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Questions from a young developer that "just" started working aka: how do you manage it?

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Re: Questions from a young developer that "just" started working aka: how do you manage it?

#51
What matters is what does your inner self want. If you want to be secure and have fun with your friends and need weekends off, You should stick to your job and keep cursing your boss or company. If you want to build something neat and want to be free, you should quit your job and concentrate 110% on your vision. We humans were not born to work in cubicles for 40-50 years of our lives doing something lame. Never, Never, Never ...Give Up - Winston Churchill.

Re: Questions from a young developer that "just" started working aka: how do you manage it?

#52

Dude, quit your job, work at a coffee shop, and build things because you want to build them. Your skill will return, the light will return to your eyes, and your career will improve. I'm not even kidding. Take a few years away. You'll build something so much cooler than you would at these apparently soul-destroying jobs you've got. I did it, and I'm now showing off what I've built at damn near every Ruby conference i…

Dude, quit your job, work at a coffee shop This is bad advice.

Why? If kamme heeds the advice without thinking, it would be bad. But not because working in a coffee shop is bad.

A mini breakdown caused by soul-grating work convinced me to stop wasting my life. Not everyone needs the same amount of money and security to be happy.

Re: Questions from a young developer that "just" started working aka: how do you manage it?

#53
post #27
post #24

Here's what worked for me when I was working for the man: Pick an evening sometime this week. Tell people you're not going to be available. Ask your SO to go out with friends or something. I'd grab a quick bite after work, go home to an empty apartment. Close the blinds, dim the lights. Turn off my cell phone, turn off the wifi on my laptop. Put on a playlist of music that puts me in a good, happy, mellow mood. Poor…

My god. Are you making love to your computer or what?

>> Master! That's the longest "for" loop I have ever seen!

>> printf("Run it all, machine!");

Re: Questions from a young developer that "just" started working aka: how do you manage it?

#54

Sounds like what used to be your hobby has become your job. If you spend your whole day sitting behind the computer and then go home and spend your off hours behind the computer, you run out of time to do anything fun (hang out with friends, read, etc.) I am a big fan of golf, and when you look at the PGA Tour most of those players go on vacation and fish, or ski, or do some other activity - anything but golf. Golf b…

Exactly; for me, there are periods where my work is challenging and interesting and I have no desire to code outside the office. Conversely there are lulls where I'm flooded with ideas for personal projects, and suddenly have energy and motivation to work these.

It comes and it goes.

Re: Questions from a young developer that "just" started working aka: how do you manage it?

#55
post #25

Dude, quit your job, work at a coffee shop, and build things because you want to build them. Your skill will return, the light will return to your eyes, and your career will improve. I'm not even kidding. Take a few years away. You'll build something so much cooler than you would at these apparently soul-destroying jobs you've got. I did it, and I'm now showing off what I've built at damn near every Ruby conference i…

What have you built? And what conference are you attending in Canada?

yes. I will tell you, because my existing response is not yet enough of a threadjack.

Re: Questions from a young developer that "just" started working aka: how do you manage it?

#56

Dude, quit your job, work at a coffee shop, and build things because you want to build them. Your skill will return, the light will return to your eyes, and your career will improve. I'm not even kidding. Take a few years away. You'll build something so much cooler than you would at these apparently soul-destroying jobs you've got. I did it, and I'm now showing off what I've built at damn near every Ruby conference i…

This advice reads like utter insanity, but the even more shocking thing is that there are at least 14 people here who thought positively of it, and a magnitude more that nod in assent but didn't click the up arrow. I have come to believe this kind of spirit is part of the core of true innovation. If this was posted in another community, I'm fairly sure you would've been treated like a lunatic. How amazing is that!

I told him that if he wants to love what he does, he should do what he loves. And you call that utter insanity.

Re: Questions from a young developer that "just" started working aka: how do you manage it?

#57
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. But Dude, quit your job, work at a coffee shop, and build things because you want to build them. is stellar advice. Seriously. The sabbatical is the instrument of champions.

No, it's bad advice. Without knowing a lot more about this guy, you can't just say, "quit your job" just because it sounds romantic. It's cheap advice. I notice that every time someone complains about his job the advice coming from the internet is always the same, "Quit". The world doesn't work that way for 99 percent of the population. Decent jobs are no one's birthright, and the poster may be an ordinary, mediocre…

Forcing someone to do a job he hates is no-one's birthright either. We see "quit" everywhere we look because too many people are afraid to rock the boat, but wish they had the courage to do so.

Quitting means nothing in itself.

It is a vice when you back out of reaching good things because you lack the courage to do what is necessary.

It is a virtue when used to eject soul-destroying things from your life.

There is no virtue in voluntary suffering. There is no virtue in staying in a horrible job (I'm ignoring the complexities of having dependents).

Re: Questions from a young developer that "just" started working aka: how do you manage it?

#59
We don't know what your issue is, so we can't give you useful advice that applies to your situation. For me, I'm finding that I don't want to work 100% anymore, and I won't work overtime anymore, and I don't want to live in a city anymore. I can afford to stop doing all of these things, so I will, and I'll do it before I burn out.

I've worked years for other people, and in those years, I have created nearly nothing that I own. Like you, I've had ideas, and technically I would even have had some time to work on them, but after a day of sitting in front of a PC, more sitting in front of a PC at home just didn't seem very pleasant.

I want to have more time and energy to work on stuff I actually own. And that's what I'll do.

But perhaps that's not what you want. We don't know what you want and why what you're currently doing isn't working for you. I guess the first step should be for you to find out what you actually want.

Re: Questions from a young developer that "just" started working aka: how do you manage it?

#60

I'm in a similar situation as you. Recently, however, it's a little worse because I actually do have less time to work on my own projects than I did before. So most of the time I can't work on my own projects, even if I wanted to, because I have other priorities and responsibilities. So at times I feel frustrated when I wish I was hacking and learning but I can't. And it's not that I'm unhappy when I'm not hacking (I…

Are you saving money to start a company?

I'm not sure whether saving money for a startup is a good idea. It might just be a copout, a reason why you can't yet start your own company. But you can. You don't need that much money to incorporate, and you don't need to quit your day job - you may be able to move to a cheaper flat, keep working something like 50% at your day job, and spend the rest of your time on your startup while still making enough money for a reasonably decent living.
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