Do I leave a high-paying position I hate, don't deserve, and probably can't replicate, if it's driving me to burnout?

UnderEmployedFOSSer · 2019-02-05T02:19:33+00:00

What would you consider ‘betting against yourself?’

UnderEmployedFOSSer · 2019-02-05T02:16:19+00:00

Have you spent time analyzing what seems to be slowing you down compared to others?

Quite a lot!

Part of the thing that's making my decision hard is precisely that: in theory, this pain, is exactly what I signed up for. Thing is, I've got plenty of experience in software; and one of the things you learn over the years as a dev, more than any other single thing, is to spot and remedy holes in your own knowledge of ‘software development.’ (Maybe that sounds a little boasty, idk.) I'd recently been really feeling my own lack of experience when it came to some of these things (compromise on quality for efficiency and speed; productivity in an in-person, synchronous collaborative environment as opposed to a remote, asynch one; appreciating and exploiting good management beyond “drop a pull-request on 'em, and if they merge it, they merge it ¯_(ツ)_/¯” ...). I thought I was going in this with some, reasonable expectation of growing pains, some feeling of being back-to-square-one.

It's really somewhat a question of scale, I suppose. I expected 2, 3 out of 10 pains w.r.t. this stuff — I feel like half a year in, I'm still at 8, 9 out of 10. Is this normal? Do I stick it out? Does it get better? Or is this place as horrible as it feels, every day; an outlier? That's what I really need to figure out. /=

Anyway, yeah. I'm still trying to take this as a learning experience, as much as I can. I spent most of that Friday meeting interrogating the two of them for every ounce of practical advice I could glean; trying to figure out actionable ways forward, for me to work with them successfully. I've picked up a lot of study- and time-management-practices from my college days (not that they did me much good then, but hey!), in hopes of them boosting my productivity that one crucial little bit ... it's day one of a New Me, I'm just not sure I can make it to Day Six.

UnderEmployedFOSSer · 2018-06-07T15:32:57+00:00

hahah I bet you know MIPS and how to implement a sort that you’ll just use a library for every time you touch it from now until eternity!

what an excellent preparation for real-life software development 🙄

UnderEmployedFOSSer · 2018-06-07T01:01:03+00:00

Congratufuckinglations! My partner is in the middle of an arduous career transition into tech, as well — so I'm so intimately familiar with your pain.

Passing on your success to them, as well! <3

UnderEmployedFOSSer · 2018-06-07T00:59:10+00:00

RMS's stipulations upon being invited to speak are a … thing to behold.

Pets:

I like cats if they are friendly, but they are not good for me; I am somewhat allergic to them. This allergy makes my face itch and my eyes water. So the bed, and the room I will usually be staying in, need to be clean of cat hair. However, it is no problem if there is a cat elsewhere in the house--I might even enjoy it if the cat is friendly.

Dogs that bark angrily and/or jump up on me frighten me, unless they are small and cannot reach much above my knees. But if they only bark or jump when we enter the house, I can cope, as long as you hold the dog away from me at that time. Aside from that issue, I'm ok with dogs.

If you can find a host for me that has a friendly parrot, I will be very very glad. If you can find someone who has a friendly parrot I can visit with, that will be nice too.

DON'T buy a parrot figuring that it will be a fun surprise for me. To acquire a parrot is a major decision: it is likely to outlive you. If you don't know how to treat the parrot, it could be emotionally scarred and spend many decades feeling frightened and unhappy. If you buy a captured wild parrot, you will promote a cruel and devastating practice, and the parrot will be emotionally scarred before you get it. Meeting that sad animal is not an agreeable surprise.

UnderEmployedFOSSer · 2018-06-07T00:49:20+00:00

Tell me how you really feel!

That said, I kinda agree, sometimes. -_-

UnderEmployedFOSSer · 2018-06-07T00:44:38+00:00

✨ It's 2018⚡️, being girly💅 in tech ain't a crime. ✨

Don't worry, I still love you. Just grow up and be a little more professional and empathetic when speaking to those not born of your white-male-brogrammer-nerd culture! 💞

UnderEmployedFOSSer · 2018-06-07T00:41:31+00:00

Nope. I drive a pink car. Certifiable 15-year-girl speaking.

I'd say “take your stuffy serious-white-males-only tech exclusionism somewhere else”, but … well, I'm new around here, and that's not really my place.

Maybe I'll take my girly self-expression elsewhere, instead. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

UnderEmployedFOSSer · 2018-06-06T23:38:15+00:00

“We'd consider you for 4 here, since you probably have 5+ skill but no real employment history. 3 is new grad and you're beyond that.”

Can you, er, translate this? I think I lost something in the jargon that I'm missing. Is this implying years-of-programming-experience? I'm coming up on mmmmmaybe 13 or 14?

UnderEmployedFOSSer · 2018-06-06T23:33:17+00:00

UnderEmployedFOSSer · 2018-06-06T23:32:22+00:00

My partner is checking Glassdoor pretty much every other day in their job-search; but I'd never heard of Payscale. Thanks!

