
Ask HN: Why are you stuck in a dead end job? - astrowilliam
We&#x27;ve all been there. Working for the man, just getting by. I&#x27;d like to know why you are stuck and how you think you can get out of it. Or, if you don&#x27;t want to leave the job, what keeps you there? Benefits? Pay? The job is easy?
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trwhiteaker
Stability. Once you start to build a family and lay down roots the harder it
gets to be able to move because you have to put family first. What may be
'better' for you might now always be better for the family.

~~~
matt_s
This is the reason for me as well. The dead end part for me is that the
company doesn't value hands-on technical people and has outsourced most of
that.

There aren't a lot of jobs in the area either. My wife and I have discussed
moving down the coast to Raleigh/Durham area since there are a lot more jobs
around there and we have some family near there. But I imagine it would be
hard to apply and get interviews for jobs when you're not in the area.

My wife says if we are to move it has to be in the next 2 years - before the
kids are in middle school. The thought process there being that they will
solidify friendships, clubs, sports, etc. before high school.

Since I've moved into management it is hard to apply for remote jobs that look
very appealing career-wise. I fear employers see the management history and
think "this guy hasn't coded in years".

So many factors to take into consideration that it numbs you into staying.

------
saie
Up until last week I was in this exact same position, Golden handcuffs, enough
money to choke a small donkey with as a daily rate but I had lost all job
satisfaction. Then they offered me more money, and a 4 year contract. But I
bit the bullet and said no! So now I've only just over a month left, with
nothing lined up but sometimes you need to just take a leap of calculated
faith. I don't know if it is going to work out, but I do know ill be happier
on the other end.

~~~
scrapcode
This is great and I'm glad you're in a position where you can do this. I took
a government job since the benefits are great and the pay is consistent and
safe while I finish a degree. I got an amazing promotion into a completely
unrelated field than what I enjoy (development), and the pay is far more than
I ever expected to make, but not enough to save enough to be comfortable about
leaving my job to pursue development. Unless I can find a entry level job that
pays over $90k/yr in the midwest, I'm pretty much stuck at my boring, non-
exciting job.

~~~
saie
To be clear, I have a mortgage and family, small savings but not for
unemployment. At the end of the day, I am the only person that can change my
situation, so I did. Yes its scary but, If i believe in myself enough and have
the courage I will make it work one way or the other.

------
analog31
I'm at the highest level of the technical track within the division of the
company that I work for. Moving up probably means moving to a different town
or spending a lot of time in China, based on who is getting hired or promoted
into those positions.

I don't want to move.

The town that I live in is a nearly ideal place to raise kids. Good public
schools, educated and tolerant populace, nearby university, things like high
caliber music programs, and stuff is close enough together that they don't
have to spend 1/2 of their life in a minivan.

It's a pedestrian- and bike-friendly town. My spouse and I both bike to work.
The kids walk, bike, or take public bus to school. I think this is better for
their bodies and all of our brains.

~~~
subrat_rout
I am curious to know the city which has such good facilities and reasonably
priced to live.

~~~
girmad
I'm guessing Raleigh / Durham

~~~
mlwarren
That was my guess until he mentioned it's a bike+pedestrian friendly friendly
town. Maybe if it's a job in the heart of Raleigh or Durham, but RTP is
definitely not fitting that description.

------
goodforenergy
Anyone heard of imposter syndrome? It makes it hard to change jobs. Although
my managers have only ever had good things to say about my work, and despite
being promoted several times, the last time I tried to update my CV to apply
for a job I broke down, feeling useless and incapable. I never think my work
is good "enough" and often wonder when everyone else will realise I'm actually
terrible at my job.

Interviews for someone suffering from imposter syndrome are awful - how are
you supposed to come across well if you already feel like you're not good
enough for the job?

I stayed at my last company for at least a year more than I wanted to because
I didn't think I was good enough to get a job elsewhere. Although I feel like
I've recovered somewhat from the worst of my I.S, this question made me
realise I haven't just yet - the thought of interviewing elsewhere inspires
just as many "Oh but you haven't learned much lately, you've fallen behind the
crowd, they won't want you etc.. etc...".

~~~
jqm
I hear a lot about imposter syndrome..

But, to be fair, a certain number of people who think they have it probably
really couldn't code their way out of a wet paper bag.

------
mercnet
I work remote and have plenty of time to work on side projects and learn
programming. I still get excellent reviews from my peers and manager so the
raises and yearly bonus have been decent. I want to make the switch to a
developer role but I am insecure about my coding skills. In addition, I love
working from home and I would have to replace my aging car with something more
reliable if I commuted to a new job.

