11–20 of 52 posts
Don't commit seppuku. That's an overreaction. Suicide should never be an option until you have exhausted literally everything else, and "everything else" is such an immense field that really, suicide never makes sense.
You have a choice. Either you keep what you're doing any try to find meaning in it, or you change your life and do something else. If you're not satisfied and have something better to move on to, then do that.
Heh. Nice user name. Don't commit seppuku. That's an overreaction. Suicide should never be an option until you have exhausted literally everything else, and "everything else" is such an immense field that really, suicide never makes sense. You have a choice. Either you keep what you're doing any try to find meaning in it, or you change your life and do something else. If you're not satisfied and have something better…
If I were you, I'd look around for other jobs and see what else is out there. If there's another job that you really want to do, or you see a viable startup opportunity, jump ship. If not, buckle down and finish up the project. In my case, a friend from college IM'd me a couple months after I'd started feeling discontent, and said "We're starting a startup, and need a technical person. Wanna join?" I stayed long enough to get my current project into a sellable state, and then quit.
Some reflections in hindsight:
1.) My feeling of lower productivity was mostly a mirage. In LOC/day, I was almost as productive as I was in the previous project, it's just that more of those lines were boilerplate, and so I guess my productivity in function points/day was lower. Boss was relatively happy with my productivity, he just didn't like my complaining.
2.) In terms of it being a dead-end professionally, I was absolutely right. Actually, both technology stacks (Swing/Netbeans for first project and JSF/Facelets/A4J/Hibernate for the second) were dead-ends; overall job markets for both seem to be declining, and anything new that I'd start now would need a modern web framework (Django or Rails) and/or C++ WinAPI experience.
3.) 90% of products fail, whether they're done by a startup, a small company, or a big company. The only variable seems to be in how fast they fail, and how much resources they consume. So you should expect that your project is doomed and do it anyway; that's the only way to find out if it's one of the failures.
4.) There was just as much grunt-work for my startup as for my job, but it didn't feel nearly as onerous. I think this was because I knew that even if the product didn't pan out, I was building skills that I'd want to use in the future. For me, it's okay to work on a project that'll fail as long as it leads to one that'll eventually be a success. At the last project at my employer, I felt that not only was the product doomed, all future projects using that skillset would also be doomed. (This feeling was not helped when we e-mailed some mailing lists on how to do simple things like integrate other AJAX libraries, and the response was "It's not possible. In fact, the engineers here have recommended to management that use of JSF be banned for all future projects.")
Heh. Nice user name. Don't commit seppuku. That's an overreaction. Suicide should never be an option until you have exhausted literally everything else, and "everything else" is such an immense field that really, suicide never makes sense. You have a choice. Either you keep what you're doing any try to find meaning in it, or you change your life and do something else. If you're not satisfied and have something better…
I think he was joking? At least, I sincerely hope he was joking... I'd suggest doing it for a few more months, and if nothing improves after that, maybe start looking for a new job. Living for a long period of time with a job you hate might not be good for you. :D
This is one situation where being a hacker is not recommended.
This happens to everybody. I think I've commented on it here before: a lot of nascent entrepreneurs here appear to be working under the delusion that they'll redline at their peak productivity levels throughout the lifetime of their startup. Here's what you need to remember: the difference between a professional and an amateur is that a professional comes and in and delivers work they'll stand behind all the time, wh…
That's a fantastic essay. Somehow I always thought that no-one else had this problem. Seriously. I hope I can finally give up my youthful arrogance. I always believed that when people spoke about getting experience they meant learning more about writing software (and how I scoffed at that). But it's just as much, if not more, about learning how not to turn around and run away.
Seriously, calm down. What's up with the assumption these days that everything done in our work is supposed to be fun? It's work. Sometimes it sucks, it's un-interesting, it's laborious, sometimes maddeningly menial. You're not always going to be learning at a fast pace. You could just quit and go somewhere else, get assigned a crappy project and find that the grass isn't any greener. Or you can suck it up and take t…
Seriously, calm down. What's up with the assumption these days that everything done in our work is supposed to be fun? It's work. Sometimes it sucks, it's un-interesting, it's laborious, sometimes maddeningly menial. You're not always going to be learning at a fast pace. You could just quit and go somewhere else, get assigned a crappy project and find that the grass isn't any greener. Or you can suck it up and take t…
This happens to everybody. I think I've commented on it here before: a lot of nascent entrepreneurs here appear to be working under the delusion that they'll redline at their peak productivity levels throughout the lifetime of their startup. Here's what you need to remember: the difference between a professional and an amateur is that a professional comes and in and delivers work they'll stand behind all the time, wh…