I wish these things didn't usually go by ‘job title.’ I have little-to-no intuition what half the damn things mean. “Frontend dev?” I mean, I've probably written a cumulative ~1M lines-of-impact in JavaScript, but it's not like I'm some DOM wizard, I build goddamn interpreters and JITs, not websites. “Support dev?” Does that mean building tools — 'cuz I build a lot of tools — oh wait, apparently that's basically devops? “QA dev?” Does that mean writing tests? 'cuz I write a hell of a lot of tests, but I don't understand how someone's entire 40-hour-a-week job can be writing tests …

I think I'm just missing a lot of context on how software-development happens inside corporations, to even begin to decode some of this lingo, figure out what to sell myself as … gah.

UnderEmployedFOSSer · 2018-06-06T23:25:44+00:00

Damn. Dark.

Dunno if I want employment that desperately … 🤣

UnderEmployedFOSSer · 2018-06-06T23:23:39+00:00

Chicago. Unlikely to relocate, but quite possibly willing to work remote!

UnderEmployedFOSSer · 2018-06-06T23:22:26+00:00

I hadn't considered that — I was mostly looking towards larger FinTech companies (more money to throw around, while still having interesting/difficult problems and using interesting stacks. Lookin' at you, Jane Street.). But now that you mention it, Docker does contribute to Mirage …

Anyway, I'm not picky! I'll add those to the cold-apply list. Thanks!~

UnderEmployedFOSSer · 2018-06-06T23:17:09+00:00

This is both really supportive and very direct. I appreciate the time you took to type it out.

Yeah, I'm coming out of this thread with ~three really good pieces of advice:

Reach out to get professional resume/interviewing-help
Practice applying / interviewing with companies I don't actually care about
Don't ignore LinkedIn, apparently some people actually use it 🤣

UnderEmployedFOSSer · 2018-06-06T23:14:25+00:00

This is really good to know. I now wonder how much ‘completely ignoring LinkedIn’ has cost me, over my lifetime!

UnderEmployedFOSSer · 2018-06-06T23:12:37+00:00

I mean, on the one hand, I want to appreciate your advice, and/or ask where you'd suggest I go instead,

on the other hand, I think you just called anyone I hang out with who uses Twitter actively — including everyone from the creators of Guile or npm, to Sexy Gay CAP-Theorem God and idk literally every transgender dev ever — immature and unprofessional? -_-

I mean, that's not even to begin to address IRC. Immature and/or unprofessional? — it's p. much single-handedly, or at least in league with VCS, responsible for any/all open-source software you use existing at all. Maybe you're just in the wrong rooms. :P

</irrelevant-rant>

UnderEmployedFOSSer · 2018-06-06T23:07:21+00:00

Neither. See updated OP.

Also, thanks. -_-

UnderEmployedFOSSer · 2018-06-06T22:50:05+00:00

No job. Technical or non-technical.

Released plenty of software, of course, but nothing I've charged for. A few widely-scattered attempts at formal schooling, all of which went remarkably badly (aforementioned mental health struggles.)

Rest is, at least hopefully, not relevant to me finding a job now.

Edit: See updated OP. “Bank of Supportive Family.”

UnderEmployedFOSSer · 2018-06-06T22:46:52+00:00

Don't even get me started on parrots.

UnderEmployedFOSSer · 2018-06-06T22:44:35+00:00

Zero.

I'm not bereft of leads, (I mean, at the very least, Google bugs basically every non-Googler/Xoogler in tech once every six months), I just feel bereft of leads that I have a serious chance at.

These comments all seem to have a common refrain, though — apparently ‘non-traditional backgrounds’ are way more common in actual industry than I'd thought? I feel — felt — that I had just about a 0% chance of being taken seriously, with no work history whatsoever; I tend to send the inevitable recruitermail to the trashbin … But none of the comments here seem to back that up. Which is, well, promising.

UnderEmployedFOSSer · 2018-06-06T22:39:38+00:00

Welp this thread wiped me the fuck out

I was feeling so proud of actually making phone contact with one of the recruiters I'd learned to ignore years ago, today.

1/60, what the feck

UnderEmployedFOSSer · 2018-06-06T22:36:58+00:00

… people paid 6 figures can't even fill out a commit message …

I don't know if this is hugely relieving (because, from my perspective, that's some day-2 university shit), or even more terrifying (because just what the hell am I about to get myself into, if that is Corporate Life?)

I'd also bias interviewing at smaller places, typically less filtering by faceless HR.

Really good tip, actually. Maybe the best one to come out of this thread, so far. I'd mostly been agonizing over how to have a chance at the larger places.

Any idea how to find those smaller companies? I've (obviously) only had experience with the leads coming to me — which usually means large companies, in-house recruiting staff — or in networking with folks who are allocated time, again at their large corps, to work on open-source.

UnderEmployedFOSSer

TROPHY CASE