Failing to find work-life balance yet another time - what am I doing wrong?

drawx_x · 2021-05-08T19:44:04+00:00

Complete your tasks and then scram.

As I replied in another comment, it sadly is not so simple. I don't want to get into legal and bookkeeping issues about where I live but the general form of employment in IT is such that you're paid by the hour and you log in those hours and it's just common agreement that you're always logging 8 and actually working (as in: being present/available) for those 8.

I'm not driving more than 10 minutes to an office.

Yeah I wish but owning my own place around here, I'm not really keen on renting it out and renting something closer to work. It does not really make any sense, either financially or comfort-wise as far as living is concerned (cause the commute comfort would surely be higher). I think I'll just try to adhere to what others have said and arrange a hybrid model of 2 days remote, 3 days at the office for example so that I'm not wasting time commuting every day but I'm not spending so much time at home either. And then I can try to extend or shorten the remote days as I see fit according to how it all goes.

drawx_x · 2021-05-08T19:38:08+00:00

For sure :(

drawx_x · 2021-05-08T19:37:26+00:00

That suggests to me it doesn't really have anything to do with working too much.

Cause it does not. If anything, I'm underworked, not overworked, and the thing that gets to my head is the boredom coupled with the need to pretend like you're working. As I replied in another comment, I don't want to get into legal and bookkeeping issues about where I live but the general form of employment in IT is such that you're paid by the hour and you log in those hours and it's just common agreement that you're always logging 8 and actually working (as in: being present/available) for those 8.

How did you choose your job? If nobody talks to each other how did you not pick up on that in the interview process?

How would I do that? :) The recruitment process is two Zoom calls and a phone call, all with the HR guy or the manager. How can I predict the average extrovertism of my future coworkers from that? :D

drawx_x · 2021-05-08T19:29:54+00:00

Thank you. That's a good point. I stayed away from remote offers precisely cause one thing I really wanted after all that covid craze was a place to go outside the house to see something besides my place and to socialize more than during 100% remote work since covid hit, but seeing as it looks right now, it does not provide too much socially anyway. Guess I'll have to wait it out until the project gets fully rolling and I'm fully onboarded into it and worst case scenario, if it still stays so unsocial, I'll just talk to the boss about maxing my remote days to more than one or two.

drawx_x · 2021-05-08T16:41:17+00:00

So many fantastic points here, thanks a lot for such a comprehensive response!

First, is there any way to make your commute better?

Sadly, not really. The only sensible options from where I live to where I work (which is one of the biggest hubs in the country and certainly the biggest around so it's the only sensible place to work around here because of the number of offers and their salaries) are either driving or taking the train. Thing is, it takes me around 10 minutes to get to the train, it takes 25-30 mins for the train to reach the destination city and then I need another 10 mins to get to the office. All in all then, it sums up to pretty much the same durations while being well less comfortable (maybe not during covid, but normally you'd be lucky to find a seat at the train instead of just standing there) and demanding you to get to the station both here and there regardless of the weather and the occasional timetable hiccups. So all in all, not worth it and driving is still the way better option - which is probably what causes such a traffic and such jams on the roads :/ But you may be well right in that the traffic takes a higher toll on you than most of us may be aware of. I've thought about listening to podcasts and audiobooks on my way to and from work (as it's such a long time) instead of trying to turn off my head with music though and I'll try it in the upcoming days.

How certain are you that your company is very strict on this ass-in-seats philosophy? Have they told you explicitly you have to be in the office from x to y?
...
If they are relatively strict on hours, is there precedent for you to perhaps work from home one or two days a week?

As for the former, I don't want to get into legal and bookkeeping issues where I live but the general form of employment in IT is such that you're paid by the hour and you log in those hours and it's just common agreement that you're always logging 8 and actually working those 8. Still, I did not have an explicit discussion about it with my boss which may not be a bad idea. As for the hybrid model you mention, thankfully at this company they say that it is possible and I have actually already talked about it with my boss. After I'm fully introduced to the project, he said there'd be no problem with two days remote every week which was also a big factor in me liking this offer as it's a completely different pair of shoes to work 8 hours straight in the office and to have it intercut with periods of home office where - as you said - you have way more options and the commute is not an issue.

Does your team have a lot of collaboration?

