Ask HN: What am I going to do with my job? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What am I going to do with my job?

19 pointsdesperateone16 comments

Dear HN community,

I know many of you will understand me. I am a software engineer working in a big multinational company. Software has always been my dream. I love it, I spend my free time mostly for it.

Now I am middle aged, I have a family and kids. We are living in a non-english speaking european country as foreigners and kids are going to the school now.

What I daily do is to develop enterprise software (mainly web applications) using the recipe which many of you know. Jsp, application servers, synchronous servlets, heavy SOAP interfaces, many JEE beans, hibernate, thousands of threads and locks, JMS, one big expensive database in the backend.

I see that most the problems that we have are coming from architectural choices. Business units want to decrease the cost but no one wants to get rid of the license of that big expensive database. Everybody wants to improve backend performance, but no one is eager to touch the data modeling, access and storage or how we manage the traffic.

When I speak or demonstrate about possibilities I feel myself like an alien. Nobody is interested. Most people are years and years behind the world. Nobody has the ambition and courage to take and defend bold decisions. Most people are ok with living like this and finalize their career.

I feel myself trapped. I feel I am doing the wrong thing. It feels bad to work on something which you know it will underperform and become dissatisfactory in the end. I can not consider moving to another country due to family status. I am paid pretty well so I can pay my mortgage and others but that also limits my options to switch jobs.

What am I going to do ? Am I supposed kill my enthusiasm and just do whatever asked in the tickets without questioning or trying to improve ? What would you do ? How do you deal with this ? Is there even a solution ?

Do the contracting math.

How much an hour/how many hours a week would you need to pull even with your current pay and benefits package? Do you need that much or would your own hours from home with your family mean you'd trade money for time to an extent?

Could you land a client or group of clients to get there?

If not, it is free to put out feelers. Here are places to get started:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5803767

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AlD_6iEb8Ed9dGs...

While looking over your options, consider mine:

SEEKING FREELANCER - Remote

Long term contract work. $29/hr. 90 hour 2 week cap. Paypal/Wire.

Support a family of CPAP websites including CPAP.com, CPAPtalk.com and CPAPDropShip.com.

PHP/MySQL/jQuery/RabbitMQ/Asterisk. GM is a coder and manages the team.

Several HNers already remote with us. I'm happy to put you in touch with them to get a feel for our company and the work ahead of starting.

Contact to schedule fizzbuzz: johnny.goodman@cpap.com

I'm curious... at a rate of $29, do you only get HNers that work from outside Western Europe or the US? In Holland I gather the 'average' rate is 50 euro, and that's for 'simple' front-end work. RoR or Drupal work can net you more.

(Honestly curious)

In short, no, we are from all over.

Several things are going on here:

1. There are a lot of projects available nearly all the time. You could say "oh, so you work more for less and call that good" or you could say "it is a pain point of contracting to be forever negotiating a new project that will just end in days or months, to be renegotiated again. What if there was a pool of work always available and I could scoop it up as I wished and contract out for it under known terms"? Less money, but more reliable money when you are free to do the work as you can see the fire hose.

2. The pay goes up. Informally, we'll name/label "epic projects" and hand them to veteran contractors. On clean completion, I'll get a "hey, its time to talk hourly rate" email and will bump rates.

3. F U, pay me. I do, reliably. This is a big deal.

4. It is home brew code base PHP work, which does tend to be a bit cheaper than RoR or CMS work.

5. Interesting work. We've rolled our own custom warehouse software. Our own queue system. File and fax storage engine. Purchase forecasting software. On and on. Yes, there's rote work and yes things go wrong now and again but in general once you are up to speed you are going to get something cool. When you fight that dragon, you'll do so with the help of a lot of people who know more than you. So you won't be bored and you'll come out stronger.

6. Me. I'm GM but also a (middling) coder. A lot of people doing contract work HATE these things:

a. Here are project specs, they have no relation to how databases are designed or how software is built, but do your best. PS, we're not going to use a ticketing system or code versioning to reference changes, just email me.

b. Refactor? No, no money or time for that. Just get this feature in.

c. Idea? No, can't trust you. Code review before push? We don't do that, so you are dangerous.

I think (and hope) we do a better job than most here and it makes us sticky.

7. Picky. We are fairly picky when it comes to enjoying working with a fellow contractor or full time person. If they have the chops but there's not a click, we pass. Seriously. Even when there's a pressing technical need. This makes for a nice group with less of the usual software pain. People tend to take a project, then another, then kind of keep taking them as can while mixing in that $100/hr, 5 hour project when it comes along.

Works for us. Your experiences may vary. :)

As it seems that you do not have the guts to leave the company you will need to try to change it from the inside.

This is what I did:

Find 2-3 people like you in the company. Make sure they are all respected people within their teams. Implement a prototype. Select the most ambitious manager you can find and show him the prototype.

This is not about technology: This is about power. Explain him that he can save tons of money, that he can reduce the number of outsourced people, reduce the operational costs, stop some providers (i.e. big database vendor) from ripping money off from the company and that you think that he is the only one with the guts to stop all this mess.

I was in this same situation 9 years ago. I made my guerrila war. Lost it. Quit the job.

I did not have the guts either, but this whole process (9 months) made me a better person. Lots of stress and lots of work. Quitting the job was easy as pie.

Now I have my own IT company. This is no paradise, but I will not work again in a big multinational company.

Good luck.

