↓Skip to main content

Thoughts and reflections on finding a job in the IT market in 2026

··4 mins
Remote It Jobs Recruitment
If you never know failure, you never know success
Table of Contents

I applied for jobs in the US, and to be honest, I failed most of them.

I’m still applying and still failing. But that’s how it goes… But one thing that is worth mentioning is that I am learning a lot from these recruitment processes.

Where am I faling? #

  • Leet Code
  • Parallel Programming
  • System Design
  • Behavioral interview questions

Leet Code #

I understand that there are thousands of candidates for one single job, and the recruiters have to submit their candidates through a LeetCode challenge in a way to sort the best ones out.

And here is where I am falling behind.

There are lots of algorithm concepts, like:

  • Two Pointers
  • BFS
  • Graphs

I had those a long time ago in college. I got to remember and practice all of them back.

There is no other way than practice and keep practicing.

Learn the solution from others; you don’t have to be a genius. Copy, learn, debug and review. This will also make you a better developer/engineer.

Parallel Programming #

All my career I worked developing RESTful APIs for backends, and most of these APIs were simple POST and GET methods. Simple operations in a database. Sometimes we had to provide some sort of pagination.

I never had the chance to work developing a high-performance system that required parallel programming.

So all the questions are related to:

  • Deadlock
  • Atomic Operations
  • Data race
  • Race conditions
  • Semaphores
  • Lock-free algorithms

I am missing and skipping all of that.

I’ve been asked questions like:

  • In Java, what is the difference between a callable and a runnable?

So, besides all those basic topics above, there are also new related topics, like CompletableFuture.

If I want to be a senior professional, I have to go through this.

I asked Claude to help with this. Now he’s guiding me through a project that involves all of these topics. I’ll be publishing it on my GitHub account.

System Design #

Now that AI can help us code, we must be able to design better backend services. Specifically, prepare them for failures and unexpected situations.

During interviews, I’ve been asked things like:

  • How would you avoid a duplication request being persisted in a database given a distributed system?

I couldn’t be able to answer that. But I do believe that is something related to idempotency.

After that, I decided to take classes with a real specialist in this field. Matheus Fidelis works for Itau (a large bank in LATAM), and he is launching a training course only for system design through LinuxTips.

Getting ready for the next 6 months of my life.

Behavioral Interview questions #

I believe that my resume is not even going through the ATS.

But some tricky questions that usually show up during interviews are:

  • How do you manage a conflict situation?
  • How do you behave when someone disagrees with your idea?
  • What was the most challenging project you ever worked on?

To be honest, I never worked in something challenging. As I said before, I had only CRUD operations over RESTful APIs.

Is there something wrong with that?

What about a mentorship program? #

No! Definitely this is NOT THE WAY TO GO!

I’ve been there already, and it was a waste of money and time.

I joined Felipe Palma’s mentorship program for about R$12k in order to get help on these topics, have a nice and clean LinkedIn profile, and have an attractive resume. Not only that, but I also learned a few useful things during the 6-month program. But to be honest, all of that is free on YouTube.

Yes! Twelve thousand Brazilian real!

As you can see, I am not ready.

They said I was ready. What??

Felipe is a nice guy, but his team didn’t give me too much attention.

Further steps for the next 6 months #

Well, I have to run for it.

I got to learn those algorithms, build a project that deals with multithreading, design a fault-tolerant system, and review my career and reflect on what was challenging or, at least, create some sort of convincing narrative.

To be honest, I am tired.

I’ll keep you updated.

Is anyone going through the same thing as me too?