~~~
fleitz
Whether your coding is up to par is for your employer to decide, you don't
need to worry about it.

Find a remote programming gig, or just do a few hours on elance.

I had similar feelings when I was working tech support, now 13 years later I'm
not coding so much anymore and am now managing devs.

~~~
codezero
How did you make the transition from tech support to coding to managing devs?

------
404error
>I'd like to know why you are stuck

Education is holding me back, I started working at a newspaper when I turned
20 as a Graphic Designer, moved to IT, then to the Web Department. Fast
forward 9 years, now my position is mash up of all of these. Everything I have
learned has been self taught, I feel like a Jack of all traits master of none.
I feel I lack a solid foundation on the fundamentals.

>How do you think you can get out of it.

Honestly I don't know if I can get out of it without putting my life on hold.
Which, I can't since I'm pretty much paycheck to paycheck and about to get
married. I'm currently trying to teach my self Java to add to my tool chain.
(html, css, javascript, php). I'm hoping I can collect enough skills that if I
do apply for another job my lack of education will not hurt my chances so
much.

>What keeps you there?

The steady income.

>Benefits?

We have them, but definitely not here for them.

>Pay?

Awful, I'm a couple of dollars over an In-N-Out burger flipper. I'm on the
Central Coast in California, not many tech jobs around)

>The job is easy?

After 9 years it better be. :-)

------
toxic0Nion
Because the first development team I joined worked with a dying language, and
then I moved to different teams using a language that was losing ground to
things like Rails, Python, .Net (read anything really). I haven't kept myself
up to date, instead blaming my tools (my 7 year old laptop with no battery) or
the fact I have a partner/life and thus too busy to do (home)work in my spare
time.

But i'm in a comfortable position too. I have a team who respects me and my
input, I have good friends at work who i would hang out with any day of the
week, I have decent holiday, increasing pay, great benefits... but I won't
make my company a $million company, nor will I change the position of this
company in many significant ways. Tech is not their focus, so suggesting we
use Neo4J goes on deaf ears.

and so i'm still writing a language that should be dead... that few other
companies would take a chance on me because of this... and still i walk the
earth

------
amatxn
I have shared custody of my 7 year old daughter in an area (Amarillo, TX) that
is geographically distant from metros w/ developer jobs, and Amarillo has
little IT presence.

I've reached the pinnacle of technical jobs in my area (lead developer). The
job is easy, I do pretty much what I want when I want, work 40 hours or less a
week, the commute from home to office is 5 minutes - I can bike it in 10, and
eat lunch at home each day. My quality of life is hard to beat. My job also
allows me to experiment with many new technologies, so it can be somewhat
challenging.

Beyond that, I make a decent salary for the area and combined with my wife's
income and low cost of living, we are able to save A LOT.

I'd like to have a remote position, but the above reasons + imposter syndrome
keep me from even applying.

------
vonnik
Until last year, I was living as an expat in a foreign country, whose laws
limited my ability to take another job, since employers need to sponsor
foreign workers and go through the hassle of paperwork to employ them. I was
stuck, then, and now I'm not.

I was also working in a rapidly obsolescing industry, journalism, where demand
for reporters and editors is decreasing sharply. People in those positions
often feel like they can't make the jump, because they lack the skills to be
considered for work in another industry.

While that's not always correct, it is true that early career choices can
commit you to economic sectors that end up not doing well. And then you're
playing catch up with other candidates who spent their years building more
desirable skills.

~~~
Gustomaximus
From journalism your in a great position to move to social media & PR, if
interested in the marketing world. These areas have quite good growth
currently. And once in the marketing world a lot of doors can open in other
areas.

