The hardest thing ever is figuring out how to get hired as a game dev programmer. Not the artist, not the composer, not the level designer. The programmer. The person making the systems and the logic. That job is in the LEAST demand. That's not even mentioning the fact that if you have yet to prove yourself in the industry you're competing against the thousands of people who have been laid off recently.
In my case, I'm just a novice Unity/Godot Engine game dev who has very little to their name. My most impressive projects are probably the amount of modding I've done for a Unity game and an arcade game that I made in Unity and I'm porting/improving it in Godot. My college experience has allowed me to dabble with VR development and do game jams, and that's it. It feels like the only way to get hired anywhere is to drop everything I'm working on to make 20 small games just to get people to notice me. Yet, I don't want to drop any project out of the fear of not being able to come back and finish them.
Maybe if I learn Unreal I can go down that route, but all the time I have is spent on my own projects. I just don't have much space for learning something new unless I was getting paid for it. (Unreal is probably ez ngl). Besides, there's no guarantee I even get hired for Unreal experience. I'd rather bet on my own work.
Honestly, I'm just complaining, I'm a bit frustrated at what feels like incompetency when I know that's not quite the problem. Maybe it's not that hard. A long time ago I failed to get a job in this field so I ended up getting a job I hate just so I can pay bills. I lost that job, and now I'm at a job I that is not going to last long. All the money I've built up is gone and I'm at a crossroad. Get a new job I hate or try to lean on the skills I've trained so many years on. Let's see where I end up...