I switched to the security industry without even realizing it when I was hired to work on IAM software. It's not pen-test security, but it's a great way to get into the industry for a software engineer.
What kind of digital ocean plan did you get for your setup ? I've been thinking about putting together something similar but the price to get a reasonable amount of space seemed prohibitive.
There are a few movies that inspired me when I started learning sales: Glengary glen ross is one of them. The boiler room. Wolf of wall street. Not sales lessons per say but that'll get you into a state of mind and motivate you devour sales books.
I guess you just need some mentoring to get some skills/structure. Difference between hacking and engineering is the "structure:. I can't find the right word in english, I would say "rigueur" in French.
Any if you can't find mentoring at your current position, try some books. My first mentors were Andrew Hunt (The Pragmatic Programmer) and Martin Fowler. Start with them, or find your own.
Code mindfully, go deep to understand every little detail of the code you write or read. Ask questions. A lot. Don't stop at the first draft. Don't stop a the first pass of questions.
Keep at it for a while. That one day you'll wake up with the feeling that the code you write yesterday was good. And hell if it's not a beautiful day to make it even better!
Get some CS background if you feel you miss it. https://teachyourselfcs.com/ gets one Hacker News every now and then.
Work on architecture/design. Try to understand design patterns for example. Be critical. Try to understand architectural decisions of the code you read.
Don't understimate the efficiency that comes with really being fluent with a language but do not give fluency too much credit either.
This is a lifetime journey. Improve step by step, little by little, every day. But improve mindfully. Get a direction. Get learning goals.
It's not a "try harder" it's juste question of better orienting the energy maybe.
That's my 2cents.
Good luck, I'm sur you can get, better you just need guidance.
I'm doing a lot of interview as an interviewer these days mostly with junior candidate.
The guy in charge of those before me was the kind that use aha question with no relevance whatsoever. Pure ego trip. If that guy had interviewe me I would have said "I don't know" a few times and eventually get up and leave.
For my candidates, I tried a few things. Now I've got it down to explain to me your last project. I ask questions until I've understood every little detail of the project. Then we code a few simple "exercises" with increasing "difficulty". The candidate is allowed google, documentation, questions, anything. Then we read code. A piece of code with a "bug" or a feature to add.
The key is to make them talk about concept from impérative, fonctionnal and object paradigm and interact like a junior and senior dev would in a dev team.
I found that junior candidates react pretty well to these. Some of them thank me for having had the opportunity to learn about new things like functionnal programming. It's pretty cool and I feel that make them want to join us most of the time.
You could consider the marketing factor: early work from lesser musician is designed to sell. Then when fame is there, maybe they can focus on something more driven by their artistic désires.
The stones released a classic blues album lately. That was purely for them not so much for selling. They can afford that because of their huge fame.
I completely agree. It always breaks my heart to see locked up animals, be it a cat not allowed to go outside, a dog confined in an appartement with only one outing a day in the urban concrete or a bear in a cage in a zoo. Makes no difference to me.
I firmly believe animal rights movements should discourage pet owning but it's often the other way around, at least from where i'm from.
Before that I worked on military software