alt Hacker NewsNobody else will tell you the truth: nobody will ever hire you as a software developer. You will never get past the filter.
I tried to enter the field at 35. I couldn’t get an interview with a CS degree. I did everything right. Good GPA. Portfolio. Professional resume help. Sent applications for two years and heard nothing. Now I’m 45 with nothing to show for it. All those late nights studying coding interview questions and I never got a chance to try.
The success stories you hear are people with friends or family members who get them through the door. Unless you know someone like this, give up now and don’t waste your time.
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I agree you're going to have a tough time landing SWE at meta, but I think there is more to this story.
> I did everything right
This can't be true.
An often forgotten field that's adjacent to programming but much easier to get into is network engineering. If you're smart enough to program then you're smart enough to to architect and configure a network. Salaries are comparable to programming jobs, and college degrees generally don't matter much.
I'm sorry it didn't work out for you. Sometimes it's luck of the draw. It also depends a lot on which industry you're in (finance, gaming, etc.). As an extreme example, if you're any good at COBOL, you can probably get a job working on legacy systems regardless of your age. Gaming, probably not so much.
You may have more success getting smaller freelance jobs at first and building a reputation as a can-do developer, which might be easier to parlay into a full time job. But at the end of the day, connections are sometimes the most important factor, so I would encourage anyone in your shoes to work on not just their technical chops but also their people-meeting skills.
What filter? Why would age matter at all on the filter?
Getting no offers in 2 years seems very possible (it's tough out there - every job seems to have dozens of applicants), but getting no interviews at all is rough.
I wonder if anyone on HN has experience working with a technical consulting or contracting agency. Are there good ones? How hard is it to get hired?