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Ask HN: Depressed, need to leave web development, what can I do?

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Re: Ask HN: Depressed, need to leave web development, what can I do?

#91

Post by sanitycheck »

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #7
francis-io wrote: post #6

I think you have to take a break. Step back for a bit. When you come back, find out what really interested you in tech in the first place and follow that. The fact you think 300+ people are applying to the same jobs means the market might be saturated with those skills. Do you think you might have let your own skill set stagnate?

> Do you think you might have let your own skill set stagnate? yes, definitely. although i worked a lot with node and react, building electron apps, cli tools, browsers extensions - but i just don't enjoy it anymore. and i don't have experience building large scale production apps with the latest trendy stacks. > The fact you think 300+ people are applying to the same jobs means the market might be saturated with tho…

FYI if you're a contractor for a FAANG you're a probably better than average dev.

Regarding typescript, I've been writing JS on and off since '99 and I picked up TS last year. It's actually good. Not everything new is shit, just most of it!

"Coding challenge as a first-stage filter" is something I'd like to see disappear, why would I want to work for a company that shows so little respect for people's time? I guess the answer is "$$££€€", which makes sense only when there's a ton of $£€ on offer.

Re: Ask HN: Depressed, need to leave web development, what can I do?

#92

Post by weatherlite »

Snd_ wrote: post #21

I feel you... Web development is geared towards the "next hot thing" and can be very exhausting. Could it be an option to change your career path into a more management type role? Are you good with people? You might be a great mentor for junior devs?

Especially front end. Backend is a bit more sane, I'm thinking of getting some Java/C++ job and becoming an expert. Hopefully having a decade+ in Java or C++ will keep me reasonably employed when I'm 50.

Re: Ask HN: Depressed, need to leave web development, what can I do?

#93

Post by weatherlite »

tibbydudeza wrote: post #48

I felt the same way as you did in my Corporate SAP gig - writing the same type of report programs day in and day out - in hindsight it was soul sucking really. SAP in the mean time did their third attempt at the cloud (BTP/Steampunk) and it seemed like the same old shit I was working on the classic ECC 6.0 buried in more layers of shit but now running in the "cloud". Covid then came along and I got laid off which pro…

This is scary. I'm thinking about joining a corporate just to reduce the insane pressure peaks I experience now in my startup. I really don't wanna find out being in a corporate will make my mental wellbeing even worse :(

We'll see...

Re: Ask HN: Depressed, need to leave web development, what can I do?

#94

Post by varispeed »

Ignore 300+ applicants. That always have been the case, but maybe exacerbated now when there is a lot of scam bootcamps promising one becomes a developer after a month. So you have a ton of people like this applying.

> expects you to be a superstar leetcoder, with the wherewithal to go through 6-8 interviews and IQ test.

Ignore these too. If a company is unreasonable, I see no reason why I should follow through with the interviews.

Also make sure you do work adequate to the pay. If company does not pay well, don't do overtime, don't do a great code, just something that works. Basically do bare minimum and no more.

Sadly engineers kind brought it upon themselves. I am at fault too. When I was young I would pull all-nighters at the office all the time to get features done and beating increasingly shortened deadlines. That eventually led me to depression and other issues. Also I didn't feel all that effort in my bank account.

Re: Ask HN: Depressed, need to leave web development, what can I do?

#95

Post by weatherlite »

PeterStuer wrote: post #55
StevenWaterman wrote: post #16

Definitely agree with others that it sounds like burnout. I went through it myself about a year ago, and wrote about it recently [1]. Maybe it will help. [1] https://stevenwaterman.uk/opening-up-burnout/

"Eventually, I just had to leave that job, with nothing lined up, and barely any notice. They knew it was coming, and we left on good terms, but it still felt like a failure. I'm in a very priveleged position to be able to do that." You are, but you don't mention the nr.1 reason in your article: your youth. Unlike you the author is 40 in a commodity IT position where agism is far more than endemic. I do agree with yo…

Are 40 year olds really not able to pick up a job? I'm 38 ...I get turned down a lot but that always used to be the case and also the market is pretty shitty now.

Re: Ask HN: Depressed, need to leave web development, what can I do?

#96

Post by sanitycheck »

sli wrote: post #53
clouddrover wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but its usually some typescript challenge or something like that - which i refused to learn, since i already know javascript. once static type checking became a requirement in front end is like the intersection for when i became a dinosaur Why? Static type checking is a good thing to reduce errors.

TypeScript is a Microsoft band-aid on problems far better solved by other languages. The level to which people praise it feels like Stockholm Syndrome, and criticizing it frequently gets the stereotypical toxic programmer forum replies like "well you just don't know how to use types." It's impossible to speak critically about TypeScript unless you write long blog posts.

It totally is, but it does largely work as intended.

For people who've been dealing with JS for years it's a big improvement which I guess is why it gets so much praise. (The love for React, OTOH, must be Stockholm Syndrome!)

Other languages are better, but transpiling from them to JS has (arguably?) bigger downsides than using TS. WASM is the big hope for some people, of course, but it's only really good for heavy lifting at the moment.

Re: Ask HN: Depressed, need to leave web development, what can I do?

#97

Post by sylens »

You could take your experience with web development and pivot into an adjacent role where the career prospects are better. If you like talking to people and would like to meet with others instead of writing code all day, you could look into sales engineering roles as they always are looking for skilled developers. Or if you’d prefer to build additional technical skills, you could move into application security as a lot of that already deals with web applications and browser controls.

Re: Ask HN: Depressed, need to leave web development, what can I do?

#99

Post by ciberado »

May I suggest to spend some time working as a trainer? I'm sure you have a ton of knowledge to share, and learning how to structure it for delivering a class is not difficult.

Training is (if your understand the content) not so stressful as working in consulting or developing, and you meet a lot of interesting people.

It comes with its own burden, of course, but it may work as a way to find time to better understand what you want to do in the future.

Also, the salary is pretty good.

Re: Ask HN: Depressed, need to leave web development, what can I do?

#100

Post by weatherlite »

qprofyeh wrote: post #43

What if there’s no solution? What if you’re right and ageism is real and the industry is only going downhill from here? How does a Hacker accept that fact and change the situation? I believe the successful hackers went on to start their own consultancy firms. Same job, totally different culture and treatment. Threshold is a major skill upgrade in self-marketing though.

You can ask for a mid level salary then. It will be silly to discriminate against you then, are you really worth less than someone with 2 years experience? I doubt it. In fact I see people get into full stack web dev and still struggling after 5 years...it's not such an easy thing to pick up.
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