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Urit posted:I think that's it - when I'm on vacation or when I was taking a few months off, a lot of my time was consumed by work-type stuff and I don't really stop thinking about it. I also hate what the company I'm working for is doing (personal information groping) and I've quit companies in the past that got too much into that space, so it feels disgusting to contribute to their code anyway. Ah well, guess it's time to bail! Just an additional note. My personal pattern seems to be that I take 3 days to wind down and stop thinking about work, and 3 days before I get back into the swing of things is when I start thinking about it again. Also, now that you've made that decision, act smart, not hastily, and plan to change things in a way that gives you the most leverage. Maybe set benchmarks or deadlines for progress after which you'll let the shoe drop and just quit, but if you can play this in a way that is beneficial for your career, that might be good. Or if you want to be free first and feel that out, that is another option, so long as you're okay with the possible tradeoff. I did go without a job for a couple of months a couple of times, and it did impact my career, a little, but it was probably good for me (though not for my savings).
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Jun 29, 2017 10:54
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Thanks for the responses to my previous questions, everyone. I had a chat with a recruiter yesterday, and it really showed how dire my employment history, treatment of my skill set, and overall approach to my career has been. The assessment that my problem isn't with specific tech stacks or languages but with management, environment, and mentor support is one that I agree with. I had hoped to leverage my first job in that fashion, but a combination of dissatisfaction with what I worked with, friction between me and my manager, and a whole host of other useless excuses led to me leaving not entirely on my own accord. The next job ended up being at an initially-okay org that went south when corporate started meddling, and now in looking elsewhere.  He gave me some career advice in that I might be trying to push my career too fast and too early, and that I needed to focus on finding a supportive environment with good mentorship. I agree with this and it is in line with what I've heard here. The recruiter confirmed that my current workplace is known for awful churn and has a bad reputation, so I'm not imagining it. I guess I just feel very, like, developmentally retarded in my career. I'm older than other engineers with my amount of experience usually are, thanks to coming into this line of work when I was in my mid 20s instead of early 20s/immediately after college. I feel like I need to make up for lost time as a result, and I'm really neurotic about what in doing and whether I'm growing and if what I'm doing is "good" and "real" development and I think that's making things worse. I'm gonna focus more on working with cool people and save management, so I can learn from others and just build my career over time. I had a really rocky start, and I wanna start the next place off on the right foot. I hope I can figure out what the gently caress eventually, but for now I need to refocus and look for a position that's best for a relative newbie like me.
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Jun 29, 2017 15:28
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Arachnamus posted:One other thing that other people have hinted at is depression. I feel it's worth saying that sometimes burnout leads to depression, but sometimes depression mimics burnout. Agreed. Something that people miss about depression is that, sometimes, you are depressed because your life sucks. If this is the case, you need to fix the things that are making your life suck. Pollyanna posted:He gave me some career advice in that I might be trying to push my career too fast and too early, and that I needed to focus on finding a supportive environment with good mentorship. I agree with this and it is in line with what I've heard here. Don't get so caught up with having experience with tech. If you are reasonably talented, you can get up to speed with most tech stacks very quickly. If you are good at C#, you can easily get good at JavaScript, or Java, etc. What is not so easy to gain are the soft skills, learning to work with people, learning to be a developer that does more than just close stories, etc. That takes time and experience, because however many ways there are to do things with any given technology, there are far far more ways to do things concerning people. Focus on these sorts of things, and don't worry so much about the technology specific things. Skandranon fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Jun 29, 2017 |
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Jun 29, 2017 16:20
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Skandranon posted:Agreed. Something that people miss about depression is that, sometimes, you are depressed because your life sucks. If this is the case, you need to fix the things that are making your life suck. Things that made me 100% more productive at my job: 1) Get up every hour and walk for 5 to 10 minutes. 2) Take a lunch away from your desk. 3) Go to the gym or work out daily. You will be 10x happier at your job if you do these things.
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Jun 29, 2017 16:26
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I would relax about your age. I'm almost 31 and I just started my first software engineering position after changing careers and going to a boot camp last year. Do good work and very few people will care how old you are. One of my buddies from boot camp was over 40 and landed a great position right out of the gate he's really happy with. It's all anecdotal but I don't think it's worth the consideration you are giving it.
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Jun 29, 2017 16:31
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The hard part about combating depression, burnout, and the like is that the 40 hour work week makes it really, really hard to do.
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Jun 29, 2017 16:41
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About a month ago I completed a take-home exercise for a consultant/solutions shop (been told to avoid those places but I figured I'd try), submitted it and never got a response so I figured they weren't interested. Got a recruiter message yesterday asking if I was interested in the exact same position  I just responded saying that I was in the middle of talks with them and never received a response. How can companies and recruiters be THAT disorganized?
