Introduction

My name is Jago and I've been studying programming for about three years.

I live in a small town in Salina, Kansas and there are not many programming jobs here.

My work history has mostly been related to electronic repair, electrical, and mechanical. I have done a lot of troubleshooting, repair, and maintenance, but I don't consider myself to be a designer or an engineer.

I have a bachelor's degree in technical management and a masters degree in project management, though I've never really been able to make those work for me. Most of the best jobs that I have gotten are because of my military experience as a US Navy ET Radar technician.

While in college and graduate school, I wrote many papers and I consider myself to be a skilled technical writer. I've never been able to afford to take a low or unpaid internship to advance my career. No company has ever asked me to write a SWOT analysis or an executive summary. I have always needed to fall back on my electronics/electrical experience in order to pay the bills, often doing factory work or similar, and as such, my employment history is spotty. When I do get hired into a company at the factory floor level, I often feel trapped at that level and nobody seems to care that I've been educated and trained to do more.

When I apply for any type of an office job, the interviewer seems to target my two or three years here and there and they turn me away in favor of another candidate.

Potential employers often tell me that I'm overqualified for this position, or underqualified for that position, and I've never been able to find something 'right for me' that utilizes any of my education or training. In fact, I haven't put my masters degree on my resume in over a decade because I don't get callbacks when I apply for positions.

I started studying programming about three years ago in hopes of making a better life for myself. It hasn't been easy, and I often feel like I've been looking at too many different languages and not getting very good at any one in particular. I know having a mentor would help me learn better, but I have not had any luck finding anybody in town with whom I can have a conversation about coding.

I tried to do the LinkedIn thing, but I had very little personal engagement and I felt that I saw more advertisements and off-topic posts than anything else. I closed my account a couple of months ago. I might open a new LinkedIn account and start over, but I need to put some serious though into what I'll be doing with it.

Looking for a job as a programmer has been difficult because there are very few in my town, which leaves me looking for remote positions. Employers that have remote positions often want a senior level developer with eight to ten years experience. I still consider myself to be junior, and when I do find a junior position, the requirement is often five to eight years experience.

Today I did a search for programming mentors which led me to this site. Hi! I'm new here. This post has been mostly about venting my frustrations with employment and finding a job as a programmer, so I'll end here. In my next post, I will start describing my programming history and the projects on which I have worked.

Thank you for reading.