If software engineering is in demand, why is it so hard to get a job?

I see many, many more developers lamenting the "requirement" of a CS degree to get a software development job than I see lawyers lamenting the "requirement" of a law degree for a law job or doctors lamenting the "requirement" of a medical degree for a doctor job. If it opens doors, and you want that door open... get the degree!

Wait, not even that.

Even if you are senior you can get that job (because, for example, you are from another country and suddenly you are "cheap" even if senior).

19.5 years of programming, but mostly web programming for the last ~12. I want to move away from that, I am sick of it already. There's always something more to learn and even though I don't mind at all -- it keeps my mind sharp which is something I want to keep all the way to my death! -- the churn of knowledge in there is exhausting.

> If you have a CS degree...

I am not from USA and have no degree. I am 41 y/o and I'm a self-taught programmer ever since 12 y/o. Not sure how well that flies on interviews; I feel the US companies put a lot of value on degrees?

> If you apply somewhere and don't get a call back, don't sweat it, and don't take it personally. It just doesn't matter. Hiring is a noisy process...

Completely agreed. I've been in a rough mental and physical health patch for ~3 years now and I've changed more employers/customers than I wanted. Tech hiring is completely broken indeed. You're quite right.

> I'm going to offend a ton of niche fanboys now: Don't pick Vue, Go, Erlang, Haskell, or Rust.

I am not a fanboy at all. I've used 8 languages over my career -- Elixir (stepping on Erlang) and Rust included and I've picked them based on their true, proven and testimonialized merits.

I don't take offense with your statement at all. I presume you meant "aim for something huge and somewhat commoditized that has a ton of legacy code to maintain"? If so, I'll agree with you immediately; there was a period during which I've been barraged by offers from German and Swiss companies almost every day, for months -- all for Java and C# huge legacy beasts.

But sadly that's not where my heart is. :(

Furthermore, I am willing to bet my neck most of those are NOT a code janitor job at all. They'll require a ton of time and attention every day. If I'll do that I'll just find an Elixir or Rust job but at least be happy with the tech stack (if not the area -- the webdev -- which I hate with a passion nowadays).

> Now I'll offend the embedded and systems programmers: Don't pick C or C++. They're just not widely used in business applications.

I haven't been an active C/C++ programmer for like 12-13 years now but IMO you're not on the mark here: there are a lot of business apps but they usually belong in huge old mastodons that are too stubborn to move on (I personally know the VPs of engineering in two such companies!).

But overall you are right -- they are niche but not the good kind of niche; you need a metric ton of battle scars to even qualify there.

> Congrats, you are now qualified for the majority of SE job postings at non-tech companies.

I'd agree but I've neglected networking -- both physical and virtual -- for most of my career and now at 41 y/o I started to feel the negative effects of that. :|

Unfortunately, yes. Young engineers are terrible at communication and working with others. Partly due to workplace incentives and partly because you must realize that entire generations have grown up with computers and not people.

Never tried waterboarding, but my issue with white boarding is that it’s deeply subjective. With working code you at least can judge the correctness straight away with a real piece of runnable code. You can also observe how the candidate reasons around the problem and how they formulate and test hypotheses. With a white board you can observe the candi^Wvictim making a table test, a term I first heard in the 70s and last heard in the early 80s. It is just cruel.