They were doing a lot of stuff really inefficiently because..

made a bunch of applications over a few years that automated/worked around/replaced that old broken stuff. This ended up becoming a really important part of everyone’s work day and my software has saved them 1000s of man-hours annually and honestly I think that is a conservative estimate. My work in part helped them grow their product offerings significantly because they weren’t having to do a bunch of stuff manually anymore. (Inventory updates, Customer order and tracking updates, Updating/pulling stuff from databases, eventually integrated my stuff with some vendor APIs who offered them, web scraping to get info on hundreds of thousands of products and more!)

Sounds like you're not entey level anymore and you shouldn't think of or present yourself as such. It sounds like you can find businesses that need similar updates to their processes and improve them.

The other person mentioned attending Chanber of Commerce events. If you go to one, tell some business owners how you made the existing staff at the prior company able to do more with fewer mistakes and how much the business expanded as a result.

I know that you have your mind set on a more traditional software development position, but until you find it, you can be more creative with how you can make money using your skills. Data is valuable, you know how to collect it, store it, organize it. You're clearly able to problem solve, so create some solutions to problems you see or offer to create them for someone you see that has problems (and money to pay you to solve them).

The market will come back around, you'll eventually be able to find a traditional position that you're looking for, but in the meantime you have to be more flexible.

I'm hearing it's pretty bleak getting a programming job, right now, as a junior developer.

The industry is signaling to you that you're not needed, and that feels awful.

There has been no meaningful reduction in the actual need for programmers, due to either AI or the stock market.

CEOs are colluding with each other explicitly to lower your salary expectations. You are being fucked with by powerful rich people to minimize your career pay and maximize their bonuses.

In the industry, we call this the "fuck around" phase.

The "find out" phase is coming.

Todd in accounting is not, in fact, going to be able to AI prompt a secure scalable customer friendly useable single-sign on integrated legally compliant webapp.

It's going to be a huge mess, and you - with your proven experience automating computers - will be invited to help fix it, for large sums of money.

This has happened before in this industry, and it will happen again.

I'm sorry it's happening at a time that you need to make a change. That sucks.

Hang in there. It sounds like you're good at this job and well suited to it.

I wouldn't go back to school for a master's degree, over this. I would just keep quietly interviewing, while doing a bunch of Cloud Academy style tutorials on interesting topics.

We've been through this before. The shit does hit the fan, and they have to pay us even more to clean it up, afterwards. It's not particularly pleasant, but it is lucrative, over the long term.

You’re no more screwed than anyone else. Don’t go get a masters, it doesn’t carry much weight when hiring with no experience. The work experience you have is better than internships as long as you can sell it during an interview and more importantly on your resume. How do you list that job on your resume? Would you mind sharing a redacted version? Maybe e can help you present it better to get the right attention.

I never did any internships or even went to school for CS (which I've variously felt was either holding me back or was completely irrelevant). If you're looking to network, look for local user groups and business group meetups. These groups are normally held together by consultants and other various marketing interests so you will likely not get hired from this but you can get to know people and maybe even have an opportunity to present. This could lead to getting a heads up on upcoming positions and perhaps even good word of mouth.

Unfortunately this just is a bad time to be looking for work due to industry layoffs. It's impacting me as well and I have 25 years of experience, but I'm stuck in a job that is good but contracted through a garbage company. But it's remote and not going anywhere so I can weather the downturn and wait until the market improves.

Oh and in my observation, a Masters degree isn't helpful unless you branch into business or something, but that's not a technical career track, but management.