Did you have a strategy or was it a leap of faith?
Did you regret it later on?
Are you happy with the decision you made?
Where do you think you would be today if you had decided to stay in that job?
If you are currently in a job like that, then do you have any plans of escaping to work on your passion[1]? if yes, then please share your plan.
[1] Your passion may be a dream job, a special course (masters, software bootcamp, course in another field like marketing or airplane pilot etc.) or a startup. It just has to be something you love but are not doing because you think you're job is currently the safest option for you.
I just couldn't figure out how to get out of that routine. I had tons of ideas but could never work on any of them. So I decided to take someone else's validated idea and grow it further. The point was to get STARTED somewhere. Force yourself into it. I forced myself into it by buying that side project and then quitting my job 4 months later. My income went down but couldn't be happier.
EDIT: So a few of you asking how I found the project. It was flippa. Yes, I know it is needle in a haystack. That is where I guess the luck factor comes in. I was just browsing that day and came across that project for sale. It looked perfect for me and I talked to my wife and put a bid. Leap of faith really. I never met the seller but he was an excellent marketer. THe software was crap but he had already built a very small paying audience which I knew could do a lot more.
If anyone is interested, I wrote a blog post on how to buy an online business. Linked on profile.
Hardcore Math modelling implemented in C++ or something?
How did you find that project?
Out the window. I had to back up quite a bit and take a running leap, but I was able to easily shatter the floor-to-ceiling pane glass. Marge from Accounting tried to stop me, but luckily I had begun taking Parkour classes recently and was easily able to dodge her.
> Did you have a strategy or was it a leap of faith?
It was a literal leap of faith. Some banners set up to advertise a corporate conference broke my fall.
> Did you regret it later on?
Well, yes and no. I didn't regret choosing to leave my job, as I was able to take a chance and see what I could achieve. But I did regret the broken legs and fused vertebrae.
> Are you happy with the decision you made?
Yes.
> Where do you think you would be today if you had decided to stay in that job?
Probably not in this motorized wheel chair...
It is about finding what you really want in life. Sometimes safe but boring is good enough. But sometimes working on a dream project might feel like a chore because of the circumstances and people.
I mean, it's not like nobody in HN ever romanticized creating startups and pursuing dreams over "meaningless 9-5 jobs", right?
"Guys, how much gasoline should I pour to put out a fire?"
"Why are you pouring gasoline on the fire? Use a fire extinguisher or water if it's not an electrical fire!"
This does not mean that you shouldn't look for a better job, or one that has more meaning (for you). But ultimately, you need more meaning in your life than a job can provide. If you try to make your job provide meaning, it probably won't provide enough, no matter how good of a job it is.
And though a job may not provide real meaning, it can still be really meaningless. If it's just make-work, if it's just bureaucracy, if it's just pointless, then by all means, look for something better. Full meaning for your life isn't found in a job, but a meaningless job is soul-crushing.
That managerial job was ok and it paid well, but still my morning/evening coding sessions is what I was looking for all day. One day I was like "Cmon somebody will always pay me to write a code." I had some savings, didn't have kids or mortgage, next day I resigned.
It turned out well, I find maintenance contract doing programming job nobody wanted to touch (writing internal application in Delphi) that lasted for decade. I haven't made that much money, but I was able to travel the world few times over, failed few startups, read a ton, play a music and even bought a farm (dont ask).
I am in my 30s, having two small kids, mortgage and that farm. Everything is going well and I am still happy to code everyday and when money get low I go and consult for startups or something. If I stayed at that job I am sure I will have some career going on and more stable live, but I am still glad I did jumped the ship.
I know you said don't ask, but I guess there is a good story there. so why the farm? :P
Next day was a bit of a blur and then I went back to SE Asia where I was living at that time. In about two or three months later I've got message "So we finalized papers, you still want to buy that land, right?" It took me a while to understand about what he was talking about, but I was actually ready to get back home after 5 years of traveling around and I was burned out of startups and projects that went nowhere.
