I think my interview/offer ratio is somewhere below 1%. One factor that you probably guessed is I have very low social skills, well documented in my psychological evaluation that I did to diagnose my ADHD.
I started learning programming about as a preschool kid, in the 8 bits era, then did some Visual Basic desktop apps, C, .NET, embedded C payment devices, vehicle plate recognition systems, backend of payment systems, android programming, etc.
Changing that much was probably a bad thing, as a senior any position I attempt I’ll be competing with people that is focused on the same stack for years.
All the best positions ask for fluent english and my pronunciation is not that good, and I’m 44 years old now.
There is no chance I’ll move up to management because of said social skills.
- reinforcing others’ comments – “define the lifestyle you want”
- do you really want to move up to management? – not just social skills, management requires both a different skillset and mindset – there’s no shame staying on the technical/development/engineering side of things
- in your off-time, try out stuff and find what feels most comfortable
- backend? – there can be more focus on interoperability over performance, plenty of companies trying to get their web frontends working with enterprise backends that they’re never planning on upgrading – ex. there’s still a huge call for COBOL programmers
- embedded? – between maker communities and self-hosting communities, there’s a big hobbyist community sitting outside the corporate sphere – ex. programming microcontollers/SBCs in C, MicroPython, PicoRuby, Forth/Factor, …
- 8-bit? – tools, programs, and games for virtual consoles (uxn, Pico8, TIC-80), chiptunes and tracker music (keeping the legacy of Amiga MODs alive)
- Android? – pick up some Go or Dart/Flutter skills (one of the current maintainers of Dart, Bob Nystrom, has put out Game Programming Patterns and Crafting Interpreters and likes programming roguelikes)