Everyone is bad at everything they haven't tried to do. You can be good at anything. I can't ride a bicycle but if I wanted, I could be good. Just gotta go and do it. Unfortunately doing things is work. Solving abstract problems is the main thing engineers do, if you're not doing that then you're not really engineering you're just copy pasting text.
I had a 3 and 2 year old when I prepared for interviews and I did alright enough to get a job at a FAANG (and it's not Amazon). I took about 2 months and blocked some time every single day. I still managed to cook meals for 4 and put two kids to bed, and wake up at 1am and 3am for night time milk feedings... yes that's not delegated to a housewife it's done by me.
Not quite but almost: Leetcode doesn't evaluate programming proficiency but ability to solve complex and abstract problems using programming. Doing so doesn't require being good at programming but being good at solving problems, and doing so using a programming language. It doesn't require knowing a language well, but only well enough to solve the problem.
Airline pilots are professionals, car drivers are just trying to get somewhere... paying attention isn't their full-time job. Also building autopilot software for a near empty 3-dimensional space is much easier than for complex roads of varying shapes, moving obstacles, country regulations and different road markings...
It's not because we achieve more with less code that we write less code. Instead we want more. Doing speech recognition would have been unthinkable with punch cards... plenty of things are still unthinkable today, but maybe not tomorrow.
I think your inability to find a developer position has nothing to do with your ability to develop. I recruit for my company and the most important is how you sell yourself. Every company looks for a very specific profile that fits.
If you feel uncomfortable about your skills, you need to build a portfolio of projects you've worked on / created / designed... Then you can talk about those, how you designed them and why, and that can fix a poor technical interview. Those also help convey your passion.
10 rejections is insignificant, I think nobody has faced fewer rejections than that for anything, whether it's finding a job or finding funding for a startup or even finding a date.
I would need more information to know what's going wrong, but 10 rejections isn't even an indication that anything is wrong. If the technical interviews are not going well then it "could" mean:
- you're not applying for the right position
- you're looking for something you don't have experience in
- you don't show passion or a good attitude
- you seem desperate and mostly care for the money
- you show a lack of interest in the company and their products
Maybe you are missing out on a lot of opportunities:
- You can do freelancing
- You can find a non-tech company to work for, you'd be surprised by how many need developers: hospitals, government, transportation companies, airlines, insurances, banks... Have you sent your resume to Bank of America?
- You can find a startup that's in a field you kinda know and offer your help
- You can talk to a staffing company, they make money by finding you a job
- Go to events (eg. PHP event, Ruby on Rails, startups events, conferences...) and do networking. It's the easiest way to find a job, though you need to be good at talking to people.
- Look for jobs on angel.co, monster.com, dice.com
I agree, most of the ideas listed either already exist in some shape, or have no market at all. One issue is not just identifying problems one has, but identifying problems a large group of people have AND that they're willing to pay money for the solution.
The secret behind a great idea is actually the hours of research that go with it. You need to research the market very thoroughly, your costs and such and then suddenly it's an idea that's viable. Of course then comes the execution. But a an idea is not just good because it sounds good.
I think this table is missing some important columns. Consider adding these:
- market size (in $)
- time and cost for acquiring a customer
- margin per customer ($ range)