I was thinking about making it my only source of income, but after two years I realised that if I want to make it I will have to work minimum wage job for quite a few years and I decided to get back to programming instead. I decided to scale down my ambition and I am having semi-pro winery at the moment. I work there for one or two days a week, wines are successful and sold out easily but to get it to next level will require quite a lot of money and a lot of unpaid labor. Maybe some day.
Complete leap of faith. Got a very safe job in the French administration writing programs that manage pension for public servants and electronically archive documents. So safe I was bored to death and depressed.
I applied for a Canadian work Holiday Visa, got it with a friend, left and never looked back. My boss at the the time was so surprised I left such a safe place he literally told me "You've got balls" ("t'as des couilles"). Truth be told it was a matter of mental health.
I've spent two years in Vancouver, Canada, learned scala in a startup, met people I'm still in contact with. Now I live in the UK and work for the Guardian which is by an order of magnitude the best job I've ever had.
>Did you regret it later on?
Never. It was risky but it also was the best decision of my life. I just miss being closer to my family.
> Are you happy with the decision you made?
Yes
>Where do you think you would be today if you had decided to stay in that job?
Probably still integrating bloatware in order to manage French public servant pension, if not in hospital.
Keep up the good work!
The hours and safety of the job are not what give the job meaning; it is you that gives it meaning.
I have worked for large firms and startups (none of them, by the way, were 9-5) and always felt it was a great job to have at the time. There was no "escape" though since the work was remarkably similar. The startups still paid.
To put it another way, I think you're looking at the wrong feature set to make this prediction.
It turns out that as long as I'm employed as a factory worker cranking out pointless Jira tickets all day to integrate another A/B testing framework, I don't have any good ideas. Boring works makes people dull.
How to escape: have f-you money. Pay off debts, save ruthlessly. See e.g. Mr Money Mustache [0] or The Simple Path to Wealth [1] for more. Bonus: you'll end up making better decisions at your 9-5 job because _you just don't have to put up with all that_, if the need arises.
My strategy: realizing that having a boring 9-5 job I found unfulfilling would make me insanely unhappy in the long term. You can always get another job if you decide you'd rather do that again.
Did I regret it? Am I happy? N/A. I know for sure I'll regret wasting another day arguing with a project manager that putting a ticket in the "in progress" column isn't actually the same as progress. In any case, others' experience doesn't have any bearing on yours (fortunately!). However, I strongly recommend against discussing this with your coworkers. They've chosen the same path you have, and will demotivate you despite having best intentions for you. If you go on an antarctic expedition, you'll run into a lot of people interested in the South Pole, and may begin to think it's common to spend lots of time thinking about penguins or the aurora australis. Well-intentioned but bad advice is pernicious.
You can't go wrong spending your days doing something that matters to you.
If you haven't read it, I recommend Post Office by Charles Bukowski.
[0] https://www.mrmoneymustache.com [1] JL Collins: The Simple Path to Wealth
A friend who owns an ecommerce business said that he would create enough work for me full time for my first 12 months if I set up on my own, as well as paying me the same as I was earning at my previous employer. My first job was to build him a new website which involved not only building the site but migrating all of his product and order data, which kept me occupied for the first few months. I jumped at the chance, splitting my time between home and his office at first.
This was 8 years ago and while growth hasn't been explosive, I've been consistently employed since then and now have 2 full time employees to help me out, with revenue slowly increasing year-on-year. I still have the original contract (he started another ecommerce business in the meantime which has grown to be the biggest in their sector) and have picked up a couple of others along the way, expanding into industrial software and interactive marketing. It's a mixed bag, and a lot of fun getting to pick and choose which projects we want to take on.
I honestly couldn't be happier with the way things went. My life is relatively stress free and I (and my employees) earn good money off the back of a very small number of stable long-term contracts. We have a nice office and nice working conditions. Everything I ever wanted and never got in my old job.
As far as what would have happened had I stayed? The company was acquired and the web department was eventually dismantled after years of sitting around with nothing to do. I hear the redundancy packages were half decent, at least.
