The REAL Reason Why It's Hard To Find A Software Job 

I've been programming for 18 years, and I had my first fulltime programming job this year. It turns out I'm more experienced than my entire team. Hr does hiring, that's half the problem.

This is great resume advice, thanks for sharing your story!

Thanks boss. We appreciate these kind of posts.

I graduated from school in 2021. I've been looking for a web dev job since than take little breaks from it. It's honestly exhausting

I graduated with a Marketing degree as well and realized quick that most of the jobs are strictly sales and cold calling which isn't for me. I went into a coding bootcamp (which isn't worth the price) and the tech market has shown to be the same. It's been difficult.

I have been applying since September and am at about 400 apps out. I only got 1 interview. Yea its pretty wild for me at least.

Thanks a lot. This is very helpful

very insightful, tbh im in the entry stage rn. I know it takes a lot of work, its already taken a lot of work, and its been years of programming and building projects. But im at that stage where I need something, so im gonna take my cs degree elsewhere and see what else i can get. I will still chip away at this, but this market is hard rn, and people have needs. so im gonna take care myself first, get something, then keep the goals in the back of my head and work hard to see if i can find something better in the future.

holy shit ! someone actually doing something other than React web dev and realizing IT is way vast when talking about getting into industry on RU-vid !!

I've been pretty meticulous and careful about my applications, often taking time tk read requirements and tailoring my resume. I'm almost 100 apps in and nothing yet. The only good sign is that I'm progressively getting less and less rejections within a few days. It's still tough

I currently work as a network egineer for a large hospital network in New York, but in the future I would love to get into softwear engineering for job security. I decided to start with C++ so I would have a more comprehensive understanding of programming in general. My end game is Typescript with Angular, and C# .NET developement due to the growing demand for interprise level solutions. What's cool about my situation is that I wouldn't have to change employers when I'm ready to switch roles.

At 5:45 is exactly what RU-vid has blocked. There is so many niche IT jobs like service now or salesforce(what I work on) and the salaries at least for Salesforce are 80k after a couple years of experience and certs. Like the amount of niches in enterprise IT is so much more than what RU-vid will have you believe.

Hello Brian. Thanks for this video. Our stories sound similar. I studied hard to get a marketing degree - but realized in 2020 during the pandemic that my real calling was software development. I decided on Jan 1 2021 that I was going to learn web development on Udemy. Thanks to Colt Steele - I learned a lot of content - was inspired to build projects - learned backend, built further projects - it took me almost 18 months to get my first full time job as a software developer last August (2022).

Very helpful - I think we underestimate the "human element" aspect of our field and how important that is.

Thank you man

This makes me sick. I'm in college doing everything I can to turn my assignments in on time (albeit with a 4.0). While I'm worrying about this my car is broken, I just had to bring my dog to the vet cuz she ate plastic, my rent is due, and I need to cut my lawn. However, my jumper cables are in my broken car away from home...lmfao....Now I need to find the time to fight for a job. Forgive me for the pessimism. I should have figured enough with how chaotic everything else is in life.

I have a slightly different perspective I think employers nowadays want a developer to be able to do everything they don’t want to train you up. Technically, you have to hit the ground running.

good insight

I have stopped at "out of bootcamp". You weren't out of a major computing university or whatever so yes it was hard. For me I was hired even before I got my diploma as the same period. Same experience for most of my class

Don't get frustrated. Just know this will be a very difficult journey. Easy things are not worth a damn. Use AI to help you. Create something difficult that works to stand out. MARKET YOURSELF.

Thank you. I'm not at this point yet. I decided to go the WGU route with Computer Science. I expect to run into all of this later.

I started applying for my first job around august of 2021 and found a position at a nearby defense contractor within a couple months. After working their for almost 2 years I'm beyond burnt out and am desperately looking for a new job. I know that I have a solid grasp of communication and teamwork but struggle to find myself even able to get contacted to showcase these skills to recruiters, instead facing countless auto rejections and ghostings. Things have been on an upturn somewhat recently with some 3rd party recruiters contacting me but how do I get myself the chance to even show that I have skills down for the positions I'm applying to?

I graduated with a Marketing & Product Management degree but literally all the marketing roles have been not marketing related. My friends that had internships found roles in the realms of product marketing associate. I did general assembly's software engineering immersive bootcamp but I'm not the biggest fan of coding/web dev, what areas would you suggest would be cool to focus on? I've been looking into data / business analyst roles & taking a linkedin learning class

Anybody can automate the process. I did some automation. It took me from 6 hours to find, read titles, apply to 30 minutes. I automated the scraping, auto response, location of resumes etc.

