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Why Stressed? Let me tell you why I'm stressed and since last week thinking of turning of my life. 1. It's not ok to just be a programmer who goes to office, f

by panjaro 11y ago

Why Stressed? Let me tell you why I'm stressed and since last week thinking of turning of my life. 1. It's not ok to just be a programmer who goes to office, finishes work and comes back home. 2. It's not ok to just know about few things. You need to be full-stack engineer, mediocre developers are bad as the internet says. 3. Oh what are you doing at job, real programmers leave their job and pursue your dreams. 4. Oh you don't have a dream Very bad. You need one. 5. Oh you don't have passion you must have one. Look at all the founders, genius people who have become millionaires. 6. Oh you know javascript and jquery. Yes you can learn any new framework but Do you know Angular.js? How about Node.js. 7. Oh you work only with C#. A good prgrammer needs to know python if possible haskell etc etc. 8. Oh you have worked for 5 years but do you have a blog? do you have contributions to open source, do you have github account with regular commits? No? You're not good programmer. Sorry no job for you. 9. Oh you know a bunch of things but you don't know more than those silicon valley programmers. They are genius. Why aren't you genius? 10. Oh you are approaching age 30 but you're not famous. Why aren't you. Some kid made an app, some guy created this great business...why didn't you. 11. Add the list goes on..... I have realized even if you are good at what you do, it's not enough. You have to meet right people at right place in right time who can give publicity and credit to even your small work. That makes you look good. But people who are not at the right place at right time, they think how the hell did that guy do it. How is he now regarded as great. Then the mind goes crazy. People feel down and depressed. I did the same. I left a perfect job. Why? Well a programmer takes risk, learns new things. After a year? I have no job, no income, I'm unhappy, depressed. Because I was chasing a mirage.

quickpost 11y ago
I feel similarly and hearing someone else say it out loud eloquently and comprehensively made me feel a bit better. Thanks.
draper625 11y ago
This perfectly encapsulates my feelings as well right now, even though I'm not as old. I wanted to make games, start a business, or make cool apps. Now I spend 9 hours a day in an "enterprise" role resetting passwords and writing trivial backend code for third party apps. I'm a night owl, but I get up every day at the crack of dawn, and I'm too exhausted almost every evening to be social or work on side project ideas. I have a project at home that I really believe in, but with my exhaustion in the evenings and life's endless distractions filling my time in one way or another, it's been over a month since I really got in the "zone" for a few hours working on it. I went to a shitty school, so now I try to study algorithms and other fancy whiteboard interview-esque things I need to know (and didn't get a solid foundation on) if I ever want one of those fancier developer jobs at a company with 21st century environment, policies, etc. It gets so tiring to forgo time with family and friends to study in your spare time and write cover letters to places you'll never hear back from. And I live in a small town that I want to move from, how am I supposed to take enough time off unnoticed to do any meaningful amount of phone calls and in-person interviews? At the end of the day, it's easier to play a few games of Halo, go to bed, and say you'll get a little closer to somewhere you want to be tomorrow. And that's what I told my self a year ago. Will I be in the same situation next year? I've worked full time enough to see how easy it is to just give up on any dreams and settle for making the only focus of your life raising a few kids in a nice neighborhood house with white picket fence, and forgo efforts of reaching your full potential in favor of worrying about things like mowing the lawn and keeping beer in the fridge.

by panjaro 11y ago

quickpost 11y ago

I feel similarly and hearing someone else say it out loud eloquently and comprehensively made me feel a bit better. Thanks.

draper625 11y ago

This perfectly encapsulates my feelings as well right now, even though I'm not as old. I wanted to make games, start a business, or make cool apps. Now I spend 9 hours a day in an "enterprise" role resetting passwords and writing trivial backend code for third party apps. I'm a night owl, but I get up every day at the crack of dawn, and I'm too exhausted almost every evening to be social or work on side project ideas. I have a project at home that I really believe in, but with my exhaustion in the evenings and life's endless distractions filling my time in one way or another, it's been over a month since I really got in the "zone" for a few hours working on it. I went to a shitty school, so now I try to study algorithms and other fancy whiteboard interview-esque things I need to know (and didn't get a solid foundation on) if I ever want one of those fancier developer jobs at a company with 21st century environment, policies, etc. It gets so tiring to forgo time with family and friends to study in your spare time and write cover letters to places you'll never hear back from. And I live in a small town that I want to move from, how am I supposed to take enough time off unnoticed to do any meaningful amount of phone calls and in-person interviews? At the end of the day, it's easier to play a few games of Halo, go to bed, and say you'll get a little closer to somewhere you want to be tomorrow. And that's what I told my self a year ago. Will I be in the same situation next year? I've worked full time enough to see how easy it is to just give up on any dreams and settle for making the only focus of your life raising a few kids in a nice neighborhood house with white picket fence, and forgo efforts of reaching your full potential in favor of worrying about things like mowing the lawn and keeping beer in the fridge.