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There's not much you can do about a demanding family life (unless you want to prioritize work over it, which I wouldn't recommend) and getting older. Your optio

There's not much you can do about a demanding family life (unless you want to prioritize work over it, which I wouldn't recommend) and getting older. Your options are limited for a stressful work environment, but you could try to negotiate some changes to improve that situation. Learning on off hours seems to be where you have the most leeway. Depending on when you were 23, you may have started web development before its transformation into its current state of an unfathomably complex abomination. If that's the case, I would argue that you got your start in greener pastures, but those times have since passed. You will have to buckle down and learn as much of the "new way" as you can stomach each sitting. Compile a (what will likely be an absurdly long) list of every tool that you're currently using or will be using soon and try to build a working understanding of it. Your best hope is to learn everything you can in a big push and hope that your employer doesn't do the flavor-of-the-month bullshit.

swombat 9y ago
This looks like terrible advice. It is defeatist (you can't do anything about most of your situation - false, as other comments have pointed out) and where it does offer some suggestion, it is to do stuff that the OP has already ruled out and which will obviously contribute to the OP getting even more stressed. And it feels like unrealistic advice too... you can't "learn everything", or anywhere near everything, of any deep topic like web development. Just thinking about trying to do that seems likely to be panic inducing to anyone who has any notion of how big a field that is. I would recommend reading the many other helpful posts here for ideas of better advice to offer someone in this situation. This ain't it, imho.
- seabird 9y ago
  There's a difference between defeatism and and realism. A demanding family life can't really change in a way that's any less than serious and far-reaching; any recommendation in this department is hugely personal and runs deep. A stressful working environment is something that can be fixed, but requires negotiating more accommodating conditions; this is neither quick nor reliable in many cases. In an extreme case, the OP could look for a place of work that has a more fitting pace/culture, but this is an entirely non-trivial change. RSI is a medical circumstance that no wishful thinking can change (short of best practice to avoid it). The same goes for aging and passage of time. Can the OP make these entirely non-trivial, life-changing decisions and achieve a significant improvement? Of course, and I'd encourage him to do so, but that's personal beyond what many of us are able to help him with. Can the OP treat the symptoms of a lifestyle/occupation that puts him under extreme stress? Sure, but that's not actually fixing the underlying issue, and patchwork solutions may not hold. Of the underlying causes he mentioned, there's one he can address without having to go all in; keeping up the best he can with his field of work and how it is changing. Everything about web development has changed, and it's entirely understandable that he feels out of his element when his job has become absurdly complex almost overnight. That type of environment can make you feel like a dullard, a slow learner, or even an imposter who is holding a position under a false pretense. The way to beat that feeling is to prove to yourself that it isn't true.

swombat 9y ago

This looks like terrible advice. It is defeatist (you can't do anything about most of your situation - false, as other comments have pointed out) and where it does offer some suggestion, it is to do stuff that the OP has already ruled out and which will obviously contribute to the OP getting even more stressed. And it feels like unrealistic advice too... you can't "learn everything", or anywhere near everything, of any deep topic like web development. Just thinking about trying to do that seems likely to be panic inducing to anyone who has any notion of how big a field that is. I would recommend reading the many other helpful posts here for ideas of better advice to offer someone in this situation. This ain't it, imho.

seabird 9y ago
There's a difference between defeatism and and realism. A demanding family life can't really change in a way that's any less than serious and far-reaching; any recommendation in this department is hugely personal and runs deep. A stressful working environment is something that can be fixed, but requires negotiating more accommodating conditions; this is neither quick nor reliable in many cases. In an extreme case, the OP could look for a place of work that has a more fitting pace/culture, but this is an entirely non-trivial change. RSI is a medical circumstance that no wishful thinking can change (short of best practice to avoid it). The same goes for aging and passage of time. Can the OP make these entirely non-trivial, life-changing decisions and achieve a significant improvement? Of course, and I'd encourage him to do so, but that's personal beyond what many of us are able to help him with. Can the OP treat the symptoms of a lifestyle/occupation that puts him under extreme stress? Sure, but that's not actually fixing the underlying issue, and patchwork solutions may not hold. Of the underlying causes he mentioned, there's one he can address without having to go all in; keeping up the best he can with his field of work and how it is changing. Everything about web development has changed, and it's entirely understandable that he feels out of his element when his job has become absurdly complex almost overnight. That type of environment can make you feel like a dullard, a slow learner, or even an imposter who is holding a position under a false pretense. The way to beat that feeling is to prove to yourself that it isn't true.