill on unpaid time in order to get hired again is laughable to me. That's like trying to climb up in rank when you're not even participating within a hierarchy. I'd rather get re-hired at the bottom and make my most impactful decisions on the job. But as long as my gap and experience continues to scare off employers, so must this "FIRE" continue for now. Your attitude and mindset is honestly what's keeping you from actually getting a job again. Your prior "experience" literally did nothing to prepare you for a modern job in software/tech. Your constant rants / posts / unwillingness to listen to others from your many many posts, is more evidence that you want something handed to you instead of actually spending time yourself learning new things that will actually get you a job. Stop using HN as your venting ground and instead work on being an adult capable of self independence. Sunken costs. I've had my resume re-done several times, and took the aforementioned interview prep. Applied to almost a thousand jobs last year alone. It has not made me more employed. And yes, I do want a job handed to me because the lack of progress has made me very desperate. I don't even trust myself to do the right things anymore. But I now prefer not to learn anything for work unless I am getting paid for it. There's no positive feedback cycle I can find otherwise. A couple of things:
- If you were actually desperate, you would be trying to find ANY job. Even a minimum wage job because if not, you will be homeless in a month. > "But I now prefer not to learn anything for work unless I am getting paid for it." - Do you know what compnay pays you to do this? Starbucks!! It takes them 1 hour of training to teach you how to make a frapachino and you'll instantly be productive. For a software compant to teach you from the ground up? MONTHS of investment when they can hire someone else who actually knows their tech stack and have relevent developer experience. - Ever since the pandemic started and remote development started taking precedence, the amount of competition for tech jobs have skyrockted. But even then, for the past year and a half, we had one of the hottest tech job markets, besides the past 6 months of downtrend. Yet you could not find a single job offer in that time period means, hey sir, you don't have the skillset that a company will pay you to work for. So what does that mean you should do? You should STOP APPLYING like you're trying to win the lottery and actually go learn some software development skills. Learn Python and data structures and algorithms. Learn how to be a GOOD SKILLED developer and not an entitled brat hoping for the easy times like you had it 5 years ago. News flash, the world has changed and either you adapt or you get out of this industry. I wish you luck and I hope you stop making these kinds of posts because everyone is going to tell you the same thing over and over and over and over and over. Am confused by your second paragraph. You refer to "easy times" of 5 years ago, but also say "one of the hottest tech job markets" in the past 18 months. Not sure if this is meant to say that today is as good as it was 5 years ago for jobs. I just can't see myself improving by learning on my own anymore. As another professional told me, "you're practicing, but with no guidance and nobody to step in and let you know when what you're practicing is the wrong approach." And when a person can spend many hours a week with practice and learning and receive the same result - no job offers - as someone who did little-none, it's entirely reasonable to conclude that learning new things is just a waste of time. I still code once in a while, just to keep busy. Still haven't gotten a good idea of "exchange rate" for employability with the knowledge I obtained from my personal C and JavaScript projects. I know that many companies won't train you from the ground up, but there are a couple. So I started looking into WITCH and similar consulting firms with a contract training program. InfoSys and Deloitte have rejected me for some general SWE positions (not language-specific) but there are other similar places. Don't mind if I have to go to one of these body shops, they seem like my best fit for a software job right now. I'll say I appreciate you taking the time to get me to understand your situation a bit. To clarify, 5 years ago, it was much easier to get a developer job with less experience and less knowledge. Now there is a much higher bar, even though a year ago, there was a high demand for developers, BUT the bar is now raised. A lot of this is because of the emergence of coding bootcamps and the popularity of software development careers in general. So again, there is unfortunately much more competition and much more to learn and apply to have a stable career in tech.
As for what to practice and learn, I would start off with what you learned from your actual interviews you've had over the past few years. Remember what questions they asked you, and the ones you couldn't answer well. Find out those answers and truly understand why the interviewer even asked you those questions in the first place. Remember that the job of an interview is to tell that a company is hiring a COMPETENT person who they perceive can do the job. When you can't answer people's questions, they don't perceive you as competent or a good candidate and will find someone else. Your job is to learn how to be competent, to answer common interview questions (basic programming, fizzbuzz, system design, data strcutures and algorithms, etc). You need to be coding more, like literally everyday. There are many coding practice coding sites where they will give you some typical coding problem and you can practice to implement them. Then you can go online to reddit or what not and ask people to review your code. This feedback loop will help you improve and further your chances of not only being a good developer, but ultimately getting a job. You don't sound very serious about your career. I don't know you, but I speculate that you would be frustrating to work with. Who knows, though. Anyway, none of my business. Do you have a plan for your actual retirement? No detailed plans for retirement. I'd need a new job first, to start saving again and I'll cross the bridge when I get there. But, it is true that I did not take my career seriously for a long time. I treated it more as just work, with no clear direction, since I didn't understand the fundamental difference between a career and a series of similar jobs. Every new job, I was just hoping for a modest pay raise and learning a new thing or two, and being able to coast when I wanted. Coasting is probably acceptable once you hit senior level in a well rounded team, but I figured out the hard way it's bad to do as a junior or mid-level. "I get that a 3 year gap looks really bad..." Say you were a full time caregiver for an elderly relative. Get a direct labor production worker job. Show up every day on time and be a good employee for 90 days. In the meantime learn what software envirionment they are in, learn it. $$$ I don’t think you have the makings of a varsity engineer. This is the universe telling you to find something you’re actually somewhat passionate about and get a fresh start.