I just decided to pivot into consulting. Had saved so I have a bit of a runway, but the moment the thought occurred to me that I can forget about letcode shenanigans, and interviews and performance reviews, and terrible codebases and focus on jobs that I want to take, I couldn’t go back
I hear you. On top of it all I had to move to change countries for personal reasons, so now I'm away from my network.
The job market is filled with scammers and really low offers.
One way to go is to bite the bullet, as others mentioned, and go through the 18 interviews, pointless ridiculously difficult tests and whiteboards, 3-days long code projects, all that to be accepted into a codebase full of legacy tech, bad team practices and 36 meetings per week. Then you spend a year working your * off trying to convince them to improve, until their funds run dry, they fire you, and the whole thing starts anew. Only this time everything is aggravated because of the recession.
Quite frankly, the whole thing is quite tiring. A career should sum up to something more than that. This can't be it. This whole process is flawed. It's a self serving loop, sub product of greedy business practices.
The world is full of problems, there has to be a better way to contribute, to be productive to society without wasting oneself to all that. I don't know which better way that is. It's all just exasperating.
I went through the whole cycle of "software is magic" to "All jobs are just babysitting horrible codebases" in about five years. I'm done.
I've said this before elsewhere, but I'm starting anew. I'll be studying the classics and will tend bars/sweep floors to make ends meet if necessary. I'm lucky to be in EU where education is nearly free.
There are many companies and industries, not everything is like that. If you're OK taking a pay cut, the process to work on the film industry (VFX), or bio industry, is definitely much easier, and the work can be more meaningful
I’m still figuring it out :) just the position change in LinkedIn has started some conversations but I’m currently working on my personal site because it feel like when people ask me where to look for what I can do I don’t have anything to show them yet (most of my career has been for employers, so I don’t own any of my previous work, only stories)
At the same time I’ve started attending local networking events and meeting businesses (chamber of commerce, meetup, etc) and I’m working on some simple items for friends to get testimonials and portfolio.
It is kind of annoying looking back at more than a decade of work and not owning anything of it! Sure, I got paid, but so what?
Comments
I just decided to pivot into consulting. Had saved so I have a bit of a runway, but the moment the thought occurred to me that I can forget about letcode shenanigans, and interviews and performance reviews, and terrible codebases and focus on jobs that I want to take, I couldn’t go back
I hear you. On top of it all I had to move to change countries for personal reasons, so now I'm away from my network.
The job market is filled with scammers and really low offers.
One way to go is to bite the bullet, as others mentioned, and go through the 18 interviews, pointless ridiculously difficult tests and whiteboards, 3-days long code projects, all that to be accepted into a codebase full of legacy tech, bad team practices and 36 meetings per week. Then you spend a year working your * off trying to convince them to improve, until their funds run dry, they fire you, and the whole thing starts anew. Only this time everything is aggravated because of the recession.
Quite frankly, the whole thing is quite tiring. A career should sum up to something more than that. This can't be it. This whole process is flawed. It's a self serving loop, sub product of greedy business practices.
The world is full of problems, there has to be a better way to contribute, to be productive to society without wasting oneself to all that. I don't know which better way that is. It's all just exasperating.
I went through the whole cycle of "software is magic" to "All jobs are just babysitting horrible codebases" in about five years. I'm done.
I've said this before elsewhere, but I'm starting anew. I'll be studying the classics and will tend bars/sweep floors to make ends meet if necessary. I'm lucky to be in EU where education is nearly free.
There are many companies and industries, not everything is like that. If you're OK taking a pay cut, the process to work on the film industry (VFX), or bio industry, is definitely much easier, and the work can be more meaningful
How you initially got in consulting? How ro find first clients?
I’m still figuring it out :) just the position change in LinkedIn has started some conversations but I’m currently working on my personal site because it feel like when people ask me where to look for what I can do I don’t have anything to show them yet (most of my career has been for employers, so I don’t own any of my previous work, only stories)
At the same time I’ve started attending local networking events and meeting businesses (chamber of commerce, meetup, etc) and I’m working on some simple items for friends to get testimonials and portfolio.
It is kind of annoying looking back at more than a decade of work and not owning anything of it! Sure, I got paid, but so what?
Heh, don't worry you'll see plenty of those.