This is actually all happening right now, but I am currently very happy with the decision. I enjoy the risks and the unknowns. They are huge motivating factors for me, rather than a source of stress. I honestly don't think I could be happy working for someone else. Every job I have worked at, people justify bad behavior as just being "good business". I simply can't accept that, and don't want to be part of it. On top of that, I can't stand giving someone else so much power over my life. I understand a certain amount of that is inescapable, but a 9 - 5 just feels oppressive to me.
I haven't yet reached the point where I only ever work on projects that are particularly meaningful in terms of impact on the world, but I have more time w/ my wife and daughters and dogs and guitar, and I take every July off to go sailing... so it's a lot closer to "dream job" than anything else I've yet come across.
As for "meaning", one can find purpose and merit in almost anything, it's more about mindset than circumstance!
It's been my experience that if you can get one 9–5 job, you can get another as long as you have a nontrivial amount of experience.
For example, I last got laid off in March of 2016. In May of that year, I applied for a job that I ended up starting in June (and I'm still here two and a half years later).
It was a leap of faith and within 10 days came up with Draftss. 9 months later we've achieved 8k MRR. (http://draftss.com)
Very much happy with the leap of faith. At present, I wish I would've done it sooner.
I always wanted to start a business but preferred the safety of a salaried position. When that was taken away and no one was hiring I had no choice.
I bought a laptop on my way home and started calling my professional network. Within a day I had signed my first web design client.
5 years later I sold the company.
Both starting and selling my web agency were incredibly rewarding for my professional growth.
If you think of a job as just a tool to make money, lots of the pressure of having a "meaningful" job goes away. The job has meaning because it allows you to feed yourself and your family.
For reference I work at a large bank, so I suppose the availability/features of our systems/applications is not meaningless for our customers. That said there’s no way I can see my professional experience moving forward here. Maybe experience surviving in a corporate environment counts?
> Did you have a strategy or was it a leap of faith?
It was more of a loose plan. I'd been reading Patrick McKenzie's articles about consulting and knew I wanted to try it. When my 9-5 (more like 8-10) job pushed me to the edge, I decided to put in my notice and give consulting a shot.
I had about $30k saved up from four years of 9-5 work which helped A LOT because I made zero dollars for a few months. But that cushion was a result of good personal finance decisions, not because I knew I'd quit some day.
> Did you regret it later on?
No, never.
> Are you happy with the decision you made?
Absolutely. I still have challenging moments but they're the good kind of challenges; interesting and rewarding.
> Where do you think you would be today if you had decided to stay in that job?
Miserable. No way my mind or body would survive that long in that environment for that long.
In short: I made the right decision for myself, but it wasn't a rash decision. My savings cushion helped me survive for the first few months. Even if things didn't work out as well as they did, I would have no regrets for trying.
[1] https://www.gkogan.co/blog/how-i-learned-to-get-consulting-l...
There's lots of 9-5 jobs that are meaningful. They may not pay as much as a meaningless adtech job, but if you're in software engineering, they still usually pay pretty well.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15127154
Also, if you're in the bay area, start coming to events on my bayareaenergyevents.com calendar. Software engineers usually have no issues finding jobs once they come to a few events and learn who's hiring.
When your planning to leave because you can’t take it anymore, you suddenly have a lot more freedom to tell your existing employer what you really want. And if they still want to retain you, things can work out great.
A senior tech job pays about US$1000-$2000 per month. Maybe $3000-$6000 for managers/VP of listed companies. Conditions can be poor. Long hours at work, long hours in traffic, 14 days of vacation. Aggressive people. Pay is often late with startups, and the norm is paying on the 5th of the month.
The trick is to work foreign jobs. I make about US$35/hour freelancing, which is a very comfortable amount for me personally, and also well below the usual rates internationally. I can live in a comfortable area away from the city with good food, good traffic, and fast internet.
If I can just make an international SaaS thing at $1000/month, that should be enough spare change to buy a family house.
I make it a priority to try to find more interesting work and projects that will add value to the company.
