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I have worked in the software industry for some 12 years now but it feels like I'm just spinning my wheels. I get contacted about senior engineer jobs from recruiters that look at my LinkedIn page and resume, but I am woefully under-qualified for any of them. Therefore I tend to stick with applying to mid-level positions but even those are getting tough now. My communication skills are good at the job, I'm mild-mannered and never create any big conflicts at work, people have generally said I'm enjoyable to work with. And my skills are getting more out of date, so I have learned more modern Javascript frameworks like React and Vue. I will also sign up to Coursera to learn TDD. I get some phone interviews for some major companies but can't pass them. Last time I've been to an onsite was in late 2017. Since I'm on my own w/o good referrals, and I cannot pass any job interviews for full-time jobs, I have resorted to short part-time contracts. I'm not in good financial shape. Currently I live with my single mom in subsidized housing and we are both under the poverty line. ---- Here is my resume covering my career with redacted info. I tried to keep it all within one page: https://i.imgur.com/qo7fTtB.png Some facts about my jobs: * Every job (aside from the freelance ones) was found on Craigslist. From 2007-14 I was cold applying to Indeed and CL. (I know CL is garbage now, so no need to tell me that. When I moved to freelancing I have moved onto LinkedIn and other sites like Hacker News and Angel.co to apply to full-time jobs.) * With the exception of one job, they are all contract or contract-to-hire, and all paid much lower than the average. First starting with $12 an hour up to $25 for the most recent non-freelance job. * They're all small companies, no major brand names. Two of them are web agencies that cater to small-medium B2B clients. * Most of the work I do is "feature work." From 2013 onward I have never overseen deployment of code. Mainly just commit code and submit PR's. * I also have never experienced any sort of unit testing, continuous integration or modern ops practices in development. I guess it's less likely to have these things in low paying jobs. System design? Microservices? I know even less. * I thought I could cover more ground in smaller companies, but apparently not always. The more time I spend working in those places, the more realize what I don't know about the industry. ---- I am open to joining big tech companies even it involves Leetcode. However all the Leetcode grinding in the world won't do me any good if my resume is the show-stopper, the reason some big companies are ignoring me. What's your resume advice for big tech companies? Maybe I should go back to a junior level job as a temporary stepping stone but do it at a much better company that actually builds up their developers well? I have spent 5 years applying for full-time jobs in the midst of all the freelancing. I want my next job to be so good that I will only need like 5 weeks of applying to get my next job after that. And what can I do to make my hobby learning look more attractive? I'm not copy-pasting code from Medium articles. I'm making stuff from scratch with frameworks I learn. I'm hoping someone will hire me on what I have learned vs what I did at work because most of my past jobs are looking less and less attractive each year.