I’ve already forgot what I googled to find this site and I apologize if, after this rant, this is the wrong place for myself and my story. I just felt like I had to try and get some of these thoughts off my chest.
Please don’t feel any obligation to read this wall of text.
I self identify, or at-least have been up until now, as a web-developer. Truth be told, I haven’t been doing it long enough and am definitely not good enough to deserve the title. I am 26 years old and have been teaching higher ed since I was 22. Teaching was amazing, but I learned first-hand it wasn’t the type of career you could raise a family on, so I decided to try a career that used the same skill set (I taught a “analytical” subject at my community college) which would allow me that possibility. Instead of going back to a traditional school I decided to go to a web dev bootcamp in the Bay Area. I graduated and felt competent in my stack until I started my job search.
Since “graduating” I’ve been unemployed for almost 6 months now. The “job assistance” from the programming bootcamp I attended was basically an explanation on how to write a resume and present yourself in an interview. I’ve sent out over 100 applications, and only heard back from about a quarter of them. Of those that I did hear back from, the typical response was mostly “we want someone with more experience.” So I felt like I was in a catch-22 between the fact that no one will hire me because I had no experience and the fact that I can’t get experience because no one will hire me. I’ve had coffee with a few developers in the bay area and when I asked them how THEY got their first jobs, their responses were generally that they got their job because they already knew someone in the company. I, however, know no one. Coming from academia, I had little connections into tech jobs and companies. After attending some meetups I’ve also realized how much I struggle with social anxiety.
The main point of all of this is that I’ve run out of options. I’ve had to resort to food-stamps , unemployment, and my SO’s minimum wage income to pay the bills and eat. I felt and still feel like a complete incompetent sack of shit.
The saving grace of my story is that I’ve landed a QA role at a well established tech company. So starting next month, I’ll have a job and it will be enough to accomplish my original goal which was to have the type of income to support a family. I plan on proposing to my SO as soon as I can afford her ring. I should be happy, but I am not. I think my goals and aspirations, for better or worse, changed along this process.
What depresses me is how much I actually enjoyed web development. I wanted to be in a career that, like teaching, I enjoyed. I won’t have that now.
I feel like I failed in actually “becoming a web developer” and that I’m not smart enough to actually succeed in the career. I’ve just been pretending to be a web developer up until now and I never had what it takes to begin with. My story has come to the point where I’m just repeating that general theme. I feel envious, embarrassed, and defeated whenever I think about web development.