Career advice?

[KHRZ]

So I became a .NET consultant last year, at the start it was fine, learned new technologies like .NET/Angular 7, and Azure, after I got bored of my old Java job. But now it kind of happened again, I got rented out to some product database company with some legacy-shit AngularJS app, and .NET backend that has junk code (for example, 20% of their 400+ unit test fails, so the guy in charge have disabled them in the build pipeline. And they have a bunch of outdated code that just sits around/or is commented out, e.g. there is a "productController" and "product2Controller" both in use.) And they didn't even have urgent tasks for me, I finish the task and the guy working there needs time to think up something new...

I will be there untill Christmas, unless I jump ship again. Now I did get contacted by 50+ recruiters so far, although most are similar web dev jobs, some are indeed more interesting like machine learning, unreal engine, some Azure distributed game engine. You may wonder why am I even in my current job? Well they had 3 recruiters contact me, and they supposedly have the biggest AI department in town, which I could possibly switch over to, which seemed interesting.
However, when I look at it, it seems they do mostly boring projects where they sligthly optimize some stuff with statistics, do data cleanup (which I heard is 66% of typical such roles) before feeding their AI models, which they got from Google, and I just don't seem on their wavelength or something (I have a Master's degree in artificial intelligence, while they seem to all have math or physics degrees, and they say reductive stuff like "AI is just statistics").

My thinking was I really need to stop listening to these recruiters, and apply for a job myself next time, since you can't really trust them when they boast about companies. (some job I interviewed with, supposedly for some AI focused role, the interviewer said "actually we don't do any AI"). And I just looked up my colleague sitting next to me, no disrespect to him, he's a "senior" consultant while I'm "junior", yet he actually started at a college the same year as I started in university, got out after his bachelor and started as "non-junior" for 3 years at another company, then became senior last year. So although I earn good money, it seems kind of humiliating and like I'm wasting my talent, when some recruiters are asking me if I am interested in their senior positions. 

[Helios]

I work in tech but I am of the strong belief that contracted jobs are terrible, so feel free to pass over my opinions -

Recruiters from contracting management companies are fucking awful. They never know what they're talking about and will straight up lie to get you to sign.

Always trash emails from recruiters unless it's somebody working *directly for the company*, as in, is on their payroll, FTE, working for them.

And yeah. Just start throwing you app out to anywhere you think looks interesting. Never go through contractors

[Silent Hell]

I've always been interested in programming, but unfortunately for me, I never considered it an option while growing up, so allow me to offer advice from a different career perspective. A bit of history, I was the kind of kid that has always gone with the flow. I had no direction in life. All I knew is that I got amazing grades in biology and chemistry in highschool so I was a Biochem undergrad. So naturally, I had no fucking clue what I wanted to do with my newfound degree. I sorta liked my laboratory classes so I looked online for listings for lab work. A recruiter for a hiring firm found me and had me come in for an interview for basically all the jobs she had available. It was fucking weird and I had already been working at an animal hospital so I wanted something to do with microbiology. The lady says that I didn't have enough experience for microbiology and that I'd fit better in a chemistry setting. So she lands me a job at some flavor making corporation as a QA tester. Worst fucking experience of my life. I despise corporate environments (which is why I'm kinda glad I didn't do computer science/programming). I reevaluated my life choices on my third day there. After a week I quit and went back to my animal hospital job and have just now finished applying to Vet School.

Recruiters don't care about what you want or what you're interested in. They're only getting paid to fill positions they know you fit in. The downside is that a ton of jobs (at least in my situation) hired through recruiters. I can't do any meaningful work with just a bachelors in Biochemistry. So that's why I figured I'd go all out and become a veterinarian. My foot, hell, practically my whole body is already through that door, might as well take that chance, right? So if you're unsatisfied with your prospects, consider going further in your education, but again, I don't know much about your degree.

[KHRZ]

Well I did have more fun making video games. First I made one by myself, just a free game but won a game competition. Then I joined a startup that is making a "real" game, ecxept it was mostly me programming, the other programmer too scared of my code or something, some 3D artists mostly waiting for us to get a concept artist/funding, and too many (3) business people who were not really interested in working on the game. I quit 2 years ago as it seem a likely failure, I have some evidence of the CEO scamming us to get more shares also.

Since then though they did get some investors and hired more people. I lost access to their documents, so I can only really follow the development through their PR, they now treat me like an investor and just sends me letters to the shareholders saying everything is great and the sales are projected to be really good. One thing I do know though is they switched out my network architecure (fixed integer math deterministic simulations without syncing) to floating point with authorative server, which seem like it could create huge challenges. And the guy who decided it quit in August.