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Jun 29, 2017 16:49
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Good Will Hrunting posted:The hard part about combating depression, burnout, and the like is that the 40 hour work week makes it really, really hard to do. At least in my case, another issue was simply realizing that I had a problem. I have (self-diagnosed) very mild manic/depressive phases, nowhere near worth medicating over but enough to have an impact on my quality of life. I actually added a periodic reminder to my calendar to take a step back, examine my mental state, and compare it to how I've felt in the past. Without that, I wouldn't self-examine, and wouldn't realize I was depressed until the depression passed on its own and I'd go "whoah, I was depressed back then!" Since I added the reminder, I've gotten better at realizing "oh hey, I'm in one of those periodic downswings", which makes coping a lot easier.
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Jun 29, 2017 16:56
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So, here's my first question to the thread. Just got an offer that gives me a 47% bump in pay. However, I do enjoy where I currently work, and they've made promises about raises, though they are taking a long time sorting that out. New offer also has more room to grow in it. What's the best way to go about talking this over with current place? I know the basic advice is "don't accept counter offers" but I definitely do not suffer anything but lack of pay in my current spot.
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Jun 29, 2017 17:51
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Promised raises are meaningless unless they're in writing and signed and then they're just almost meaningless. The best way is to accept the offer and give notice. Then tell them why in the exit interview if you feel like it. Otherwise you're in Accepted a Counter-Offer territory and there's nothing you can do about it.
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Jun 29, 2017 17:59
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Skandranon posted:So, here's my first question to the thread. Just got an offer that gives me a 47% bump in pay. However, I do enjoy where I currently work, and they've made promises about raises, though they are taking a long time sorting that out. New offer also has more room to grow in it. What's the best way to go about talking this over with current place? I know the basic advice is "don't accept counter offers" but I definitely do not suffer anything but lack of pay in my current spot. Negotiate a raise without mentioning the other offer. If that doesn't work (which it won't because it sounds like it's already pending) then bounce.
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Jun 29, 2017 18:02
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Skandranon posted:So, here's my first question to the thread. Just got an offer that gives me a 47% bump in pay. However, I do enjoy where I currently work, and they've made promises about raises, though they are taking a long time sorting that out. New offer also has more room to grow in it. What's the best way to go about talking this over with current place? I know the basic advice is "don't accept counter offers" but I definitely do not suffer anything but lack of pay in my current spot. Do you think you won't enjoy the work at the new place? 47% pay bump and more room to grow sounds like a no brainer unless there are red flags at the new place
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Jun 29, 2017 19:32
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Pollyanna posted:I guess I just feel very, like, developmentally retarded in my career. I'm older than other engineers with my amount of experience usually are, thanks to coming into this line of work when I was in my mid 20s  You're seriously worried about a difference of 2-3 years of experience when you're going to have your career for decades. It's a marathon, not a sprint (insert Scrum joke here). I started when I was 30 and my career has not been crippled.
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Jun 29, 2017 19:36
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Jose Valasquez posted:Do you think you won't enjoy the work at the new place? I think I would enjoy it as much. I do enjoy the people here. I guess I'm hoping I just get a 47% raise and I don't have to make a hard decision.
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Jun 29, 2017 19:40
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Skandranon posted:So, here's my first question to the thread. Just got an offer that gives me a 47% bump in pay. However, I do enjoy where I currently work, and they've made promises about raises, though they are taking a long time sorting that out. New offer also has more room to grow in it. What's the best way to go about talking this over with current place? I know the basic advice is "don't accept counter offers" but I definitely do not suffer anything but lack of pay in my current spot. "I wish I could stay here, but I can't afford to not take this offer." They'll do with that what they will. Act accordingly.
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Jun 29, 2017 19:47
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Skandranon posted:I think I would enjoy it as much. I do enjoy the people here. I guess I'm hoping I just get a 47% raise and I don't have to make a hard decision. Oh, that's not going to happen. Optimistically you'll get a promise of a 5%-20% raise at some point in the future which is worth exactly $0 compared to the 47% offer. Even if you tell them and they counter by matching the 47% raise (unlikely), you're still left with less room to grow.
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Jun 29, 2017 19:53
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Che Delilas posted:
I know it's irrational, it's still a thing I worry about. I'm getting over it (or trying to).
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Jun 29, 2017 19:58
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I dunno, you still flip out over any insinuation that there's not One True Plan For Every Dev and poo poo's just tedious. New grads should put their GPA on resumes, or not because who gives a poo poo. Github can be a great place to showcase public code, but folks with proprietary experience can still get jobs without one. Good advice for someone else can fly right by you without requiring self-introspection.asur posted:That should say something, as in there is always work that could be done.
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Jun 29, 2017 20:26
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Jose Valasquez posted:Oh, that's not going to happen. I think it's a good opportunity to work on some negotiating skills. Ask for a 50% raise, with the confidence that you know you're worth it.
