I’ve stagnated at my position and have learned just about everything my position can learn.

Get a cloud learning subscription and spend an hour every day learning DevOps skills or something. You're in a great spot. You probably don't need to drive an hour every day just to learn something new.

No. You're restless. But you're asking here because you need someone to tell you to wait for a decent opportunity, which this is not.

Don't take the pay cut.

Don't give up one hour per day to commute.

Don't waste your time and money and health eating lunch away from home.

Keep your ears and eyes open for the right opportunity.

This isn't it. Don't take it. Wait for the right opportunity

I'll keep this short and sweet.

The two hardest job interviews in IT are getting into the help desk, and getting out. Assuming you want to climb the ladder (it sounds like you do), does this new role set you up to get out of general help desk type roles or not?

Oh as for certs. One or two is useful if your trying to jump up rungs without experience. That said your get past HR and land with someone like me who won't even spend 20 seconds looking at your certs in the interview.

I’m looking at a pay decrease about 7% from where I’m at. $36/hr to $33.48. The commute won’t be as bad as, but it will take about an hour out of my day total.

I love working remotely too. I can work efficiently and stay in my sweats. It’s a huge benefit not going to lie.

It definitely is a tough choice. I’ve stagnated at my position and have learned just about everything my position can learn. The only time I can learn new things are when new projects are implemented or when time allows me to talk to others.

Are you looking at a real pay increase if you switch? It's going to cost you to go to work, as well as having less time. Highly depends on the commute as well.

Personally, I'm happier working from home and I wouldn't go back to an onsite job willingly, even with a pay raise.

I get not feeling challenged enough and wanting to move up though. Hard choice to make.

A pay cut to go onsite sounds bad all around.

The difficulty really boils down to your aptitude and the job market in your area (unless you’re lucky and can land a remote gig). I would suggest looking around for interesting jobs that are available in your area, and try to find out about their stack.

Knowing the stack will give you something solid to focus your energy on. Each language has their own idioms, and those idioms may not work well in other languages. And coming from iOS, you will soon find that out. 😅 (I say that because Im currently trying to learn macOS/Swift and it’s a whole different ball game than web development)

Find meetups in your area for the languages you’re interested in. While you should know what you’re doing in a job, it also helps to know some people too. And it never hurts to get your name out there.

I don't have too much experience myself, so take it with a grain of salt, but I'd imagine that your best bet would be to use your iOS experience to get a job and within that company transition into more backend work. Yes, it would require more iOS dev, but IMO that's the best way to go. You'd have to look for jobs where there would such opportunity though

You’d have an easier time working as an IOS dev at a company where you could pivot onto their backend team.

Fuck cloudflare. Fucking monopoly bullshit

Thanks, it's mentioned in the link that u/Sten gave me as well.

I heard of a place called Coding Simpletons they have a group on arcane chat. They seem to have a foss philosophy you might want to check that out. Most open source groups stay on open source platforms Discord is a cool interface for chat but riddled with spyware & proprietary.

Best way is to use open source software yourself, and then when you encounter a bug, fix it. Looking for open source alternatives to stuff you currently use is easy.

Install Kali and try all the tools.

You can check goodfirstissue for anything that might pique your interest. That's where I started, and it helped a lot to get used to issue tracking systems.

Thank you. This seems very helpful.

Just found this guide to open source contributions that looks pretty good: https://opensource.guide/how-to-contribute/

Section 4 is on finding projects to contribute to.

Never. As others have said, most of the time it's "we can't discuss that" or just crickets. I don't bother anymore and just move on.

Are you looking for jobs abroad too? There's a chance that remote jobs will get you hired...

Anti Commercial-AI license

This was several years ago and only once has a recruiter actually replied back with feedback shared by the interviewers. This was after they said, "sorry we found someone better". I reviewed the list and I saw nothing that would be considered "negative". I only found out later that the director was trying to hire their friend for the role.

Sorry if this wasn't helpful, but I guess the takeaway is that unless you completely bombed the interview, it's probably something going behind the scenes that was out of your hands.

I got denied at the internal codimg review. I asked if I could get feedback. I was told it's policy not to give feedback.

I tried for 2 years but I'm kinda feeling broken down. I'm now almost as long out of work as I had been with a job in CS.

I don't say this to drop doom and gloom on you but, to say, they aren't going to give you even a aingle inch that you don't claw out of them, so if you find a place that you really like fight for em.

Its been about 5 years since the last time I was job hunting, so things might have changed. I did that email after rejection a few times, but the only reply I ever got was a "Sorry, we can't discuss that."

Someone on reddit mentioned that they straight up asking at the end of the interview, so I started doing that. I did that at my current job, even.

During those final moments of the interview when they go "I think thats all we need, do you have any final questions for us?" I would ask something along the lines of "Based on this interview, what would you see as my largest opportunity for improvement to be a better fit for this role?"

Try not to phrase it in a negative way or in a way that would make them highlight downsides, like "Is there anything about this interview that makes you think I'm not suited for this job?" The last think you want is for them to leave with the most negative aspects fresh in mind.

Obviously theres a risk of sounding like you already feel like youre not getting the job, but it depends on the recruiter and any reasonable person would view it as you looking for opportunities to improve yourself, and that you're willing to go the extra step in filling their need.

I've gotten a couple responses after asking for feedback. I don't remember all of details, but generally the issues were: gaps in knowledge, internal changes the halted the hiring process, and once the interviewer simply didn't understand the solution I gave them during a segment.

It's right there in the name: we're just resources.

At best, they're petulant toddlers, but the questionnaires smack of training their algorithm.

It likely jams their brains. Accepting a sudden change of plans is a skill. They rarely have to practice it. When it happens they either want to understand it (and so ask a lot of questions). Or they want to make it go away, and so try and bully you into accepting.

You sometimes see a similar thing in dating. Women almost never have to deal with direct rejection. Most are smart enough to take it gracefully, but a few get wildly inappropriate and aggressive about it. Men are on the other side of it. More used to being rejected, and so better at rolling with the punches. You still get a few that react badly however.