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I couldn't care less about Javascript frameworks

A lot of us have had that experience!

I've realized that I will never be happy in a traditional job. Being subservient and following orders is not in my nature.

This is a good thing to realise, but on the flip side do be aware that it's possible to work with a team without being subjected to a top-down, prescribed style of management. A collaborative team environment can be sought or created, and you can achieve a lot more a lot quicker with a good team than alone. Best of luck finding your groove.

Definitely, and that's a great point. My current job used to be pretty good in that nature, but it's recently gotten worse with the hiring of an authoritarian person at the top and the politically-oriented sycophants coming out of the woodworks to entrench their own power, but I'm doing what I can to keep the work environment democratic like it used to be.

I suggest having a plan before you take the year off. Doing what you want to do is fun, but not rewarding if there is no goal or plan to meet it. You burn a year and a bunch of cash and end up back where you started, thinking about how you could have used the time better.

Definitely, that's great advice.

I can relate. I took a year off university for medical reasons and am not sure whether to return. I felt miserable in uni, but I got a decent job right now and am truly happy for probably the first time in my life. On the other hand I would be putting my future in jeopardy by not getting a degree.

I'm not sure wtf to do to be honest. School has not been my thing since like 9th grade, I barely even attended the last grade. I think the system just totally started grinding my gears and now uni feels similar.

School is terrible, similar to a labor camp. I was lucky to find a subject that was interesting and easy enough to where I could cruise through, yet demands enough respect to get me interviews.

I completely get the gist of what you're saying, but you've mentioned labor camps a few times.

Not sure if you mean for it to be a literal comparison, but I'd find it very difficult to argue that school or work is the equivalent to somewhere where you are forced into doing backbreaking work. That's besides for the physical abuse and risk of murder that often accompanies it.

School is horrible but make sure to get your degree. It's a requirement for various things, for example moving abroad, and not having it would limit your future in many ways.

I can attest to that - you never know what doors you might want to walk through in the future that require a degree to open (or are a lot easier to open if you have a degree).

Examples...

1) I moved from the UK to Australia last year. Having a degree made it a lot easier for me to get the requisite number of 'points' on their visa system.

2) A friend (from University) who just got a government job in Canada, had to dig out his degree certificate for job application process.

We graduated back in 1996 (21 years ago! gulp).

Do you enjoy coding when you do it for fun outside of work? If so, what about doing freelance work where you either work by yourself, or with people you actually enjoy working with?

Not anymore. It's not that I don't like coding, it's more that the most important problems to me right now that I want to work on are all non-coding problems. What I'm most passionate about right now is ending wage slavery, and I think the first step to getting us there is implementing a universal basic income. So I'm more interested in political activism.

DUDE. Me too.

Looking at the latest wealth distribution data, the wage slavery thing is getting out of hand and we have a growing population without the infrastructure necessary for it. Yet we have the resources to tackle the problem if appropriate attention were given to it.

I'd absolutely love to find a way to break into community organization while also feeding myself, because I see a lot of work that must happen but it's not compensated work at the moment. Lots of urgent needs don't have "market demand" right now because those needs don't have dollars behind them. (And the dollars are increasingly flowing away from needs of the masses and into the wants of the 0.1% as I'm sure you know)

Can you talk a little more about "the prison of an office" and why you consider an office this way? You say that you're tired of taking orders, and I can relate to this... but do you feel so oppressed from above that you absolutely must be "butt in seat" at 9:00 AM Or Else Death? I felt this way when I was younger fresh out of university and not so much anymore, and I don't believe I've become Institutionalized to such a Prison.

I don't understand how people manage to be in an office with their boring-ass jobs from 9-5 Monday through Friday till eternity (excluding their measly 2-3 weeks of vacation). I honestly think most people lack consciousness.

For one, it's boring, monotonous, and soul-sucking. Which might be manageable, except with commuting and such you're looking at 9 hours/day wasted, and the bulk of your mental energy drained. Add in cooking, errands, gym, showering, and decompression time, and you have very little productive free time to do anything else. (Most people are ok with this because they have little ambition outside their jobs)

Most software engineering jobs are boring and unfulfilling. Very few of us are actually working on groundbreaking, interesting stuff (eg. augmented reality, blockchain), and the harsh reality is that the more interesting the work - the worse the compensation and working conditions tend to be because everyone wants those jobs (see videogame industry). Most of us are doing menial work for for-profit businesses. Developers these days debate endlessly over programming languages and frameworks rather than the actual problems that are being solved because they're all working on the same boring shit.

