From Istanbul to San Francisco: A Developer's Journey Through the 2025 Tech Job Market

• The American Dream Meets Silicon Valley Reality
• Landing in a Foreign World
• The Rude Awakening
• The Numbers Game That Nobody Talks About
• The Weight of Shared Dreams
• The Mental Health Toll
• Finding My Voice Through Writing
• What I’ve Learned (So Far)
• The Road Ahead

The American Dream Meets Silicon Valley Reality

Six months ago, my wife and I were sitting in our small apartment in Kadıköy, Istanbul, clutching my green card approval letter with trembling hands. After years of waiting, countless forms, and endless bureaucracy, I had finally won the lottery – literally. The diversity visa program had chosen me, and America was calling both of us.

I remember the excitement, the endless planning, the tearful goodbyes with both our families and friends. Everyone told us the same thing: “You’re going to Silicon Valley! You’ll be rich in no time!” As a software developer with five years of experience in Laravel and PHP backend development, I believed them. San Francisco was the promised land for tech workers, right?

How naive I was.

Landing in a Foreign World

February 15, 2025 – The day my wife and I landed at SFO with four suitcases, $12,000 in savings, and heads full of dreams.

Everything was foreign to both of us. The accents, the slang, the way people ordered coffee, even the way they walked down the street. In Istanbul, we were confident, established, familiar with every corner of our neighborhood. Here, we couldn’t even figure out how to validate our BART tickets without looking like confused tourists.

The first week was brutal. We stayed in a cramped Airbnb in the Mission District, paying $150 a night for what would cost $40 back home. The culture shock hit us in waves – the homeless crisis that nobody had warned us about, the casual way people discussed their $200,000 salaries while stepping over someone sleeping on the sidewalk, the bizarre ritual of buying $18 avocado toast.

But we adapted together. That’s what immigrant couples do – we lean on each other. Within a month, we had found a one-bedroom apartment in Daly City (the only place we could afford), learned to navigate Muni’s inexplicable delays, and even started to appreciate the foggy mornings. While my wife began looking for work in her field, I was ready to conquer the tech world.

The Rude Awakening

The Bay Area has lost more than 11,000 tech jobs so far in 2025, but I didn’t know that statistic when I started applying for jobs in March. All I knew was that San Francisco was supposed to be the tech capital of the world.

My first red flag should have been the responses I wasn’t getting. Back in Turkey, my GitHub was solid, my portfolio impressive. I had built several robust Laravel applications, contributed to open-source PHP projects, even led a small backend team at my previous company. I knew MVC architecture inside and out, had experience with MySQL optimization, Redis caching, and API development. On paper, I looked good.

But Silicon Valley operates on a different level entirely, and I quickly realized that PHP and Laravel weren’t exactly the darlings of the SF tech scene.

The technical interviews were unlike anything I’d experienced. LeetCode problems that felt more like abstract math puzzles than real-world programming challenges. System design questions about scaling to millions of users when I’d previously worked on applications serving thousands. Cultural fit interviews where I struggled to decode the unspoken rules of American workplace communication.

The Numbers Game That Nobody Talks About

Week after week, the rejections piled up. Applied: 147 positions. Phone screens: 23. Technical interviews: 8. Final rounds: 3. Offers: 0.

“I was so demoralized,” said Pretzell, who chose a career in tech for its stability. “I’d see other software engineers making $200,000. Meanwhile, I had the skills but couldn’t land a similar position.” This quote from another job seeker perfectly captured my feelings.

The market had fundamentally shifted. Marc Benioff has stated publicly that Salesforce does not plan to hire engineers this year due to AI, and Mark Zuckerberg has said AI could soon replace the work of midlevel software engineers at Meta who make mid-six-figure salaries. The very tools I had been using to make my life easier as a developer were now being used as justification to not hire developers at all.

The Weight of Shared Dreams

The worst part wasn’t the rejections – it was watching the toll it took on both of us. Back in Istanbul, unemployment meant family dinners where aunts would offer connections, friends who’d share job leads, a whole support network. Here, we were together but isolated, supporting each other while both struggling to adapt.

