I got laid off in March as a software engineer 2 and since then I’ve hardly applied to many jobs, of the few I’ve applied to I got a handful of interviews which I couldn’t even clear the first round of Leetcode test. I can barely solve 1 or 2 LC questions a day, and I’ve tried to read system design for a while but can’t find any interest in it. Even if I solve the interview questions we’ll I’ve been rejected, everything feels so pointless. I just want to play video games and watch movies till these darks days pass and there’s another boon in tech hiring. But with AI it feels like many jobs won’t ever come back. Should I consider changing careers or moving to another country. I don’t think I have any real passion or talent for programming, but it’s the only skill I have right now. I don’t know what level of panic I should be feeling right now. I don’t have any close friends or supportive family to talk to about any of this.
Hmm, I’m having trouble just landing interviews. Probably 50-100 applications before an interview. The possibility of losing my home is all that keeps me motivated. I do like software engineering though, and am always working on personal projects that probably won’t make me money.
But yeah, I do find it hard to motivate myself for practicing leetcode problems, and I do suck at them, since most stuff is just about remembering algorithms I learned in a class more than a decade ago, and the few times I’ve needed to implement them myself in my career, I’d just look them up.
I’m not sure it’s “AI” causing lack of demand though. It’s just most large companies have given up “innovating,” and are in rent-seeking mode now. In the US, at least, I’ve heard that many companies are only hiring devs in India to backfill the devs they’ve laid-off or quit. I’ve interviewed with an agentic AI startup, and it was pretty obvious it was “Actually Indians” (underpayed, overworked devs would fix the shitty code their AI agent would write). Most of the interviews I’ve gotten were to lead a team of all-remote Indian devs.