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I have a soul-crushing job and I don't know what to do

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Re: I have a soul-crushing job and I don't know what to do

#21

i 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…

Please tell me these are at the very least, CSS tables.

Re: I have a soul-crushing job and I don't know what to do

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been there. Shift your hours back to 9-5. Helps considerably. You don't lose the evening then. Gives you something to live for.

Moar this than I can upvote. Getting in early changes your entire day. Sure, you sleep less, but unless you have an acute medical condition you can get used to it within a week or so.

Yeah, but make sure you do sleep enough. I neglected sleep for years, sleeping for 2-4 hours a day - on average, with sometimes 2-3 days without sleep at all - and I though I was doing fine. When it finally caught up to me I had a major epilepsy episode at the office, which was not nice. I since started to value a solid 8-9 hours sleep much more than before. This "much" of sleep is probably not really needed, but right now I'd rather be safe than (even more) sorry. YMMV ofc, but just keep in mind the dangers when deciding to sleep less to do something else.

Re: I have a soul-crushing job and I don't know what to do

#23
Some 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. Portfolios are not, in fact, how most people get consulting gigs or jobs. This is believe due to availability bias by junior employees/consultants because portfolios are tangible and they have some sort of just world theory where the best gigs/jobs go to the people on the top of the ladder in programming skill. There is no one skill ladder. To the extent that there is, skill is not the primary driver of employment decisions.

P.S. The overwhelming majority of jobs are not in modern frameworks. Get good at Rails/AngulAr if they interest you or if you want to work in fields where they're the frameworks of choice. (Rails might be for Valley startups one of a few top contenders. I am insufficiently well acquainted with Angular to understand whether it is. Either way, neither will account for a full percentage point of LOC written in 2014.)

Also, if you haven't done so, I'd sit down and figure "What do I want to get out of my career?" and start optimizing for jobs which get you closer to those goals. This sounds obvious but some people don't do it. Do it. "A job which keeps a roof over my head and doesn't tax me mentally" is a perfectly valid answer but you don't seem to want that so don't continue to seek it out when you get up every morning.

Re: I have a soul-crushing job and I don't know what to do

#24

i 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…

Agreed, at least with the advent of precompilers and task managers like Grunt and Gulp we're starting to see a division from the previous generation of "web designers" where there's some hard skills that you simply do or don't have that can't be faked easily using bad WYSIWYG editors or rudimentary grasp of HTML and CSS.

Re: I have a soul-crushing job and I don't know what to do

#25

If your job is a soul-crushing vise, take your soul out of it and put it somewhere else. There are a lot of people out there that do something they hate to pay the bills. They get their enjoyment out of life by doing something else after clocking out. People at your work have no interest in doing things better because they already emotionally divested themselves from the job. Just pretend that instead of writing awfu…

You are misunderstanding my situation. The reason why people aren't interested in clever solutions is because they can't think of any. It may seem cynical but I have seen people out here working even longer than me re-creating something, not exploiting even basic tricks or automations.

Lately, my co-worker spent 15 minutes indenting JS files without realizing that it would 10s to use a code beautifier.

Re: I have a soul-crushing job and I don't know what to do

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been there. Shift your hours back to 9-5. Helps considerably. You don't lose the evening then. Gives you something to live for.

Moar this than I can upvote. Getting in early changes your entire day. Sure, you sleep less, but unless you have an acute medical condition you can get used to it within a week or so.

I completely disagree, for me, anyway. I was a child that chose to sleep instead of open Santa presents on Christmas. I am most definitely more productive when I can start my day late - enough that when working overnight, my mother noticed a positive difference in my happiness level. When possible, I test myself every few years to see if it has changed: Both ways I can get enough sleep, but timing my sleep to fit the correct time of day for me helps tremendously.

The only thing that might motivate me to wake earlier in this situation is to search for a job that didn't try to suck my brain away - very worthwhile.

Re: I have a soul-crushing job and I don't know what to do

#27
I got addicted to solving problems. Every time I fixed one, I would get that little dopamine hit that told me I was doing a good job.

Then one day a buddy said, 'Yeah, but in your company there are problems that shouldn't need to be fixed.'

Completely changed my way of thinking and set me on the path to start looking for a new job.

Re: I have a soul-crushing job and I don't know what to do

#28
post #23

Some 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?

Re: I have a soul-crushing job and I don't know what to do

#29
post #6

Your sentence "[...] out of 8 hours, I barely write code for 2 hours" contrasts with the next sentence: "[...] but this job barely leaves me any time to do so." I am probably misinterpreting, but if you wanted to buy some time I would have thought this meant accepting this job to pay the bills, and then outside of work hours picking up other skills to create some interesting things, which sounds like the right way to…

The main problem is exhaustion. The queer thing about jobs out here is that in name "flexible timings" there is complete lack of schedule. Everyone comes around 11AM and stay till 7-7:30. I reach home by 8 and I am completely spent. Weekends are better but I don't feel I am progressing enough to have a good job.

Arrange it so that the most optimal part of your day is for your personal projects. Your employer can have whatever energy and focus is remaining.

Re: I have a soul-crushing job and I don't know what to do

#30

i 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…

Please tell me these are at the very least, CSS tables.

i'm fighting the good fight - the ones i write are CSS tables. the rest, no.
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