Getting Hired as a Software Developer is Impossible 🙄

00:00 The Tech Job Market Crisis?
00:49 Common Mistakes in Job Applications
01:57 Crafting an Effective Resume
06:37 Optimizing Your GitHub Profile
09:26 Leveraging LinkedIn for Job Search
14:11 Gaining Experience and Building Projects
18:17 The Role of Time and Luck
20:24 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

[LeftoverSundriesMan]

As A CS degree holder who's still looking for their first full-time position, I am tired of volunteering my time for others and trying to navigate the politics of open-source projects just to try to gain some experience that would give me a chance at gaining paid employment. I'm beginning to need income so badly that I'm expanding my job search to nearly anything that will give me a callback.

[kusurugizeme]

I can't imagine disliking a take so much that I would email a person because of it. That's wild

[LifeWithSeb]

As a person with 2 years software experience after 14 interviews with 6 different companies in the last 5 months I finally got a software engineer job with not even too good salary and I can confirm it was hard

[perc-ai]

Brian you are completely delusional. It's a simple demand supply problem. Just think about how many millions of people are in a CS degree program right now around the world, bootcamps, or self teaching online every single year.... There too many people learning to code and not enough jobs for it. Where are the millions of jobs you are spouting? Don't you realize those statistics are overreported, companies put multiple job ads on different places all the time. There's less jobs than you think or others are reporting.

[georgebaraza]

Work for free to gain experience? Call it pride if you like but this is the last thing I can think of as a developer. It makes those you working for take advantage of your desperate situation to extort you. If you can't secure a freelancing gig, just work on atleast 3 full stack projects that you can add to your resume; something that could keep your conversation with hiring managers/decision makers going.

Tech content creators should discard this idea of advising unemployed software engineers to do free work. Are you aware that some of these developers are on their own, and have to fend everything for themselves, including the most basic of things like food? No software developer, regardless of their employment status should adopt this kind of self-defeating strategy.

[first]

CS grads have grown to such an extent that they outpace supply, especially now that we are no longer in a low interest environment. A decade ago there we had about 25k grads annually, now we are way over 100k. Supply and demand.

[AshleyLaughter-kn]

Supply and demand. Also unchecked expectations. As a Data Scientist, can confirm 80% of interviews require elite coding stages, and I do analysis all day instead of software dev. Within 1 hour of job posting, 100+ responses. The VP where I work got over 100 qualified resumes for a single position. Employers can set super high expectations from a potential candidate. Was told in an interview for Lowes(!) that I would have to survive multiple rounds of high level coding challenges! Interviewers would not even go on camera!

[FatherPhi]

Didn’t watch the whole video, but this seems to ignore the fact that entry level jobs are hardly being opened in the US at large, high paying companies and the competition is highly educated and qualified in many cases. I agree that people shouldn’t give up, but they will likely have to start very small with very low pay and wait out the storm.

[MikeStoneJapan]

I started in the humanities. Worked in service for 5 years. Went through a boot camp. Searched like a mofo. Got into a small startup for comms and did a bit of dev. Did menial dev stuff for work, side projects in my spare time and learned the industry. Lost that job, searched like a mofo, took lower paying jobs in the interim, got something with a lil bit more tech duties. Rinse and repeat

[hikemalliday]

Its really fucking hard to get in this field right now, i would not recommend it. Im almost 2 years self taught and about to complete a 5 month internship, but the other intern, who if anything is smarter than me, was just told that under normal circumstances they would hire him, but cant right now. I have my meeting about it monday and expect to hear the same thing.

[detader]

i have a business which makes mobile app games. I hired my friend for a percentage of the revenue. Now he makes a good salary, same as me. My point is that why should we as developers "get hired", rather than do something of our own. Yes making a business is going to require blood, sweat and tears, but after it all ends the outcome is better than a regular job.

[owenbartolf]

I will say, cleaning out the Github was a very good suggestion I haven't heard anyone else. I removed a bunch of garbage school class repos to ensure that only my best stuff is the most visible.

[MrRoGoNow]

Some interesting comments here. As someone who's interviewing a lot of candidates at the moment some of the things that I pay attention to are;
1. If it's on your resume be able to talk about it. Don't just put stuff on there and hope it doesn't come up. Trust instantly gone if it does.
2. If you don't know something just admit it. Being humble is important, nobody knows everything and being able to admit that is massive for me anyway.
3. Personality and attitude are huge factors. You'll need learn as you go, regardless of experience, so interviewers are picturing themselves being the one who's working along side you at the start.
4. Show that you're enthusiastic about tech/dev, keep abreast of it in your own time, etc. Someone who did a course just to get a job is a red flag.

[ooogabooga]

It really is the worst time to be a software engineers for real, market is saturated and there is no actual demand for more programmers. The demand vs supply curve is highly unpropotionate in 2024. I would honestly advice everyone to refocus career into something different.

[RecreationalNuke]

Protip: just lie on your resume. Everyone else is.

[Dalamain]

Your take on this is flippant... it's an absolute bloodbath in the job market. Your logic about 40+ devs going into management (thus freeing up developer vacancies) is sound logic, but in the market right now that is not how it is playing out.
Even seniors are struggling although they are getting an odd interview compared to a junior. What I've seen is a merging of roles like DevOps and Dev and sometimes QA into a single role with above norm compensation. It is brutal out there even with everything you listed at 1:52

[itismydump]

Protip: they either want to consider hiring you or not. You can be prepared and ready and all that, if ultimately the hiring principle doesn't see the need to make the hire right then, it just won't happen. Beware, the vast majority of who you interview is NOT the final decision maker, especially another techie/engineer. They may be delegated the authority prior. Then and only then, is it a pure technical challenge and your experiences, projects, and resumes come into play.

[Joshua.Developer]

All this seems like a pain in the ass. I really don't think I would like working in the tech world.

[dj-xnpo]

@ Brian Jenney This is my first time watching one of your videos. I’m a rising freshman Cybersecurity major. Honestly I’ve only watched 4.5 minutes so far and I really like the way you explain things. Tho a few of the comments find your advice discouraging there’s a lot more people myself included who genuinely appreciate you making this video. I decided to subscribe to your channel. Im definitely going to watch more of your videos and heed your advice. You’re doing a bang up job man! Keep it up!

[JoniniTheChickenNugget]

This is great advice of jobs (especially STEM) in general! This helps me as a BME student!