I Am a Bad Developer

Being rejected repeatedly is disheartening for sure. However, 10 rejections is actually not that many, nor is two months a very long job search. Many companies have a pretty narrow idea of what a good candidate is - e.g. "5 years experience with X" or "agrees with the lead engineer about most things" or "can solve this tricky puzzle". I'm a very good developer and have a degree from a top school but faced many rejections early in my career (more than 10 I'm sure).

It is extremely disheartening to go through rejection after rejection but you have to do your best to not let it get you down. You certainly dont sound like a "bad developer" - its just that the market is tough out there and companies can pick and choose. I have "failed" many interviews and I know it can knock you around. Its only a matter of time before you find the right job - not saying you might not have to take a more menial job in the mean time to keep the money coming in. I was unemployed at the beginning of the year - I was lucky I found another job after three months.

All I would say is, aim much lower, pick up plain old ugly Java, learn Spring, Hibernate. From being a "bad" advanced algorithms Lisp / C++ developer it's an easy jump to be an "ok" CRUD apps developer / Enterprise drone. You will nail the technical interviews, just try not to be overqualified.

Pick up either Spring/Java/Hibernate for the corporate "boring" market (but still well paid / plenty of offering) Or Rails / Django for the still cool startup market

You can make a good living as a CRUD app developer, many of us do just that. reading through SICP is a huge bonus, but not a requirement to get a job in this "improving, but not yet fully ready for functional programming" world.

Did you ask yourself sometimes if you are perhaps overqualified? or causing the impression that you are going to over complicate things? Did it occur to you that you are maybe making interviewers look stupid as you give them a functional solution you learned in SICP to a problem they had in mind a imperative, for loop, lot's of shared state solution to? Perhaps you are too good of a developer for your own good?

I interviewed and hired lot's of developers, and having someone "too smart" is sometimes as bad as having someone who is, well, the opposite...

Try to go to a professional mock interviews service, and check if it's indeed you being a bad developer or something else, check anything, gee, check even your breath, (not kidding, had candidates who were brilliant but simply had bad breath, I was the only one decent enough to tell them that I guess as they didn't understand why they can't seem to get a job) not that I'm saying that this is your problem, but don't go and say that you being a bad programmer is the reason without very serious investigation.

Take it as a debugging task, rule out anything, I'm pretty sure you are a developer much better than many others happily employed that the moment...

You seem so obsessed with being part of the true programming elite. And blow it up so far as to think that most people know how to answer those interview questions.

As if by being intelligent your daughter should value you and you would derive worth. How can anyone be proud of cashing in on the genetic lottery? Your family will only ever love you for how hard you work and how much you sacrifice. Whether programmer, or plumber. Big difference.

I think it's hard for some to show confidence after being rejected a bunch. That may be coming through in the writing because of the recent rejections.