| HN Mirror

I appreciate that you're likely struggling with self doubt and the sunk cost fallacy so you might need to suspend your disbelief for a few moments, but... forget technology, if you're a competent programmer, then you have a great deal of value to a lot of companies regardless of their technology choices. You're clouding your view of employment by applying feelings about your current situation to all employment which isn't rational: if the company is treating you poorly, they're almost certainly doing everything else poorly too.

A company will hire you when they have confidence that you can meet their needs, so your goal is to find roles that you're confident you can deliver value to and then help the hiring managers share in your confidence. That's it. You need confidence. A technology match might be a component of delivering confidence but it is not a fundamental. My most recent software engineering job hired me because... I was the candidate with a specific experience _outside_ of software engineering, as they valued that experience _more than they valued my experience with the technology they use_!

I don't know what motivates you, whether it's internal or external, but on the chance that you're motivated by external factors... I have a challenge for you to complete. First part is to be completed this week: explore job boards (e.g: linkedin, stackoverflow, workatastartup) and look at many different roles, but rather than focus on the requirements or technology, consider what the day to day is like for each role and decide if you think you'd be capable of it. Make notes of each role you look at, and keep track of the commonalities between roles you think you can do day to day and the commonalities between roles you think you can't do day to day. Then, next week, compile that information into a single document that represents things you're confident you can do, marrying up to the language used by hiring managers.

The goal is to get to a point where you can look at a job posting know whether or not you can give the hiring manager confidence that you are a good candidate. You don't need to be the best candidate, you don't need to be a genius or expert, you just need the hiring manager to think "Yes, giantg2 could do this job" ... and then it's a numbers game: find jobs you're confident about, apply with a bespoke application that emphasises why you're a candidate they can be confident in, and repeat.

There'll be hard days and I don't mean to downplay the hardship of the situation you're in, I absolutely appreciate that "just be optimistic" is unhelpful at best or offensive at worst... but that really is the key, and so anything you can do to bring yourself the optimism and energy to apply to new jobs will pay dividends. You deserve to be happy at work, you deserve to be treated with respect, and there are companies out there that will give you that, you've just got to find a way to get yourself into the right mindset.