most were dumb though - as in 60 iq dumb...

...and you can't even fuck them, because that would be career suicide.

It's never too late!

...oh boy, this is hitting close to home; I am six months away from retiring (but don't tell anyone...:-) ) - and I am slowly losing my mind.

Am I overqualified...

it depends: are you white?

If you are a self learner, there are tons of great free resources online; someone mentioned Khan's academy, but there are also a lot of good stuff on YouTube (search for instance for the two keywords 'Python' and 'beginner', you are bound to find something that works for you -- Python is a pretty good language to learn as a beginner while still being very useful to advanced users -- there are many other ways to get started, but that's not the worse one);

...what about male/female connectors?

That could be the key incentive : tell them there are projects out there with hateful comments and naming conventions!... (not to mention projects deeply rooted in meritocratic principles -- which, as we all know by now, is a white supremacist racist toxically masculine patriarchal very bad thing) and point them towards projects that are already SJW fucked up anyway (Linux kernel and such)

Aren't number 6 and 65 redundant?

AI tools with VR and block chains ! :-) (that’s how you sell an idea these days, didn’t you get the memo?)

Find smaller companies.

To add to that argument: smaller companies simply don't have the resources to support the sjw parasite types, as everybody must pull their own weight; moreover, when you get in early, you have a better shot at steering the company in the right direction as it grows...

Though, don't count on the last point too much - parasites flock to any place that becomes successful, you might have to jump ship as it happens; you'll basically be jumping ship in the opposite direction as sjw parasites do - you'll move from growing successful companies to growing successful companies, as the sjw move from formerly successful companies they ruined to soon to be ruined newly successful companies... but hey, you might be able to retire before you grow tired of this game... :-)

nope it’s a ios dev tool thingy.

...may be she should ‘write’ the firmware for clock-boy next creation? they would have never problem raising capital for that one :-)

Sometimes these negative-productivity people make your life easier though :-) there was this dude who kept breaking things ; I eventually developed a neat little routine : every time I got a bug that was a regression - and I was hunting for these - it became a matter of figuring out what this guy had touched in the relevant code since the bug occurred and just undo it...never ceased to amaze me that we were both paid to do this :-) (I am smiling now but it was actually not all that fun at the time...)

Same problem here, I hate to admit it, but this thing is pretty good.

If the career path you see for yourself is to work for tech companies, then go for the internship. If you i) pick a good one; and ii) do well during said internship, you can get yourself a guaranteed job as soon as you graduate. It's a no brainer IMHO.

Quick read, and some sticking points:

Scrum Master

The dude lists that on his resume... I would throw that out and burn the trash can and burry the ashes as fast as I could too.... then he piles on:

....assigned me coding tests [...] I rejected those tests

why didn't they call him back? I wonder... and he carries on:

I rejected the calls for interviews from these, too...

...and on:

Now that I am in my thirties, I am picky about my job. [...] Unfortunately, the companies don’t understand that.

Yes, special snowflake, they do understand that very well; why hire a picky prima dona with an inflated ego, when you can hire kids fresh off college who'll churn out code just as fast, for a fraction of the cost and without the attitude?

your organization is fucking it up.

Nope, we are staying well clear of that kind of overhyped fad, and we are doing just fine. I would not be working there otherwise.

Ok, it's more like a cult then. The only people I have ever met who would proselytize agile/scrum tended to have a cultish approach to the whole thing. Yep, the holy scriptures do not talk about management, but about all the good things and joy the process brings to the enlightened. I get it. That said, at the end of the day, it is about micromanaging newbies but without telling them that they are being micromanaged - it feels so much better when they feel empowered!

The whole thing is about micromanagement, that's what it boils down to; might work great to herd newbies and less experienced developers, but it is indeed a nightmare situation for experienced devs...

I have found this blog entry from Michael O. Church to be particularly interesting on the subject.

Why did they not become some manager

Self respect? Some of us enjoy coding?

I am one of these ol' farts; still a foot soldier, partly by choice, partly by lack of the social / political skills required to get into management. Funny thing is that I have mostly reached my FI (financial independence) target a wee while back, so the day I am no longer enjoying the game, I'll just kick back and retire (i.e., work on my own projects instead :-) )

ps and I'll keep behaving like a teenager as long as I am still enjoying it too, you darn kid.

OP appears to be a complete beginner with a pocket calculator; so the combination I suggested - Raspberry Pi for which many Python friendly tools exist 'right out of the box' - provides a nice - and cheap - beginner friendly environment to get started, while not limiting OP as his (or her!) skill level grows. That's all.

I started programming with the likes of Fortran, Pascal, Modula-II... wish I had started with C; the dang language is awful of course, but doesn't hide anything, instead of trying to hide things under neat abstractions; it forces you to understand what is going on, AND if you learn it first, it gives you a preview of how shitty programming actually is, rather than gloss over the ugly truth :-)

...and Lisp. Then you know everything there is to know about programming languages, and will be able to pick up whatever is the latest fad of the day in a couple of hours.

...that's how I found happiness too; however, OP has to realize that this is not really an option for a junior / entry level position (5 years experience is still that); small companies expect a new hire to hit the ground running, they can't afford much hand holding.

Another contributor mentioned participating in some open source project : that's an excellent suggestion; that and some years of experience will open a lot of doors.

....the potential for trolling is so tempting here, I mean I am not advocating such behavior of course, that would be bad, but what if someone were trying to push the shittiest possible code - I mean deliberatly shitty - there and go full SJW retard on them until it make it into whatever project.