I feel like I have nowhere to go but that I could succeed if I’m just given a chance. /u/SetIntelligent4123 CSCQ protests reddit

Hello all. I’m in a bit of a rough patch and have been for quite awhile.

A bit on my background. I went to college and earned a BS in Anthropology. I had dreams of becoming Indiana Jones but life had bills that needed paying so that didn’t quite work out. I did end up working a season as a seasonal state park employee in my home state which transitioned to working as a federal park ranger with the Bureau of Land Management for the next three years. This job was great. I got to visit new states, worked alongside archaeologists in ancient sites, backpacked desert and mountainous trails, developed and managed projects, ,oversaw and managed teams of employees and volunteers, etc. I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. However, by 2020 a lot of the job duties had changed due to covid and I was finding that I didn’t want to continue my career there. Basically the promotion I had been offered would have put me on a computer for most of my job and the pay wasn’t that much of an upgrade to justify no longer being outside as much. I figured if I was going to be on a computer I might as well learn some better skills to get better pay.

I moved to California in 2021 and did a full stack coding bootcamp through UC Berkeley. This was difficult but I managed to get through it and pass. At the time I had some decent but very obvious beginner projects. Six months of job searching later lead me to an entry level position with a rather large company (large in its country at least). The first 6 months of this job was mostly training with Java and microservices. The training was very similar to the bootcamp I had just completed except that it was paid. However, the following 6 months was not great at all. This was a time when I should have been placed on a project but the company began to feel the effects of the tech lay offs and I found myself, along with about 500 others, twiddling our thumbs for half a year. We still got paid but we had no work to do.. no projects.. nothing. I personally had a rotating door of managers that changed every 2-4 weeks and never could get the proper permission to do new certificates because the process constantly got reset by having a new manager. So I technically have over a year of experience at a job but ultimately nothing to show for it.

Well the job laid me off in july of 2023. I used the next couple months to travel and build my relationship with my significant other. Then began the job search to no avail. From what I could tell Tech was still hurting from lay offs and what few entry level positions I saw were so sought after that I couldn’t get through the auto resume grader even after paying for resume building services from professionals. Searching for work became a full time job and I found myself not practicing my programming. Then I hit what I thought was a lucky break. I found a company that was doing entry level positions. It involved a 3 month training similar to that of my bootcamp/previous job but unpaid. The catch was that only a few paid full time positions would be offered to those who passed the training with the highest.. grade I suppose. Well I was the first of 3 to be offered a paid position. Unfortunately, the position had been advertised as remote but once the offer came through the pay rate and location had changed with no way to negotiate and as things had developed with the SO I had to turn down the position. The pay was lower and would have taken me across the US for at least a year and a half.

And so I continued to apply.. again to no avail. And I applied to everything. I applied to fast food and grocery jobs as well but no luck. Often times told it was because my previous experience as a federal employee and that I was “too qualified”. I hopped on r/careerguidance and got some great advice that I explored. Some said to get a PMP Certification (bought the class on Udemy but then a recruiter on LinkedIn told me it was worthless and that it wouldn’t help me find work). Most recently though I applied to be a dispatcher for a local police department (not really relevant to Computer Science). I applied in July of 2024. The process was long. Each month requiring some new test or certification to be passed and I passed them all. Then there was a lengthy background and polygraph. I was honest and provided as much information as I could recall from the past 10-15 years depending on what they were looking for. Then one week on Monday they told me I was being moved to the next step in the process but by Thursday afternoon I was no longer in consideration.

At this point I have no clue what to do. I’ve managed to get by on my savings and being frugal but that amount is finally running thin with maybe 2 months left before I’m on the streets. Every application of mine gets rejected by auto graders even when I pay to have my resume optimized. I currently have 17 different versions on my laptop for hyper specific and general applications. I applied recently to East Bay Regional Parks, The National Park Service, and the USDA in the Bay Area but have been rejected by all 3 (many were entry level positions which I more than have experience for but was rejected on the grounds that I didn’t have the experience. I even then contacted recruiters to argue the case, most agreed I had the experience but refused to put me back in the running). So yeah.. what do I do? I’m too poor to go back to school and I feel as though I have no skills or that the skills I have are not being considered.