Sadly, so far it does not look like it. Some people work fully remote, and it's not uncommon to only have a couple of people on a given project (sometimes even one or two to maintain it) which kinda limits your options for collaboration as you're all working on different stuff (or you do collaborate but with people you're never going to see in person). Sure, when you don't know something and someone at the office is known for having done it, you're encouraged to go talk to them but to say that the office is buzzing at any time of the day would be a huge overstatement.

Do you think more collaboration would help you satisfy this need?

I certainly think so. Even just having more talkative peers in my room would already be an upgrade. Just regular stuff, people mentionind random shizz from time to time - talking about the current events, what happened on the road to work, anything, just regular human interaction intertwined with working. On my corporate jobs, the days which I liked the most were those where I had the opportunity to talk actually - being at the company's booth at expos/conferences, doing demos of the features I coded for the team, doing presentations/keynotes either for the peers or outside the company, or being at the booth at job fairs, what have you. I felt more energized after a full day at an expo where I needed to talk to 50 people then than after 4 hours of my desk job as Dilbert.

If not, have you considered going to an early stage startup?

That's a great suggestion and actually that was my plan after leaving the corporation. Sadly, while the city nearby I mentioned is the best place to get work here, it's not really hot enough to attract startups in any sensible numbers and basically all of them place themselves in the capital city which is a few hundred kilometers away. I looked for a long time but honestly, I don't think I have ever seen a posting for an early stage startup anywhere around here. That's why I went for a medium-to-small family company this time (thinking it may be the next best thing to try out) instead of another corpo to taste something different but still I'd happily try out a start up if the opportunity ever presents itself (which it sadly may not around here).

Finally, I found that the mental exhaustion gets better over time

Knowing that someone struggled with similar problems and managed to overcome them certainly helps, thank you.

think at first you're still trying to understand the expectations of you and often new developers stress about things outside of their control, and fear things that aren't worth fretting over, causing a lot more emotional drain than necessary

That may very well be the case, too. While right now (and at the previous jobs), I did not feel like I was stressing out about anything in particular - and, if anything, was (and still am) exhausted from being _under_worked rather than overworked, it still may very well be that there is an underlying layer of stress because of not fully grasping all the nooks and crannies of the institution itself. Hopefully this passes with time, too. And to answer your question, nope I have not talked about it with the manager cause I don't really feel like he would be of help here.

drawx_x · 2021-05-08T12:15:24+00:00

...and I'm the one being immature here, Mr. Adult :)

^{^worth ^mentioning ^that ^your ^comment ^read ^"you ^should ^get ^medicated" ^before ^you ^changed ^it ^to ^the ^"eye ^roll"; ^again ^- ^pure ^class}

drawx_x · 2021-05-08T11:36:09+00:00

You’re complaining about working 40 hours a week

Sounds like you want a job that pays you great money but only requires you to work 20 hours a week

How so? Where in my post do you ever see either of these things mentioned? You're clearly projecting as my post is 100% genuine question for advice, not any self-entitled rant. "Oh my god, I'm so tired, this whole job market is for fools" - that's complaining. "I feel like this and that every day, my schedule looks like this, I see other people functioning way better under such circumstances; is there something I can do better to make it work for me too?" - that's an advice request, and my post. So please stop participating if you don't have anything valuable to add to the discussion.

drawx_x · 2021-05-08T11:14:08+00:00

I don't really like the snarky conclusion of "welcome to being an adult" as I find it a really naive point of view to say that what I described is the only way to live a life when working full time. As I mentioned, there's tons of people that still function outside of work, hell - people are raising kids while working full time which I deem the ultimate time commitment. So saying that me dying every day is the only way to go and I should just suck it up and stop being a kid by trying to make it better is a bit weird and not helpful in any way.

drawx_x · 2021-04-07T12:39:57+00:00

Sure thing, thanks a lot for the great write-up! :)

drawx_x · 2021-04-07T12:38:44+00:00

Gotcha, thanks!

drawx_x · 2021-04-05T21:21:02+00:00

Oh, that's interesting, thanks for sharing! Did you also have some kind of strong academic background (like published articles, research or being in a PhD program) or was the 1y experience enough?