I have tried for many years to create a profitable side project, but I am still trying. You have to be careful about survivorship bias when you hear about successful startup. I am not saying you should not try, I am saying you have to consider that there are far more failures than successes. Keep that in mind and try to learn as much as you can along the way.
The fallacy is, that a corporate job is safe. One startup got bought by Dell, then we got laid off. Hadn't been laid off before.
Did you have a strategy or was it a leap of faith? Of course you have to have a plan or an idea, but then it is just a leap of faith, not much in life is a guarantee.
Did you regret it later on? Nope.
Are you happy with the decision you made? Yup.
Where do you think you would be today if you had decided to stay in that job? In that same job, doing the same thing, reasonably happy, but slowly dying.
Background: I am from Canada where the social systems and job prospects are good, therefore my 'worst case scenario' is not that bad, so YMMV. I also have an engineering degree to fall on. However; I do have a wife, 3 kids and mortgage. Honestly, the kids are the only thing that concerned me. Wives can work too if need be, and mortgages are easy to get rid of.
Worst Case Scenario: Don't let fear of failure (ie Pride) get in the way. Where is your pride when your dying and full of regrets?
My plan is to work on my projects, blog, study in both specializing and generalizing, get in touch with the developer community, do Open Source, seek remote & independent work, I've saved enough for about a year on a budget.
I also plan to take the opportunity and take a very good care of myself, I skate and I'm taking up calisthenics, at 31, I'll skate everyday! Small-scale farming & getting a masters is also planned.
I've been trying to conciliate my actual interests with job unsuccessfully for about 7 years now(subtracting some 2-3 years from the beginning), I've been considered above average generally and almost always the employer wanted to talk me out of quitting but I think I've reached my tipping point, the cost of this salary is just too high for me. Feel free to get in touch anyone.
In Theory: "Do what you love, and you’ll never work another day in your life."
In Practice: "It's not about where you work, it's about who you work with."
The theory is achievable, but it ignores working with people. The practice can tend to avoid obtaining your ideal work to perform, but can lead to more satisfaction among most people.
Working on a dream project can feel like bore or a nightmare due to the people or dependencies. Sometimes safe but boring is awesome because it still might challenge you and the people around you are amazing, they pick you up when you are down, support your failures, and celebrate your success. Ultimately it's a balance that we all have to find.
For the information security side of the house I am just doing my own thing learning pentesting and reverse malware analysis. It is still fun but I have less time to do it as I would like.
Lots of risk and hard work, but it can pay off. It did for me. Not really that company, though it was successful, but companies I started after that which were more closely aligned with what I love to work on.
My plan was to become my own boss, or at least a boss. Turns out it's not that black and white, but it defined my career for the better.
I will say this:
Taking calculated risks is as important, or more, than any other factor in what you'll accomplish in your life. I've seen many otherwise very talented people get stuck in local maxima because they're afraid of failure.
Listen to your instincts. Take risk.
Staying at my last job wasn't an option so I'd have a different job for sure, but not satisfied with what I was doing with my time. I find running a business and developing my own products much more rewarding. 7 years later I don't have any regrets although running a business is a whole new set of challenges.
Luck and faith came into play when we applied to YC and were accepted. At that point I quit my job to move to Mountain View.
There are no regrets today, but it was a difficult decision at the time. Keeping my day job allowed me to still feel secure while also pursuing something ambitious.
Really, that's it. Just quit, and go do the work you enjoy.
The OP edited his question after I replied. When I wrote my reply the question was a oneliner: "how do I escape my meaningless job"
Hopefully it's not part of a course assignment otherwise the instructor may need a course of their own.
I wouldn't really call my current job 'meaningless', it's nice to work on something that customers actually value (I get to say "someone wrote a book about the product I helped make" which is pretty cool) and isn't adtech or analytics tech, but it is annoyingly safe and I've been thinking it's probably time to look into a different environment. 3 years ago I estimated a 55% chance I'd still be here, it drops to 35% chance in another two years. What keeps me? Part of it is I've done the math on early "retirement" (having enough investments to live off a % of interest/dividends) and if I stick it out a few more years into my early 30s (I'm 28) I'll be at a spot with a nice buffer to be fine even in years like 2018 where the final 1YR ROI for the S&P 500 was negative.