Hello all. I’m in a bit of a rough patch and have been for quite awhile.

A bit on my background. I went to college and earned a BS in Anthropology. I had dreams of becoming Indiana Jones but life had bills that needed paying so that didn’t quite work out. I did end up working a season as a seasonal state park employee in my home state which transitioned to working as a federal park ranger with the Bureau of Land Management for the next three years. This job was great. I got to visit new states, worked alongside archaeologists in ancient sites, backpacked desert and mountainous trails, developed and managed projects, ,oversaw and managed teams of employees and volunteers, etc. I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. However, by 2020 a lot of the job duties had changed due to covid and I was finding that I didn’t want to continue my career there. Basically the promotion I had been offered would have put me on a computer for most of my job and the pay wasn’t that much of an upgrade to justify no longer being outside as much. I figured if I was going to be on a computer I might as well learn some better skills to get better pay.

I moved to California in 2021 and did a full stack coding bootcamp through UC Berkeley. This was difficult but I managed to get through it and pass. At the time I had some decent but very obvious beginner projects. Six months of job searching later lead me to an entry level position with a rather large company (large in its country at least). The first 6 months of this job was mostly training with Java and microservices. The training was very similar to the bootcamp I had just completed except that it was paid. However, the following 6 months was not great at all. This was a time when I should have been placed on a project but the company began to feel the effects of the tech lay offs and I found myself, along with about 500 others, twiddling our thumbs for half a year. We still got paid but we had no work to do.. no projects.. nothing. I personally had a rotating door of managers that changed every 2-4 weeks and never could get the proper permission to do new certificates because the process constantly got reset by having a new manager. So I technically have over a year of experience at a job but ultimately nothing to show for it.

Well the job laid me off in july of 2023. I used the next couple months to travel and build my relationship with my significant other. Then began the job search to no avail. From what I could tell Tech was still hurting from lay offs and what few entry level positions I saw were so sought after that I couldn’t get through the auto resume grader even after paying for resume building services from professionals. Searching for work became a full time job and I found myself not practicing my programming. Then I hit what I thought was a lucky break. I found a company that was doing entry level positions. It involved a 3 month training similar to that of my bootcamp/previous job but unpaid. The catch was that only a few paid full time positions would be offered to those who passed the training with the highest.. grade I suppose. Well I was the first of 3 to be offered a paid position. Unfortunately, the position had been advertised as remote but once the offer came through the pay rate and location had changed with no way to negotiate and as things had developed with the SO I had to turn down the position. The pay was lower and would have taken me across the US for at least a year and a half.

And so I continued to apply.. again to no avail. And I applied to everything. I applied to fast food and grocery jobs as well but no luck. Often times told it was because my previous experience as a federal employee and that I was “too qualified”. I hopped on r/careerguidance and got some great advice that I explored. Some said to get a PMP Certification (bought the class on Udemy but then a recruiter on LinkedIn told me it was worthless and that it wouldn’t help me find work). Most recently though I applied to be a dispatcher for a local police department (not really relevant to Computer Science). I applied in July of 2024. The process was long. Each month requiring some new test or certification to be passed and I passed them all. Then there was a lengthy background and polygraph. I was honest and provided as much information as I could recall from the past 10-15 years depending on what they were looking for. Then one week on Monday they told me I was being moved to the next step in the process but by Thursday afternoon I was no longer in consideration.

At this point I have no clue what to do. I’ve managed to get by on my savings and being frugal but that amount is finally running thin with maybe 2 months left before I’m on the streets. Every application of mine gets rejected by auto graders even when I pay to have my resume optimized. I currently have 17 different versions on my laptop for hyper specific and general applications. I applied recently to East Bay Regional Parks, The National Park Service, and the USDA in the Bay Area but have been rejected by all 3 (many were entry level positions which I more than have experience for but was rejected on the grounds that I didn’t have the experience. I even then contacted recruiters to argue the case, most agreed I had the experience but refused to put me back in the running). So yeah.. what do I do? I’m too poor to go back to school and I feel as though I have no skills or that the skills I have are not being considered.