Comment by istvan__ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by istvan__ | Hacker News Reader

I am pretty sure there is something you like to do. Get good at a tiny small particular thing first before you extend your interest to other things. If it helps, I used to be a test engineer who was tasked to run test cases manually. You know what I did? In me spare time I wrote an extremely dumb and simple executor that did my job. Management realized the potential, they let me write a better tool now with their approval. This was 10 years ago. Today I still struggle with Java and sometimes with Python but I found a handful of languages that I really like and I am focusing on getting better with those, kind of ignoring what is mainstream. I regularly fail job interviews (the last one few days ago, using codility) but I keep interviewing so I can do those better over time as well. I do one interview per week as a minimum. I try to contribute things to open source projects. Even stupid simple things like this (https://github.com/cloudera/hue/pull/68) it is not even code, it is configuration, but we needed that few jobs back.

I don't think I am particularly talented, but I spent so much effort on this (learning how to write software) that I can say today that I am a mediocre software engineer. Again, just think about it. I spent 10 years on this. In the meantime I did everything that I could, being Linux admin, systems engineer, data engineer, just to keep myself running. Almost forgot, I never received any formal education in computer science.

My co-workers run circles around me when it comes to programming, yet my persistence helps me to outperform them.

I guess what I am trying to say is: - don't give up - expect success over time (1-2 years as a bare minimum) - try to start with a simple thing, as simple as it gets (QA, DevOps, anything where you don't need to flip binary trees on a whiteboard :) )

This was my story, I hope it helps.

Your story is heartening. I wish it would work for me. Nothing really makes me happy or interested. I could lay in bed all day if I didn't force myself to get out.

I think it's great that you didn't have any formal education, and you have gone farther than me, someone with formal education and 'seven years' of experience.

> guess what I am trying to say is: - dont give up - expect success over time (1-2 years as a bare minimum) -

I've been unemployed for a year. I think my career is over. Other, better people can do more.

I think you just need to talk to a professional who can help you to get motivated and interested and the rest comes after that.

http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/therapy.aspx

> Nothing really makes me happy or interested. I could lay in bed all day if I didn't force myself to get out.

This is a sign of depression. Talk to a doctor. It's possible that clinical depression is holding you back. It destroys your motivation and makes it hard to find joy in anything. And it's hard to get better in something that you don't enjoy and aren't really interested in.

> I've been unemployed for a year. I think my career is over. Other, better people can do more.

That sounds like the depression talking. Don't listen to it. Fix the depression (easier said than done, but it can be done), and the rest will get a lot easier.

I've been unemployed for over a year once, and completely wasted that year (I should have done private programming projects, but instead I wasted it gaming and sleeping late), but now my career is doing great.

A close friend had dropped out of programming completely due to RSI, and after many years of not touching a computer, tried to start his own company (selling computer generated puzzles), which failed, but it did get him enough hands on experience to get a regular programming job. His career has lost some time, but is otherwise doing fine.

Another friend went suffered from depression and addiction, went through years of therapy, got his life back on track, and now has an excellent job in programming.

It is possible to get back in the saddle. It's not always easy, and it can mean you have to take care of other problems first, but it can be done. Take hope in that. Get help, get to the root of the problem, fix that, and your career will get easier in time.

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