I'm 26 years old and I have a Computer Engineering degree with a 3.45 GPA from the University of Maryland: College Park, not the greatest school, but not at all bad either.

All my life I've played games and have been interested in computers. From the first time I've taken a programming class, I've gravitated to taking as much programming courses as possible. When I took my first physics course on electro-physics, I've been dead set on being a Computer Engineer and have successfully and enjoyably, completed my bachelors in it.

My first job was as a technical consultant for a software company, which I completely hated. Nothing low level technical, everything high level, very buggy software, and horrible company organization. The company was not successful and tons of people, including myself, got laid off.

After the dreadful experience working as a technical consultant, I decided I wanted to do something interesting, challenging, and fun. I never programmed a game, didn't take any courses in game development, but using the internet I've learned to developer small scaled games on the side in C/C++/Java/Actionscript. After some time, I got a job as a Quality Assurance tester for a game company, in the hopes of moving up as a game developer/programmer. After over a year there, the project flopped, no career growth for workers, and the studio shut down. Currently, I'm doing development work in Unity using Javascript. If anyone's interested, check out my website @ www.skinlessmeatpalette.com.

Now I'm on the job hunt again. I've applied to several game companies as a programmer, but right now, I'm pretty much looking for any programming position available. Without any professional experience 4 years out of college, I'm finding it quite difficult to convince any company to give me a job as a programmer.

I'm wondering if a person's personality/character has a lot to do with whether a company will hire a person, if the person will "fit in" with the coworkers. I've never had any issues hanging out with nerds and geeks, I'm a huge geek myself. I've met tons of people who love playing D&D, anime, etc. However, I am not oblivious to the fact that although I do spend a lot of time on the computer playing games and programming, I do not spend a lot of my free time learning about internet culture, such as popular mimes and tropes. I'm very active outdoors, play sports, snowboard, run, weight lift, hang out at bars, clubs, etc. Growing up, I've never had a single friend (besides classmates in college) who was into programming. I feel like even though I have the skills to program for a company, I may be stereotyped as an individual who is not technically savvy. The last job interview I had with a lead game programmer, I was consistently questioned if I view myself more as a designer rather than a programmer.

Should I continue and try to be a programmer or look for alternative career options? Is there any truth to my claims? Any suggestions?

Trying to become a general computer programmer these days is a bad move. Had you finished your degree 5 years earlier you would have no problem landing a programmer job even with no experience.
But now general programming it's a rat race to the bottom trying to compete with indian and chinese programmers who get paid less than $5 per hour.
I would not advise the games industry either. Although the games industry is specialized, and you won't suffer as much competition, because bellow average programmers cannot get into it,
game studios make programmers work like slaves and low pay. They assume that everyone is a geek who doesn't mind working for peanuts just because of their love of games.
Get a career on something else and develop your own indie social game on your free time.
2 specialized fields where programmers get decent pay is finance and electronics. It's not easy to break into finance. I myself am trying to get into electronics. I wish I had studied electronics or electrical engineering instead of computer science.

Here's what I suggest. Don't try to get a job doing something you enjoy. If you want to do something that you enjoy as your career, start a business. But if you're going to work for someone else, do something that will pay you the most money. Because all doing the thing you love for someone else is going to do is teach you to hate the thing you love. Then, spend your sizable paycheck and free time on doing the thing you love.

Here's what I suggest. Don't try to get a job doing something you enjoy. If you want to do something that you enjoy as your career, start a business. But if you're going to work for someone else, do something that will pay you the most money. Because all doing the thing you love for someone else is going to do is teach you to hate the thing you love. Then, spend your sizable paycheck and free time on doing the thing you love.

This is a good advice, but don't forget that you can still learn a lot of things by being employed at a decent company. Starting a company is ideal, but only if you have experienced people in your team to back you up. If you are a sole programmer who just graduated college, and your project portfolio consists of a pong game and a half-finished tetris, and you have nobody to work together with, it's better to get a job and learn new things about programming, project execution, and corporate cultures.

I'm 26 years old and I have a Computer Engineering degree with a 3.45 GPA from the University of Maryland: College Park, not the greatest school, but not at all bad either.

