[poulsbohemian]

>But then when I apply for jobs and just keep getting rejection after rejection, it wears me down and makes me feel like an imposter who isn't cool enough to join the club you know?

I've concluded that we aren't going to fix this. When even PhD's appear to have this same experience, you know it isn't a matter of education. For a long time I thought perhaps licensing / certification like other professions including engineering, but there are too many economic forces against that happening.

So, we're going to continue to bifurcate into companies that have the means to interview, hire, and manage software development and those that are essentially a cargo cult version of those activities. You have to basically accept that a large segment of the market for tech workers is going to belittle you, mistreat you, and it's up to you to either jump through their hoops or work really hard to find places that aren't like that.