“Was the Great Resignation of 2021 a Glorious Opportunity for Job Seekers like Me in Tech? How I Transitioned from Infantry to a Lucrative Career in Software Engineering Without a College Degree #GreatResignation #TechJobs #JobSeekers”
From Infantry to Software Support Engineer
– Transitioning out of the Army
– Teaching myself coding with no background
– Landing a job as a software support engineer in a low-cost-of-living area
– Advancing to back end engineer and later an SRE
The Job Market During the Great Resignation
– Many job opportunities for those with decent portfolios
– Retail employees learning python and quadrupling their salaries
– Employers desperate to fill seats quickly
Personal Experience and Subreddit Help
– Nearly doubling my salary within 10 months
– Struggles of college colleagues in finding internships
– The changing dynamics of the job market
– The supportive role of the subreddit in navigating the tech industry
I’m very sorry the industry is the way it is, but it will get better with time. I hope.
I used to work with a guy that a was bit older and he was telling me about how he got into “software” in the late 90s.
Back then, he could make $2000 for a decent banner ad. Just design the ad and deliver it to a customer. Basically just make a decent GIF and the HTML to embed it in a page.
What is and isn’t valuable changes over time. It just happened really fast this time due to the crazy conditions we were in where money was almost “free”.
Once the cost of borrowing goes below inflation, there is basically no disincentive to borrowing.
I was a 10 years neet who did nothing all day except playing wow or lol. Joined some dev sweatshop cause found love and got >200k job in less than 2 years. Â
Good times
Lol. I’m endlessly entertained by the Bay Area bubble that is this sub. No, the industry isn’t completely fucked. It’s just harder for you to get a job making 200-300k right now.
Market may have been better back then but OP makes it sound like you could get a job by sending one app…
He might’ve been fortunate but as someone who graduated in ‘21 I was sending out hundreds of apps leading up to my junior year, and many of my classmates as well. Sure it may be more difficult now but entry level has always been challenging to break into
your sentiments deserve an award..
you’re exactly right.
Yeah 2010 was a total wasteland too. I remember applying for a seasonal retail job and not getting a call back after attending a group interview. 2009 is the only year since I started working that I had 0 income for the whole entire year. Shit was bad. It got better. This will get better too.
You really just got lucky (and you have the vet advantage, which is a preferred higher for a lot of places)
That was the year I graduated, and it absolutely took a few hundred apps and months of treating applying like a job (while door dashing).
Many in my cohort didn’t even make it into the field. Even on here, there were posts about people giving up and going into other fields.
Multi round interviews were absolutely the norm then as well.
I think when people talk about “great resignation” they refer to a period when the employees are in more demand than their supply. Its natural that people decide to leave if they know there are more employeers willing them to pay more.
The idea that it was some sort of antiwork movement where people decided to quit because a Tik Tok trend seems off to me.
It’s great to have your insight, I appreciate it and I’m sure many others do. It’s been a rough job market but it’s good to hear that times have BEEN better, meaning that times will hopefully BE better someday in the future. It’s something to look forward to.
Why do you think they went so hard with layoffs?
I think the number of people firing out 1000’s of applications was way lower too. There was none of this 500 applicants for a job within 48 hours of listing stuff going on. You had maybe a few dozen applicants, it was easy to filter. Remote work hadn’t become the expectation yet, people were still mostly applying to local jobs or jobs they would relocate to, not just applying to every random job in the entire country assuming it could be remote.
The heartbreaking thing about this post is it sounds like you’re talking about a point in time that was decades ago. But it was months ago.
When you start your career >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> T1 CS School
When you start your career might be the closest thing to nepotism
Did you say 25 an hr I made that back in 2005 as a helpdesk level one. Sorry I’d just work for myself at that price point.