Alternatively I could try switching jobs to another bigco that gives out more stock in annual compensation and maybe cut that need-to-work figure by a couple years. As another alternative I could join various kinds of startups. In the worst case for that (at least given what I would settle for, e.g. especially now startups can band together into group insurance policies I'm not going to accept a role without some sort of advantaged medical insurance plan vs paying for one all myself) I just pay my current cost of living and don't raise more savings until I have to get another job, so that extends the time frame of "retirement". Perhaps in a close-to-average case it doesn't change the years-to-goal line too much as startups with funding can at least pay semi-competitive base salaries. In the best case it cuts the years required by a few years (like another bigco job) due to a quick IPO or acquisition. So ultimately on the financial front there's not a strong reason to change right now. I can afford to be picky and wait to see if something comes along that stirs the "I actually want to do this for its own sake" feeling (due to technology, the nature of the problem, or the people I'd get to work with). Perhaps that thing will be my own thing and I'll make a startup for it then. "Retirement" I often put in quotes because I do think there's a strong possibility of continuing to work, just not in the traditional sense. My dad just actually retired, I don't think I could last until I'm 60 without a much stronger external driving influence (e.g., a kid, or a mortgage).
Decided to pursue a PhD, which requires about 20x effort but I like coming to the office every day to work. Huge difference for my mental health.
Seems to be working so far, though I'm super tired all the time.
But for most people, the best way is probably FIRE.
i left my cushy consulting gig for a small startup that was acquired a year later. if i had decided to stay there, i would likely be doing the same meaningless projects for about 5% more than I was the year before.
I am good at software development. I help a company with software development 8 hours per day and they pay me for my time. They take care of hardware, air condition, desk space, social stuff, cleaning, internet connection, tax pre-deduction and regular payment transfers. I get to focus on what I'm good at.
My colleagues are pleasant and my work tasks are challenging.
In the evenings and weekends, I spend time with my family, make things for myself, or play games alone or with others.
I didn't read it that way. Two sets of ppl whose 9-5 jobs can be 1. meaningful 2. meaningless. OP's question is for second set of ppl. Wans't implying that set one doesn't exist.
OP is trying to find a state where he's happy, you seem to have already found one, so good for you.
And still no answer :(
That's the HackerNewsBlues.
I'm gonna go throwaway since I really need to spill the beans here:
My story is full of 'pendulum swings' and 'comparisons' and I can't really make up my mind. I need help.
- I am married with children.
- I live in Brazil, which is shitty right now, as most of you know (far-right trigger-happy president just got elected). Lots of unemployment going down here, people are genuinely struggling. Basically everyone knows someone unemployed or in bad shape financially.
- I managed to somehow escape all the suffering from the last 3-5 years by landing a .gov job several years ago. That means I currently have a good stable income, I am able to afford a mortgage and a comfy home, I have a car and health insurance. Not much money left at the end of the month but everything is properly paid and managed. And I basically cannot be laid off unless I do something really bad.
(Lots of people here would kill to have this job -- in our culture landing a .gov job is synonymous of "having made it", because the majority of Brazilians don't really enjoy hard work -- they measure success by your amount of free time).
- Problem is, my current 8-5 job is as meaningless as one can imagine. I siphon data thru python scripts and write excel spreadsheets, deal with lots of useless crap, data that is not going to be used for anything, and that's it. It's a .gov job after all, filled with bureaucracy and useless stuff to do just to fill time. It makes me feel really empty and after all these years I have ended up developing Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Panic Attacks ;(
- Otoh, before working here I worked on places in which I've consistently put 70h+ work weeks, I was really fat and my overall health (blood pressure, sugar, cholesterol levels) was poor. After joining this boring dayjob I managed to have more time for exercising and hobbies and I ended up losing an excess of 50kg, which was really good to me. My health is mostly in check, besides my anxiety which fucks me on a weekday basis (I almost don't have it on weekends).
