
Ask HN: Career trajectory? I'm terrible - hoboon
hi, hn.<p>I know I posted before...but I feel like my situation is the same or worse. I&#x27;m trying, I really am.<p>I keep trying and failing. I am sincerely worried that my career as a software engineer is over, if it even began. This is the end. All I wanted to do is get really good at this and build things but no one wants to hire me. I try to get good on my own but I know that I don&#x27;t know what I don&#x27;t know. I keep trying to do stuff on my own but all I do is fail. If I never quit and never win, what do I do?<p>I don&#x27;t know what I&#x27;m doing wrong. How do &#x27;normal&#x27; people do this? They graduate school, get a job doing this, and then get better after years of practice? Did I take the wrong jobs? What did I do to so colossally fuck things up so no one wants me?<p>I&#x27;m terrible. I&#x27;m shit. I&#x27;m in the wrong field. I feel like eating a bullet would make the world a better place. I&#x27;ll never understand. I give up.
======
DanBC
> I feel like eating a bullet would make the world a better place.

Thoughts like this are always a significant cause for concern. If you found a
mole that was raised and had changed shape you would see a doctor. If you
found a lump on a testicle you would see a doctor. This is similar.

Your treatment options should be a broad package:

1) change the situation

2) give you the tools and skills needed to change the situation

3) support you while you're getting those skils and making those changes

(2) here is not just about your software skills, or your interview skills. It
should include some stuff about how to recieve criticism (take what's useful;
ignore the rest).

I often push Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. That might be a good idea, but you
have some complex interdependant stuff going on and CBT is more effective if
you just concentrate on one thing.

There are other therapies that may help, but they're harder to find. DBT is
well known and might be useful.

You make several reference to your perception of your programming skill. You
describe bug hunting as low skill. Try to frame that as specialist skill, that
helps you avoid mistakes in your own code. Do you program in your own time?

------
azdle
First, please go see a doctor. You know how shitty you feel right now? That
isn't a normal state of being.

I've been there, I really have, I know it feels hopeless right now, but I
promise it's not. If you're anything like me you might feel that getting anti-
depressants is somehow wrong or cheating, or that you're admitting defeat ,
but you know what? They are just another tool that you can use to improve your
life. Think if it like toilet paper, sure people lived for years without it,
but we live in a modern world why not use the modern conveniences?

> all I do is fail.

That is called learning. Maybe you are trying to take on too big of a project
or maybe you're just not giving yourself enough credit for what you are able
to accomplish, it's hard to say without knowing you. Just don't compare your
self to what you see on the internet. I know this is kind of a cliché at this
point, but when you do that you're comparing someone else's highlight reel to
your everyday, and it's just never going to compare.

~~~
hoboon
> That is called learning.

I get the tripe of what you mean, but perhaps I fail at failing, then. I don't
really learn anything. Everything I do is wrong, I'm told.

I wish antidepressents would work. If I could cut out parts of my brain and be
better, I would.

I just don't get it. Everyone else has done something right or at least
better. People say things and everyone else gets it. I've been working for
seven years, unemployed for one year. I had a job for a month and they fired
me because I didn't have the skills they needed (not sucking, being
experienced, nothing tech specific).

I just don't get it.

~~~
mcv
> I've been working for seven years, unemployed for one year. I had a job for
> a month and they fired me because I didn't have the skills they needed (not
> sucking, being experienced, nothing tech specific).

So you have held onto a job for 7 years. You can do that again! Being
unemployed sucks, but it has happened to most people at some time in their
life. Getting fired is not fun, but that too has happened to lots of people.
You're not alone.

------
istvan__
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](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.

~~~
hoboon
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.

~~~
mcv
> 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.

------
czbond
Dude - we understand. We've been there, just maybe for other reasons. Are you
applying for things too far above your pay grade, or too far below? Are you
applying using technologies or a background that the companies you apply to
aren't interested in? Or are you always making it to an interview and flubbing
there? Can you see a pattern? Look for the stopping point - and optimize by
focusing only on fixing that one point - forgetting everything else for now.
Make it a game - make spreadsheets and test (as an engineer would).

~~~
hoboon
I don't know what my pay grade is, or how to feature the data I get. I do ask
for feedback from interviewers; they usually don't response. When they do, I
get conflicting answers.

