Better late than never
This is being published months after I wrote it. When I wrote it, I was in the middle of what turned out to be an almost six month long job search.
So many people are in this boat right now, and I want to just publish this to say it’s okay to feel this way. The way things are really sucks, and when you’re job hunting, you’re in the worst position to try to change things.
I’m struggling.
And I want to put that struggle into words, just in case it somehow helps someone else in this situation (of which there are lots, just look at any job search board). I don’t know if I have any answers, so it may just be a “hey I’m not alone with these feelings” vibe that people get from this.
I’ve been out of work since the beginning of September, and I’ve had very little luck lining up interviews. Most places aren’t actually hiring, so they either ghost you or send you an automated “we’ve looked at your resume and decided to pass” emails. They say networking is the best way to get a job, but I’m exhausting my network of people I know and have worked with personally before.
The last time I was searching for a job, over a year ago, the one thing that I kept getting hung up on was passing coding tests. The stress of a live coding challenge would impede my performance, and the one place I had a take-home test, the solution I wrote wasn’t as good as it could have been. I was expecting more of this sort of problem this time around, but that hasn’t been the case. This time, I’m getting feedback (when I get feedback) that indicates a lack of the right design or leadership skills people are looking for.
I live with chronic depression. I’ve been getting treatment for it over the past four years or so, including anti-depressant medication, which does keep it from being worse than it is, but doesn’t completely solve the problem.
This constant drumbeat of “your not good enough” doesn’t help. I live with a perpetual knot in my stomach from the stress of wondering about how quickly we’re burning through our savings and how much runway we have. My partner is a PhD History candidate, ABD they call it “All But Dissertation”, and she’s trying to find work too, but the academic world is worse than the software engineering world. And with a small child taking up so much of our time, it’s harder still.
A future retirement is a joke at this point. All of that money has been exhausted. We had already used a portion of our savings to pay for some home maintenance a few years ago, but that seems like a mistake now. What good will they be if we have to declare bankruptcy and lose the house.
I’m so sick from the stress that I don’t even want to touch a computer, much less work on projects that could be part of a portfolio of work I could show potential employers.
I almost rescheduled the final round of interviews I just had because of this stress induced illness making me feel so bad. I feel like I’m burning years off my life, and totally expect to see more grey hairs in the coming months as it catches up with me.
I just want this to be over and to find a good long term work home. I don’t just want to get by, I want a place I can thrive. Each failure gets harder and harder to bounce back from. I know it’s the depression talking, and I try to remind myself of that, but it’s a siren song.
So, it’s back to square one, it feels like, and finding places I can apply. Cloudflare took three months to get back to me with a generic rejection email. The interview cycles are too long, and I’m emotionally exhausted and running out of time.