[joshaidan]

This is the situation I am currently finding myself in. I work as a telephone switch administrator for an independent phone company in Canada. I've had this just for 13 years now, it was the only job I've had since university. My undergrad is in computer science. I ended up with this job because the company bought out a friend's ISP that I was helping run when I was in high school. It was a good job, nice company, they treat me very well. Pay isn't quite at industry standards, but back then I was living in an isolated Northern Ontario Community, so it was a decent job. Plus it allowed me to work from home.

But I love programming. I've been doing it ever since I was a kid on a Commodore 64. While I do get to do a good amount of programming, I wish I could do more. It would be awesome to get more into systems or embedded programming. I recently moved to Ottawa, one of Canada's major tech hubs, and I've been sending out resumes everywhere. So far I've only gotten one interview, which was at Shopify. But I didn't make it past the initial interview--there were too many other applicants with more experience than me. I've applied to other telecom related vendors as well, like Cisco, Genband, Nokia, etc. but I've never gotten a callback.

Now I find myself wishing that after graduating university I'd taken an internship at Nortel or someplace like that, so that I'd have it on my resume, and focused on my programming career rather than just keeping the same job. I find that all entry level job postings are for new graduates only. I've contemplated doing my masters so that I could "reboot" my career so to speak and become a "new graduate."

[ghettoCoder]

Fellow Ottawan (is that what we call ourselves?) here who also relocated from Northern Ontario many moons ago. The thing about Ottawa is it's a government town so most of the local tech firms (not including Shopify Mitel, etc...) are for professional services or are small early-stage startup (for some reason our startups typically get acquired, or fail). The Feds' fiscal year starts in April which means that contract money is either currently frozen or non-existent until then. After April all departments will start hiring again and you should have some luck if you get yourself into one of the better professional services company.

The other "problem" in Ottawa is that ALL of the professional services firms will do a hard filter-out on keywords in your resume/cover letter. And they expect a certain format due to what the Feds want in their submission.

Disclaimer: I don't work for the Feds. I know better.

[kv-1]

I'm 32 and I was in a similar situation a few years ago, so I decided to do a masters with focus on embedded systems hoping that would help me land a job in that area. I've been applying for positions in the embedded industry (mostly entry-level) for the last 5 months and haven't gotten a single invitation to interview yet. The answers I get are similar to what the OP described.

At this point I'm feeling like those two years could have been better spent working on side projects.

[hunterjrj]

Apply to the CSE. Your telco experience combined with your education in CS will be considered quite valuable to them.

https://www.cse-cst.gc.ca/en/careers-carrieres/professionals...

[ghettoCoder]

Yep. CSE or CSIS

https://csiscareers.ca/available-jobs/3

[innomansland]

Hey, thanks for sharing your story. Hearing all these personal experiences does put things into perspective for me and realising there are many people like you out there.

I don't think you should get too hung up about having big name companies on your resume. As a anecdotal data point, I worked in 5 companies till now and 3 of those companies are internationally well-known yet even I am in your shoes - no callback or interviews.

As others have said in the thread, before considering doing a masters just for the sake of it, spend some time:

- persisting with your job applying. Sometimes it is just a numbers game.

- start working on your own personal side projects.

- get involved in the local <$programming> meetups, communities, conferences, etc

Good luck!