First, screw reddit. Probably one of the best things you can do is leave those subs - they're letting you compare where you are to what other people choose to s

First, screw reddit. Probably one of the best things you can do is leave those subs - they're letting you compare where you are to what other people choose to share about how they're doing. (edit: also remember that in 2008ish there were a lot of 'incredibly successful' people that turned out to be leveraged to the eyeballs or higher and borrowing money to keep up appearances until they lost the McMansions and the expensive cars got repo'd) Second, if you're applying mostly for large corporate jobs you're applying with companies that have established streamlined processes to get employees who are good enough and will fit their molds. Their regular hiring processes aren't designed to filter up the good hires, they're designed to filter out bad ones and they get enough volume that they don't care about false positives. If you want to be at one of those companies you'll have to do it through networking to take you past that first (and maybe second) filter. Are you looking at smaller companies at all? Is what you do or have the skills for relevant at a company of 10-100 employees? Heck, even "Why are you leaving?" has a great answer - "At a giant company like $F advancement has rock solid rules, and without spending years and $thousands on schooling it's clear that there's no upward path for me within the company. I have bigger goals, which is why I'm interested in smaller but growing companies like $interviewer's. This is nothing against schooling - I've taken advantage of a lot of educational opportunities available - but I feel like I'd be stagnating where I am while trying to reach their filtering bar."