tcrow

I understand this idea, but it doesn't really address the fundamental issue or what it REALLY MEANS to say you are religious. Can I really make a valid claim to be religious If my actions are not in accordance with the principals of my religion? Sure I can say I "believe", but then If I truly did, why would I not act it out in my life? I don't think the two are really separate concepts at the most fundamental analysis of it. Say one thing but do another just means you are a hypocrite.

What does it mean to be religious? Is it simply belief or belief and action? I would argue that you aren't really religious unless you actually live by the code of the religion. That would mean a very strict sense of how to navigate the world and your interactions with others and yourself. How many people do this? In my experience - not many, and I don't think this is unique to Americans. Perhaps I'm way off but it seems like the world in the majority is often only pretending to be religious.

"- I know I need more free time for my family and the kid. I don't think I should be living two work lives for that much time or I'll end up not seeing my kid grow up or something. As much as the freelance gigs make me feel really accomplished, I realize I also need time for "real" hobbies (music making, woodworking), exercise, etc."

This bothers me. You made a decision to start a family, when you did so, you made a commitment to uphold their well-being to the best of your ability. Living "two work lives" will most likely have detrimental effects on your relationship with them. I know, I've been there. Be careful to balance your needs with those of the ones you love, they are more important than some temporary high of doing fun work on the side. Yes we need to do meaningful work in our lives, but not necessarily at the cost of these other meaningful things. As a programmer (and creative) with a family, I completely understand where you are coming from. As a loving father, it is easy to make the necessary sacrifices. I hope you find more meaningful work soon, but unless you breath that work with your heart and soul (which is rare), it will always be just that, work, and at best a fun distraction you will trade for time.

I've been there my friend. I've done as you have done. I even managed to convince my wife to let me go part-time for 6 months to pursue my "dream" and find meaning, you know, attempting the ideal. I eventually came to the conclusion that taking on more responsibility in my life gave me more of what I have been looking for than pursing only what I found interesting (remember interest fades!).

Do not cheat your employer (if you owned the company, would you appreciate your employees doing this?). Perhaps search for better ways to accomplish your work duties, take on responsibility, or move on to another endeavor where you would be more inclined to be an actual steward or leader.

Best of luck, don't be afraid to do some reflection, perhaps you will surprise yourself in regards to what exactly you are looking for, I know I have!

-T

I find writing software to be a very tedious exercise a majority of the time, punctuated by moments of intense joy and concentration. However I still do it because I see it as an indispensable tool for turning my own ideas into reality and its hard to put a price on that. If you're worried about interviews and what not, pick a domain your intensely interested in and let your passion glow during the interviews, I know from exp. that many good employers would rather have a knowledgeable passionate hire than a dev who knows "everything" but couldn't care less about the domain.

One way to get ahead of it is to try pitching proposals to problems your organization can't afford to ignore.

IMHO technical work tends to be very boring and tedious unless you have a vested interest in it someway. I think the key to finding interesting technical work is to first set your sights on some problem or issue that is personally meaningful for you, and then see if can be solved by a technical solution. Case in point, my current day job would probably be categorized as "technically interesting" since it is a project using fairly cutting edge technology and methodologies to try and solve a problem that previous attempts have failed at multiple times. Now that is fine and all but a little over a year in, and while progress is going great, I just don't care anymore. I care about my team, and my organization but my personal interest in the work is non-existent. The luster of novelty has worn off, and it is easy to see a long stretch of road that glitters from time to time but offers no real peace of mind. I think my peace of mind will come from less technologically fanciful endeavours and more meaningful work, such as providing better local educational opportunities for the community than what I currently see being offered. As such, I'm currently in the process of transitioning into this line of work while also taking a huge pay cut, and I couldn't feel better about it. Good luck to you.

see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IT_consulting_firms for a list of some large scale firms. I'm sure there are also plenty of local agencies in your area that you could tap into.

From my experience, one of the best (and relatively easiest) ways to reach higher salary levels over a relatively small time frame is to, at some point, go to work as a short term consultant through a consulting agency for a little while. If you have any decent skills, getting in will be no problem. The benefits of this approach is 2 fold; 1) you will obtain a broad and diverse set of skills due to traversing many different technology stacks and dealing with all sorts of issues. 2) As you move from client to client, the consulting agency which is responsible for placing you, will be ever-increasing the rate at which they charge the client for your work. Although you probably won't see any personal gain from this increase, the big benefit comes when a company wishes to hire you long term (assuming you want to be hired also) and it's time to negotiate salary. If you know what the consultancy has been charging the company for your work, you now have a huge advantage in your negotiations. Typically, they will charge the client 3-5x what they are paying you, so just as an example, if you make 75/hr, the client is probably being charged ~200/hr. I would think you could at least double your salary if not more during final negotiations with the company. This approach worked out pretty well for me, but it does assume you have some way of knowing what the client is being charged. In my case, I befriended a few people during my assignment which allowed me to open that door.