Ask HN: What should a stuck dev do?
I am struggling with finding work and having thoughts about whether or not I should keep going or start thinking about switching careers. Any advice/perspective is appreciated.
I am a 40+ year old self-taught software developer. I've been doing front-end/full stack development for most of my 10+ year career. I was also struggling heavily with undiagnosed ADHD and the emotional dysregulation that comes with it for most of my life. I finally discovered it 3+ years ago after around 5 years in therapy and have put in an incredible amount of work since then to learn how to manage it all effectively.
Through this process, I've also come to find a real joy in my work. Now I just need a good job to get my life back on track.
I have been interviewing since December or so and have realized that I do not approach this work in my head the same as engineers that have gone through typical school and career trajectories. Most of my roles have been through recommendations which short-circuited the typical tech interviews or was I hired by non-technical people who only cared about the output, so I have been fortunate in that regard. However, that fortune has become a burden and made it incredibly hard to navigate tech interviews where I am mostly graded on my ability to interview and how homogeneous I am.
In my off time I have been learning new languages, doing coding exercises and working on personal projects to try to display proficiency, but it doesn't seem to matter. I submit applications and receive only form rejection letters, people reach out about work and after a conversation I never hear from them again. When I do get the interview, the questions seem unnatural and designed to garner a specific response rather than have a real conversation.
To top it off, I get exactly zero feedback and have no idea if I'm going through a process with a successful ending or just banging my head against the wall. I'm willing to do take-home coding tests or even a short contract-to-hire period to prove myself, but I'm not even being asked. I think most devs may not be ok with that, and maybe that's partly why, but it's a perfect opportunity for me to overcome concerns during the interview.
Am I on the right track and just experiencing what most people go through? Has anyone else been in a similar situation? Any thoughts or ideas on how to overcome this?
If you got this far, thank you.