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Coding as a Career Isn't Right for Me

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Re: Coding as a Career Isn't Right for Me

#11

Post by YuriNiyazov »

tomreece wrote: post #10
YuriNiyazov wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something wrong with how you evaluate your potential employers, then. I understand how one can make the mistake that working at any startup would mean that it is going to be an exciting job. If you want to be excited about what you are working on, the fact that a company is a startup or a huge company isn't important; the question is always, what are they making, and are you excited about that?

They're all making glorified crud apps, stuff that I could make solo. I'm not excited by it.

Did you not ask "what are you working on?"

Re: Coding as a Career Isn't Right for Me

#12

Post by sliverstorm »

tomreece wrote: post #10
YuriNiyazov wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something wrong with how you evaluate your potential employers, then. I understand how one can make the mistake that working at any startup would mean that it is going to be an exciting job. If you want to be excited about what you are working on, the fact that a company is a startup or a huge company isn't important; the question is always, what are they making, and are you excited about that?

They're all making glorified crud apps, stuff that I could make solo. I'm not excited by it.

Why did you pick companies that make crud apps?

If you're good, and can prove it, you ought to have the potential to work on things that excite you.

Your experiences thus far can be seen as learning experience teaching you about what you want/need in a job. You want to engage the customer. You don't like test. You don't want to be at the whim of marketing and bosses who've never programmed.

You've already discovered it's not programming you're tired of, and that's valuable to know.

Just to throw out an idea, there's B2B software companies that employ engineers as consultants to work with client companies. You probably wouldn't like doing this for mega-enterprise, but if the client companies are small they will have a human face.

Re: Coding as a Career Isn't Right for Me

#15

Post by jimmywanger »

tomreece wrote: post #10
YuriNiyazov wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something wrong with how you evaluate your potential employers, then. I understand how one can make the mistake that working at any startup would mean that it is going to be an exciting job. If you want to be excited about what you are working on, the fact that a company is a startup or a huge company isn't important; the question is always, what are they making, and are you excited about that?

They're all making glorified crud apps, stuff that I could make solo. I'm not excited by it.

No you can't write and support it yourself.

When you're dealing with load issues, ops, reporting, i18n, logging, and concurrency, you realize why the infrastructure is there and why it's a lot of work to push out a new feature.

The fact that you're not excited by it is why they're paying you, and NO, you cannot do it solo, not without a team behind you.

Before you say it's all in the cloud, most EC2 admins have to deal with unexpected outages, and it's not exciting in a good way. Fundamentally, 99% of everything is a glorified CRUD app.

Re: Coding as a Career Isn't Right for Me

#16

Post by ocfx »

This resonates a lot with my current situation. I'm hoping a job change will fix that since I'm still with my first big programming gig (3 years now), but I'm so burned out. Tired of working with people who give inconsistent directions and don't have their shit together. Tired of people being able to act like idiots and never deliver on time, yet if I make the smallest mistake I go under a microscope. It's just so mentally exhausting day in and day out and it's making me extremely depressed. I don't want to go out anymore or do anything and all my passion for hobbies is gone. I'm moving within a year, so until then I guess I'm stuck.

Re: Coding as a Career Isn't Right for Me

#17

Post by jmspring »

grillvogel wrote: post #13

the entitlement is strong with this one

Depending where, that "cabin in the woods" doesn't come cheap. And the time and effort needed to make a decent fraction of what one does "coding" in jobs around cheap locations is going to take many years of hard work.

Re: Coding as a Career Isn't Right for Me

#18

Post by grillvogel »

tomreece wrote: post #14
grillvogel wrote: post #13

the entitlement is strong with this one

Indeed it is. Haven't I accrued debt, worked hard, and earned the right to be in a job I should be happy at? I deserve that. So do you and so does every body else.

no one deserves anything

Re: Coding as a Career Isn't Right for Me

#19

Post by moron4hire »

grillvogel wrote: post #13

the entitlement is strong with this one

I rather much agree with him. What the hell was the point of getting a supposedly in-demand degree, graduating top of my class, maintaining my skills at the top of the industry, if I was just going to get stuck in a corporate hell-hole?

Programmers of the world, unite.

Re: Coding as a Career Isn't Right for Me

#20

Post by moron4hire »

tomreece wrote: post #8
outericky wrote: post #7

Change your lifestyle temporarily, go heads down and pay off your debt in 12 months. Probably could. Alternatively, there are plenty of places to work that won't make you feel like a small cog in a giant machine. Self improvement comes from, improving your situation. No one will do it for you.

This is my third try at improving my situation, each time the money has increased and is helping me pay that debt off. So I'm getting closer on that front, but I don't want the money. I want to be excited to wake up every morning and go build something amazing.

Try part-time freelancing. That's how I've been able to survive these last 5 years. I spend about 20 hours a week working for clients and the rest of my time (usually another 40 hours a week) I spend on my own projects. I don't make a lot of money, but I make enough to live on. And I get to spend most of my time doing what I love.

Freelancing is hard. It's especially difficult to get into a part time situation. Most clients don't want a consultant, they want an employee they don't have to file HR paperwork for. But if you network enough, you'll get there and it will be fine.

I think, if you can get out of the soul-crushing chasm of despair that is wage employment, you'll find that software development is indeed your calling. You just don't like being treated like a child in that calling.

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