All my life I've played games and have been interested in computers. From the first time I've taken a programming class, I've gravitated to taking as much programming courses as possible. When I took my first physics course on electro-physics, I've been dead set on being a Computer Engineer and have successfully and enjoyably, completed my bachelors in it.

My first job was as a technical consultant for a software company, which I completely hated. Nothing low level technical, everything high level, very buggy software, and horrible company organization. The company was not successful and tons of people, including myself, got laid off.

After the dreadful experience working as a technical consultant, I decided I wanted to do something interesting, challenging, and fun. I never programmed a game, didn't take any courses in game development, but using the internet I've learned to developer small scaled games on the side in C/C++/Java/Actionscript. After some time, I got a job as a Quality Assurance tester for a game company, in the hopes of moving up as a game developer/programmer. After over a year there, the project flopped, no career growth for workers, and the studio shut down. Currently, I'm doing development work in Unity using Javascript. If anyone's interested, check out my website @ www.skinlessmeatpalette.com.

Now I'm on the job hunt again. I've applied to several game companies as a programmer, but right now, I'm pretty much looking for any programming position available. Without any professional experience 4 years out of college, I'm finding it quite difficult to convince any company to give me a job as a programmer.

I'm wondering if a person's personality/character has a lot to do with whether a company will hire a person, if the person will "fit in" with the coworkers. I've never had any issues hanging out with nerds and geeks, I'm a huge geek myself. I've met tons of people who love playing D&D, anime, etc. However, I am not oblivious to the fact that although I do spend a lot of time on the computer playing games and programming, I do not spend a lot of my free time learning about internet culture, such as popular mimes and tropes. I'm very active outdoors, play sports, snowboard, run, weight lift, hang out at bars, clubs, etc. Growing up, I've never had a single friend (besides classmates in college) who was into programming. I feel like even though I have the skills to program for a company, I may be stereotyped as an individual who is not technically savvy. The last job interview I had with a lead game programmer, I was consistently questioned if I view myself more as a designer rather than a programmer.

Should I continue and try to be a programmer or look for alternative career options? Is there any truth to my claims? Any suggestions?

I went to UMCP for a time. However, if you have a CE degree shouldn't you be looking toward company such as Intel, IBM, AMD, NVidia? CS degree, in theory, is more targeted toward software company jobs than a CE degree. Granted you can get a programing job with either.

With that said, are the consulting firms in MD/DC not able to find you a job? I'm surprised given the college you graduated from, GPA, the fact you have experience, and it seems you have a small portfolio at least. I find it surprising that you are having a hard time finding a job in that area. UMCP is a highly respected on the East Coast. I don't mean for basketball. I mean for the curriculum. If you can't get a job doing temp work (as a programmer) by your own means or through a temp agency, then try sites like rent-a-coder to pull some work in the meanwhile.

Joel on Software, says there are "Five Worlds" (here: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FiveWorlds.html)

I'm not sure he's quite right, but he's certainly close.

The difficulty in the software industry seems to be, that once you get into one of the worlds, moving to another is very difficult.

Joel's article is quite dated, he seems to consider SaaS as a variataion on "Shrinkwrap" (which I call "Boxed" software, even though it's mostly downloaded nowadays).

I think SaaS isn't a variation on Shrinkwrap.

However, I do agree with Joel's other points.

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I guess it's possible to transfer between worlds, but few ever find the "portals"

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You have entered the "Shrinkwrap" world, and are now trying to find the portal to Games.

* This is going to be difficult
* Are you F* insane?

Most games developers I know are insane, so if you are, you're in good company.

Personally, I (have been in the SaaS / Shrinkwrap world for some time) have long wanted to get into "Embedded" because I think it may be quite interesting.

Here's what I suggest. Don't try to get a job doing something you enjoy. If you want to do something that you enjoy as your career, start a business. But if you're going to work for someone else, do something that will pay you the most money. Because all doing the thing you love for someone else is going to do is teach you to hate the thing you love. Then, spend your sizable paycheck and free time on doing the thing you love.

