What are your chances of getting a software development job?

Have you ever wondered why it is so hard to get a software development job yet so many people and sources claim that there is huge demand? Well, this dichotomy is of no surprise to me, why? damn because the world is so weird man. So if this is one of those things that make you wonder a bit, or maybe you’re studying for a computer science degree and you’re wondering what your chances are. Well, worry no more. Indulge me a bit as I unpack some of the metrics that influence what opportunities you will have.

This is a sequel to my “Views of a 21-year old Software Developer” post that you can find here. It’ll give you some context. If you haven’t checked it out please do, also I’m just plugging it here because you might find some value in it; value that would make me seem like less of an idiot for writing about this. Cool.

In that post, I spoke about how I feel like uni doesn’t really get you a developer job. So I want to dive a little bit more into that here. I think in the future a degree won’t be necessary to get a dev job; it’s already happening in other countries, and I personally know of at least one situation where it has happened. So that served as a nice confirmation to me. But more of this would have to do with the industry gatekeepers not mentioning a qualification as a job requirement, so looking at things from that perspective you can argue that we’re far off from reaching that level.

In this post, I’m going to speak about some mental shifts, and the general mindset I had after qualifying for my degree, how and why I think having a CS degree is beneficial but doesn’t guarantee your success in the industry. Then following this I’m going to share my interview experiences and what they thought me. Thereafter; plug some tech resources for noobs, and things I could’ve done before getting into the industry, and then we’ll take it from there. Alright, let’s go!

I believe there are things I did that made me end up where I am today, and I’d like to share some of those things with you. I have sort of reflected about how and why this happened, but overall I think it was luck — I’ve been extremely lucky to end up where I am today. But before you think that’s a crazy thing to say, here is my cool definition for luck.

“ luck is when opportunity meets preparation.” — Roman philosopher Seneca.

Take that and add a fair amount of hard work, some more preparation, and a well-presented opportunity.

Here are 3 things I mention.

• Stop feeling entitled.
• Be better.
• Study your L’s.

Stop feeling entitled.

— your tech degree isn't a measure of your ability.

As graduates, we tend to have this strong sense of entitlement. When we look at how far we came, the many hours we spent, how getting that qualification was so hard, and reflecting on the sacrifices we had to make to be where we are; struggling to get a job after the trying times in university can almost feel like a huge slap in your face. I believe that a big source of frustration amongst grads is having this sense of entitlement being met halfway by life’s own ways of presenting us with below-par expectations.

While I was not able to find a study that could back up my understanding of this, it certainly makes sense as to why graduates may feel this entitlement, especially tech graduates. Tuition is way too expensive for us to get rejected for jobs, get offers from internships that only want to pay R4000. It is so mentally expensive to complete a degree and then be presented with mediocre offers.

So what’s the real story here. Well, simple. Tech “rules the world” and every day it’s getting harder to deny it’s potential to completely disrupt our world and how we do things, it has become so integral to our everyday lives that checking your messages when you wake up has become somewhat second nature. By virtue of this, it keeps presenting more and more solutions to businesses and individuals. So why must it be hard to get a job if employers and innovators are looking for people like me?

The simple answer to this question is competition. But it gets much more complicated than that. Some of the things that will set you apart are your desire for learning, the projects you’ve built, if you are part of the community or not (some companies don’t care about this though), experience contributing to open source projects, and yeah you guessed it, years of experience (the most dreaded of them all to grads) . The list is endless, and honestly, trying to understand all of them is as clear as mud. My advice is to choose at least two or three of them, and that will surely amplify your chances and gear you towards success. Let me give you some context: If a hiring manager was to give one job and the two candidate profiles are: a) someone who has worked on projects, is enthusiastic and has contributed to an open-source project but has average marks and maybe one or two A’s, and b) someone with straight A’s for every single module on their degree and nothing else. Who do you think will get the job?

Be better.

— adapt or die. improve or you shall perish.

Yes, it’s not a joke. I really mean it.

“Be better” is actually a thing at my company, lol. #BeBetter is the official way to write it. Now, this is something I did not know before starting, but it is more fitting to explain the mental shift I had to go through. Being better means being open-minded, being teachable, willing to learn, and wanting to improve. It also means investing in yourself to be better.

Tech and development, in general, is an exciting ever-evolving industry. The kids out at Silicon Valley roll out new frameworks as often as you check your phone. The hype in the industry then builds up, maybe because it is indeed a super great framework or tool. Regardless, then boom — you walk into your office one morning and they want to start using this new baby. So if you are intransigent and somehow still believe PHP is still the future (lol, love you PHP developers 😚😘) then people who pick up the new skill/framework will surely be better than you. Better in terms of how efficient they solve problems and how diverse their skill set is.

There are so many misconceptions I had about the tech industry, things I didn’t know and stuff I didn’t think were real. The mental shift of being better makes you recognize that you can achieve a lot more if you become teachable, because learning only opens you up to greater opportunities.

Study your L’s.

— learn from your mistakes.

Before I got my job I had failed two interviews. Now, I don’t know if failing interviews is a thing, or I’m just dumb. I’ve never spoken to any of my colleagues and work friends about it so I really don’t have an idea what the average number of interviews people generally fail before landing a job is. But I would like to believe failing interviews is a common thing and it is absolutely normal; especially among people who have just qualified for their degree. (also just firing make-believe so I don’t think I’m dumb.) I’ve heard stories of people failing 3 interviews at google and only making it on the fourth one. Lol, 4 years just get into a job is a stupidly long time I know. But I think there is a very good lesson to take from that, which is what I apply every day.

The trick is to be clinical and really get into the details of what made you flop, so next time you get into a similar situation and get presented with the same opportunity you know how to do it better. I also believe that you can apply this concept to any other spheres of your lives really, I do. Taking this approach and combining it with some deepened research and then ultimately taking your failure as a lesson; instead of being embarrassed and walking away like you just took a major L, you could instead walk away with a smile because you know what not to do next time.

These are the mental shifts I had to apply, and even though some were very general I had to hear them somewhere before taking them seriously. So find them useful, touch wood. In the future I will be writing about more technical stuff (maybe on lerato1ofone dot com, we’ll see), I trust you to stick around long enough.

Thanks for reading.

I hope you didn’t fall asleep trying to read all this. If you’ve made it this far, I really appreciate it. You are a gorgeous unicorn 🦄. If this was a cool read or you found it useful in any way, please leave those 👏👏 down below, it makes me smile.

Time for some shameless plugging (lol you thought i wouldn’t do it, didn’t you?): follow me on my social media too, please… @lerato1ofone on twitter and Instagram. Connect with me on LinkedIn too.