Why Your Developer Dream Job Remains a Distant Dream

I know that the job market is particularly hard for software developers at the moment.

At the same time, recruiting managers are having nightmares because it is so difficult to fill tech positions.

You have to wonder if this is all some elaborate industry prank.

How is it possible that every tech town is screaming out for developers, yet developers are being laid off and hiring freezes have hit like it’s Siberia?

It feels like a bizarre tech ecosystem where the demand for developers is both insatiable and unattainable.

This Kafkaesque environment is the end result of some problems that have festered within the tech world for years, and it is only now we have reached the inevitable conclusion: insanity.

The Great Pretenders

Let’s cut to the chase: everyone wants the LeBron James of coding and be paid accordingly, even if they’ve simply coded an amateur-level website for a no-hope business.

This means that there are developers who will not get out of bed for anything less than a 6-figure salary and who think Dijkstra is a character in Game of the Kings.

They’re not worth any salary but as coders, they command good money for doing little.

Wanting the impossible

Job listings scream for a ‘Ninja Developer with 20 years of React experience’ (React hasn’t even been around that long, folks!).

Companies need to spend big money to get any developer to work, and so it is perhaps no wonder that the employees are privileged jerks. Unsurprisingly companies are then conservative about employing any staff into their ranks.

Trial by fire

And then there’s the classic, the coding interview. Nobody has ever required binary tree inversion, much less so under pressure with judgemental snobs around.