$120k Bay Area WITCH "SRE" - Going nowhere and feel like just giving up on life
About me: YOE: 8 years US Citizen TC: $120k/year, living with spouse(TC $350k and 2 kids) Need to stay in the Bay Area for family reasons WITCH = Wipro, Infosys, TCS, Congizant, HCL. I work for one of these companies (1st job out of college). The client where i work at is Apple. I have basically done nothing of value here that counts as experience i can put on my resume. I have ended up doing just some operations work here and there. Many days there is just pagerduty i have where i need to make noise to FTEs. I want to leave but i have nothing that i can put on my resume to show for my time here. My leetcode progress has been slow. I just really suck at these questions. I know i need to work a lot harder (multiple hours a day) if i want to get to the point where i can solve medium which seems to be the bare minimum for the Bay Area. At this point I will even take a minimum wage job if it is what i need to do to get some actual dev experience on my resume. The longer I stay here, the longer I stagnate and gain no skills. What do i even do in my situation? I am more interested in SRE position. So is my best bet to do 2 - 3 in depth side projects and put them on my resume to get interviews, then a hackerrank easy/medium to pass the interviews? I will be going for the easiest companies possible of course (non-tech companies) as most FAANG type companies are in HIRING freeze. Thinking of also quitting my current job and use time to study for interviews. Anyone have any advice? Looking at current market and layoffs, is quitting job at WITCH advisable?
Life is about tradeoffs, some would chose 350k spouse and 2 kids
Stay put for the next couple quarters while you keep preparing and take some practice interviews Economy will improve. Nothing lasts forever
The only reason you think you ‘suck’ at leetcode is because you haven’t yet put in the time needed to reach your first breakthrough point where you start getting the hang of things. So I’d recommend pushing a bit further.
posssible
What do you think about going back to school and getting a masters degree? Or join one of those boot camps
Hard to understand. Your wife or husband makes $350K and you are miserable? Wait until economy rebound. Prepare and learn hard skills meanwhile.
Fluff your resume. Hit leetcode hard. Look for level 2 positions at start ups or 2nd tier companies. In the Bay Area you should be able to get at least 170k TC and start doing real work you can put on your resume.
Your household TC is pretty decent, so you don't need to rush. I'm also in the bay and I wish my household TC was that much. Stay put for now as others said until the economy improves. Find ways to work on something more interesting at work. The job market should improve in 6 months.
TL;DR learn how to write summary
Unpopular opinion here. Quit the job so that you can all in interview preparation and algorithms. Your loved one ca support you a few months with that compensation.
Why did you stay in witch for 8 years and never try to get out ?
You are not helping
Maybe op a chtya, maybe couldnt get out of chtya job.