141–150 of 233 posts
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Not sure who your friends are but where I am half the young people are creatives or otherwise not traditionally full time employed and my experience has been people are far more likely to avoid you for being a boring banker/lawyer/accountant in a suit (which I used to be) than unemployed with a good story about what you are doing, which could spark a decent conversation.
What the fuck is a "creative"?
I should have spent some more time on job hunting, in retrospect. At my current job as a consultant I am back-end code-monkeying in a large team where most developers don't have a technical background - it's not very challenging from a technical perspective (even though I like the working environment in other aspects). My current employer pushes me to get certified for some front-end technologies, which I don't find interesting (and have no value for the gig I'm currently assigned to).
My true interest are OSes, drivers, optimization, FPGA's, electronics, compilers, assembly, microcontrollers, graphics... But I can't seem to find a job in that field, mostly because I don't have work experience in those fields. I also have a tendency to be very humble about my experience, which I think is a good thing in general, but I think sometimes people wrongly classify me as 'very junior'. On top of that, everybody seems to be looking for C# programmers, but the pay seems to be a bit lower in more technical fields. I don't care that much about my salary, but right now I am the one with literally the best background (4 academic studies), and the lowest income (basically every time I talk about it with someone, he/she goes "hm, that's pretty low"). I have had some good offers (about 15% more than I currently earn), but they came with a traineeship which seemed not very challenging and would force me to stay with that company for 2 years.
A very common scenario I end up in is that I'm talking to a very enthousiastic HR person ("I think you're a very good fit for our company!"), but the offer ends up very low ("Well, you're a junior after all.").
I am thinking about quitting my current job to brush up some skills (mainly Python, Vulkan, OpenGL, and some OS API stuff) and build a portfolio, but I'm too afraid to be unproductive and end up in a worse situation than before (about 1 year of working experience and a giant gap in my CV after that). Has anyone been in a similar situation? Any advice?
Recently quite a few articles appeared on HN about escaping the rat race for a while and taking some time off. As someone who has a little savings and who is a bit burnt out I've been toying with the idea myself quite a bit. My biggest fear is that because I have only a vague idea of what I want to do with my time, I will fritter away my sabbatical, not accomplish much and end up pretty much at the same point (but wi…
Usually I take a week or two letting myself experience calm and boredom, and then reading what others are doing inspires some ideas.
Usually I then write myself mini proposals like you'd do for your boss or a grant, clarifying what I think I know, what I think might work and why it works be interesting, how the problem I'm considering is done best now, and how I'd go about developing that problem into a project.
It takes maybe a day or three per proposal, but saves months of chasing bad ideas like a new electronic device that solve a technical problem in a cool new way (but does it worse than the current solution.
It just takes a different amount of time and introspection and recovery for each person. There are so many ways to live a good life, and many are better than what we thought we wanted in high school or college. Don't be afraid to explore things that seem silly, no one is watching and it's the only way to learn.
But boredom while alone is critical. Perhaps the most important part to redeveloping curiosity and processing what we think we want is silence.
After my graduation, I planned to have some months off to work on hobby stuff, and build a small portfolio with programming projects. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to finish my thesis in time (which is my own fault, but at my university it was also business as usual to take more time than planned for your master thesis). I already had a job and didn't have any time off between my thesis and working (in fact, I started…
I've been treating my sabbatical time post graduation as basically summer vacation and honestly, it's been pretty nice. For the past 4 years, I've been researching, in school, or working an internship, so I haven't had a period of time to just be carefree for quite sometime. I'm very happy right now, but mostly that's because I have a roommate who's unemployed right now, so most of the time I'm not alone in the house…
1%'er you say? You've piqued my interest, mind sharing what your family did to get there? Can anyone guess how many 1%'ers are on HN?
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1%'er you say? You've piqued my interest, mind sharing what your family did to get there? Can anyone guess how many 1%'ers are on HN?
Everyone on here is a 1%er.
After my graduation, I planned to have some months off to work on hobby stuff, and build a small portfolio with programming projects. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to finish my thesis in time (which is my own fault, but at my university it was also business as usual to take more time than planned for your master thesis). I already had a job and didn't have any time off between my thesis and working (in fact, I started…
This sounds very unfamiliar based on my experience with the US job market, but does match with some experience of the European one.. Which country are you in? Maybe that would make for better advice.
If you've seen Europeans backpacking around Asia, Australians in Europe or Canadians in South America, its a common thing - with people from countries with a firm safety net. Its a pity Americans dont get that same security and have to work work work.
Actually I started setting up a Redmine to pursue more complex goals that are usually not related to work.
In the past I also used classical todo lists on a sheet of paper or Asana for some time. But I gave up both, what I observed happens after using this 'tool' after a while: indeed a lot gets done, it's even fulfilling check an item, especially on paper. So after a year or so, the things on the list end up being more and more difficult to do. The only easy tasks are the recently added ones but the list becomes more and more static.
Problem with todo lists is that they are the end product of some ideas that happen at random times. But you lose the idea behind it, so a proper project management tool is worth it. (In fact when you look at how Asana developed over time, it converges into something like that...)
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Everyone on here is a 1%er.
You are probably mostly correct if you are basing that on income relative to the rest of the world. See http://www.globalrichlist.com/