I am a software developer for 3 years with experience with .NET development. I got laid off 3 months ago from my small company of 30 people after my company losing the big tech contract and reducing workforce to focus on financial side of fintech industry. I am applying to jobs ever since with the hopes of getting higher pay since my company used to pay me 60k which is very low in Montreal, and whenever I go to interview I would get small inefficient companies trying to lowball me lower than what I used to get as dev it is so underwhelming. I also have an ethnic asian name which I think makes everything worse for applying to jobs. I see people here claiming they get 85k as 2 yoe developer and I get overwhelmed and feel like I picked wrong industry in Montreal. Do people lie in Reddit about their salaries or am I getting screwed by some circumstances uncontrollable by me. I am a fine developer if you check my resume too.
C# and C++ are very different languages, as C++ expects you to handle memory management while C# has a garbage collector. Just because Microsoft has their own version (Visual C++) does not mean that much of that knowledge is transferrable.
I think your biggest challenge is that you only have 3 years of experience. When tech was encroaching into people’s lives (desktop computers, smartphones, social media, video games) more demand for tech jobs was created than could be filled. Thus you’d hear stories of new graduates getting jobs easily with high salaries. Tech growth has stagnatrd though - there aren’t enough hours left for tech to create new business. With so many new people getting into tech there aren’t enough jobs for all the new entrants, that it’s created almost two job markets. People who are seniors with loads of experience are still in high demand as there’s just few of them relative to the current size of the industry, but there aren’t enough junior jobs for those who are new.