Ask HN: How do you keep motivated if nobody supports you?

1. you should distinguish yourself as either a copy paste coder, or a genuinely articulate engineering guy who loves to churn original stuff.

2. if #1 is true, then you should continue to pursue coding as hobby and help your old man in putting his affairs in order by using your skill set.

3. if #2 is true then 1. are you positioning your self correctly? 2. are you reaching out to right set of hiring managers? 3. are you able to effectively communicate in your own mother tongue about your skill set? forget English, clairvoyance could be be exhibited in your language as well. 4. did you analyze why you flunked your interviews, was it communication or technology? 5. are you a guy who starts 20 different things or projects and complete very few. 6. do you have a github page to showcase your technological prowess?

After you analyse your self, ask question, why your brain is so adamant and thinking about taxes etc? could it be way to escape for not accepting that you are not a good engineer?

Your father has given you food and education with his EMPIRE and he is still running it successfully, i would say since he is still supporting you.

Very few of us are luck to have old man setup a running business, if you are not doing any thing right now, sit with him, help him in optimizing his business with your skills, trust me in bad days 1 in hand is better then 2 in bush. Ask him to pay you salary for your time so that you feel independent and lookout for good opportunities simultaneously.

I wouldn't say that any company that ~ins't~ a large corporation only has the mindset of "ship fast/ship often"

I have similar but not identical experience. I was growing up surrounded by people who owned everything from family type business to SMBs to large businesses and it was totally natural for me to start working at my family's company anytime I was asked to do so.

I had hobbies too, I was programming, I was playing games, but it was routine for me to spent between 10-20hours/week with my family in our business. I don't regret any minute of that, because I have learned so many things - I gradually gained experience in f2f sales, phone sales, communication, working in team, basics of accounting, working with other people and I can continue. Later, I was even able to to solve some of the main problems with programming - www, eshop, soc networks, crm, etc. That all before the age of 23.

There will never be a better teacher than my father and grandfather, because family based business has many important advantages, just to name few: you are allowed to do mistakes and fix them without any harm, you are allowed to ask for help anytime you need without bothering someone, you are part of the team from day 0 and you are even allowed to lose money into some extend.

From my point of view, you are late, very late. You should have joined your family business around the same age you started with computers. Just go and jump on that track as fast as you can. I'm grateful for the possibility to discover the nature of running family based company and scale it to some extend.

Gained experience in different fields will definitely help you to create better and useful software. Sometimes I feel like devs around me see the technologies(programming languages, buzz-worded tools, AIs) like the most important thing in every project, but in the end, these are just instruments which allows us to create products with added value for real customers and be able to recognize what is added value which can earn some money, is the most important skill.

Apparently, you are able to create beautiful stuff. But none of them seems to me to be either finished or brings some added value. Go out of your comfort zone, it will help you to see the World from different perspective.

Take a break. Think about what you really want to do, and how support from others is necessary. The great founder myth obscures how everyone needs support and encouragement from others to keep going.

You're not too old. Don't compare where you are with where you 'should' be, because I think you have an unrealistic image of where you should be. Any success you have now won't live up to that image, and you'll beat yourself up again and again. You gotta break out of that cycle.

Your parents probably see how unhappy you are, and are trying to guide you to a path where they think you can be happy. They're probably wrong, but I bet they want the best for you and are trying to help in the ways they know how. They're probably frustrated themselves and all that, but go give them some thanks.

You're gonna do okay.