~~~
DanBC
Interviews have to be carefully constructed to avoid a bunch of bias. The
interviews you go to probably aren't carefully constructed.

The interviewers just pick someone. They then post-rationalise and say things
like "cultural fit". And then, when any other candidate asks the interviewers
will post rationalise a reason those candidates didn't get the job. You get
conflicting answers because they're all just making it up.

You frame not being sucessful as failure. Sure, it is. It might be useful to
reframe things. Getting a job is an iterative process. You apply for jobs. If
you don't get replies you tweak your resumé and cover letter until you get
responses and requests to interview. You're getting interviews so that already
some sucess! Now you just need to tweak your interview technique to get a job.

There are people who can help. There are probably recruiters that can help -
although finding a non-scumbag recruiter may be difficult. Perhaps there is
someone on HN who can help?

------
shepik
This sounds like a depression. Not as a "I'm in a bad mood" depression but as
a medically diagnosed illness which has to be treated properly. So please, go
visit a doctor.

~~~
mcv
My thought exactly. Depression is a serious illness that can kill.

It is hard to give advice on the OP's professional situation (do you
underestimate your ability? do you need a better way to learn? should you be
looking at different talents and try a different career? no idea), but the way
OP responds to his situation is very concerning.

If you do suffer from depression or some other psychological condition, it's
entirely possible that that's the very thing that's holding you back. Talk to
some experts, and deal with that. It might solve a lot of your problems.

------
jtfairbank
Email me (email in profile). I've coped with depression before, can relate to
how you are feeling and perhaps give you interview tips / a resume review.

Seconded about seeing a doctor- seeing a therapist as needed is one of the
best things I've done.

------
LarryMade2
a) Share with us example(s) of stuff you've done. so far you have hidden
behind doubt, can't give you pity till I see something pitiful. :-) (if you
are nervous, preface it with, "please, be gentle")

b) Maybe the platforms/technology/projects you've chosen aren't clicking with
what you want really to do, just because its popular doesn’t mean it works for
everyone.

c) Sounds like you might trying too hard, relax your self standards a little
and concentrate of getting something running to your satisfaction, don’t worry
about tight/pretty code. Once you like how it works, go back and re-factor if
you feel the need.

c-2)Take one of your earlier projects and revisit them, might have some new
insights on how to prop up some earlier work. Sometimes looking over my old
code is a mixture, of "I can do that so much better now" and "wow, I wrote
that?!"

d) you might be REALLY good at debugging from what you say.

e) you know, you can build stuff on your own. Reinventing the wheel is also
something to do, maybe you can make a spiffier one.

f) maybe the jobs you are applying for are too high for starting out. Or maybe
you should take a non-developer position and work your way up through the
company (this is how a lot of folk do it, including me).

g) network, it's not always what you do but also who you know, even in non-
teach, someone might know somebody...

------
Nzen
When I feel down, I like to read [Winston Rowntree's
autobio]([http://www.viruscomix.com/makingofpartseven.html](http://www.viruscomix.com/makingofpartseven.html)).
He makes the subnormality webcomic. His story is the same as others have said,
'it gets better', but shows that it was crushing on _every_ _step_ and only
his insane persistence got him to the success ten years in the making.

------
bgilroy26
I def echo the CBT and mindfulness exercises everybody is taking about in
thread. I struggle with anxiety and depression and they are difficult
challenges.

Did you see these suggested learning projects on Hacker News?

[http://projectsthehardway.com](http://projectsthehardway.com)

------
ice303
I can relate to what you are feeling. You have to take a couple steps behind,
take a deep breath, and start to see things how they really are. There's no
evil that will last. You will get over this, I can assure you. make a list of
your strengths, of what you are passionate about. Maybe change job, work on
something else that might make you happy. Maybe relocate and start over. A
good friend of mine, sysadmin for a couple of decades, burn out one day. Left
everything and bought a small house on the country and he's producing wine.
He's never been happier he said to me. Do some sports, go out, be with
friends, talk about what you are feeling. It helps. Take care mate.

------
Bahamut
This sounds like you are depressed - please see a counselor, for your own
good.

The road to being a successful software engineer is paved with failure. I
failed to get accepted to an Ivy League (or equivalent) for undergrad. I had a
failed relationship affect my graduate studies and partly ended up dropping
out of a prestigious PhD program in math as a result. It took me 2.5 years to
find a first full time job afterwards. And yet, I became a senior frontend
engineer in under 2 years despite my failures - the important part is that I
maximized the lessons learned from all of my failures.

Failure is natural - what you do when faced with failure is what defines us.

------
PhilWright
It would be helpful to get more detailed information in order to provide more
targeted suggestions. What is your educational background? What is your work
experience? What languages/domains have you worked in?