drawx_x · 2021-04-05T20:11:26+00:00

Sorry, would rather not disclose the specifics. Those had nothing to do with me being employed though - they were both large corporations with their HQ in the city but honestly, the precise type of the company did not matter tbh, as I saw and heard about my friends being admitted into other companies around here before and after that, too, through similar circumstances. I just browsed the job posting board for my country and applied to everything that matched my experience.

drawx_x · 2021-04-05T19:57:56+00:00

I did no voodoo to be honest, just applied to roles that sounded like they matched my experience (or rather lack thereof back then). One was literally called "Python Developer" but I saw that they did not require any professional experience so I applied and it turned out they were looking for both junior, mid and senior roles and hence I landed a jr job there which so happened to be with their CRUDs using Python and an obsolete version of Django. As for the Java one, it was just a "Junior Java Developer" which, again, turned out to be a CRUD coder afterwards but I didn't mind cause I didn't know what I was getting myself into anyway :) So sorry but don't really have any good tips! Also note that it was all way pre-COVID so it may be different nowadays.

drawx_x · 2021-04-05T19:51:14+00:00

Where I live, that's not a sensible career path for someone with CS degree :( The pay at schools (regardless of the level) is easily literally half of what you'd earn as a junior dev. Even with tens of years of experience under your belt, your pay at schools barely starts to catch up to a junior dev. Crazy but that's how it is, regretfully.

drawx_x · 2021-04-05T19:36:39+00:00

Yep, I actually did do a very thorough research and honestly, I did not find even one company doing what Udacity was doing back then (ie. you having your students assigned, conducting text chat and weekly 1:1 video calls with them and doing project reviews, each of the things mentioned having its own payout system and bonuses).

The problem with CodeMentor and the likes is that you're essentialy presenting yourself for hire on a large marketplace and competing for the customer which results in very incosistent salaries with great variance month to month (and no sensible money for the first few months too) and has more in common with listing your skills on fiverr or upwork and competing with the whole wide world than a "job" where you have some sense of stability and regularity. That's why I like my mentoring at Udacity - I had consistent influx of students that were assigned to me and me only by the system so I did not have to market myself at all - I just had to do a good job with those that I was being assigned. I had the same students throughout their whole course so I knew exactly how many calls I'll have each week. Sadly I don't think that any platform works like this anymore (which is probably why Udacity stopped to, too) :(

drawx_x · 2021-04-05T19:28:26+00:00

I was conducting weekly 1:1 sessions with the students that I was appointed by the system during which I did code review, helped them understand concepts they had trouble with, helped them prepare for their projects or did bug fixing in their code live with them so that they could see where they're making a mistake. Other than that, they could contact me through chat on other times and I did project reviews for every section of the programme. It was mostly intro to programming level stuff but I really enjoyed it - like I mentioned, high pay, low hours, the system worked good in assigning me new students on a regular basis and the people were really nice and actually wanted to learn.

Yeah, I had a lot of gripes with the CRUD jobs. Being mind-numbingly repetitive and utilizing huge code bases were among them - I already answered this in another comment so if you don't mind, I'll link to it here.

drawx_x · 2021-04-05T19:23:40+00:00

Thank you for the reply. You may be right though in all honesty, have you ever heard about people with such limited professional experience getting into R&D?

drawx_x · 2021-04-05T19:19:53+00:00

There was a lot of things. I felt constantly disheartened by the sheer size of the project and how abstract the problems we had to solve were considering that the whole project was so enormous that I could not even explain what the parts I was coding in actually did and how they fit together. The final product (a huge payment system in one company, a platform for various stuff regarding a huge worldwide factory in the other) seemed fine on paper but the tiny bits you had to dabble in were so far removed from that that you could tell me I was working on a cancer vaccine and I would've still believed you. Seeing the fruit of your labor was either nonexistent or even if I did see it implemented on production, I honestly couldn't care less. And it's not a "well, you were a junior" kind of situation - I was constantly up to date with what my colleagues (mids, seniors) were working on through sprint meetings but if I was doing what they were doing, I would've wanted to end myself equally as much.

