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I wonder if I could write the story of the BBM once he left the university and went on to work in Corporate Land. My career (if may be called that) can be summ

I wonder if I could write the story of the BBM once he left the university and went on to work in Corporate Land. My career (if may be called that) can be summarized by a constant swing. On one side, I have a "job" where I start well but after a while I fall out of grace from higher-ups because I inevitably end up calling out their bullshit and/or start seeing the pointlessness of it all and lose interest in progressing there. This leads me to either quitting or getting fired, which brings me to the other side of the swing: I dive into another project where I try to do everything "my way", no compromises, no shortcuts, no justification of "best practices" because "that is how everyone else does it". While I am on this side, I feel incredibly productive and I am forced to grow/learn a lot of things that are required to the problem at hand. Yet, because of this hard-line stance on not compromising, my projects gets either out-competed by a startup that was (rightly) willing to take the shortcuts I didn't take, or I end up building something that had no market for, or (worse) there is a market and no strong competitor but I refused to pivot out of the original idea for a matter of "principle" that only I cared about - hub20 definitely fell into that category. When I am finally out of steam (or financial reserves), I go back into the job market, usually with a renewed set of skills which helps me land a job that was better than the previous one, and the cycle is complete. Honestly, I am tired of this. These swings were fun for the first 3 or 4 times but now I am increasingly feeling that my luck will run out soon and that I need to get out of this swing, no matter on what end. Either I finally make one of my projects more than a nice portfolio piece or I learn how to settle and navigate the corporate world without hating it and myself so much.

adrianN 3y ago
Have you considered part-time?
- rglullis 3y ago
  I did and still do, but it's hard to find someone willing to hire part-time for a lead/staff/IC position. If you have any good tips, I'd appreciate it very much.
  - adrianN 3y ago
    Move to a country where working part time is a right ( eg Germany), get hired full time, wait a year or so, reduce your hours.
    - rglullis 3y ago
      I live in Germany already. AFAIK, changing to part-time without any special condition (e.g. Elternzeit) would require a change in the contract, no? Also, I've had little success breaking into any higher-level position as an employee here. For the past 5 years or so I've worked only remotely for foreign companies and/or freelance and/or on my own projects. Employment offers were low-balling me and in a German company who would see me as a simple cog.
      - adrianN 3y ago
        Being seen as a simple cog has the benefit that the relationship with your employer is clear: you show up and do want they want you to do, they pay you. Nothing more, nothing less. That leaves you to define your identity using something other than salaried work. Part-time always requires a change in the contract, even as Teilzeit in Elternzeit (at least the part of the contract that says how many hours you need to work has to be changed). All the regulations regarding regular part-time can be found here https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/tzbfg/index.html https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/tzbfg/index.html §8 is probably the most relevant for you.
capr 3y ago
That pretty much describes my "career" of the past 20 years. Lately it's been getting harder and harder to get _any_ job. These days it's either web dev which has reached unbearable levels of idiocracy with its endless tail-chasing web frameworks, microservices and even the platform itself (DOM/CSS), or it's million-line C++ legacy-on-arrival abstraction shitfests written by OOP-heads. It feels like there's nowhere to run.
- conor- 3y ago
  I've found that "devops" is a pretty nice niche to fall into, even with all of its warts. And that means devops as in literally a developer who can also provision/manage infra and operations and not just a YAML jockey who gets a buzzword title. You can kind of pick your lane: dev-experience tooling, build systems, infrastructure automation, observability systems, etc. It's a nice way to break out of the rat race of bad practices and questionable frameworks being used all over the place and it seems pretty secure because most of the tail-chasing framework types aren't exactly keen to learn the details of what actually takes code from 0 to production-grade so having the breadth of knowledge becomes an asset that lets you work on a variety of problems. Obviously there's a different slew of annoying things to deal with (wrangling cloud services, insane abstraction around infrastructure, etc.) but I think those are more pleasant to work around. The infra-side of things also hasn't really slowed down in hiring like pure developer positions has.
  - capr 3y ago
    That could work except there's just as much BS in devops as in dev. The fact that this job title exists at all to me is a symptom of the same problem.
pif 3y ago
> I inevitably end up calling out their bullshit and/or start seeing the pointlessness of it all The fundamental point to keep in mind is that it does not matter. The only thing you are entitled to in a corporation is your salary. Interesting projects and things making sense all over are just side perks. They are very nice perks, I have to say, but they don't pay your rent or put food on your table. Keep this is mind and life will get easier.
- rglullis 3y ago
  Don't you ever get a feeling that life is more than worrying about how to make rent or put food on the table? Maybe it's just my (relatively) comfortable upbringing in Brazil or me living for over 10 years in Germany, where I see how the Welfare State affords me some peace of mind in knowing that my kids will be okay even if I give up on my career... but "I just better swallow this bullshit and do so for the majority of my productive life or I won't be able to pay rent" has never been a thought that crossed my mind.

