Ask HN: Why can't I get a job as a developer?

4 points

6 years ago

I've been looking for a job since July. I've had a few freelance projects in the meantime, but most of my time has been spent on doing coding challenges, followed by rejections with no explanation. I'm exhausted, and I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

I have 10 years of experience, NASA on my resume (https://github.com/localjo/resume), a pretty good list of open source contributions and code samples (https://github.com/localjo/code-samples), personal references, and good interviewing skills. I get interviews all the time, and usually get to the final stages, and then get a generic rejection letter.

Today, I got rejected from a company I just did a coding challenge for. My submission (https://github.com/localjo/react-tater) far exceeded their requirements but after reviewing it, their response was "we're looking for frontend engineers with more experience".

I'm incredibly frustrated by that response. Usually I just archive the email and move on, but this time I decided to ask for more specific feedback, and they said "it's less to do with something you've missed and more to do with other candidates having more relevant expertise having shaped similar products".

This is basically the same scenario that I've repeated about 25 times in the last 10 months. It seems impossible to get a job, even though I'm fully qualified. Meanwhile, a lot of my peers seem to think it's easy to get similar jobs, often making almost double my target rate of $100k/yr.

Does anyone have any idea what I'm doing wrong, and how I can break out of this cycle of job search frustration? I'd love some honest feedback on my code samples.