I've been unemployed for a while now, and living in assistance housing for low-income residents. This by itself isn't so unusual. But I was working as a software developer for several years. With that kind of professional background only to end up back in poverty, that is probably unusual to see.
I've worked a string of low paying (for a software dev in the US) jobs and despite falling in line with their salary expectations, it's just been one rejection after another. I haven't been able to find a job since 2020 after applying to hundreds of jobs and going to dozens of interviews, and also practicing many times, and seems like I have to do something very drastic to find one.
Back to my housing situation- I have lived in the same apartment for roughly one decade. The general rules are, I don't have to pay any rent if I'm not making any income. I am still responsible for utilities, food, and other personal expenses. I pay this through whatever money I had left over saved from previous jobs.
I passed three years of unemployment last December. And feel very burnt out from the job seeking process.
Should I take another break, this time, indefinitely? What are your thoughts? I have done the following:
- Applied to over a thousand jobs (mostly from 2021-22)
- Interviewed with at least 25 companies
- Took a prep course for tech interviews (and 5k more in debt because of it)
- Worked on some programming projects to practice more web dev skills that I'm missing out on
- Completed over 100 LeetCode tech problems for interviews
- Got some free coaching sessions from other professionals
There's no single point where I fail the job interviews. Sometimes I fail the pre-screen round and sometimes I go as far as three technical rounds. But I can't find myself getting a job if I lost the will to be competitive. I don't want to try for first place anymore. I just want it to be possible to get an average job by placing average among my peers, not by placing first.