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Jun 29, 2017 20:44
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:At least in my case, another issue was simply realizing that I had a problem. I have (self-diagnosed) very mild manic/depressive phases, nowhere near worth medicating over but enough to have an impact on my quality of life. I actually added a periodic reminder to my calendar to take a step back, examine my mental state, and compare it to how I've felt in the past. Without that, I wouldn't self-examine, and wouldn't realize I was depressed until the depression passed on its own and I'd go "whoah, I was depressed back then!" I struggle with fairly severe, medicated depression and anxiety. It's generally very under control, but a work environment like mine now (and towards the end of my last role) really brings it out to the point of obsession. I get frustrated easily because I feel as if I'm not progressing or learning. Specifically at these two places, my managers just sorta didn't give a poo poo about making sure the teams could progress for different reasons. I stress that I'm not going anywhere. It's actually far worse for my mental state than unemployment, but  and I gotta pay rent somehow.The healthiest I've ever felt was (and best decision I made) when I was getting a MS in CS. I didn't study CS in undergrad but I quit my first job after 18 months to do it full-time and the balance of school + working out + self-study/constant learning had me in an excellent mental shape.
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Jun 29, 2017 20:46
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dantheman650 posted:I would relax about your age. I'm almost 31 and I just started my first software engineering position after changing careers and going to a boot camp last year. Do good work and very few people will care how old you are. One of my buddies from boot camp was over 40 and landed a great position right out of the gate he's really happy with. It's all anecdotal but I don't think it's worth the consideration you are giving it. I went to college with a dude who was like 60. Retired Navy; realized he could go to college for free so he said "gently caress it, why not?" Got a CS degree and now he programs drones for a living. I started my first programming job at 33.
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Jun 30, 2017 01:15
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Seriously, look at the non-traditional student thread in SAL some time.
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Jun 30, 2017 01:23
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Skandranon posted:Agreed. Something that people miss about depression is that, sometimes, you are depressed because your life sucks. If this is the case, you need to fix the things that are making your life suck. That's actually the opposite of what I was saying. Sometimes you're depressed because your brain chemistry is out of whack and it can make you hate your job in ways you can't fix without fixing the brain chemistry.
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Jun 30, 2017 16:52
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Arachnamus posted:That's actually the opposite of what I was saying. Sometimes you're depressed because your brain chemistry is out of whack and it can make you hate your job in ways you can't fix without fixing the brain chemistry. I was more making an addendum than expanding, both are possible, but you have to fix each one differently. First step is to identify what is actually wrong.
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Jun 30, 2017 17:11
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Amazon recently opened an office here and it looked like they were mostly looking for iOS devs when I last checked. Would there be any point to applying if I don't have iOS experience or will they not mind if people learn on the job? E: should probably add that, if I got to an interview, I could actually point to languages I've learned on the job, so it's not like I'd be going in there hat-in-hand or whatever. I was just wondering if filling out the application at all was a waste of time. Munkeymon fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Jun 30, 2017 |
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Jun 30, 2017 17:44
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Seems to be like stuff like iOS development (ObjC, Swift) is a lot harder to learn on the job than if you were moving from JS framework to JS framework. Especially if it's an entirely new field (e.g. learning mobile when you do web dev). Some things are just too involved to learn on the job. I mean, I understand that programming is programming, and there's all sorts of knowledge transfer - but there's gotta be limits to that, right? Otherwise people wouldn't hesitate to hire web devs for embedded systems, or vice versa.
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Jun 30, 2017 18:10
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Pollyanna posted:Seems to be like stuff like iOS development (ObjC, Swift) is a lot harder to learn on the job than if you were moving from JS framework to JS framework. Especially if it's an entirely new field (e.g. learning mobile when you do web dev). Some things are just too involved to learn on the job. The only limits to learning is people's desire and ability to learn. The fact that companies hire people with X v3.5 experience to do X v3.5-type of job is one of the many failures of this relatively new computing industry. Just like you were able to take a worker that produces screwdrivers and make him create bullets, so can programmers from one field (web-dev for example) can do mobile (or hell, even embedded) applications. Now it's true, a CS education is important to have. I don't think is mandatory, but it helps. In my opinion, the best lesson I learned in university was "how to study". I haven't touched AND and NOT and OR gates or created circuits with them in 20 years, but I know where to look and I know how to read, what to read and I'm sure I'll be able to create an adder in a short amount of time. Now, granted, it won't be as perfect as a guy who made his last adder yesterday and has been making them for some time, but come on. Is not rocket science.
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Jun 30, 2017 18:26
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Huge companies are much more likely than small ones to hire someone for being a good engineer irrespective of if their language / framework / platform skills match well with the position. They have the money to finance your on-the-job training and ramp-up and presumably are hoping you'll stay for a while so that it pays off for them. OTOH I don't know about Amazon specifically and their reputation for having high turnover may mean they're an exception to that rule.
