Truth: "I have experience using SQL/excel/java for workbooks and automation, but i was just freestyling everything "

On your resume: "I have experience using SQL/excel/java for workbooks and automation turning company aspirations into real world solutions"

Bullshit is ok, it's expected. Sell yourself. Quit being a pussy and get out there and get yours for you, her and your future family.

You have 9 months of time to make use of, the first thing you need to do is cut expenses and start preparing what you need to take care of her during her 9 months. Get health insurance for her if she does not already have it. If you are currently unemployed you need to get a job any job, I don't care if you are washing dishes in a truck stop dinner or being a walmart greeter you need anything that lets you stack up cash. Read baby books and possibly reach out to local churches if you are in dire need of charity and a support network.

Once you have a job (shitty minimum wage or not) you can focus spare time on advancing your skill set. Not very many hobby projects are going to tell employers whether they want to hire you or not, most of them wont even care to look or bother asking about it unless they are interested in hiring you in the first place.

If you live in or near a larger city look into local datacenter or hosting companies, they are often hiring low level employees with basic computer skills. If you live in a smaller city look into IT jobs (also available in larger areas), either in-house for individual companies or for IT business where they are paid to send their workers out on calls. No job is beneath you, you are the bottom of the computer industry job market until you have experience and certifications.

What you need to focus on after a job is getting certifications since you dont have experience, this lets employers know that an outside 3rd party has vetted you to some extent and that you have worked in that language and field. I am not going to bother listing all the certifications you can get of learn online but just look it up. The more you have the better you look and the more doors that open for you.

I made decent cash right out of college working on Database Management, get yourself some SQL certs and find a job in that field to start your real career if you can, you can branch out after you have learned more. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/sql-training.aspx

what is the point of working remotely?

Don't be afraid to have balls when you interview. I once applied for a job in an aerospace machine shop. After dropping off my application, I went back home and proceeded to get drunk on whiskey (back when I still drank). About 30 minutes later and fairly drunk, I got called to come in for an interview. During the tour of the shop with the owner, he asked if I was familiar enough with their machines to run them. Though I had not run Fadal or Haas controls at that point, I'd run many other types so I replied "I can run any fucking machine you have in here." I got the job and was later promoted to the office across from the boss, planning the workflow and scheduling the jobs through the shop. True story. I've gotten an offer at every interview except for one in the last 15 years and I've had 10 different jobs. In my trade, the fastest way to make more money is to change employers every few years.

First thing first, there's no way it's not your kid, yeah?

It's not that you are a white male that is getting you ignored, it's the useless degree in CS. What kind of actual experience do you have?

When I look at resumes for engineers, I don't give a shit about what certs or degrees you have. Anyone can get those by throwing money at a program. What have you worked on? What have you built/improved/managed?

So you knocked up someone while you weren't married to them.

I have no pity for you. Suffer.

PHP sadly.

You have lots of time. Get a job related to your field. DONT set a requirement that you need to work remotely. It will limit your options significantly.

You work. Your wife stays home. You work on advancing your career throughout the years. If your wife wants to go to work after the kids are in school. great.

Drop the requirement for 100% remote. It isn't going to happen. It's already becoming more and more rare as shitty devs abuse it and break the trust for everyone else. You will see the jobs out there still, but they are generally reserved for long time veterans that can be trusted or they are in such high demand the companies will put up with it.

The myth that only 2 or 3 locations have all the programming jobs is just nonsense. I've spent my career working almost exclusively in rural areas, as I hate big cities. There are plenty of programming jobs all over the country. Many Enterprise joints prefer those areas as the land is significantly cheaper. I've worked for major Enterprise operations that were literally surrounded by corn fields. And Enterprise is more keen on doing internships and taking risks on entry level positions, so they are good way to get your career started.

Get on LinkedIn, as that is where most talent hunters focus these days. Work with recruiting agencies. Try to get in with multiple to increase your odds. They take a cut, but they will work to get you interviews.

Also hit up places on Indeed yourself for the smaller companies who can't afford to pay recruiters.

For increasing your appeal, try to work on open source projects. Even if it's just contributing to writing documentation to start with. Then try to fix a couple bugs. Try to stick to already reported issues and don't bite off more than you can chew.

You aren't getting denied because your a fucking white male. That is really only an issue at a handful of San Fran type companies. Everyone else is in it for business and the best candidates. They are used to hiring far more white males than any other demographic. H1B visas are a larger threat than anything else, as they are competing for your entry level salary. But that has reduced since Trump and continues to be on the decline, thankfully.

Interview well and with confidence. Read books constantly. I have a programming book shelf worth thousands if not tens of thousands. If you don't study, you will fall behind and be ruined. Also sign up for newsletters, podcasts, and other means to keep up with your favorite languages and frameworks. You need to be constantly educating yourself if you want to stay ahead.

Do your own pet projects, but always push yourself to go further. Play with different and very new ways of hosting, deploying, etc. I got one gig because I spent a year on my own project and building it out to scale on the cloud, even though my software was small and dumb and didn't need it. The point was to learn about cloud scaling and my day job wasn't providing it. All my theories and experiments applied at the new gig turned the company around. Learn, learn, learn.

My advice would be to sign up for an AWS account and build some stuff using their free tier of services (they are very generous). There's lots of stuff you can create, but do something end-to-end, even if it's a dumb thing like dumping shit from Twitter's API into some kind of analysis tool.

Im a white male who keeps getting ignored.

Get this shit out of your head. Life isn't fair. Try harder.

If you have SQL, look at data companies or analyst roles. Jr. Reporting Engineer? Those might be less technical so entering might be easier.

learn haskell man, the field of functional programming is exploding these days. plus! you'll get hired quick onto some sweet crypto gigs, like IOHK projects

Find a recruiter that can match your skill set to a company offering the job you want.

Finding a totally remote job in tech as a programmer will be extremely hard. The best you may do is to find one where they will let you work remotely 1 or 2 days a week remotely but expect you to be there the other days, so you can interface with other employees and end users of what you are programming.

You know programming...there tons of remote programmer job come on!

You'll figure it out. You have no choice now. Good luck, kid.

Freelance work might be a good option!