Job Hunting as a Software Engineer in 2025
As my state unemployment benefits begin to sunset on the horizon, I have been reflecting back on my job search experience throughout the year 2025. After losing my position at the end of January, I have been searching for a new role for the better part of this year, about 6 months in total as of writing this. I have found many things about this process emotionally difficult, and it has been very hard to separate my failure to find a new position from a sense of failure in my career and my life in general.
I have taken all the traditional advice of resume-tailoring and networking to the best of my ability, but the fact is there is just not many positions out there in comparison to the huge amount of talented and experienced engineers in the hiring pool. Standing out is difficult if not impossible, and I have not even had a single interview with another human to discuss a role. Being filtered out at the resume stage time and time again underscores how competitive of a field I have found myself vying for scarce positions in.
Undiagnosed cognitive disorders (hello ADHD) and mental illnesses plagued my educational years and early career, and I was often left frustrated with the feeling that my peers were accomplishing more personal projects, getting better grades and networking more effectively. It wasn’t until I started treatment for these issues that I realized how much they had been holding me back, and even with treatment they still present many difficulties in my personal and professional life that take a large amount of dedicated energy to overcome. I am doing better these days, in no small part to the amount of free time I have had to dedicate to treatment and building skills that allow me to more effectively cope with these conditions, but I still experience a daily struggle for normalcy and consistent effectiveness.
Fighting for a place in the workforce while coping with disabilities feels like it is much more difficult than it needs to be. I may not be able to complete work as quickly and efficiently as somebody without my disabilities, but I am still able to produce high quality work in the right environment and with the support of my peers. Just because my brain works differently, it doesn’t seem like I should be excluded from the field I have spent so much time training in. It really feels like it has been for no good reason other than that I happen to work a little bit more slowly on some types of tasks.
I haven’t given up on software engineering yet, but I am currently researching other career paths, such as getting my teaching license for public school here in Oregon or tutoring. I will keep looking for more opportunities in the field I have spent my career building towards, but unless something changes very soon, I fear I will be forced out of tech altogether just to survive.
If you are also struggling with the job market in tech right now, feel free to reach out to me on Linkedin, Threads or Bluesky. I am interested to hear other’s experiences on this issue.
Til next time,
tori
at 18:45
