It is rough out there, y’all.
I’ve been applying for software engineering roles since summer. Let’s just say it’s been an exercise in persistence.
So far the results are a little disheartening!
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So many applications! The lone interview didn’t go well; the role was listed as remote, but was actually in-office in a totally different city. Awkward!
I’ve attended every OSU career fair, Codepath career fair, employer recruiting event, and random tech talk I can get my hands on. (Side note–if you have a chance to hear Tony Fadell talk, take it. The most pragmatic and profanity-laced event ever, amazing stuff.) My resume has been reviewed and critiqued, and is down to one page of hopefully impressive goodness.
The basic problem is that the numbers are wildly unbalanced for new graduates. A recruiter I spoke to this week was super honest and told me she had 16 open spots and over 4000 applications. There was a hilarious hot-mic moment in a different recruiting event where the hosts thought the participants had left the call and were chatting about how most applicants wouldn’t be reviewed or get a response since there were just so many. Which felt pretty brutal in that moment, but I suppose the upside is that I’m not getting rejected based on any merits.
It’s tough to stay selective and only apply for things I’d be theoretically good at. I’m a 271 ULA and love low-level work, so I’m interested in embedded and optimized programming. Backend, API development, and database work are also strengths. I’m tempted to write a script to apply indiscriminately and see if my results are better!
I’m hoping that this is just a rough hiring cycle, and we’ll all have better luck in 2023. But it also means I’m about to have some time on my hands! So I’m looking for volunteer opportunities and personal projects. I’ve got a pretty good list of possibilities started, but am open to nifty suggestions. A few of the frontrunners:
- Signed up on Ragtag to get connected to non-profits
- Enrolled as a volunteer at DonateCode
- Registered as a volunteer at Social Coder
- Project plan: Finish integrating data from solar system into LifX tiles
- Project plan: Library for converting common IoT data sources into unified MongoDB data source
I’m sad that I likely won’t be able to put my shiny new degree to work for a while, but I want to keep my skills sharp and retain what I’ve learned!