Corporations are the worst because you're literally a cog in the machine and completely replaceable (unless you're a highly valued expert). I prefer startups because at least I feel more valuable, even if at the end of the day I'm still replaceable and my stock options are pathetically low. I hate the authoritarian, hierarchical power structure of companies though. Funny how we claim to value democracy and say "don't tread on me", yet the bulk of our lives are spent working under tyrannical power structures within companies.

Software engineering itself has become a commodity, and going forward this is only going to be more and more the case as every college graduate realizing that there are no good jobs in their major start flooding into the industry, driving down compensation and increasing employer demands. The interview process in this industry is downright obnoxious and absurd, and is a reflection of the oversupply of job seekers relative to jobs (contrary to tech industry propaganda, where Google only hires the top 2% based on esoteric algorithms trivia questions and then turns around and claims there's a developer shortage).

The whole "butt in seat" 10-5pm obsession is stupid and ridiculous. We're not manual laborers - productive mind work doesn't necessarily follow a 10-5pm schedule. If I can get all my work done by 2pm, why can't I just leave? (Sure there are a few companies that claim to allow that, but in my experience, perceptions tends to matter at these companies more than your actual contribution)

It's sad that labor had to fight so hard and literally shed blood for the 40 hour work week that we now take for granted, yet we're now so complacent that we put up with it or don't even realize that we're wage slaves.

If there's one thing I'd like to dedicate my life to, it's to ending wage slavery. I see universal basic income as the first step. (Sorry I kind of got carried away in this response)

You make some good observations and it's true that commuting overheads, US holidays and 9-5 are over the top. Many people here on HN eventually wind up with remote gigs and swear by them. I worked remote for many years too. Right now I am founding my second startup, which being hardware-focused basically requires physical presence. That said, everyone knocks off at 4PM, being foodtech-focused we do lunch together and try to maintain a collaborative environment where people can work on their own stuff but communicate frequently. It helps us all stay on one page and minimizes needless formal project management / messaging / issue-tracking muck. Probably a totally different environment to many startups or larger companies, definitely more creative, and definitely more attractive to people like yourself who reject needless formalism. It's probably largely a response to my own experience. I guess there's always a few companies like ours carrying the torch of (in)sanity: find one, or start one!

> The whole "butt in seat" 10-5pm obsession is stupid and ridiculous. We're not manual laborers - productive mind work doesn't necessarily follow a 10-5pm schedule. If I can get all my work done by 2pm, why can't I just leave?

This is the most important point that hits home. I've been constantly looking for a job that recognizes this.

The problem is that the "lazy" workers sour employers on the notion. So unless your team is filled with motivated, grown-up individuals that won't just use the opportunity to slack-off and do the bare-minimum necessary, then it makes no sense for the employer to try anything but the "butt-in-seat" approach.

I manage people a group of about 20, and I'd love to have a hands-off approach. I.e. Letting them be creative and do their own thing at their own pace. But after a week or two of that with me trying to encourage them to experiment, and absolutely nothing happening, it's pretty obvious that they're not inclined. They want to just be butt-in-seat for 9-5, like a factory-worker, then go home. Maybe they're broken already. Or maybe they don't care enough to apply their creativity or motivation during those 9-5 hours to show me that they can do that.

I don't know anything about you, so don't take me too seriously.

If you tried to change something, and zero out of twenty people respond well to it at all, have you considered the possibility that it might be you, not them, that should do something differently? A hands-off approach requires a clear mission, motivation, and most of all trust. I don't think "a week or two" of you trying to change something will magically make things different.

To me it sounds like the difference between managing and leading. If you want to be a leader, you might need to invest a bit more time to learn how to do that. Blaming your coworkers for your own shortcomings is the best way never to learn anything. [Again, see disclaimer above.]

Great post, and I totally agree on having UBI as one of the potential solution. What’s your vector of attack? Does it mean that you’d need to be involved in political activism or are you considering building tech which would make UBI possible?

I personally think that with the current rate of automation, jobs would be eventually elemntated pretty soon and we need a viable solution, besides creating more meaningless jobs.

Wow brah Everything you said here I agree with. To the point where I feel I could have written the same thing word for word.

I'm also in kind of the same situation as you, the difference being I'm trying to build some software to provide myself income and work for myself and own my time.

Do you worry about money? I have a bunch saved, but if I'm not making money I start to feel sick big physically and mentally real fast.

I found that after I had kids, 9-5 m-f is a vacation. You mileage may vary, etc.

Watch Rick and Morty's S3 E3.