- After I arrive home from my dayjob I'm usually so stressed out for not really doing anything meaningful (which worsens my anxiety) that I have several freelance gigs lined up so I can 'feel alive' for a bit. I am a systems developer and I have almost 20 years of UN*X experience, which lends well to these kinds of custom workloads where they need specialized solutions and whatnot. When I'm in the zone doing this kind of work at my home office, I have no anxiety whatsoever.
- 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.
- All these freelance gigs helped me shape my career outside of my day job and build a good network and portfolio of solutions and cases. I currently have some interviews lined up with recruiters from Europe, and some are going pretty well. I think I might score a job there soon-ish and if that happens I'll be offered to move. That means abandoning my "dream job" here.
- Thing is, I don't know how it can turn up there, it could be good, it could be bad and if I come back I'll not have my safe job anymore, and I'll end up being thrown into genpop without any kind of safe net which is much needed in this extremely volatile environment that is Brazil right now. And now I'm older and I have a mortgage and a kid.
- I am currently "taking a hit for the team". Not happy at my dayjob, but I do it anyway and I "like it" because I am thinking about how I am able to keep my family together and well-fed, while several people are losing their houses etc and suffering a lot. It really is a 'lesser evil' situation.
My doubts are:
- Am I complaining on an full stomach? Should I stick to my safe job and not go into unsafe adventures?
- What if I end up hating there as well and regretting not having valued my current safety as much as I should?
- Otoh, what if I am losing myself into this hole of a job and living a lesser life, for me and for my family? Emigrating to a better place could mean more work and less slack but also living in a better place, with less crime and with a better overall quality of life.
Doubts doubts doubts.
I'd appreciate your sincere opinions! I'm gonna come back in a few hours to read the replies.
Thanks in advance and have a good day, y'all! o/
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.
If you have a degree(I think you do), moving over here might be easier than you think. I'm also brazilian and have been living here for 4 years already. Brazil is shit.
I've never accepted working on a shitty job though and would hate working for the government, I see it as stealing from people, at least in Brazil. Mostly startups and left the country as soon as I could. You also need to see that if what you want is to work on a company that has a balanced amount of pressure(not too much, not too little).
About your anxiety&panic attacks, I believe only professional help can help. My wife has her deal of issues and our lives has changed very fast due to us moving abroad, having to deal with a challenging environment where people speak a different language etc. This makes it definitely worse and it might be better for you to work on this first before you do a bigger move with your life. Starting exercising can work, but definitely a doctor will be able to give you much better ways of handling that. Now that the dust has settled and we've been doing well here, it got better, but she has always went to the doc and took it seriously. Seriously. Go to the doc.
I'm already doing that, sending CVs and applying all over.
I would like to target Portugal since the language barrier is smaller, specially for the wife which does not speak english. But I know salaries are smaller there and whatnot.
About the Panic Attacks: They are handled. I underwent treatment and stuff, took meds for a couple of years, thank goodness I don't need them daily anymore :) I still have them once a month or so, which is really good, compared to daily.
I believe I have developed this shit in this job, before joining here 7y ago I had never experienced any of that. I am an overactive, overachiever type of individual and I sincerely don't fit the .gov kind of environment of lots of people doing almost nothing all day long, the extreme boredom makes me anxious, I need to have shit to do.
As you now, I'm here for the job safety and good income, that's it (I hate it too). The private sector is too risky right now and salaries are worse than what I earn right now, so it'd be dumb to go back 'just for the thrill' and jeopardize my family and the house.
That's why I'm trying an international move. I speak three languages and I've been coding since 8 years old (started on Pascal, then C, C++, AWK/SED and friends, now Python+C mostly). I'm oldskool ;-)
Thank you man o/
I think your situation is really complex with no clear solution. You have job safety, a family to take care of and decent life where you have. In my case, I had something similar but I gave it all up and moved to Germany (when I was 35) which has been rewarding but hard. I had to reboot my whole life as if I had just graduated from university and at 40 I am in a similar position as I was when I was 30 (in terms of finance, housing etc.). The initial 1-2 years were super hard as well in terms of finance and setting up a new apartment etc.
