Quitting IT job and perhaps the industry safely [closed]

Question

Brief historical background:

I've turned 24 recently. I taught myself how to code at 18-19. Dropped out of university to get a full-time job. The very first opportunity came about around 6 months later. My first job in the industry was bizarre and obsolete but I had no better options.

After 2 years, I quit and found a new one. It's my current job, a bit better but has little to do with software development just like the previous one. It's all about customising business logic and developing "local" features restricted by the core. (if you're wondering the core is a Java web app, BL is written in Groovy). The company has dozens of clients with different BLs, so every time I get a new task, I have to delve into the business logic of a particular client (which is nearly always over my head). It's reminiscent of "a system inside a system". The core of the product is unreachable to neither my team nor me. I write groovy scripts that are then processed by the core. Haven't opened IDE for years.

This alone, alongside a ridiculous wage of a 1000$ per month (after having been working in the industry for 4 years), gave me food for thought and I decided to find a new job yet again.

And now I discovered that every interview I attend is a total shambles. I'm unable to answer advanced technical questions, don't know much about frameworks, modern approaches and trends in the industry. In an interview, the candidate should either demonstrate good problem-solving skills or practical knowledge of software development. Sadly, I can't do either. Too many companies assume that having experience of more than 3 years equates to knowing this stuff. In a desperate attempt to fix this, I started memorising the questions they might ask. Memorising is my last resort since I don't understand the concepts. This will fail if they give me a case study, though.

I came up with the conclusion that the software industry isn't for me. I'm not good at programming. And never have been. I've wasted 4 years of my life and want to start over again. Initially, my idea was to save money (mainly by working for foreign companies) and buy real estate, but with no relevant experience, it's next to impossible. The passion has run dry - for the last 2 weeks I've been so loath at work like never before

I have no backing, no relatives, no one can be of any help to me. On top of that, I finish university by March next year (I study remotely), so I need time to do the thesis. Don't get me wrong - this is not a cry for help but rather a problem that needs to be solved. I need a job cause I have to pay for education, rent and food (obviously) but can no longer self-sabotage myself.

Question:

Has anyone been in dire straits like this? If so, how did you manage to climb out of the slump, take the plunge and start a new career in a different or adjacent industry? How long did it take to adapt?

Answer 1

You sound like a more-technical-than-average Business Analyst. Your current skills probably match well to that type of role. Get a BA role and save your money. Or work at a fast food joint and save your money ($1k a month is $6 an hour, yikes.) But definitely get new job.

Then explore options for finding the career you want. (I recommend against trying to make money in real estate unless you're okay going broke a few times on the way). Local colleges likely offer career guidance, including tests that help you match your interests & skills to jobs. Once you determine a destination you can train for it, but don't go to school just for some idea that it will give you a good job.

Answer 2

You should also consider changing your views. It seems that a lot of your thoughts are overly pessimistic:

"Every interview I attend is a total shambles." / "Software industry isn't for me." / "I'm not good at programming. And never have been." / "I've wasted 4 years of my life." / "I have no backing, no relatives, no one can be of any help to me." and this list could go on...

While I am not saying that these thoughts do not have a grain of truth in them, they do sound unnecessarily absolute. When you are saying that you are not good at programming, your mind is set. There is no room for possibility. It makes reality darker than it is and also prevents you from seeing more solutions.

You held a job that is related to programming for quite some time after all, you did study at a university and have some coding and business logic skills. That's something. And now you are learning through failed interviews that you lack some certain skills to acquire a better job and do what you wanted to. So you should focus on those skills, learn them and then apply again. It won't be easy, but that's the way everyone has to go to become a professional. And this is true for any industry - a point to consider if you are going to abandon the idea of programming.

I am not saying that you shouldn't be looking for a better job, however. Just that you need a plan on how to go about it.

Answer 3

Before you accept the conclusion that the software industry is not for you, it might help to explore all the ways that software is being used in industry. You might not be a "hard core Java programmer", but you don't need to be in order to make a living creating and modifying software.

Customizing business logic is a very useful and marketable skill. What you are learning is some of how widely business operations vary from company to company and learning how to put that into software. There are many people who never understand that.

However, it does not translate into good "software developer interview skills" especially when you interview at a software company. It does translate into "business analyst" skills and nearly any other company would pay for them.

However, I would suggest learning a couple of other tools if you can in your spare time between the classes and the thesis (yeah, right). Some other software skills that would benefit being a "business analyst" would include Excel macros, Power BI, and SQL. Those can take several years to learn. I have a friend who is a financial analyst making very good money but doesn't know Excel or SQL and I hear his struggles when he has to do something that I would code an Excel macro to do.

Answer 4

First, don't try to sell yourself as something you're not. Even if you somehow manage to squeak through the interview, it'll be blatantly obvious once you actually have the role, and the people around you will hate you for being a lying dirtbag who can't do your part. That's no way to live.

Second, getting a job in programming is rough for people who don't have a degree (in the US, at least. Ar you in the US?). Having enough industry experience can counter that, but your industry experience isn't worth a lot (at least, as a programmer).

So... the first step is to be utterly up front and honest in your job applications. Don't present your recent experience as a programming job. It's not. Call it something else. Say that you're trying to transfer into an entry-level position in programming. Once you stop telling yourself (and them) that your recent jobs are programming jobs, you can talk about the experience and skills that they do give you - which is still potentially valuable to some employers and will make you somewhat more appealing as an entry-level programmer. It's not like "understand strange customer business logic" is an unuseful skill. If it's a particular industry of customer, that's even better.

If that doesn't work (perhaps because it's hard to get hired as a programmer when you don't have appropriate schooling) then you need to take a look at what job skills you actually have, and who would actually want them. I'm quite certain that you do have skills, currently. It's just not the standard set of software engineering skills. Figure out what job that is, and start applying for those.