>>23944957despite on what is being reported around, it was always hard to break into the market.
my story is
>my background is CS and most courses required a lot of C>after 4 years in uni I had half courses passed for the degree>I started grinding in research centers as FPGA dev (way hard to get experience on>did it for almost 10 years (80% verilog/FPGA, 20% C/TCL/C++)>covid hit>started looking for embedded, digital design (fpga, asic) and C jobs>C jobs was the only option available I could get, others needed migration>jumped full time in C development which I already had good experience since late 2000s>did 2 jobs locally>found a 100% remote as a contractor, B2B indefinite contract>I make more money than anywhere in europe (except Switzerland) while my rent is €300I did a lot of work for free and I did a lot of work on gub'ment pay, which for 2 years was €122/month
this happened between 2010 and 2020. In December 2015 I just had money for my last rent and in 2016 I had to go to do my army service.
I spent in total 12 months living with my parents throughout this time. I haven't had any extra help from them, only living there from time to time while changing towns from one workplace to another.
now, after all these my opinion is:
if you pick some career path that requires almost no expertise and knowledge, i.e. frontend developer, you will find a job, you will always find any job, you will always have low pay because people like you are a dime a dosen.
If you pick a career path that requires you know your shit, then you will eventually find a good paying job. it was not too long ago that I was optimizing some shit for faster cache access.
My employer appreciates the work I do, he knows that this shit is hard and I get paid accordingly, despite living in Greece.
I hope this info help.