My work quality has improved a lot since I moved to India but it has not always been a bed of roses. Things were super hard when my father was sick back home for example. On the other hand my kids may have a better life here in Germany since the education / opportunities here are a lot better.
My take is, life will be hard anywhere and some decisions will always be tough. With a family you will have to make sacrifices no matter where you go (unless you are really lucky). Gratitude, hard work and creativity will also take you far anywhere. It boils down to your priorities, for me India was hard because of the pollution and my asthma was getting really bad, I did not want my kids to go through the same so I moved. I would say, make a list of what matter most for you (e.g. family, job satisfaction, health etc.) and use that to make a choice.
Hash out a list of real priorities in life and map that into the current situation to help out decide.
In my case, it's not pollution, it's crime and rampant corruption tho. Brazil really sucks right now and I don't know if it's enough to have a 'really good job' down here if I could earn HALF of what I earn right now in a better country and still have better quality of life.
I'm thinking that if I'm able to move to a better country I'm gonna improve my kid and wife's life as well, with better access to education and whatnot.
I just don't know if it's worth the risk of abandoning everything here right now. Even though it's shitty, it's at least "quite good" compared to my peers. If things turn out wrong I might have to come back and start all over.
o/ thanks again and have a good one
All other things considered, so do I!
adj. meaningless - not bringing a sense of meaning, satisfaction, worth, value, or purpose.
Now onto my response...
I was in AAA video game development, and regardless of what game I worked on, it was always the same thing each cycle: solve the same problems, work long hours on a game I'd never play myself, often detested, and maybe get some kind of a bonus or vacation time if it did well. Rinse and repeat, only each cycle was worse as I got older, had a family, wanted to spend time with them, and learned from past mistakes, but the designers got younger (from my perspective) and wanted to continually make all the same mistakes over again.
After a while, I came across - and read - "What Color Is Your Parachute" (https://www.amazon.com/What-Color-Your-Parachute-2018/dp/039...), which was fantastic!
At the time I was working for Disney and used the strategies I learned to come up with a plan to make connections outside my studio, learn a few new things while helping with other issues. Eventually (it took about a year) it paid off and I was moved + promoted to a completely separate division. I was still helping the game studios, but doing work that was far more rewarding to me and I was learning new skills: big data, ETL pipelines, databases, etc. And, I was able to apply all my existing knowledge and experience to that new position to make it better. I may not know Kafka yet, but I knew how to integrate pipeline code into the game engine using very low memory and CPU.
Time goes on, and - after helping someone else with a Scala + database problem on Reddit, I ended up landing a job using all my new skills at The Broad Institute helping with genetics research. I can't say that I've ever been happier or ever had a job that was more meaningful. I go to conferences now and meet people who are actually using my tools, REST APIs, etc. to cure complex diseases. And I'm learning so much more than I ever thought I would.
Back to your questions:
> Did you have a strategy or was it a leap of faith?
It was a strategy. I think when you're young and don't have a family it's easy to take big risks and leaps of faith. That was not an option for me. But, I think that believing that I _could_ successfully make the transition was a leap of faith.
> Did you regret it later on?
There was one point early on I did. I knew game development inside-out and was an authority on the subject. If I said something in a meeting it was taken seriously. It was hard to go back to being the newbie. After a while, though, that went away. I absolutely do NOT regret it now.
> Are you happy with the decision you made?
Couldn't be happier. Life is better on every single front for me. I'll also note that much of that is intertwined. I'm happy (with work), so I act happier (at home), which means the family is happier (around me), and it all feeds on each other.
> Where do you think you would be today if you had decided to stay in that job?
Do the same shit over and over again, until something happened to the studio and I was let go. Eventually, I'd be a 50-year old game developer that no one would hire because my price tag would be too high, and I wouldn't put up with someone telling me to work 80 hour weeks.
