Greetings fellow Dev community! This is my first post so please forgive any faux pas regarding subject matter or formatting. I'm hoping to get some advice from folks with more experience in developer world regarding the hiring process and experiencing hiring fatigue.
Background
I've been a self taught Front End Developer since around the end of 2015. I worked the first year or 2 just learning the basics (HTML, CSS & JS). Once I felt slightly confident I started making my own projects and then managed to pick up some freelance gigs from friends and people in my community. I also managed to get a few Open Source contributions under my belt and build a portfolio site with some projects https://www.dylandavenport.com/
I got my first full-time job as a developer almost 2 years ago at a non-profit. I love the work that I do and the people I work with are fantastic! With that being said those of you who know the non-profit world, the salary is usually lower if not much lower than average. That coupled with the fact that since my company is not very "tech focused" I guess you could say, it leaves very little room for me to be able to use things like Vue, React, SASS, etc. Which means I'm not learning as much as I would like.
I started looking at other positions about 8 months ago and have been getting interviews and have received positive feedback in those interviews. I have also gotten far enough in interviews to receive the coding challenge or technical assessments but that's where my confusion lies.
The Problem At Hand
Once I get the coding challenges from employers I find that the majority of them are totally unrealistic. For example, one I have currently worked on has a simple form with some buttons and asks for some simple form validation using JavaScript. No sweat. Check if this input is filled in, add the result to the document as innerHTML in this DOM element, then create a button with a click event to remove the item. But then comes the parts that I feel are unrealistic. I can't touch the HTML file AT ALL, can't use for or while loops, etc.
While this in itself is not a problem in the sense that it's "too difficult", I can do it and have done it, I just don't see how this is an adequate way to test how I handle code in the real world. I can't imagine having to work on a project and have these types of restrictions. Which makes me feel like I'm kind of wasting my time working on problems that aren't real world problems.
I've spent countless nights staying up till the crack of dawn getting no sleep and then going into my day job just to complete these challenges and not get the position or even a call back. I'm just exhausted and I feel as though these types of expectations cause people like me to feel burnt out and jaded.
By no means am I complaining or lazy, I'm just not sure if this is a situation where I just haven't found the "right" position for me or if I am lacking in some way or just not seeing the "bigger picture". I'm sure it's a test of my problem solving skills but in situations like this my first thought is "Let me edit the HTML file like I would in the real world. Problem solved..." I want to solve REAL problems. Not manufactured problems with crazy conditions.
Conclusion
I'm mostly looking for some guidance on how to proceed here. Should I keep doing what I'm doing and keep applying and wait for the perfect position to come up? Should I keep working on these assignments even if I feel the conditions aren't very realistic? I really love being a developer but as I'm sure you all know job hunting and the hiring process in general is somewhat broken and it's exhausting. Thanks for listening to my rant and please feel free to provide any honest feedback.
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