As you found out, changing a company from the inside can be very difficult. James Shore wrote about his experience when he tried to do this and it is a very interesting read.

http://www.jamesshore.com/Change-Diary/

(James Shore here.) Thanks for the nod. For what it's worth, I wouldn't go through it again. It's possible to change a company from within, but it's not easy. If you find your attempts rebuffed, and you're truly unhappy, my advice: leave. Find a better job, even if it pays less. Life's too short to put 1/3 of it into work you can't be proud of.

(It's much easier to change a company as an outside consultant, by the way. I've worked doing that for years now and there are many many "tricks" I use that just don't work if you're an employee. The simplest one? People hired as management consultants get more respect than internal employees, even if the employees know what needs to be done.[1] Sad but true.)

[1] My dad's favorite joke: "A consultant is someone who takes your watch and tells you what time it is. And then keeps the watch."

I'm a fairly new father (two-year-old son), and I have explored switching careers recently. I am a high school teacher, and I have considered switching to programming. Switching jobs and switching careers is a lot different as a parent than as a single person.

There's a lot to be said for stability and security, but there's also a lot to be said for keeping yourself excited to be alive, with your family. My parents worked hard to give my brother and I a good home and a good upbringing. But sadly, one of the clearest things I remember about them now is how much they stopped living when my brother and I graduated from high school. They stopped climbing mountains, they stopped taking canoe trips, they stopped being open to the outside world.

So, I am careful not to let myself "stop living" like this, and I'd be wary of letting yourself do that as well. What country are you in? How easily could you find another company that would value your skills? Even finding a different company, working on similar problems might be more stimulating. Finding a small company where ideas are not so entrenched would be even better? If there really are no opportunities in your country, are there any remote projects you could become involved in, that might lead to full-time remote work? Can you set a timeframe for how long you need to be in this country, so you don't feel like your situation is endless?

I've watched many people burn out in a variety of careers, and it can be a really sad and ugly thing. It's not something to take lightly and just accept, although I understand it doesn't work to suddenly just walk away from a job that pays your mortgage.

"I'm a fairly new father (two-year-old son), and I have explored switching careers recently. I am a high school teacher, and I have considered switching to programming."

"There's a lot to be said for stability and security, but there's also a lot to be said for keeping yourself excited to be alive, with your family."

(Absolutely 100% correct. If you are not happy and fulfilled it's not good for your kids or your marriage.)

"Switching jobs and switching careers is a lot different as a parent than as a single person."

Let me say this (knowing a few people who spent their entire working career teaching and are now rotting away in apathy and mediocrity). If you are going to make the switch now is the time to do this. When you have one child who is 2 years old. Once you have more children and they are older the chance of it happening (especially with the golden handcuffs of a tenured teaching job if that is what you have) approaches 0.

The time to act is now. You will also have to decide (because from following the links on your profile it looks like you live in a pretty nice place) whether you are willing to give up that geography for giving yourself possibly a more challenging career path. Obligatory: "And only you can make that decision".

I can tell you this though. If you do something that has a bigger upside (financially and intellectually) than teaching it will open up an entire world of possibilities for you and your family that in the end might be more beneficial. You have to think long term. One day your kids will be older and move on. (And in fact they will change once they go through puberty but that's a different story all together).

My advice just knowing what I know from what you wrote (and what I see after a quick look) is to consider seriously switching careers. You can always fall back on teaching (so we are not talking about the downside risk of turning down admission to Harvard or anything.)

Thank you for the thoughtful response. I have committed to teaching one more year, but I will be in a much better position to switch this spring if I decide that's what I'd like to do. Your words are very encouraging.

I've had many years of experience in large enterprise projects like the one you are describing. I know exactly the frustrations you are experiencing. But don't ever forget that you are doing a noble thing by staying in this job to support your family. That is a great sacrifice you should take pride in. It shows your dedication to your family. That is an important success you have already accomplished. And don't forget Einstein made a lot of important discoveries while working as a Swiss patent clerk!

In my opinion, the first thing you should do is eliminate this feeling you have of being "trapped". Why? Because it clouds your thinking and judgement. You may feel trapped, but that is not completely true. What's great about software development is that you only need a computer and an internet connection and you have many, many options. But, are you prepared for any option when it arrives?

The right thing to do now is continue working this job to support your family while you explore and learn about other options. That may take months. For example, have you built up a body of work on GitHub? Have you contributed to any open-source projects? Have you created an iPhone or Android app? Do you need to brush up on data structures and algorithms? What about learning a new language?

Once you are fully prepared, you will see any potential options unfold naturally instead of through a feeling of desperation.

“Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.”

"Most people are years and years behind the world." You read too many good blogs, crappy enterprise software actually is "world".

You have two choices. Work at it, get to be an architect, be the guy that people defer to for decisions, be in charge, and decide your future. Or leave and do a startup, especially your own startup.

Start an OSS project, on something you like, in your free time

Where do you live?

It is one of the north/north-west european countries, one of the "example" states (not Germany. If it was Germany, changing job would not be a problem)

General characteristics are:

- high taxes (+50%), low salaries (compared to purchase power of similar positions in US) - close salary bands (so close that it is not uncommon to see managers,architects, leads only making 100-200 Eur more than the engineers in the team, regardless of experience etc. So it does not pay off to advance for people since they get more responsibility and almost nothing in return) - Very difficult and costly to fire someone even if that one does nothing in work. Due to this, many people prefer salary rather than share.

Since high taxes and high employment costs, it is very difficult and expensive to start a company. This hurts the innovative move a lot.

This sounds like a tough situation but you have my admiration for being a middle-aged father in a foreign country with a stable job, yet still caring heavily about being a good engineer and craftsman.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com