> If you are currently in a job like that, then do you have any plans of escaping to work on your passion?
No.
But, I'll answer this a little differently than you probably expected. At every job I've had - until now - I've always had side projects and little programming things I did for fun at home. I always had an "itch" that wasn't being scratched by my day job. That's no longer the case. I get fulfillment at my job, and if there's ever anything I'd like to explore, I'm lucky enough to be working where it is actively encouraged.
In summary, I'm not sure if your question was a kind of "poll" for something else you're working on or if you are looking for encouragement to escape a job that you find meaningless. Assuming it's the latter, I would suggest reading the book linked - or at least enough to get you going. It has many great tips for helping you discover what's actually important to you, and then how to come up with plans on how to get there. It may take a while, but often, simply having a plan and sticking to it (and being able to see the light at the end of the tunnel) is enough to keep your spirits up.
Good luck!
I started out doing what basically amounts to working in an agency. A business guy I graduated with wanted to start a marketing company and he got the jobs and I built the websites. It was still a contract setup and I made $50 an hour because Hacker News told me that $50 was a good starting rate so I asked for it and he gave it to me.
Then I got into doing Django web development and charged around $90/hr because I got a lead and I didn't really want the work so I said, "My rate is $90/hr" and he said "okay" and from then on my rate was $90/hr. (Ha!) I just recently got $125/hr in a recent project.
Starting when I was still sort of in college helped a lot. Living in small town Indiana where the college was and this company started out helped a lot lot. Rent at the time was $150/month with a roommate. Having very low expenses meant I could experiment more and not have to worry as much about paying rent. Not having any dependents helped too.
The biggest advice I have to anyone who wants to go out on their own: learn business skills. If you already know how to develop, you may think that's all you need. It's a meme at this point that "If you build (a SaaS) they will come." No, they really wont. You need marketing, marketing, marketing, and coding to build a webapp.
This is why I recommend people start out freelancing first. Then go into building consulting services. And _then_ build products. Freelancing is so much easier to make money with. Any competent developer can get $100/hr+ with some networking. That will teach you how to talk to clients and how to sell yourself. All things you need if you are going to sell products, but it's way easier and you don't also have the burden of designing a good product.
Consulting services are very lucrative, but require even more business sense. If you can business and code at the same time, you are in a verrrrry small percentage of people, and have superpowers.
Build your audience somehow. You'll need one if you are going to sell a product. Make the product first as a service that "doesn't scale". That is, manually implement the business outcome your software would give your customer manually yourself.
Then if you feel the need build a product based on your consulting business. Create rungs on a "product ladder" - free content you put out, paid info products, higher price consulting services, and then at the very top automate all of it in software. It's a model I've seen a number of people do that will be a lot "less risky" than quitting your job and building a webapp blind without anyone watching.
I tried this once. I quit all my freelance work for a year and lived off of savings. I then proceeded to not make anything anyone wanted and just ended up spending all of my money. Then I got back into freelancing and have money again.
In general, this strategy is: "Have safe money and risky money". Your employment is safe money. It's boring, but safe. If you want to get out on your own with less risk, figure out a way to get more time but keep that safe money (maybe try to reduce hours, maybe try to reduce your commute, maybe try to work 4 days a week), then pick up freelancing part part time. Then once freelancing becomes "safe money", quit your job. Work on freelancing part time and build a business that is "risky money".
This is what I'm now doing and I have managed to make a reasonable living while having a lot more time to pursue ventures I'm passionate about. I still spend about 20 hours of my day doing "boring" web development work, but it pays for the rest of my life. I'll probably always keep at least a little of that work because it pays so well for the time put in.
Happy to talk about this more, this subject is of great interest to me and is something I've thought about a lot. My email's in my profile if you want. I think your mindset is more reasonable than many people seem to think, and I wish you the best in your quest to find work you love. It's a long term process but in 10 years of doing this I wouldn't have it any other way.
You will need to learn that your goal is to NOT make a profit, because taxes will really piss you off.
Your goal will be to break even, or take a loss.