Oh, it never even got that far. I think I only had two or three leetcode tests, and, of course, they were Binary Tree tests (which I would still be bad at). To be fair, I did have a couple of "take-home" tests, but they were looking for buzzword du jour solutions, as opposed to ones that worked, with half the code, much higher Quality, and twice the performance.
My skills were (and have been, since I wrote my first line of code) very relevant, as you can actually easily see, simply by viewing my rather extensive portfolio (which no one ever does). That covers over a decade, and my last checkin was about five minutes ago (in fact, just this second, I got a TestFlight notification that my next build is ready). I never actually stopped coding.
But no one ever bothered looking at it. I've mentioned that, here, before. By "leveling up," I was really talking about developing work habits that didn't rely on corporate infrastructure, worked for a standup desk at home, and in a much smaller scope (I used to run a C++ image processing shop, and I have switched to just working on apps in Swift). Once I realized that no one was going to hire me for the skills I used to get paid for, I decided to concentrate on the ones that I enjoyed.
Also, I wanted to become much more proficient at Swift. I've been writing it since the day it was announced (and releasing apps, written in it). This had been my "nights and weekends" work, and now, it was my full-time work. If I had been employed, doing this work, I would have had to go through the same adjustments, anyway -maybe. It's quite possible that most corporate stuff is still done in ObjC.
Also, I wanted to dedicate a bunch of time to writing stuff. I enjoy writing. It also helps me to be a better programmer and architect.
And, I guess the best part of "leveling up," was learning some essential self-respect. Employers don't want employees to have self-respect (well, I did, but, apparently, I'm an outlier. My employers certainly didn't want me to have any). Once I had that, the scales fell from my eyes, and I realized what I was missing.
And, no, I never want to work for anyone, ever again. I have become spoiled, by not having my work ignored, destroyed, and misused. That makes me very happy. I suspect that employers wouldn't be happy with my "uppity" attitude.
Out of curiosity (and I realize you're happy with how things are for you now), did you try contract work? I've worked with plenty of highly skilled, highly paid contractors who were well above the average age of direct employees at my organization.
My skills were (and have been, since I wrote my first line of code) very relevant, as you can actually easily see, simply by viewing my rather extensive portfolio (which no one ever does). That covers over a decade, and my last checkin was about five minutes ago (in fact, just this second, I got a TestFlight notification that my next build is ready). I never actually stopped coding.
But no one ever bothered looking at it. I've mentioned that, here, before. By "leveling up," I was really talking about developing work habits that didn't rely on corporate infrastructure, worked for a standup desk at home, and in a much smaller scope (I used to run a C++ image processing shop, and I have switched to just working on apps in Swift). Once I realized that no one was going to hire me for the skills I used to get paid for, I decided to concentrate on the ones that I enjoyed.
Also, I wanted to become much more proficient at Swift. I've been writing it since the day it was announced (and releasing apps, written in it). This had been my "nights and weekends" work, and now, it was my full-time work. If I had been employed, doing this work, I would have had to go through the same adjustments, anyway -maybe. It's quite possible that most corporate stuff is still done in ObjC.
Also, I wanted to dedicate a bunch of time to writing stuff. I enjoy writing. It also helps me to be a better programmer and architect.
And, I guess the best part of "leveling up," was learning some essential self-respect. Employers don't want employees to have self-respect (well, I did, but, apparently, I'm an outlier. My employers certainly didn't want me to have any). Once I had that, the scales fell from my eyes, and I realized what I was missing.
And, no, I never want to work for anyone, ever again. I have become spoiled, by not having my work ignored, destroyed, and misused. That makes me very happy. I suspect that employers wouldn't be happy with my "uppity" attitude.