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I have a soul-crushing job and I don't know what to do
31–40 of 90 posts
Re: I have a soul-crushing job and I don't know what to do
#32i could have written this. our "designer"/self-professed "front end guru" does everything wrong. everything. i've had to teach her what javascript callbacks, closures, constructor functions, and hoisting are. she's rolling her own "front end framework" (table-based layouts with a few breakpoints thrown in) and separates the code into dozens (dozens) of different CSS and JS files. i'm also getting paid shit wages. but…
It's maddening to hear stories like this. I'm a UI/UX Developer, and really I just end up doing most of the front end development for our team. One of the big things I focus on is making sure our conventions are clear and documented. Style guides are verbose and have code examples. Part of being a good at frontend is bringing the biggest lift to the team overall and making their jobs as easy as possible. So many peop…
i think a lot of people in hiring positions (esp at legacy corporations) just don't understand what they should be looking for with a UI/UX person. you can't just wait for the first interviewee who uses a word you haven't heard yet and hire them. it's both a science and an art. hire accordingly.
Re: I have a soul-crushing job and I don't know what to do
#33And that's the attitude you need to adopt. The relevance of your knowledge base is your responsibility. Fight for it. Defend it.
Re: I have a soul-crushing job and I don't know what to do
#341. Put yourself in situations where you can meet more tech people
Most (not some, most) of the work I've gotten came from a chance conversation with someone who was working at a place that needed the skills I have. So try to have more of those conversations. I live in suburban Ohio in the heart of the rust belt, so this can be done anywhere.
2. Try consulting instead of full time work.
A lot of businesses have problems, but can't afford a full-time coder. It also sounds like you don't want to be working full-time anyhow. Try doubling your rate and finding 2 clients who each buy 10 of your hours a week. This is much easier to do if you do number 1. Even better, charge a daily or weekly rate so you don't have to keep track of your hours. This also allows you to pay your taxes on April 15th every year, instead of having it deducted from your check, giving you more cash flow options and more runway.
3. Work Remotely
When you do 2, you can negotiate 3 pretty easily. A business that just needs you to fix javascript bugs on their website 1 day a week probably doesn't want to dedicate the infrastructure to have you in their office. This will save you even more time, energy, and stress by eliminating your commute.
4. Structure your time better
Set constraints on yourself for doing what you need to do, when you need to do it. If you're coding 2 hours a day, then set aside 3 hours of your day where you don't do anything but code. No email. No web surfing (other than what you need to code). No phone. If you have meetings, schedule them consecutively. Let your brain be in meeting mode for 3 hours, then go grab some lunch, then come back to the office and put your brain in code mode for 3 hours. This way, you can even have time to multi-task (answer emails, talk about local sports team, read HN) at the beginning and end of the day. This takes some discipline, but you'll get more done if you have full chunks of time dedicated to one thing.
5. Say "No" more
You can't do 4 without doing 5. Don't be rude, just explain that you're busy with something else and that you can discuss at the next meeting you have scheduled. Put headphones on while you're coding and gently set boundaries with your co-workers that you're not available for chit-chat when your headphones are on. I've found that music without lyrics is best for coding. I have a John Williams station on Pandora that I use all the time, here, have a listen: http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh216294333998280127&shareImp=tru....
Finally, don't give up hope. In my experience, it's easier to find a good job once you know what you don't want. It sounds like you have a good idea about that, so make sure to ask questions at your interviews, sales calls to make sure they aren't making the same mistakes.
Good luck!
Re: I have a soul-crushing job and I don't know what to do
#35Our first world problems are such a drag. I think you can make most any coding job fun if you do it right. Are you interested in making things better? Adding CRUD? Bake in a better object layer to the data store. Front end developer a n00b? Just out do him with some nice Angular or jQuery on the next project. "Oh, I already added the UI stuff." If you can't learn something just for the purpose of learning (and why ar…
Re: I have a soul-crushing job and I don't know what to do
#36Some times I think we are wired to believe we have to beg people's forgiveness for not being miserable. Medium term I'd suggest discarding this belief. Short term: on behalf of geeks everywhere, your local online watering hole hereby grants you permission to not be miserable. Quit. There exist much better jobs out there. The hiring market for people with your skillset is the best it has ever been. Level up. Portfolio…
If a portfolio doesn't matter that much, how would you recommend a young programmer, without many connections, get a new job?
Meetup.com might be a start, find fellow programmers there. Go to your local co-work location. Try the freelance sites like e-lance , etc...
But whatever you do, don't let lack of portfolio stop you.
