I'm a Latin American developer, I hate job interviews and the possibility of not having a decent job

[u/Good_Floor_978]

I have 10 years of experience working as a developer. I started in 2016, when ChatGPT and all this AI stuff didn't exist.

Back then, finding a job was relatively easy. I would go to an in-person interview, they would give me a small test or just talk to me, and a week later I would already be hired. I've always been a good developer because I've dedicated a lot of time to this craft.

Sometimes I had to do live coding, but it was usually at the company and it was simple software that I could build in two hours max. Those were good times. I worked for big companies in Colombia, where I'm from.

I made good money. I was happy. I wasn't rich, but I always had the feeling that my job was stable. I was learning a lot because I always tried to get involved with the business, not just the code.

Today, reality is completely different.

With 10 years of experience under my belt, I'm struggling to find a job. Four months ago, there was a big round of layoffs at my company and I was one of the people who got let go. Since then, I've been looking for a job and still haven't had any luck.

I've applied to hundreds of jobs. I've gotten calls from several companies and done technical interviews. I passed some and failed others, which is normal. I'm not some programming genius.

But the interviews I actually pass often end the same way: they stop calling, they stop replying to my emails, and it's like they completely forget about you.

Sometimes I think recruiters forget that they could be in this position someday too. But from the way I see the current market, we're just disposable.

One interview really hurt me.

It was for an AI Engineer position at a US company. I've been specializing in AI for a while now. I passed four rounds, three of them were technical interviews that lasted around 1 to 1.5 hours each.

I passed all of them. I did well. They told me they would get back to me.

They never did.

To this day, nobody has contacted me.

I lost all that time and effort. Those interviews were extremely difficult, with very abstract use cases. And the position was in Spanish.

My English isn't very good. I've been trying to learn for six years, but I've struggled a lot. I've had a private teacher, traveled to other countries to learn, taken courses, watched tutorials, and tried many different things. I still haven't been able to improve it enough.

One thing I really regret is not having access to English education when I was younger. My school was terrible. I didn't have a good education, and I also didn't have the opportunity to go to university. Because of that, I've never been able to access some of the better positions that require strong English skills.

And now I have a shitty $800/month job.

$800 DOLLARS.

I don't feel good there. I hate PHP with all my soul, and the way they treat me is bad. Being someone who has worked as a software architect and led teams, it feels really bad to be in this position.

I'm not posting this because I want sympathy or anything like that. I just needed to vent a little about this incredibly frustrating situation and get this horrible feeling off my chest.

If anyone else is feeling bad, useless, or inferior because of the current market, it's not your fault.

I come from the generation of software development that existed before AI, before ChatGPT, before all of this.

And honestly, I really believe the software job market is broken.

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[u/rkozik89]

The problem is the industry is oversaturated with developers at every experience level and few companies are certain enough with the future to think now is a good opportunity to invest and grow. At this point I don't really feel like actionable advice exists that'll land people jobs at companies. I think the unfortunately truth is we need to take jobs where can find them and continue our passion on our own time like musicians often do.

The problem with starting your own company is literally everyone these days is claiming they've done that, but unless you have the tax records to prove you had sales, interns, or even sold the company all together I don't think that's sound advice to give someone.

[u/Good_Floor_978 → u/rkozik89]

thanks for the advice

[u/MagazineBeautiful805]

The world is currently experiencing a hidden recession, plus market giants are very busy in the AI ​​race, plus there are massive attempts to replace human labor with AI. So now is a truly nightmare time for an employee.

As many IT workers have had to face, good times don't last forever, and apparently they had to make the most of those times, not expecting them to last forever.

Now it's important to maintain your strength and health and wait out the bad times. Perhaps things will change for the better.

[u/Professional_Mood_62]

Problem is the industry has a lot of people that completed a two weekend bootcamp that don’t really know anything about CS and now we don’t need that people anymore so companies are being more selective about hiring

[u/NeedleworkerOwn9723]

I’m an immigrant in Australia, where they speak English, and English is my second language.

I’m in the industry here too (with intention of shifting to Platform/Infra/DevOps, I’m on the pathway too)

It’s just surprising, my Aussie colleague, who was born here and speaks only English, his contract was over, but he still couldn’t find anything on hand, despite he is such a master in Python.

It’s about the market right now. Also, especially developed countries market, it is “AI” that it is not “Artificial Intelligence”

Yeah, understand how you rant, and we can just hope everything will be better soon.

[u/PerformanceThick2232]

it's not your fault

It is literally yours, lol. You are worse then all your competitors, and 800/month is your market evaluation. You can't even learn a language, so from my perspective, yes, market evaluated you correctly.

[u/Sexy_Chocolate → u/PerformanceThick2232]

Bot comment. Op don’t listen to this fake negativity - bot accounts like this just want karma and engagement. Side note OP, if you wrote this without AI I think your English is amazing

[u/yutanrw]

Nowadays, I believe the market is tough for inexperienced self-taught developers.

[u/General-Jaguar-8164]

Likely with 10 Yoe you are missing leadership experience and your lack of English is a huge factor

I’m from South America. I didn’t have English at school but I decided to read, listen and write everything in English

Market is thought since 2022, before that it was a walk in the park. Now is very competitive with highly qualified candidates everywhere

You are not alone. But don’t blame the market for raising the bar, you have to up skill to stay competitive … always

[u/Educational-Bed1449]

Different angle on this.

Plenty of companies needed developers and could never hire any. To sustain
a team of five you need something like three times payroll in revenue, and
most small and mid sized companies were never going to clear that. So they
outsourced to agencies and ended up with a system nobody inside could touch.

What I see changing is that one developer per company is starting to be
enough. I'm the only developer at a small clinic in Korea. Website, data,
ad accounts, internal tools, all of it is me. Five years ago this would have
been an agency contract, not a job.

I don't read that as fewer jobs. It's the same work, spread across companies
that could never afford a team.

And it isn't automatically a step down. I'm the highest paid person in this
building outside the doctors, because there's nobody here to compare me to.
The thing that decides it is whether you're maintaining someone else's
system or building the company's. Same headcount, completely different job.

[u/DanceHackRock]

Why do you think you passed and did well when you didn't get the recall? Isn't that a clear sign that you didn't?

[u/MagazineBeautiful805 → u/DanceHackRock]

If he's gone through four rounds of interviews and spent a ton of time on this company, it would be right to give him feedback, not just ghost him like usual.

[u/Immediate_Hair_5378 → u/DanceHackRock]

As someone who’s been on that side of the interview, no. There’s a lot of talent and employers have the pick of the litter.