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Jun 30, 2017 18:28
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Munkeymon posted:Amazon recently opened an office here and it looked like they were mostly looking for iOS devs when I last checked. Would there be any point to applying if I don't have iOS experience or will they not mind if people learn on the job? I would fill it out, be honest about your skills, and express enthusiasm for learning. Let them decide what they really want.
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Jun 30, 2017 18:41
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Munkeymon posted:Amazon recently opened an office here and it looked like they were mostly looking for iOS devs when I last checked. Would there be any point to applying if I don't have iOS experience or will they not mind if people learn on the job? My brief experience with Amazon's recruiting was a recruiter asked me to send my resume in for some job fair thing, I did, and then they rejected it because I don't have work experience with their stack. Of course, I only had a couple years in the industry outside of academia at that point, so I wouldn't be surprised if that was a factor, too - the fact that you've been in for a decade at this point would probably give you way better odds of not getting tossed out for lack of iOS experience. If they're gonna reject you for that, it's gonna be before you put in any serious time, so I'd say just go ahead and fill out the application. You know how to program, and it's not like iOS programming is particularly hard to pick up or esoteric or whatever.
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Jun 30, 2017 19:26
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Achmed Jones posted:My brief experience with Amazon's recruiting was a recruiter asked me to send my resume in for some job fair thing, I did, and then they rejected it because I don't have work experience with their stack. Amazon uses (or is used by) a ton of 3rd-party recruiters, so I'd expect the recruitment experience to be wildly inconsistent. Which also means that if you get rejected early you can probably just keep spamming your resume at them and find someone who will promote you to a technical screen.
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Jun 30, 2017 20:04
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Arachnamus posted:One other thing that other people have hinted at is depression. I feel it's worth saying that sometimes burnout leads to depression, but sometimes depression mimics burnout. I mean, I was having straight up suicidal thoughts this time last year, so I know what that feels like, but I've started fixing that and come a long way but the problem (and solution) comes with its own set of depression-like symptoms. Pretty sure that this is burnout this time. At least I'm not pretending to be a guy any more! (hi trans tech peeps in this thread!) ratbert90 posted:Things that made me 100% more productive at my job: Working from home for a company across the country really screws with your perception of what "job time" is, I will say that. I kind of wish I was in an office 2-3 days out of the week. Urit fucked around with this message at 08:11 on Jul 2, 2017 |
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Jul 2, 2017 07:47
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Have you tried cocaine
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Jul 2, 2017 07:56
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 What is wrong with you?Urit posted:I mean, I was straight up suicidal thoughts this time last year, so I know what that feels like, but I've started fixing that and come a long way but the problem (and solution) comes with its own set of depression-like symptoms. Pretty sure that this is burnout this time. At least I'm not pretending to be a guy any more! (hi trans tech peeps in this thread!) What worked that time was taking a good chunk of the year to mope and let my trauma digest until I found the willpower to start trying to do something. Also, this last year I had a rough patch, probably partially related to a medical condition, sleep apnea. I checked with my employer's EAP (employee assistance program, or something) and got insurance to cover a psychologist. That didn't work for me either, because I wanted it to be a back and forth – and the one I chose only listened, but I didn't try particularly hard to find a more active one I liked. What worked for me was sorting out the medical stuff (getting a bipap), getting more sleep, moving somewhere with more sunlight. Exercise, not really, because I was feeling pressure to perform and working out limited my time rather than made me feel better. Take that for what it's worth I guess. I dunno if there's anything in this you can borrow and make work for you, but I wish you the best in your mental health and your transition.
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Jul 2, 2017 08:10
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Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:
I use humour to deal with difficult situations. Urit seems to have a handle on their depression and I doubt an offhand comment on a dumb forum is going to be the catalyst for someone taking up class A drugs.
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Jul 2, 2017 11:18
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Arachnamus posted:I use humour to deal with difficult situations. Urit seems to have a handle on their depression and I doubt an offhand comment on a dumb forum is going to be the catalyst for someone taking up class A drugs. Isn't shitposting supposed to stay in YOSPOS? Also, no, cocaine is the white collar drug of choice to abuse, and it's big in tech, due to stress and depression and nerds who think they know everything they need to take it "safely". I've got my suspicions about a couple of coworker/acquaintances. So your lovely joke was really loving on the nose and not at all a joke.
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Jul 2, 2017 11:34
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OK
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Jul 2, 2017 11:42
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I thought it was kinda funny
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Jul 2, 2017 13:56
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Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:So your lovely joke was really loving on the nose and not at all a joke. More like in the nose.
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Jul 2, 2017 17:07
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CPColin posted:More like in the nose. Now that was funny.
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