I have a dangerous thought sometimes that universities, collages and bootcamps should have a much higher failure rate. Some people, despite working incredibly hard, find programming impossibly difficult to learn. I’ve had plenty of students like this - where no matter how much effort they put in to studying, programming just never seems to click.

It breaks my heart a little to say this but the earlier they pick a different career path, the better their lives will be.

Hard to gel that with the "learn to code" wave of the past decade. Software engineering is one of the few remaining middle class white collar professions with significant demand and growth, people are going to be drawn to it as wages collapse in many other industries.

Yes. And yet, everyone glosses over how difficult it is to learn to program. Its a different way of thinking. Learning to program is like learning to write good fiction. Or learning to make art. Lots of folks - for no fault of their own - will never achieve mastery. But by never telling those stories, people end up blaming themselves for not being good enough. The reality is you can't dump a 60yo ex-miner into a coding bootcamp for 3 months and expect him to be employable. And if you try, and he (predictably) fails, failure isn't his burden to carry.

I suspect a lot of people who complain about technical interviews do so as cover for struggling to be good enough at programming to be hireable. I think we need to take the stigma away from that - its ok to find programming hard. Honestly, that makes you a more normal person. It doesn't say anything about your work ethic or your value as a human. And its not a failure to choose another career.