Well, it's not as simple as that. For starters, what if running a business isn't something someone enjoys? Whilst running a business gives you freedom, you've also got to deal with more aspects (customers, marketing, investment, hiring) that you wouldn't have in a job.

But running a business doesn't magically mean you can do what you like - you've still got the same tradeoff between "completely enjoyable but makes no money" and "less enjoyable but makes more money" that you find in employment. If you say your work choice should be whatever makes most money (even if you don't enjoy it), then why doesn't that apply to someone's choice of business, too? If doing something for work is going to make you hate it, then why doesn't that apply when you're working all hours trying to survive running a business over it?

It's not clear to me why one would make the trade off at either extreme. Given a choice between something I hate, versus something I like that pays slightly less, would you still suggest the former? And whilst more money is useful, it's not clear why that's needed to do something like programming for fun? There might be some people who have a really expensive hobby, and decide the only criterion in a job is whichever pays the most to fund that hobby, no matter what that job is, but that situation isn't typical for most people.

I'd say that for many people, what subjects/jobs you enjoy will often correlate with what you're most skilled at - even more so if like the OP you already have a Computer Engineering degree. Are you suggesting he give up, then spend years/thousands of dollars retraining as say a lawyer and a doctor, even if he'd hate those jobs, just because it might pay more?

Here's what I suggest. Don't try to get a job doing something you enjoy. If you want to do something that you enjoy as your career, start a business. But if you're going to work for someone else, do something that will pay you the most money. Because all doing the thing you love for someone else is going to do is teach you to hate the thing you love. Then, spend your sizable paycheck and free time on doing the thing you love.

I don't agree with this philosophy because it assumes that you will eventually have free time to do the thing you enjoy. If anything, time is far more valuable than extra money. Life has taught me that it is very short so you should waste no time pursuing things you don't care about otherwise you will regret it later. On their deathbed, I've never seen anyone who cared about how little or how much money they made. The only thing I've seen is regret for not pursuing their dreams when they had a chance. It is far better to have tried and failed than to never have tried at all.

[quote name='capn_midnight' timestamp='1321129448' post='4883270']
Here's what I suggest. Don't try to get a job doing something you enjoy. If you want to do something that you enjoy as your career, start a business. But if you're going to work for someone else, do something that will pay you the most money. Because all doing the thing you love for someone else is going to do is teach you to hate the thing you love. Then, spend your sizable paycheck and free time on doing the thing you love.

I don't agree with this philosophy because it assumes that you will eventually have free time to do the thing you enjoy. If anything, time is far more valuable than extra money. Life has taught me that it is very short so you should waste no time pursuing things you don't care about otherwise you will regret it later. On their deathbed, I've never seen anyone who cared about how little or how much money they made. The only thing I've seen is regret for not pursuing their dreams when they had a chance. It is far better to have tried and failed than to never have tried at all.
[/quote]

Time is more valuable than money, which is exactly why I incredibly mercenary about getting paid and paid well. Getting paid well allows me to do the things I enjoy and more importantly means I can afford to work less hours.

The reality is that while money might not equal happiness, it certainly helps.

I'm wondering if a person's personality/character has a lot to do with whether a company will hire a person, if the person will "fit in" with the coworkers.

Certainly. I'd say it's about 50% experience 50% corporate culture. If you are likable, you will get a job even if you barely met the requirement. If you are super-smart, but they can't relate to you, I doubt you could go far. Here's an example which I experienced myself. I was interviewed by this big company. There are certain types of people who would actually use their product, and I am not one of them.

I was interviewed by a programmer first. He immediately liked me. We both know good practices, and we chuckled over a couple of bad practices we had both experienced.

Next interviewer was a graphics artist. A graphics artist, not an executive or a project manager or "higher-ups". He obviously asked a couple of generic questions. Bla bla bla. He then proceeded to ask: what do you think of our product and services. Not wanting to lie (because I knew they could check), I honestly said to them that I haven't used it much just because I haven't found much use of it personally. Truth. The interview stopped there.

Unfortunately, this is what's happening out there. Companies don't really hire "smart" people. They feel if you could fit in. Try to go work in a large company, and you will find a handful of "dumb" people. They hire people they like with relatable experience.