[jd115]

I have NO university degree and ZERO affiliation with anything remotely FAANG (I'm based in Europe, where relatively few people work for FAANG). There are no globally recognisable names on my CV.

I am still the highest paid person I personally know - by a rather high margin, because of my experience as a software engineer.

Since I dropped out of university almost 20 years ago, I have been consulting and contracting, focusing almost exclusively on Python, PostgreSQL and, more recently, AWS. This simple combination (I usually refuse to learn anything new - I don't think there have been many noteworthy new technologies in the past couple of decades) has made me millions over the years and I have never been left without work for any significant period of time.

Since the pandemic began, I have actually found myself contracting multiple roles concurrently, from my home, each paying significantly above the average developer rate. I've found I can do up to 3 - 4 at a time and still deliver results for each (declining to attend regular meetings helps).

[sage76]

Good for you. I have experience with all 3 of those technologies and it's nearly impossible to even get an interview.

[jd115]

This is honestly baffling to me, I can't imagine how this can be. I get multiple emails each week from recruiters looking for that exact skill-set, and this is AFTER I've tried extra hard to unsubscribe from all such emails.

[sage76]

My final straw was when I was asked to code this problem in 20 mins :

https://leetcode.com/problems/reverse-nodes-in-k-group/

Maybe I'm just too stupid.

[blindmute]

There's something wrong with your resume or other personal information then. I was in the job market recently, I live in the boonies, and there is nothing impressive on my resume. There were literally not enough waking hours to schedule a call with every recruiter flooding me through LinkedIn. I had at least 5 interviews per week. I don't know what you're doing wrong, but it's something.

[flibblercorn]

lol I found the same awful experience at the above poster when I tried to look for something to bump my salary recently.