Re: I have a soul-crushing job and I don't know what to do
#37Some times I think we are wired to believe we have to beg people's forgiveness for not being miserable. Medium term I'd suggest discarding this belief. Short term: on behalf of geeks everywhere, your local online watering hole hereby grants you permission to not be miserable. Quit. There exist much better jobs out there. The hiring market for people with your skillset is the best it has ever been. Level up. Portfolio…
Re: I have a soul-crushing job and I don't know what to do
#38Re: I have a soul-crushing job and I don't know what to do
#391. Figure out what you want to do.
This is the most important step. You currently have a job, so you have time to really think about this and figure out a solid answer. The answer doesn't have to be an emotional epiphany where you find your so-called "passion", but it has to be a concrete goal. For me, it was more of a recovery of the idea that I wanted to apply my programming and computer science skills to interesting and difficult real-world problems. With that in mind, I looked at the place I was currently working at, and saw that I wasn't going to be able to achieve my goal there. So, I looked around and found another opportunity that was more along the lines of what I wanted to work on.
2. Figure out what skills you need to pursue your goal.
So, when I found the new job that I wanted, I interviewed for it, and got rejected. I asked for feedback, and I was told that my data structures and algorithms knowledge wasn't good enough. I suppose if I had followed my own advice, I'd have realized this before I applied. After stagnating at my old job, and foolishly taking a team lead position, my skills had certainly atrophied. However, the interview failure was exactly the kind of real feedback/wake up call that I needed.
3. Work on improving your skills so that you are ready to actively pursue your goal.
After failing the interview, and getting some feedback, I set to work rebuilding my data structures and algorithms knowledge. I bought a copy of Cormen, et al., and brought it everywhere. At work, I would go off and hide somewhere for an hour a day, and study some part of the textbook. At home, I worked on a core data structures and algorithms library in C. I'd get up an hour before work, and write unit tests or fix bugs. I'd use the evening to hack on new code for the library. I was pretty exhausted after work, and I had three kids, one of whom was only a few months old, but I pushed myself ahead because I had a goal, and I didn't want to be stuck in my current job any more.
4. Don't give up in the face of failure. Keep the dream alive.
After 5 months of study, and writing the data structures and algorithms library, I decided it was time to apply again for the new job I really wanted. I explained in a cover letter what I had done since the first interview rejection to address the feedback I'd received, why I really wanted to work at the company, and how I thought it lined up with my career goals. Within a week, I had heard back from the company, and scheduled another interview with them. Three weeks later, it was my first day on the job!
It was terrifying to apply for a second time. I had no backup plan. My current job at the time was starting to suck more, and I wasn't enjoying being a team lead, so something was going to have to change, one way or another. My life at home was exhausting, too, with the new baby and two other kids knocking around. But my wife was on board with my whole plan, and tried to give me the time to do the work I needed. It helped that we had friends and family who were struggling to find jobs - there's nothing like seeing other people hurting to give you a realistic perspective on your own life, what you have, and where your life should be going.
On the other side of all this, I've made it my mission to be continuously studying, cramming it in wherever and whenever I can. I never want to be back in that hole of skills atrophy. Also, at the start of every year, I make an assessment of where I'm at goal-wise, and I make a study plan for the year, including a substantial project to work on in my spare time that will help me get to where I think I need to be. Resist the urge to hop from one thing to the next. Focus on something, and master it before moving on to something else.
Good luck!
Re: I have a soul-crushing job and I don't know what to do
#40What do you like to do? Do more of that.
Easier said than done, I know. It comes off as an awfully curt way of suggesting that you throw out your entire life and reorganize it in a way that you can toy with your passions in pure bliss every waking moment. For those of us with families, mortgages, and responsibilities outside of work such advice seems useless.
But it's not entirely useless. You just have to do more of that thing which excites you. It won't replace the drudgery of your current job (or any possible job you can get thereafter). But if you aim to spend a few hours a week on it for the sake of being happy and doing interesting things you might find an opportunity to make it your thing.
Share your passion with others. Show them what you're up to. Aim to make a little progress each week. Keep it small. Finish one thing at a time. Don't leave dangling threads. Yadda yadda.
The flip side of asking yourself this question is that you have to be honest in order to make progress. You may not actually like programming. Or perhaps what you do like programming is so niche that there isn't an industry for it (notice how few postings there are for BF programmers?). It's okay to enjoy programming as a hobby. Maybe you're actually a carpenter in a world obsessed with gizmos and you'd be better off spending the majority of your days planing and staining wood. Fiddle with computers and neat programs at night. That sort of thing.
You're not living in a Kafka-esque dystopia. There are ways to get out of your rut. You just have to shift your perspective and be willing to do something about it.