adrianN 3y ago

Have you considered part-time?

rglullis 3y ago
I did and still do, but it's hard to find someone willing to hire part-time for a lead/staff/IC position. If you have any good tips, I'd appreciate it very much.
- adrianN 3y ago
  Move to a country where working part time is a right ( eg Germany), get hired full time, wait a year or so, reduce your hours.
  - rglullis 3y ago
    I live in Germany already. AFAIK, changing to part-time without any special condition (e.g. Elternzeit) would require a change in the contract, no? Also, I've had little success breaking into any higher-level position as an employee here. For the past 5 years or so I've worked only remotely for foreign companies and/or freelance and/or on my own projects. Employment offers were low-balling me and in a German company who would see me as a simple cog.
    - adrianN 3y ago
      Being seen as a simple cog has the benefit that the relationship with your employer is clear: you show up and do want they want you to do, they pay you. Nothing more, nothing less. That leaves you to define your identity using something other than salaried work. Part-time always requires a change in the contract, even as Teilzeit in Elternzeit (at least the part of the contract that says how many hours you need to work has to be changed). All the regulations regarding regular part-time can be found here https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/tzbfg/index.html https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/tzbfg/index.html §8 is probably the most relevant for you.

capr 3y ago

That pretty much describes my "career" of the past 20 years. Lately it's been getting harder and harder to get _any_ job. These days it's either web dev which has reached unbearable levels of idiocracy with its endless tail-chasing web frameworks, microservices and even the platform itself (DOM/CSS), or it's million-line C++ legacy-on-arrival abstraction shitfests written by OOP-heads. It feels like there's nowhere to run.

conor- 3y ago
I've found that "devops" is a pretty nice niche to fall into, even with all of its warts. And that means devops as in literally a developer who can also provision/manage infra and operations and not just a YAML jockey who gets a buzzword title. You can kind of pick your lane: dev-experience tooling, build systems, infrastructure automation, observability systems, etc. It's a nice way to break out of the rat race of bad practices and questionable frameworks being used all over the place and it seems pretty secure because most of the tail-chasing framework types aren't exactly keen to learn the details of what actually takes code from 0 to production-grade so having the breadth of knowledge becomes an asset that lets you work on a variety of problems. Obviously there's a different slew of annoying things to deal with (wrangling cloud services, insane abstraction around infrastructure, etc.) but I think those are more pleasant to work around. The infra-side of things also hasn't really slowed down in hiring like pure developer positions has.
- capr 3y ago
  That could work except there's just as much BS in devops as in dev. The fact that this job title exists at all to me is a symptom of the same problem.

pif 3y ago

> I inevitably end up calling out their bullshit and/or start seeing the pointlessness of it all The fundamental point to keep in mind is that it does not matter. The only thing you are entitled to in a corporation is your salary. Interesting projects and things making sense all over are just side perks. They are very nice perks, I have to say, but they don't pay your rent or put food on your table. Keep this is mind and life will get easier.

rglullis 3y ago
Don't you ever get a feeling that life is more than worrying about how to make rent or put food on the table? Maybe it's just my (relatively) comfortable upbringing in Brazil or me living for over 10 years in Germany, where I see how the Welfare State affords me some peace of mind in knowing that my kids will be okay even if I give up on my career... but "I just better swallow this bullshit and do so for the majority of my productive life or I won't be able to pay rent" has never been a thought that crossed my mind.