IT and job market : a schizophrenic story

I don't know if it's the same in all countries but in France we receive sometimes very opposite messages. On all social networks you see message from IT recruiters : "We can't find developers, there's a lack in the market" or "We need more women in IT". We hear this for years.

I have always been interested in IT, I worked for IT companies most of my career but I wasn't working in technical jobs like developers, I was working in HR. When I burnout, I chose to completely change my career to follow a reskilling in development. Six months of training, three months of internship. All the people in my class were there for a reskilling too, for a lot of different reasons and we all heard the same, IT is one of the most recruiting industries.

But there is an untold truth. 

Not everyone can become a developer

On my class maybe half or less have found a job after the reskilling. Why ? Many reasons. Like me they needed a change in their career because their job was too boring, too exhausting, too much unpaid, etc.. And they all heard "IT is recruiting, IT means lots of money". Jackpot.

The problem is, no one told them that being a developer is not that easy. In my part, I had already tried some coding on my personal time before choosing IT and I was working in an IT company, so I had a pretty clear idea about what is a  developer job. I've been really surprised to see that many classmates joined the programme without looking a line of code before. People hear "job + money" and they are running in like there was shopping sales. Once a classmate told me "That wasn't what I expected".

That surprised me a lot because I worked weeks before the programme begun to prepare myself because I knew it'll be difficult. One friend of mine (who works in IT) told me once that the worse developers he had worked with were coming from reskilling. No pressure. His words still haunts me because I don't want to become a bad developer. 

Weeks have passed on the programme. As expected, several classmates had difficulties to follow the class, we heard that our teachers knew in 2 or 3 weeks which one will succeed or failed (tragic destiny). I'm not telling they were dumber than the others, just the coding logic, algorithm doesn't fit to everybody. Everyone can code, but code bad. My first week of algorithms have been really hard, I came home I was so depressed I thought I will not succeed either (but with hard work I did). My reskilling was one of my best experiences, the teachers, my classmates, it was amazing. 

What I'm trying to explain is that we sell IT jobs like the new jobs for everybody but we shouldn't. We sell training to people who give up quickly because we didn't warn them, we give diplomas or certificates to people who will never become developers. The process is not right. 

One of my teachers was always telling us "IT is hard. IT is hard. Spread the word". He made us laugh a lot but finally he wasn't wrong.

Please, schools, stop selling IT training like a carpet merchant.

"Most recruiting industry" but not for old noobies

After the reskilling programme and the graduation, came the job seeking. And the reality has caught us and break our hopes.

We applied to many offers and we received almost no replies not even phone calls. A recruiter told to one of my classmates that he was too old regarding the lack of experience he had. That was honest but tough. We've started to understand that the recruiters wanted developers but young developers. Past 30 yo, it's already too late. The only way to live our "dream" was to become a freelancer and build our own reputation. Tough again.

So every day, companies, you say "We need developers, we need developers" and when finally people are coming motivated to "rock the house" you just close the door. This isn't fair.

I worked in recruitment during a time, and I fucking hated that because the politics/strategies were insane "recruit this, not this". Recruitment is based on biases, even if you hear all bullshit comms about being inclusive and not discriminating. There are still biases about your age, your graduation level or your school/training. Even if the people are great and motivated if they don't fit into the classic model path, they don't exist. I hated this job.

"Most recruiting industry" doesn't mean easy hiring

Have you ever seen developer job offers ? You need to know 20 different technologies, master 5 of them, having at least 2 years of experience in half.  When I see how many no replies we received, we have the right to ask : is it worth it ? 

For a junior developer, it's really demotivating because you have no experience, you learnt some languages but you're not very comfortable with any of it. This is scary and stressful ! I don't know if the companies are trying to be attractive but sometimes I'm not sure if they really want to hire people. Do you need people or not ? Why are you so aggressive with your offers ? 

I was reading this article the other day which explains why we have to apply even if we don't meet all the expectations (imposter syndrome theory etc). Even if I know I have skills, I feel like I'm just a junior newbie. When I see all these expectations on the offer, I often don't apply because I'm scared to be ridiculous during the interview with my small experience. 

I disagree with the article, because I still think that's not just about an imposter syndrome. The job market is crazy. I saw this tweet the other day, it was so relevant.

Companies- Why can’t we find anyone to hire?

Their interview process- pic.twitter.com/5pQMmEke9Z

— Adam Karpiak (@Adam_Karpiak) August 19, 2021

Sometimes the recruitment process is so hardcore, you have 3 interviews, 2 tests/assessments/quiz (coding game or whatever) and more. If you count you need to dedicate like 5 hours at least to the company (without counting transport/travel). Imagine if you already have a job : how can you dedicate 5 hours for each company you're applying for ? That's just crazy. With my current job, I work until 7 PM or sometimes 8 PM. How can I even consider booking a job interview ? I enjoy coding but honestly I'll not spend my night playing coding games. I have a personal life, and it's already too short and stressful, can't handle more.

Please, companies, we all need to be more efficient, for you to recruit, and us to find jobs. I'm sure there are solutions  for not wasting both of our time.