[l33t233372]

Can you elaborate on how not knowing those things specifically is what led to you not being able to find work

Did your interviews ask specific questions about Git, Linux things not covered in a standard operating systems course, and command line editing?

[_dain_]

go on indeed, search for "software engineer", look at how often those things crop up in the "essentials" section

[l33t233372]

I’m just not sure how jot knowing these thing practically stopped you from getting a job.

Did they specifically ask about them in an interview?

[pcthrowaway]

Yes, they were asked about in interviews, when I managed to get interviews.

Also, since I wasn't using git (and hadn't even heard of git or github until after I graduated; mind you, this was in 2012), I didn't have any visible work to highlight when responding to job listing. I also didn't have any demonstrable ability to collaborate, dive into existing projects and find my way around, or do things like make PRs.

I didn't have anything to say about my ability to work with software tooling, using an operating system beyond just opening a web browser, notepad, Borland C++... I think I used netbeans for a group Java project also.

I definitely wouldn't have been able to demonstrate editing a file on the command line. Most tutorials were too dense for me without significant head-desk banging, because they assumed you knew how to compile a file, or run make.

Yes, we did do a lot of these things in a very limited way for our classes, but the teacher would always tell us exactly what we needed to do, and the very small amount of actual programming we did in our program didn't require me to know how to do something like debug the code, enable linting or error highlighting in the IDE (it was mostly simple enough that I could get it right, or close to right, with a few tries anyway).

I know these things contributed to me not getting a job, because I spent almost a year learning them and more, and was able to get jobs after.

All that said, I didn't do an internship, I didn't have a good GPA, and my school wasn't considered good. I was about as unattractive a candidate as I could be while still having a CS degree.

[l33t233372]

What school did you go to?

Regardless, I have my doubts that not knowing about git or software tooling held you back. I know many recent grads that don’t include anything about Git on resumes and it doesn’t come up in interviews.