[py_or_dy]

I can't help but feel like the "software industry" is in a slow decline (or race to the bottom). Back in 2007 before I even knew how to "program", I was a linux admin at a small start up. We found someone that we trusted enough to build us a basic webpage. But he wanted $75 per hour. Couldn't find anyone else so bit the bullet. It was written in php, took the guy a few weeks to do, and we paid him somewhere between $3k and $5k for the work. For the other side of our business (our actual product, taking GPS coordinates via SMS and displaying on top of a google maps like interface), same thing, we could only find one other person that we actually trusted to build our actual product. But he wanted $75 an hour. We bit the bullet. Two weeks go by and and he shows us a mostly working demo. A back end Ruby script writing the SMS to a mysql DB, and a Rails app displaying the coordinates with mapnik. Another week later and he is finished and invoices us for $16,000.

I was in college at the time and couldn't wait to graduate and start rolling in money. I mean, these two programmers didn't even have degrees and I was about to have one. That meant I could do the same thing only charge $100 an hour right?

My first "IT" job out of college I made $54k a year. After three years I got my first promotion to $64k but quit a few months later. Did a couple of 1099 contracts at $50 an hour over a year. Got hired by Apex and sent to AT&T for $35 an hour. Did that for a year and then back to 1099 contracts again. This time at $55 an hour. Moving on up! After 4 years of that, quit cold turkey and figured with 10 years of experience now under my belt that I could easily find some better contracts or full time work.

22 months and 110 interviews later, still nothing.

[changoplatanero]

I wonder how come I was lucky enough to get a high paying job at a FAANG company when other people struggle for years and do tons of interviews and got nothing. Are you stuck in a state with not many jobs? Is it because FAANG companies only hire people who went to really good schools? Maybe the commenter above is actually not very good at interviewing and doesn't realize it? Something else?

[kixiQu]

At least two FAANG companies hire from my Kroger-brand just-beyond-community-college alma mater, so I'm gonna guess that's not it.

I have dark theories about how much harder it would have been if I'd taken even a single other job and then tried to be hired in, because of how split-brained the "university hiring" and normal hiring seem to be..

[py_or_dy]

I'm not moving, I've been working remote only since 2015. That is the biggest factor to going to a FAANG. I am near Austin, TX, there are many SaaS startups there but the dev teams are always people under the age of 30 for the most part. They live in small apartments, not married, no kids, some didn't even have a car. I'm 40 and live on 20 acres of land and even though I personally live and breath code, it is clear I would never "fit" on any of the Austin teams even though I am perfectly fine being around modern yuppie types.

[mitch3x3]

The last one. I went through 6 months of terrible interviewing and self reflection before I was any good. It’s a skill in itself.

[bloodyplonker22]

How does this have anything to do with the article? Sounds like a long rant about how you can't get a job in a thriving tech industry where salaries are actually going up by a lot.

[py_or_dy]

> Sounds like a long rant about how you can't get a job in a thriving tech industry where salaries are actually going up by a lot.

You say it is thriving, I say it is not. So who is correct? Every job I applied for was django development with a remote team. Once I'd get rejected, I'd keep an eye on the company's linkedin page and see who got the position instead of me. In two cases it ended up being someone much more senior than I (like 10 years experience in pure django), and in 3 other cases it was someone with less than two years of experience and who recently graduated from a coding bootcamp (and I guarantee they are paid no where near $100k). And in about 10 other cases, the linkedin page has stayed the same, so not sure if they hired anyone at all or what. But I've only really been paying attention to the pages for about 15 different companies versus the 60 or so I interviewed for.

Edit: Oh and about the wage thing... forgot to mention for many of these smaller software shops they are now doing most of their hiring out of South America. Fullstack labs, consumer affairs, just to name a few but the list goes on.

[zeusk]

It is very much thriving. I started with internships at ~$40/hr in 2016, I will make $680k this year W2 (I code in C++ and Python). You should brush up on some recent tech stacks and move to Seattle or Bay Area if you're having trouble finding remote work.

[jwilber]

This experience is a massive far cry from anything I’ve seen.

[ianbutler]

The median dev job is like 100k in the US so I don't think your experience (though unfortunate, not disputing that) is representative of the market. Salaries for experienced developers are climbing even now and there is a general shortage.