elizabethanera

In addition to being a basic term match, it also would mark any conversation about controversial subjects as toxic. Try saying something innocuous about suicide or rape.

habituate the populace to inspection

>My current target is a role at one of the "big four" tech companies or a high-quality startup doing either webdev or infrastructure engineering.

You're shooting high and dissatisfied that at 1 year out of college you're not 'there' yet. Regardless of your interview performance or speed with tech challenges, you're still a 'junior' (not a great term as it can seem insulting, but it's what the industry uses) engineer.

Your question is more "Is it possible for someone to not be cut out for super-prestigious software engineering?" Which is much different. If you want it you're going to have to work hard for years. Wanting it for the sake of the prestige (which is the vibe I get from this post, sorry) is not enough.

Why do you have this "if I can't make it there, it's just not worth doing" attitude? Do you have to be heads above most engineers in order to feel ok about yourself? Listen: all around the industry people need software engineers. Serve your purpose as a diligent engineer.

Just: do good work. Then do more of it.

I was going to write something about how ominous it is to defer to the judgment of a machine for a person's sanity, but the machine of psychiatry to which we defer is no more or less subject to the weaknesses of that kind of deference.