Back in 2019, I was a CS student in Iraq. I taught myself Node.js, React, and TypeScript. Then in 2020, the pandemic started, and honestly, it was perfect timing for me because suddenly a lot of local businesses needed delivery web apps.

I was lucky enough to know some of those business owners, and I ended up building 4 delivery apps by myself. I was coding solo, finishing the apps, setting up Docker, deploying everything, and actually getting paid for it while I was still in my second year of college. It felt unreal. I remember telling my parents, “I have my own money now, you don’t need to give me.” It was one of the best feelings in my life.

Later, I got an internship at a company, and I was so happy about it. I honestly couldn’t believe I was already working as a developer while still studying.

After the internship, I had an idea for a mobile app. I learned React Native in one week and felt really comfortable with it. I started building the app, but eventually it failed and during that time, I managed to get freelance contracts.

Then AI came, and suddenly the bar became much higher.

I thought maybe I should build a SaaS product, so I tried that too… and failed again. Somehow, after that, I got another remote contract with a different company. Then I landed the biggest contract of my life — my dream job — with a well-known open-source company.

The CTO and the team were incredibly kind. At that point, I knew Go pretty well, but mostly for backend REST APIs and CLI tools. Then the CTO gave me a huge task: build a bidirectional gRPC streaming system that could send debugging files from clients on different devices to the server and then stream them into an admin dashboard.

It was a massive task.

I told him, “Sure, I can do it,” but honestly, I had never worked with a codebase that big before, and I had zero experience with microservices.

So during the first week, I bought Udemy courses on microservices and gRPC. I stayed awake all night learning about streaming and diving deeper into Go. I remember one time I literally didn’t sleep for an entire day because I was so focused and excited.

That period was probably the happiest moment of my career.

I learned so much, got feedback from senior engineers, finished the feature, integrated it with the Next.js dashboard, shipped it, and finally got it merged.

And then… that was it.

No more tasks.

I felt empty after that.

Now with AI raising expectations so much, and with me living in Iraq where remote work is basically the only way to work on meaningful projects, the market feels brutally competitive. On top of that, there are fake jobs, agencies wasting your time, and fake opportunities just to make you fill out useless forms.

Now I’m sitting here struggling to even get an unpaid role.

I contacted people. Applied to countless jobs. Contributed to open source projects hoping someone would recognize my work. Built 3 failed SaaS products.

I genuinely feel like I did everything I could.

Every single day I try to improve myself and find work, even unpaid work, if it means joining a real established company and growing with a team.

But nothing is working.

What went wrong? What did I do wrong?

I still love tech. Recently, I even bought a DevOps course because I’m trying to stay relevant and become more than just a full-stack engineer.

But honestly, I’m starting to lose the fire that once made me obsessed with learning.

And I know this isn’t only my problem. There are thousands of people out there trying their best to get their dream job too.

It’s difficult.

what can I do more?