Why I failed to get a job as a programmer. And how I plan on changing this.

As the title states, this post is going to be the long-winded journey of how I tried and failed more times than I can count to get off the ground and get a job in the industry. This is by no means a blame game this is more things watch for yourself and hope to help others learn from your own mistakes.

So let's start all the way in the beginning. I first started programming web and taking it seriously back in 2015. I was going to school at this time as well. I was like everyone else I was trying to blog I was trying to learn the newest thing on the block etc. And at some point I made a few projects launched my portfolio, I even started a podcast. Things were looking ok, I finished school in 2016 which that's a topic for another post. I started to apply and went down the road of rejections stories of awful recruiters the works.

Now inevitably I ended up falling off the train, I got a job as an IT help desk and then hated every minute of it. Again a story for another post. I have since been working back in the glorious hell of customer service. I have since however continued to try so many other ave of programming. I have attempted android graphics programming if you see my older post. I even tried getting into game dev. Which by the way was actually pretty fun.

But none of this in my journey since ever helped. So all of this aside what happened. Well, let's start with motivation burnout out and why goals don't mean anything unless you learn discipline. Over this time I have learned a lot about my mistakes. I learned that motivation is useless as it's like a drug that gets you high you ride that high for a while and then you crash and burn. It's why all my other ideas of game dev etc failed as well.

It came down to the simple fact that I would keep hoping for the new thing as soon as the old thing would get hard/motivation would get lost. Now, this is only part of why I failed, the other half has to do with the simple fact that when I initially was applying I fell into the other trap of I'm never ready to apply. And on top of that, I thought my stuff was the greatest thing since google.

This is also where I learned that TODO list applications and random weather apps are about as useless as they come. And nobody including you should care let alone use them as a portfolio project. They are great if you want to solidify your skills in a specific stack, otherwise don't do it.

I also ran into this other thing where I sadly became that person who just would talk about doing x thing but would never really take it seriously and see it through. Which goes back to my initial part about discipline. I have met so many people over the past decade now. That a lot of them never make it out of tutorial land because they just can't sit down and do what they say they are going to do and then fall into that cycle.

So these and many many more things are the reasons why I failed as a dev. Not because of the market not because of the tools I was using not because I couldn't pass an interview ect. But really all because of the lack of discipline to follow through.

So now that I have said that and hopefully you all are still with me at this point. This is how I have turned myself around. I wanted to wait to post this as I wanted to actually get the discipline down before I once again went down the road of just saying I'm going to do x. Since the beginning of I would say September I have set out once again to break out of retail hell and get a job in the industry. I have successfully been building a few projects relearning and finishing courses and have a lot to go.

But I'm going to be once again reviving my blog and I want to start sharing some more in-depth advice of things I have learned along the way from my past and current experiences. As things progress I will be doing a whole lot more. But I have learned to really stop telling people about it and just do it. So as things progress I will be announcing different projects I have in mind.

Overall to sum up this post, if you're currently finding yourself in some sort of cycle that seems to never end. Really think to your self have you stuck with it? Or are you just the guy who can talk the talk but can't walk the walk?

Also, I welcome you all to share your thoughts on this. As well as any stories you may want to share with the community. I feel there are not enough how I failed and plan to change stories. And to many of the, I did x and succeeded but didn't show the failures.