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

I interviewed for a front-end dev position (it was my first ever interview in the industry, I vomited before I got there so it was a pretty crazy day).

I come in. The front-end guy starts asking me questions to try and solve something he is working on. No-one else is there yet. He is asking me about why a JS compiler is removing his comments, I say I don't know, I have never had that issue before...I make an off-hand comment that I use React and most of my JS code doesn't have comments because I am just working on projects by myself, and I don't do a lot of library code...the manager comes in at this point, and proceeds to berate me about why commenting is essential. I say: I use comments where they are needed. Off he goes, again.

Interview starts. Manager proceeds to go through a series of questions designed to expose my ignorance. None of which are related to the job. One classic was him explaining to me that database normalization made no difference to the size of the database because "the data is all the same on the disk" (which is, ofc, not accurate...I tried to explain, he just kept repeating that over and over...he actually said as I was leaving "make sure you understand databases for your next interview" with a massive shit-eating grin). For some reason, there was also a back-end guy there who, upon hearing that I built something in Java, proceeded to launch into a series of questions on internals of Java (for example, he asked me what the difference was between certain versions of Java and the size of the heap...perhaps unsurprisingly, he also got some of this stuff wrong but began laughing when I said I thought X was Y).

The only two questions that I had about front-end dev were: the front-end guy trying to ask me to help solve an issue he was having (before the interview, when no-one was there), and a question about the value of this in arrow functions (which I got wrong, but is also an excruciating thing to try and explain, so I don't think the guy knew whether I got it wrong...it is a terrible question). That was it.

> 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.

The churn of knowledge can be limited by choosing technologies that don't require constant adaptation. (Time to offend the .NET fanboys): If you pick .NET, there isn't that much difference between .NET Framework 4.5 (from 2012) and the latest version of core. The job still gets done, just with a different set of packages. If you don't have a use for async/await or the TPL, you can go as far back as 3.5 (from 2007).

> 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?

Some do, but with 19.5 years of experience, this wouldn't be much of an impediment for you in the United States. All of my opinions apply only to the United States. I haven't worked in other countries and can't comment on them.

> They'll require a ton of time and attention every day.

IMO, a "code janitor" doesn't just sit around all day reading HN. When I use those words, I mean the type of job where you're expected to fix bugs and implement features and not much else. Even if there is talk of higher expectations, there are never any consequences for just going with the flow. You'll rarely/never be asked to work overtime or learn on your own time. You'll only pay lip service to clean code, clean architecture, and long-term thinking. You'll still be expected to show up by 9, hang around until 4, and not screw off the whole time. The job is still a job; it just doesn't strain your brain.

> 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. :|

Headhunters are the antidote to this. When a recruiter wants to connect on LinkedIn and have a short phone conversation about an exciting new position, you always say yes. And if they're not sending connection requests to you, then you send the request to them.

The comment I'm relying to is pretty grayed out at the time of me making this comment but is this really that off?

I know a number of folks who work either as developers or on an IT team for a publicly traded company. 300k+ is a stretch but a lot of them pull an extra 30-80k / year more than working at a non-publicly traded company simply because of the stock options they get every year as part of their compensation.

Having publicly traded stock is nice because once you've gotten past the vesting period you can hang onto them for >= 1 year and sell them on demand for 15% long term capital gains tax instead of the usual 35%+ you would have to pay on income tax. Getting an extra 25k to 68k extra post-tax income every year on top of an average dev salary is a big deal.

As of recently I started having really confusing opinions on the state of interviewing and our industry in general.

Since there is no gatekeeping (for better or for worse), you get a large pool of people with wild variety of skills, so these silly interviews are the laziest way to assess people as an alternative to having credentials such as that of a Civil Engineer, Doctor or other professions.

I don't know of any other industry where the interview is this silly, but studying for it for a few months top could get you a 6 figure salary (not everyone makes it, but the chances are quite high) if you know what you're doing/skilled enough.

I started to play the game as well and actually got a lot better at solving this type of problems than say few months ago. My confidence is high and I'm a lot less intimidated by this type of interviews, but so is my I-take-no-shit-ometer since even if I aced some of these interviews recently and the interviewer(s) was/were acting in ways I didn't appreciate, I can just say no. I mean, I can play your game, but I'm not gonna put up with your shit.

The best way to actually learn how to code is have someone else teach you whose been doing it for several years.

I wouldn't be where I'm at today had I not had my lead help me out during my internship. My school was just trash at teaching programming. Not only was it basically self taught, but everybody got A's so long as they just submitted code that compiled. My lead actually taught me how and why this stuff works.