Title: I&#x27;m pretty new to software engineering (~1 year out of college as a CS major) and am having some serious problems improving my skillset (particularly with interviews).<p>Background:<p>- I worked as a linux sysadmin at a startup before going to school for CS. After 3 years, I graduated with a decent GPA (&gt;3.6) and a couple internships at a large tech company.<p>- In college, I always felt like I had to work a harder than most of my classmates in order to get the same result. I would regularly spend 60 - 80 hours per week on schoolwork.<p>- Upon graduation, I accepted a job with the company I interned with and have worked there for ~1.3 years. However, I&#x27;ve been prepping to jump to a different role for a few months now.<p>- Recently (past 1.5 months), I&#x27;ve spent 1 - 3 hours per day on tech interview prep using CLRS, Cracking the Coding Interview, etc. My current target is a role at one of the &quot;big four&quot; tech companies or a high-quality startup doing either webdev or infrastructure engineering.<p>- So far, I have interviewed for and been rejected by no less than 10 different roles. I was also rejected by approximately 20 companies during college. I always fail during tech portions.<p>- I am REALLY bad at algorithm problems and experience serious performance anxiety. Concentrated studying and mass interviewing haven’t led to positive results so far. I can solve most problems correctly given enough time (usually 2x+ longer than interviews).<p>Questions:<p>1.) Does there ever come a point where it just isn&#x27;t worth it to continue trying to be a software engineer who can get into top-tier companies &#x2F; projects?<p>2.) How can I find some positive reinforcement in interviewing &#x2F; interview prep even if I constantly get rejected? I do perform post mortems on every interview in order to find areas to improve.<p>3.) If my goal isn&#x27;t an impossibility, how can I efficiently progress towards it? Would a mentor be helpful?
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