My startup failed, then I found out I was unemployable
&gt; Being a self taught software developer who has been programming since I was 12, I had no idea how to reverse a binary tree.<p>It can be done.  As a self-taught developer, and after years of startups and consulting, I got my first FAANG job at age 40.  I hadn&#x27;t done any real kind of interview in 15 years.  I spent 90% of my time preparing for CS questions, and struggled at the first one, but ended up at FB, and Google a few years later.<p>My mindset wasn&#x27;t that they really cared that I could do these obscure programming exercises that I hadn&#x27;t used once in 20+ years of real-world programming, but rather that I could prove that I could learn and adapt.