~~~
hoboon
C/C++, learning python, ruby over the lst couple of years. Been working for
several years, graduated with bachelors from a cow college no one has heard
of.

bug fixing. that's all i've ever done. anytime i try to move into a dev role
they shut me out. Writing new code was not an option; tinkering with new code
was not really allowed. I thought about what I could do to make things better
but they're already fairly optimzed. doesn't matter, I'd just make it worse.

You'd think they'd hire for c/c++ but not me.

~~~
PhilWright
I think it would be worth stepping back and taking a higher level view of your
skills, in order to see where you are best suited and can provide value.

For example, I know that I am only an average programmer when it comes to
detailed systems level work. I would fail at a Google style interview because
I do not know the Big O values for common algorithms. I cannot tell you how a
Red-Black tree works without having to look it up. But I discovered that I was
very fast at writing software of average difficulty that has few bugs. So I
work at a small company and crank out lots of software that saves the company
money by automating manual processes. By aligning my best skills with a
company that needs them it becomes a win/win.

Maybe in your case you are very detailed orientated and so software testing
would be a good fit. Maybe you are great at translating users needs into
requirements and so should be a business analyst. Maybe you have a wide range
of skills but lack depth in one area, so work as a jack-of-all trades in a
small company. Stop thinking only about your ability to write some code and
look at the wider context and where you best fit in.

------
bbcbasic
> no one wants to hire me

Are you getting feedback from the job interviews that you can share here, so
we can give more targeted advice?

> I'm in the wrong field

Are you sure yet? Do you enjoy programming and tinkering with computers in
general? If so it probably is not completely the wrong field. Although the
roles you are applying for may be wrong for you.

------
gargarplex
Join a developer bootcamp with a guaranteed junior-developer placement program

~~~
hoboon
Did that last year. No bootcamp guarantees placement.

~~~
lewisl9029
Try something like this?

[http://www.appacademy.io/#p-home](http://www.appacademy.io/#p-home)

JavaScript/Ruby are very employable skills and there's no shortage of places
that need them. If you have the time, I'd give it a try since there's nothing
to lose (you don't pay them if you don't get a job).

~~~
gargarplex
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that OP probably doesn't have the
appropriate cognitive disposition for programming as a career.

He referred to himself as normal; software programmers as a group have an IQ
metric well above normal. BY NO MEANS am I suggesting that he is not smart; in
fact, he should trust his feelings even more. Just because he is not a
desirable programmer does not mean that he isn't welcomed by the tech
community and industry; this thread is clear evidence of that.

There are many lucrative roles in tech that do not rely on programming as a
primary activity.

------
M8
Do you honestly enjoy programming though? Or is it just a job?

------
fhoxh
Hoboon,

I invite you to step out of yourself for just a moment. Position your
perspective within someone else of your choosing; a co-worker, a manager, an
interviewer. Read both the post from today and the one from several months
back. Ignore the particular details of the narrative itself. Instead, see what
you can pick up on, sense, about the _author_ of the narrative. Then, observe
how, what you sensed about the author, makes you, the observer, feel.

