I am starting a new in person job on Monday. It is pretty wild and I am both anxious and excited. I have worked from home since the pandemic. I got a job pretty quickly during the pandemic and working from home full time was pretty cool. That job eventually came to an end last July after two months of being furloughed without pay. It was unexpected but at least I was able to get unemployment.

Fast forward almost a whole fucking year and I am finally getting a job. In that time I applied for many jobs. I got mass rejection letters from the big companies and was ghosted by smaller companies. I got one interview at a local college and failed very hard at a formal panel interview. It was humbling.

Looking for jobs as a dev in this current time is a bit of a shit show. High paying computer scientist gigs for big companies in perpetuity or exploitive smaller shops with delusional wannabee CEOs, especially in San Diego. Lots of jobs that seem promising with 1 star on glassdoor. So many jobs with really high requirements and expectations and super low pay and shitty benefits. The primary reason it took so long to find a job was that I was holding out for something real. I am old and cannot work 14 hour days on a laptop that records my facial movements.

The plus side was I got a much better grip on some code things I have been meaning to get on. Learned a lot of stuff in the process of trying to get some new skills I was seeing often in job postings. In particular I enjoyed learning about C# and JavaScript. I was even able to to do some work on a friends React Native app. I cannot say I really understand the overall need to dismantle the lovely LAMP stack and replace everything with a JavaScript framework but I also have dedicated my life to making websites and not apps.

The process of filling out so many applications brought one point in particular home. I have been doing this for very long fucking time. 20 years. 20 fucking years man! It’s pretty crazy. I have done some really cool shit in that time.

Not having a job was depressing as fuck. It was also pretty expensive. I played a lot of Fortnite and generally did not go without but I really had to not spend on senseless fun stuff. I am incredibly grateful to my wife for believing in me during this weird ass time. I am also grateful for my friends that regularly checked on me and got me to step foot out of my apartment of despair.

The greatest irony of all would be that after spending almost a year learning a bunch of new shit I will be doing pretty much what I was doing at the start of my career at a much larger scale.

Onward and upward I guess.