Now they wrote in the latest letter they got 4m Steam impressions and 20k wishlists, and mentioned something about good response in Youtube/Twitch community. But from what I see there is no community, only found one guy played it in 1 youtube video, a handfull comments on Steam and empty subreddit, only mentioned in very small local newspapers. So don't bother looking for it, it's an unknown game.

Now one of the business guys called me last year trying to boost about how the shares are so valuable now. I've been trying to think of some exit plan they may have, as they only sold new printed shares. Doesn't seem they can profit without actually making a decent game.

Now you could argue none of this is my problem any more. But I kind of have an instinct that I should lie low untill it's over, and try not to seem connected to the game, since I can't really speak too freely about it without putting it in more risk (my NDA should have run out though). But their plan of early access in December seem unlikely, and prorbably their funding ran out again. So it could be a while. So it made me a bit unenthuastic and I failed some job interviews that may have been much more interesting, I want to get in good shape before I do any more job interviews I think.

[NaturalViolence]

Helios Wrote:I work in tech but I am of the strong belief that contracted jobs are terrible, so feel free to pass over my opinions -

Recruiters from contracting management companies are fucking awful. They never know what they're talking about and will straight up lie to get you to sign.

This 1000x over.  When I came out of college my professor put me in touch with a recruiter and just talking to them I quickly realized that these people were degenerate scum trying to make a quick buck.

@KHRZ
KHRZ I'm amazed it took you this long to figure this out since you seem to be a pretty smart guy.  If anyone ever has a financial incentive to f*ck you over they will f*ck you over sooner or later.

You could apply for jobs directly but I'll tell you from experience that this is an uphill battle these days.  I've been on the hiring committee for two companies now and the story was the same both times.  We got hundreds of applicants, threw most of their resumes away without even reading them, and interviewed the applicants that existing employees already knew.  And it's like this at almost every company I've ever done business with.  If you know someone there you're probably a thousand times more likely to get hired.  Which is why it's so crucial for your future success that you network as much as possible.  It doesn't have to be a direct connection either.  If someone at a vendor that we've worked with can vouch for this person that's usually enough to at least get them an interview.

I did an internship programming during college but decided it was way too stressful for me, so I went into IT.  But of course I wouldn't necessarily recommend that for someone with your education (I only have a bachelor's).  

I can't tell you what career to choose since we are not the same person, but I can try to give you some advice based on what little I know.  
-Don't ever waste time doing a job you hate (or with people you hate).  If things get bad, leave.  
-That being said don't go crazy with ambition either.  If something probably isn't going to make enough money, even if you enjoy it, don't do it.  
-Always trust your gut about people/companies, many of them are shady as hell.  This game company sounds like one such company and you seem to instinctively know that.  
-Try things out before you invest too heavily in them.  Internships are great for this.

That's about all I can think of right now.

[KHRZ]

@NaturalViolence

My biggest issue is I can't tell what's really a great company, other than the most obvious ones, except it seems even they may try some shady shit. For example, I had some recruiters from Apple for Norwegian language eningeer for Siri (in France). But it was contracted for 6 months, so they may decide then to throw you out/keep you based on whether they need you. And also the pay was lower than my current pay, apparantly Apple don't like paying so much in France. However I had a 30 min Skype interview first, but fucked up (kind of bad signal, didn't read the dude's emotions and whatnot, recruiters were even mad afterwards, I offended Apple's guy or something). But when I tried Norwegian Siri a few years later now, it still sucks anyway IMO.

A company called Cognite, I was very curious on them, since they will attempt to save the oil industry $billions with machinery IoT sensors/VR inspections, are one of Google Cloud's biggest partners, and they tried getting some people I know who got into math/computer science national olympics finals to join them. I heard from a recruiter he would send them my details, but then I never heard from him again. 3 months later however, the boss of Cognite contacted me for an interview, both AI and work with Unreal Engine to optimize rendering of CAD models. No mention of the recruiter (maybe he had a 3 month expiration and they screwed him). But this was right after I signed for my current job, so even though they said I could just ask them anything, I just ignored them afterwards. Also the boss was jailed 1 year back in the day for bad accounting in his old company, so even though it may be a great company, I was a bit more skeptical at that time.

Equinor (Norway's biggest company) I interviewed for, pretty much the same job as Cognite, except they wanted to use Unity Engine instead of Unreal Engine to visualize CAD models. They had a worse interview and kind of just asked me if I could optimize room partitioning/dynamic loading, sounded like they didn't know themselves, I said I wasn't to sure how easy it would be (maybe I should have YOLO'ed?). And they kind of lost the race to Cognite which is doing much better.