Go ahead. I'll wait.

As the observer, did you pick up on desperation, despair, defeatism,
confusion, and anguish?

How well do you think you'd be able to hide those mental states in person or
even just on the phone?

I think we already know the answer to that question.

Being around a person that's experiencing acute non-positive states induces
acute non-positive states in others. Considering that most people spend the
vast majority of their time preoccupied with both moving towards feeling good
and moving away from feeling bad, they would do everything in their power to
avoid being around such a person.

It's not even about the words that would be coming out of your mouth. It's
easily detectable before so much as a single word is uttered. Your posture,
facial expressions, respiratory rate, inflection, intonation, etc., will tell
anyone, everything, in an instant.

This is why the places that you have interviewed with have not hired you. It
has nothing at all to do with your technical competencies, because your
technical competencies were not, in fact, evaluated. They shut down,
disqualified you virtually immediately based solely on "lack of cultural fit",
went through the motions, and then fed you a generic line.

When people spoke about the "experience they want," I don't think you quite
understood the subtlety. They were not referring to your technical background.
They were speaking to what they wanted in terms of the experience of having a
new hire at the office: a positive, uplifting, energizing experience.

As an aside:

* Trying and failing is good, not bad. Why? Because you're learning. Not trying at all is bad.

* No-one wanting to hire you doesn't mean what you think it means. No-one wanted to hire Steve Jobs.

* Similarly, just because the few companies that you've interviewed with didn't extend an after does not mean that you colossally effed anything up.

* You can't say that "no-one" wants to hire you. You've interviewed at only a tiniest fraction of potential employers.

You may or may not feel better knowing that the roadblock is your disposition,
as opposed to your technical competencies, but at least you now know the
truth.

The question is _why_ is this your disposition? The answer is quite obvious.

In your short post from today alone, I have counted a staggering thirty two
occurrences of first-person pronouns. Here's what your post looks like with
all of the other words removed:

I...I...I...my...I'm...I...

I...I...my...I...me...I...

my...I...I...I...I...my...

I...I...I...I...I'm...I...

I...me...I'm...I'm...I'm...

I...I'll...I.

It's no wonder at all that you are the way you currently are; you are stuck --
trapped -- instead your own head. Replaying and re-analyzing the past, over
and over, worrying about and agonizing over the future, over and over. When
other people are speaking to you, you're not really listening -- they don't
have your full undivided attention -- you're off in your head doing something
else. When you're eating, you're not tasting your food, you're too distracted
talking to yourself. You are perpetually lost in thought. This is why you're
struggling with trying to get good on your own and struggling with trying to
do stuff on your own.

Your self-identity is far too strongly, unnaturally, and unhealthily,
intertwined with things that it should not at all be intertwined with. You are
not your career; You are not your skill at programming. Your value as a person
is not measured by your career progression; your value as a person is not
measured by your programming skill.

This is the point where you have a decision to make.

You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and the bullet
that you spoke of may very well, at some point, find you. Considering that
you've already made suicidal statements, it may be sooner than later. Let's
hope that you don't take the blue pill.

You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and you show yourself just how
deep the rabbit hole goes. You enroll in an MBSR course in your area, or find
a Mindfulness retreat, or listen to headspace.com, or find a good Mindfuless
book. Mindfuless will allow you to dissolve those negative emotions, gain
insight, not be stuck in your own head all of the time, attain full control of
your internal state, and so much more.

Only then; and not before; will you have transformed your disposition such
that you'll easily find a job that will progress your career, have successes
doing your own stuff, and be able to do the best work of your life. None of
these things will ever be possible if you're constantly experiencing negative
emotions which are inducing pain, and distracted by negative thoughts that are
constantly stealing your attention, as this will only serve to cause others to
feel uncomfortable, unsafe, and/or ill at ease around you.

~~~
smartera
Thank you, I hope this is as enlightening to the OP as it was for me!

