I'm pretty new to software engineering (~1 year out of college as a CS major) and am having some serious problems improving my skillset (particularly with interviews).

Background:

- I worked as a linux sysadmin at a startup before going to school for CS. After 3 years, I graduated with a decent GPA (>3.6) and a couple internships at a large tech company.

- In college, I always felt like I had to work a harder than most of my classmates in order to get the same result. I would regularly spend 60 - 80 hours per week on schoolwork.

- Upon graduation, I accepted a job with the company I interned with and have worked there for ~1.3 years. However, I've been prepping to jump to a different role for a few months now.

- Recently (past 1.5 months), I've spent 1 - 3 hours per day on tech interview prep using CLRS, Cracking the Coding Interview, etc. My current target is a role at one of the "big four" tech companies or a high-quality startup doing either webdev or infrastructure engineering.

- So far, I have interviewed for and been rejected by no less than 10 different roles. I was also rejected by approximately 20 companies during college. I always fail during tech portions.

- I am REALLY bad at algorithm problems and experience serious performance anxiety. Concentrated studying and mass interviewing haven’t led to positive results so far. I can solve most problems correctly given enough time (usually 2x+ longer than interviews).

Questions:

1.) Does there ever come a point where it just isn't worth it to continue trying to be a software engineer who can get into top-tier companies / projects?

2.) How can I find some positive reinforcement in interviewing / interview prep even if I constantly get rejected? I do perform post mortems on every interview in order to find areas to improve.

3.) If my goal isn't an impossibility, how can I efficiently progress towards it? Would a mentor be helpful?

user:	voidpointer
created:	December 20, 2008
karma:	599