I sure do.

I kinda scrambled to get into the field not long after HS because my immediate plans fell flat and it was the only skill I had that paid worth anything. Mind you while I was programming a younger kid, I mostly didn’t do anything of note and just occasionally screwed around with stuff for a short time that interested me. I’m absolutely blown away by what some kids I see doing these days.

Spent a while kinda just spamming resumes and really stretching my “freelance work” (in reality this was mostly just begrudgingly updating and removing malware from WP sites and occasionally a mostly plain static site for some local org). Felt like it wasn’t going anywhere. Got a ton of calls mostly from body shops paying nothing, but never could get a call back afterwards. Eventually landed a job paying about what you could expect from a better low skilled type job, but it was a short contract and sort time. Actually the work I was doing was mildly more interesting than anything I’ve done in my career to date so it had that going for it. FWIW I was in a garbage market and had limited mobility. Notably I had also fallen into a moderate depressive slump at the time that had killed all interest I had in the field.

Obviously I still wanted a “real” job so I kept trying places. Eventually picked one up, paying about the same, but it was a full time job. It was government… state government… in a red state so raises, mobility, etc. we’re out of the question and I knew it. The market I was in was still terrible. I knew I had to get out, but just didn’t have the motivation. Two thing would end up pushing me to finally jump after two years. I first started getting back into retro stuff (I had a mild interest in some things years ago) and other things and would end up reignited my passion after desperately trying to figure out why my WiFi adapter wasn’t working on a FreeBSD machine. I ended up making my only “open source contribution” and wanted to do something cool. Simultaneously a ended up in a new depressive slump for unrelated reasons and spent myself broke.

And so I ended up in my current role, which was supposed to be a temporary thing till I could get my shit together and come up with a plan to get where I wanted. Current place is a pretty typical “non tech large company”: slow bureaucracy, lots of legacy stuff, but never in a interesting context and tons of sitting around. I haven’t actually written much code at all during my tenure here. Market and pay is a bit better, but still surprisingly bad and I’m now paid around what you’d expect an entry level guy in a weak, non-tech metro to make.

I feel pigeonholed into part of the industry I’d kill to get out of and kinda just stuck trying to figure out “what next” at this point. I suppose I’m still young, but not enough so that anything I do is impressive anymore, so I lost that. I still have an interest in software development, but increasingly in areas I could never find employment. It eventually dawned on me just how bad at it I am, despite having been at it for long. I’ve wondered about saying duck it, and trying to get into some domain that interests me or even just trying to strong-arm into FAANG, but the reality is I couldn’t do that. Former won’t happen because the openings are rare and always senior and my previous experience doesn’t match up and the latter won’t happen because I can’t do the interviews. In fact I’m absolute trash at most of the “CS” type stuff and too jaded/bad at the business or “software engineering” side. I would say I’m a decent hacker, but too slow to ever be competitive for the elusive roles where someone like that is warranted. I’ve also failed to get into a lot of niche interests thanks to a deficient math education. And sadly it feels like nothing clicks anymore. I can already see the comments telling me this doesn’t matter, but it does when they’re used in the areas you still have interest in or to achieve unheard of incomes. And frankly outside of that, I don’t think I want much to do with this industry anymore. In retrospect I should have kept my hobby and pursed some other career, because I certainly did not get the sort of things I was promised.

The sad part is, I can generally talk the talk really well thanks to my always changing interests in all sorts of stuff you haven’t heard of or don’t care about. So it’s easy in the presence of less smart people to sounds like I know what I’m talking about, but the reality is it’s all incredibly superficial. I think also all this started to make sense when I started to talk to actually intelligent people, and realized I couldn’t keep up. Some of these guys were a decade younger than me, not even adults and I was wayyy behind. Actually some of the projects I come up with are pretty cool, but too “out there” and I assuming I get started, I will most certainly get stuck with there to be no sort of way or reach out for help.

Anyway I’m not sure what I’m actually going to do, only that I need to do something fast. I figure I might gamble with my time and try to gain the knowledge and hack my way into a role I’d enjoy. I’ve also for many years thought about going back to school. I figure if I’m going to be perpetually underpaid, might as well try something else that pays a bit less, but may be more fulfilling. However, since I can’t hack the admissions process, that’s failed every time I’ve tried, plus the costs make it an even bigger gamble.