Learning to code is not hard if you define the code to a smaller step of problem. Learning to code is impossible if you define it as "program for voice recognizition in english and spanish'. If problem is defined as "print Hello World' then you know how to code once you learn to solve that problem. Further more, it is easier problem to solve.
breaking problems down into smaller and smaller pieces, I think, is a challenging skill to master, and people struggle differently with it (from "not at all," to "immensely.")
If you break a problem down far enough, eventually you end up with groups of problems, each containing simple conditional statements, a few variables, maybe a loop :-). That's the challenge new programmers face!
tl;dr: There are lot of opportunities for software engineers!
6 weeks ago, I left my job and here's my share of the search experience.
1 week after leaving the job, I got a cold email by a company who is 25-min drive away in Foster City. I did initial call with the HR on Dec. 1. On Dec. 2, I did my first phone interview. I was asked to rate my competency in Python and JavaScript on the scale 1-10. Then the interviewer asked me questions that were targeted at that level. I did badly, but not horribly, with the Q/A on technical parts and ok on some of the basic ones.
On Dec. 3, I did second phone interview, which went great in the first half and badly in the second half. In the later part, I just started to get nervous and lost my cool. They still felt I was competent, so on Dec. 4 I did a full day of interview. I did 5 different interviews from engineers to CTO and CEO. By the end of the day, I was offered the position @ 135K. This is where you expect the typical ending of me accepting the salary and living happily ever after. Not so fast there, reader. I pressed for higher salary - 25K more than they were offering. They didn't budge and neither did I, so no cigar.
In parallel to interviewing at that company, I also created my profile on Underdog.io. I spent Dec. 5 to Dec. 16 talking with 7 different companies in New York. I saw that their Salary range is lower than in Bay Area so it did not go far.
On Dec. 13, I created my profile on Hired.Me. Since then I have had 5 offers. I have made strong connection with one of the company and will be having in-person interview in a month (I have 3 week family wedding planned in Jan :)).
From my experience, there are so many companies looking for quality engineers. If you are having hired time getting hired, I am open to talk with you. I personally don't pursue working at big companies for the sake of them being big. I am looking for a company where I fit in based on my programming design sense and culturally.
I'm 27/M/Single/SF - so I don't have much constraints as someone who may be older with family or in non-tech savvy part of the county.
The key part of your story is that you've made it to SF. I got lucky in 2010 and found a company that would hire me and let me move to a tech hub from my home state. Once I left that job and then the big city (to reduce my burn and work on my independent project), I found it damn near impossible to get back. The fact that I wasn't in the city was a killer for almost all companies, especially startups (where I really wanted to be).
So I moved to the city again for a few months and had a dozen interviews in the first couple of weeks. Some I rejected... some rejected me (obviously), but the activity difference was stark. It was like the floodgates opened.
Everyone should keep that in mind when job-hunting. If you've left or lost your job in a tech hub make use of the time you have left in your apt.
One of the co-founders of underdog.io here. Awesome to hear that you talked to 7 different companies through the platform but not so awesome that the salary numbers in NYC didn't line up to your expectations. $160K is relatively high for NYC. We'll be in SF soon so hopefully we'll be able to introduce you to more cofounders/hiring managers that can offer a salary that's more on par with your expectations. :D
The solution doesn't takes into consideration the 'fizzbuzz' output. Your solution would print both fizz and buzz when the int is divisible by both 3 and 5.
