I am a software dev with 2YOE, from the start of my career I have been focused on getting a job and fought tooth and nail to land a position.

After a year of internships I eventually got my dream job at a company that relocated me from the third world country I’m from to Europe (which is also a dream come true). I’ve been working at said company for 1 year now

I can’t shake off this nagging question in my head: “What Next?”

I don’t know what to do. Do I stay here longer and grow? Do I start working on my own personal project/startup like my friends? Do I grind leetcode and try to get into big tech?

A.) Staying at the current company was what I initially planned to do, but I earn so much less than everybody I know and my loyalty for the company got killed when I got passed over for a promotion which I obviously deserved about a month ago. My manager practically told me “hey you’re great and you would have been the best for this promotion but I’m gonna go with my guy”. I’ve been thinking of looking for a new job but it is seeming impossible to pull off in this current market.

B.) I have thought of the idea of starting my personal project or startup but if I’m being honest with myself I do not have a single entrepreneurial bone in my body. I have no reasonable idea I believe in and I feel like I would just be forcing it or trying to copy my friends, I feel comfortable just working in a company

C.) My initial aspiration was to land a job at big tech, but with all the layoffs and the state of the market, especially for early career peeps, I don’t feel confident investing my time in grinding leetcode as I cannot ascertain it would pay off, it is time consuming and in my experience, most companies don’t even recruit using it, so it feels like an investment that may not prove very fruitful

D.) One last thing, I wanted to specialize in a specific lang like Go and be a Go dev or something like that, but this really limits my options and most specialized fields have little to no space for junior devs

I am 24 and I constantly feel like I am wasting my time and years being unambitious and not pushing myself to do more. My friend used to eat, breathe in and exhale leetcode and he got a job in big tech in London earning more than 2x my pay and I forever beat myself up for not working as hard (he got in at a time when the market was not as bad).

I’m conflicted as to what next I should be grinding on, or at least how to figure out what it should be.