My wife was facing her own challenges in her job search, and we’d spend evenings in our tiny apartment, laptops open, sending applications into the void. American networking felt performative and exhausting for both of us. LinkedIn became our mutual nemesis, a constant reminder of everyone else’s success stories. “Excited to announce I’m joining Meta as a Senior Engineer!” these posts would scream, while I couldn’t even get a callback from a startup in SoMa.

The financial pressure was different when shared. We were burning through our savings twice as fast as I’d planned, but at least we were facing it together. Housing costs remain steep, with living expenses 91% above the national average, and our Turkish savings were evaporating faster than San Francisco fog in the afternoon sun. Every grocery bill, every BART fare, every overpriced coffee felt like a countdown timer on our American dream.

The Mental Health Toll

By month four, we were both seriously considering going back to Turkey. The constant rejection was eating away at my confidence, and I could see the worry in my wife’s eyes every morning as I sat down to send more applications. Every “We’ve decided to move forward with other candidates” email felt personal. Every LinkedIn post about someone’s new job felt like salt in an open wound.

I started questioning everything. Was my English not good enough? Was my accent too thick? Did our Turkish names make recruiters pause? Was I applying to the wrong types of companies? Should we have stayed in Istanbul where we were comfortable and successful? My wife tried to stay positive, but I could see the doubt creeping in for her too.

The immigrant experience is often romanticized, but nobody talks about the crushing weight of two people trying to rebuild their entire lives in a foreign country while simultaneously facing professional rejection. The guilt of bringing my wife into this uncertainty was almost worse than my own struggles.

Finding My Voice Through Writing

Which brings me to why I’m writing this blog.

Last week, my wife and I were having coffee in Dolores Park (our one affordable luxury), watching tech workers in their Patagonia vests walking their $3,000 designer dogs, when I realized something important: we weren’t the only ones struggling.

Thousands in the Bay Area are grappling with the same difficult dynamics, and the majority occurred in the San Francisco-San Mateo area. The narrative of Silicon Valley success was drowning out the stories of Silicon Valley struggle.

So I decided to document my experience. Not the polished LinkedIn version, but the real, messy, human version. The version where you eat instant noodles for the third night in a row while applying to companies that will ghost you. The version where you question every life choice that led you to sleep on an air mattress in one of the world’s most expensive cities.

What I’ve Learned (So Far)

The American tech industry in 2025 is nothing like what I expected. The job market is shifting toward quality over quantity, with companies putting extra focus on AI skills and full-stack capabilities. The days of throwing bodies at problems are over. Companies want developers who can do everything, perfectly, on day one.

But here’s what I’ve also learned: resilience isn’t just about bouncing back from failure. It’s about continuing to move forward while carrying the weight of that failure. It’s about adapting not just to a new country, but to a completely transformed industry.

My savings account is nearly empty, but my understanding of this market is finally getting richer. I’m learning that success in Silicon Valley isn’t just about technical skills – it’s about storytelling, personal branding, and navigating an incredibly complex social and professional ecosystem.

The Road Ahead

I’m still here. Still applying. Still interviewing. Still learning. My wife and I are both still fighting for our place in this city.

Next week, I have a final round interview with a Series B startup in SOMA. It’s for a mid-level backend Laravel position, exactly what I’ve been targeting. The salary range is $140,000-$160,000 – enough to finally breathe easy, maybe even start saving again, and perhaps send some money back to both our families in Istanbul.

Whether I get it or not, I’ll be here to tell you about it.

Because someone needs to tell the real story of what it’s like to be an immigrant couple navigating the Bay Area tech scene in 2025. Someone needs to talk about the gap between the Silicon Valley myth and the Silicon Valley reality.

And maybe, just maybe, someone else going through the same struggle will read this and feel a little less alone.

This is the first post in what I hope will be an ongoing series about our experience as a Turkish couple navigating the Bay Area tech scene. Follow our journey as I document the ups, downs, and everything in between of building a life in America’s most expensive and competitive tech market.

Have a similar story? Reach out – I’d love to hear from you.