Superb ! Brian actually after a gap of 4 yrs from job employment due to family reasons now next month i will be out there in a new city for job hunt so it is making me anxious to prove myself & overthink about worst case scenario or being under prepared as i am not very sure what tasks would be up ahead for me to overcome so what should be done to believe in myself in uncertainty & tackle adversity head on ? Any best books suggestions? How can i prevent failures of any kind in my path ahead by acting strategically or something like that that would help me with mindset & also handling adversity in the best way possible to reach my desired outcome that is getting selected for the well paying job as hvac design engineer in Aec construction industry..

Lol i went way deep into learning that i got into mobile development (ios and android) and data science. I dont have much left to learn. I want to do SWE meanwhile and move around different teams after task gets fulfilled.

Great Content thank you Sir. I'm in the same position like you have been in the past job application processes.

Im looking to do military so I can get experience and into gov stuff and then overseas jobs easier

I’ve applied in 300 companies already, I have 2 tech cert , the meta front end developer and the google it support. I’m currently pursuing a bs degree in software engineering, im learning python now. I hope learn more on the backend and create some full stack projects and reapply for the full stack position because the frontend is like saturated

SW Testing/QA is going good.

3:45 bro - companies do not hire entry level developers - they want you to have 5 years minimum.

I hate that the software industry was allowed to tell people it was a super needed job and “growing” beyond replacement yet it’s 90% outsourced to India and has basically no new jobs. Please bring more attention to just how common outsourcing is. For every 1 onshore dev there are 9 offshore then they bring them into the country and pay them a regular wage.

I don't think it is the people with experience that are having the trouble, It is the people looking for entry level jobs. The reality is that the base level of skill you need to get an entry level job is much higher than it was even just a few years ago. It is hard for freshies to get an entry level job when 90% of the "entry level" jobs are looking for 3 years of professional experience minimum.

At least its not as bad as the life science industry .. where 70% of applicants have masters degrees but 50% of them are still Under-employed( working mc-jobs)-- and the ones that do have jobs in their field of study are making

can you show us a link to your resume, so we can learn from it?

It takes 5 months of active applying (~300 applications) for senior role, because there’s nobody to actually check your experience properly in an open discussion. And because senior (often) seen maaaany weird corporate things, they reject you due to „cultural fit”. Which basically means: „we want an experienced, but underpaid drone which won’t ask difficult questions”.

I'll tell you what the problem is why developers cannot find jobs: Saturation of web development candidates! The market is absolutely full of people who, for one reason or other, didn't follow the proper route to becoming a software engineer and took these "bootcamps" that specialize in web development and promise high salaries from that. I'm a senior systems software engineer, so I get down to the nitty-gritty of how computer systems work and how to make them do things from a low-level perspective. How many here who can't find work even know where to begin to be able to do that? Exactly. The market is certainly there for developers, just not web devs because there are too many.

Struggling as a computer engineer to get these positions.

Thanks for the insight. Subbing

Getting my first job was 4 hours of waiting for the interviewer outside in the heat, he shifted the meeting place twice good thing my mom had lend me her car that day.

I’ve been a Software Engineer professionally for over 5 years and have been applying to move on to another company for over a year. Probably not over 100 applicants and got multiple interviews and 1 offer but it is still insane. If you don’t check every single box, you’re nothing to most companies.

Going overseas for jobs

Like how you described it phone screen 😂.

look, it's 2023. if you're wanting those sexy 150k+ software jobs, and you've no experience anywhere near the field, you'd best find a comp sci degree from an ABET accredited engineering college. end of story. the market is quite saturated and people aren't interested in recent "boot camp" grads. they want the CS degree. and not from WGU. an actual in-person, 4 year institution. the industry matured and jobs where developers have real accountability for the livelihood of their customers want these folks to have rigorous training, regardless of the apparent, direct applicability of a lot of the curriculum. i would expect many jobs in the next 10 - 15 years to require new hires to have passed an FE exam for software engineering, or something of the sort.

Damn i use service now and get assigned tickets everyday >_< Cool platform tho!

The sw dev market is massively oversaturated with top talented devs ready to be hired for peanuts. Forget the field at least for.the next 5 years.

13 months now. None. Hiring freeze, AI ready to take peanuts

Independent consultant is the way to go

Anyone in the comments who can’t find a job: do any of you have a CS degree? Genuinely curious.

U don't know enough inside people is the answer

The reason you can't find a job is because you talk too much. ;-)

7:58 LMAO that video reference