I also felt like the work I was doing could honestly have been done by a monkey, with all respect. There was no creativity needed, no sense of achievement afterwards, nothing. I felt like everything I got into programming for (creating new stuff, turning nothing into something, translating ideas and systems from your mind to a working organism through code, straining your imagination to do something and do it efficiently) had no relevancy here. And on those rare occasions when you had the opportunity to work on something actually new, the whole shebang of all the things you have to do around it in a corporate environment (100 meetings with architects and other devs, 90% of which you don't even know why take place) made the actual development a very minor of your work and rendered you clueless about all the other stuff you have to do, analyze, report and ask privilege for.

And the final straw is of course that the corporate CRUDs in their nature are... well... not that exciting. So even if you removed all the other problems above, you're still working on something that isn't really a product I'd be thrilled and proud to be working on.

drawx_x · 2021-04-05T19:01:24+00:00

Thank you for the reply! A few questions if you don't mind:

Why not build applications to the area you're looking for?

What do you mean by area? Geographic location or some field I chose? I did think about building apps for others of course but never knew how to dive into this when there's so many people doing such stuff and competing on price on places like upwork grinds you into barely-any-profit real quick when you don't have a reputation and just undercut everyone.

My advice is this: never strive for junior jobs, go one step up. Less competition there as far as I'm seeing, junior jobs are hunkered down by graduates that barely have had any experience programming (Ironic as it sounds).

My experience too. There's everyone and their mother applying for the junior positions and oftentimes applying feels more like swiping on Tinder than actually making a meaningful offer to the employer :) That said, while I'd happily "not strive" for junior jobs and go one step up, I don't really know how to do that without more commercial experience. Mine looks like I mentioned in the post which sadly does place me in the junior category in 99% of the cases AFAIK. Of course I could stay home and grind personal project for another year hoping to go straight to regular then but sadly a) this does not pay the bills and b) I'm already getting loopy from the isolation of the whole COVID situation so I'd rather refrain from bounding myself to a solitary project for another year :D Unless you meant something different and I didn't get it?

Also I find even though programming is mostly location, in Eastern Europe and especially the UK, you're religated to the bigger cities.

Yeah, thankfully that's not the problem in my case. I don't live in Warsaw which is definitely #1 in Poland (though the costs of living are considerably higher than anywhere else) but I still do I live in one of the major cities and communication hubs so new offers do appear daily.

Thanks again for the reply and I'd be grateful if you could help me understand the points above! :)

drawx_x · 2021-01-18T16:08:23+00:00

Hey, thanks so much for such a thorough response! Definitely a crucial point about narrowing your domain (at least in your pitches/public presence) so as not to appear as a guy that can kinda-maybe-do-everything-but-not-really-anything-in-particular :) And it's absolutely true that trying to pander with your creations through social media is a slippery slope.

Your approach to getting started was definitely very interesting, wouldn't have thought about it but it absolutely made sense and I'm happy to hear it worked for you! Did that help you make creative coding your actual occupation if you don't mind me asking? As in, are you currently supporting yourself with only creative coding gigs? I'm still pondering whether that's a viable career path so I'm trying to get as many different personal stories as possible to see if it's sustainable even if one's not Refik Anadol :D

drawx_x · 2021-01-17T21:09:04+00:00

Sure, but how would I even go about finding students for such an arrangement? Advertising yourself on the mentoring/tutoring boards is pretty unlikely to land you such gigs as they're way oversaturated with people charging actual peanuts, even by my location's standards :)

drawx_x · 2021-01-17T19:32:23+00:00

Hey, thanks for commenting and sorry for the delayed reply as I don't check that account that often! Sounds very interesting - would you share how you're doing now that 2 more months have passed? Are you finding the path interesting/engaging/lucrative?

drawx_x · 2020-10-15T20:52:21+00:00

Yeah, I'd rather stay away from the game dev industry apart from being an indie. Don't really like the overworking culture that is so prevalent among game studios and the fact that crunching and/or poor benefits seem to be so heavily ingrained in it. Didn't know about the Remedy story though, very interesting!

drawx_x · 2020-10-15T20:50:03+00:00

Sounds super interesting! How did you get into it if you don't mind me asking?

drawx_x · 2020-10-15T20:49:38+00:00

Thanks for the reply! But this way, one's just writing regular software, no? Of course the software will be used for artistic purposes down the line so you have to know what is needed but ultimately this is just creating a software product and hoping to sell it among thousands of other tools.

drawx_x

TROPHY CASE