151–160 of 565 posts
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What industry are you now in, that you can work 20h/week? Just curious, you are living my dream.
I work in a Teradata shop in a major financial institution and the hours are reasonable and the work is borderline relaxing. There is a nice middle ground between 20h/wk and the startup meatgrinder if you seek it.
"I had stock options, and I cashed them all in last week. I net enough to pay off the mortgage, so I’m doing that, which will leave the entire household debt-free and cut our expenses drastically." I'm happy for you. Even a tiny bit jealous. But it does in the end make the whole post sound like a humblebrag to me.
But that's how all posts like these go, HN loves to upvote them for some reason but they all boil down to "I'm quitting because I have enough money to do it".
You're both right of course, and then some of them turn around and say "it isn't about money" or "don't make it about money". Sigh, it isn't unique to tech at all by the way.
By all means if you're unhappy change your lifestyle -- and pronto -- if you can eek out an existence in a more fulfilling way then get to it, but don't try telling everyone they work in a "stupid, backwards, fledgling industry" because you didn't like your job.
Just another "woe betide me"-disaffected-techie rant.
This post reminded me of another I-quit-the-industry blog post from a while back: http://mashable.com/2014/04/30/programming-sucks/
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Or not really Shengen. But as EU citizen I don't really care. Bulgaria has 10% flat rate. Cheap cost of living also.
Or not really Shengen. But as EU citizen I don't really care. Bulgaria has 10% flat rate. Cheap cost of living also. You have to learn the Cyrillic alphabet on top of learning a Slavic language though! I tease, I tease. Isn't Bulgaria due to join the Schengen area pretty soon? Inside the next couple of years, at least?
Isn't Bulgaria due to join the Schengen area pretty soon? Inside the next couple of years, at least?
The problem is that both countries are still considered too corrupt for inclusion into the Schengen treaty. Romania seems to have cleaned up their act better then Bulgaria, but there are still grave doubts that the countries behave according to the treaty and don't, for example, sell visas to people, who are not eligible for them.
To the best of my knowledge, both countries are still on an waiting list, but given the current anti immigrant sentiments in most of central Europe this could take a few more years minimum.
Note that I'm not singling out the countries as crooked I'm just stating facts. Organized crime, for example, is still a huge problem in Bulgaria and corruption is still a huge problem in both countries. [1]
"I had stock options, and I cashed them all in last week. I net enough to pay off the mortgage, so I’m doing that, which will leave the entire household debt-free and cut our expenses drastically." I'm happy for you. Even a tiny bit jealous. But it does in the end make the whole post sound like a humblebrag to me.
This is what burnout looks like. Unless Yelp has a toxic work culture, it's likely the author brought it on themselves by pushing too hard. After several months, the author will probably start thinking about work again, and begin the job search once more. Not to say that the author's points are invalid; it's a terrible feeling to have to spend your most productive hours working on someone else's problems. He or she m…
Don't fall into the trap of thinking this. It is the case some of the time, but not all of the time.
When I first started working in tech in the mid-90s, it was only a year or two before I was considering going back to school in music or to get an MBA. Since about 2004, I've known that I would like to abandon the tech industry. It is now 2015. I have dreams of opening a restaurant, retail store, starting any kind of business, becoming a professional writer, etc. But, this is where I am.
All that said, I read the tech and science news everyday. My relationship with tech is love/hate. I can't get enough of it and will obsess about it or coding something at home, but I know it makes me unhappy.
I feel I'd be better off just being a caretaker of some sort, or in some sort of service industry. I've talked to several developers over the years that dream of being a groundskeeper. This is reality for some of us out there.
I'm personally dealing with it by losing weight and working towards the goal of being independent from an employer.
Here are some ideas for those that feel burned out or hate their job:
* Get a hobby OR focus on your family/self and stop trying to be so much.
* Pretend you are going to quit and seriously look into how you could make your dream happen, even if it seems financially irresponsible.
* Keep a watch on cheap plane, train, etc. tickets to figure out how to escape your life, or think about where you would go to get away from it all.
* Find a place where you can go to just chill-out and think.
* If you have sleep apnea or feel tired a lot and don't dream at night, consider going to a doc to get CPAP or an oral device and dedicate yourself to losing weight.
* Talk to a psychiatrist and get some meds.
* Find a friend/person you can talk to about it.
* Do your best to stop thinking negatively for some period of each day, or all day, even if it is so normal to be negative that it seems fake not to be that way.
* Don't be afraid to cut back hours at work. If they fire you, so what. And if you think they would kill you if you stopped, run away. You will be ok.
Full-time jobs generally suck. Spending the bulk of every weekday in an office doing what you're told is not fun. If it was, then people would do it for free. Day to day work is generally unglamorous and boring.
I think part of the blame is that tech employers permeate this notion that one must "love" their work. So we feel guilty for not enjoying cleaning up somebody else's legacy code, fixing that tracking bug, or god forbid solving an IE8 bug.
I totally agree with the author that the tickets we're assigned are all puzzles that I could lose myself in and inevitably get some feeling of satisfaction when I figure it out. But in the grand scheme of things, most of us aren't working on problems of real significance (eg. curing cancer, creating a more efficient battery). Most of us are just reinventing some form of wheel. And most of the problems we solve as implementors don't pertain to us. Rarely do we capture any of the fruits of our labor aside from a "great job!" and a 10% pay bump at the end of the year if we're lucky.
We as employees need to change the culture of employment. Nobody should have to pretend to enjoy grunt work. Work should be about the output you produce, not face time or tracking hours. Being in an office 8 hrs/day and never seeing the sun is depressing, and it's time we acknowledge that and fight to improve the situation.
We can start by demanding that remote work be accepted by our employers. That immediately gives us back our entire commutes (even just one hour a day is huge when you spend the majority of your waking hours in an office and thus only have 6 hours of real free time). And we can demand the freedom to work on our own schedules rather than being confined to 9-5, which we all know for most people is bullshit because we're not on an assembly line and our most productive work doesn't necessarily follow a 9-5 schedule.
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Good lord, 53% tax plus 23% VAT plus utilities tax plus monthly healthcare premiums plus...? I'm a bit of a socialist living in the U.S. - I believe in higher taxes on higher earnings and universal healthcare - but what in all that is holy do you get for your tax money??
Good lord, 53% tax plus 23% VAT plus utilities tax plus monthly healthcare premiums plus...? The OP's overstating their case a bit, see the tax calculator here: http://services.deloitte.ie/tc/ (you'll get close to 60k in your pocket from 100k.) The wikipedia article's pretty comprehensive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_Republic_of_Ire...
This punitive tax regime makes you question as to why bother working longer and harder and kills any will to start new projects since you know you will be robbed if you ever (in the unlikely minority) become successful
AND to add insult to injury you do not get much for your taxes and from your after tax income you endup paying all sorts of further hidden taxes just to live here.