[Tmp1234]

I didn’t expect this many responses. It’s a bit overwhelming, but I'm thankful. I’m going to post a few important pieces of information I didn’t think of posting above that should help clarify my situation and how desperate it is.

I do have depression. Pretty bad one actually. I am just graduating from college at 31 because of the toll depression took on my life. I have no previous work experience because I spent my 20s just being depressed doing nothing basically. I've talked to therapists for years now and it's helped, but I've basically gone as far as that can go. My therapist and I both agree that basically as much as can be done from me through a psych has been done. My life needs to improve. Programming was supposed to be my ticket to a better life.

Some people have mentioned I should move home- My home environment is extremely toxic. I’ve cut off my mother completely because she has a severe, much worse mental illness and I only talk to my dad when I need something because he has quite the temper. I managed to get out of the house only because I’m on disability for my depression. To make things worse, my dad is past retirement age. Every single day I’m not making money forces my dad to prolong his retirement as he is the only one in the family with the mental faculties to maintain a job. It should be easy to imagine how this makes him more irritable and angry while also making me feel incredibly guilty and parasitic. This fragile economic state + my age is why I don't really have time to take it easy. I was supposed to be making money yesterday.

I’ve been preparing for technical interviews for over a year in reality, but intensely in the last month or 2. I couldn’t do Fibonacci recursively up until a few months ago until I looked it up and studied how the recursion was working. This is just one example. There are so many very basic things I can’t do.

Finally, I can’t depend on a network or friends in any form because I have none. I am a complete pariah in the computer science community I come from and every other community I’ve ever tried to integrate myself into, basically. No one will ever refer me to any job because no one likes me and, in the case of programming, everyone knows I suck.

[vpmpaul]

>No one will ever refer me to any job because no one likes me

This may be true however. It is more likely they are not sure of your capabilities. A recommendation for a programming job is basically a sure thing job placement now days. However if someone recommends you and you are a screw up it affects their professional reputation. I would focus more on finding a technology you are genuinely interested in so you can "shop talk" with some other people in the industry while proving you know what you are talking about.

In programming almost no one cares about your personality (unless volatile). I have a programmer my team that I sat next to for 3 years and I think we have had maybe 5 minutes of non work related conversation during that time. He just hates talking to people period.

[st1ck]

You should stop your crippling thinking habits, like all-or-nothing thinking that becoming a programmer is only worth it if you can get into "Top 4" companies (if I read that post correctly). Or, while your family situation kinda sucks, you feeling guilty doesn't help here at all. If you had a friend in a similar situation like yours, you would suggest that as long as they are actually trying to improve their skills and get a job, there is no point in feeling guilty about not succeeding, it's counterproductive.

Even if you do the puzzles 3x slower than "average programmer", but you still can do simple ones, you're much better than most of people who just can't solve them at all and won't bother to learn. I don't know what's the job market in US now, but you can probably get a job somewhere in IT to pay your bills (maybe try QA if you get no luck in dev). I mean, you got a CS degree, this already puts you in better position than many other IT job seekers.