------
scmoore
I hope I'm not stuck, but after a few months not working and an expensive
cross-country move, I ended up taking a job working at a university with an
old, messy codebase. It's really low-pressure, and if it turns into full-time
the benefits would good. It pays just enough, but nothing like people are
getting in SV right now. I'd rather do something more cutting-edge and more
challenging, and I'd rather be around people who are a little more driven.
However I've got the syndrome real good, I feel like "all those people with
jobs I want are pro programmers who go write big, beautifully structured,
complex software on the weekends for fun; I'm just a guy who knows some
scripting stuff that can muddle through some bug fixes." So my plan is... work
through some of the interview books, and try to find a personal project that's
interesting enough to pursue. I have a hard time motivating to actually write
software for myself, rather than for an employer.

------
lhh
"Dead end" is a bit of a hyperbole, but in two years I certainly don't want to
be doing the type of work I'm doing now (finance). What keeps me here is my
massive student debt balance and the prospect that this job could pay it off
relatively quickly. At which point I intend to start my own thing. Side
projects keep me sane in the meantime.

------
eccp
I was on a remote position for several years, maintaining code written by
several other developers over the course of 10 years, poorly written and no
spec in sight. I sincerely tried to move it forward to current standards, one
bit at a time. It improved a bit for a while but from the distance it was a
mess and I doubt some of the improvements will ever get deployed.

I went to a lot of stress during that period, but on the other hand it felt
comfortable, sharing only a few hours of the day to touchbase gave me freedom
to organize the time with the family, there were not many challenges other
than managing a big ball of mud, and the hourly rate was much better than my
colleagues did working on-site.

On the other hand, there was no prospect of new challenges, or technologies or
salary, this was a small business. I did some side projects recently and it
gave me confidence to move forward: there were many other companies willing to
work remotely with newer technologies and with a better rate.

------
hackerboos
Because it's easy and one of the few Rails shops in my modest northern city
(England).

Sometimes I roll in, don't code much and finish at 5 on the dot. It's partly
due to laziness but more to do with weak moral and lack of autonomy. Moral
where I work is appalling because the company I work for has been on a steady
decline due to the clients being in their 70s/80s and almost being wiped out
by a competitor a couple of decades ago.

I'm surrounded by suppressed talent that wants to do a good job by exploiting
a younger market in order to secure the company's future, but the management
here won't listen.

I know this job won't be here forever, but I'll have jumped ship before the
cuts get made. I'm moving to Canada and hope to get into the startup scene or
start something by myself (consultancy or startup). Until then, I'm resisting
a move to London, which does have much better opportunities but the insane
cost of living is not worth it.

------
quaffapint
I've been looking over the past couple years for a different dev job. I'm
currently in a giant corporate setting with all the horrible paperwork and
useless red tape that goes with it. I get to develop maybe 20% of the time,
the rest is trying to figure out how to fill out paperwork about what I'm
developing. I really don't like it.

My pay has dropped over the past few years when you factor in health care
premiums and cost of living. I'm living paycheck to paycheck, but in my area
developer pays are only now just slowly creeping up from 2008 levels. I don't
want to move with kids in school.

I really, really keep hoping the pay in the area goes up soon, as I'm
disliking my days more and more.

------
weishigoname
I had ever experienced once, and pay isn't so much, I keep staying there for 3
years, it is because I think I still have much to learn there.

------
LaurensBER
I'm learning so incredible much. The job is deadend, the money is not that
great but I work on something I really enjoy (programming) with some really
smart people in a city which is a rising star in the startup scene.

Sure, I'll jump ship in a few years but until then I'll try to learn as much
as possible!

~~~
exit
i bet you're in berlin :)

~~~
k__
Sounds like it...

Bad job, but oh so happy.

------
johnward
I've been trying for 2 years to escape but apparently I don't have have any
useful skills. Or maybe I just am terrible at interviewing and the entire
process. It's really hard to come off confident when deep down you really
think you're a piece of shit.

~~~
aturek
In the past, I've done practice interviews (phone or in-person) for my friends
prior to them doing a standard Amazon/Google/Microsoft interview. Do you have
any friends that would be able to do that for you?

~~~
johnward
I used to be fairly good with resumes and would often help my friends perfect
theirs. The last job I got I was able to put on my fake "Mr Extrovert" routine
to get the job. Been there for almost 5 years now. Lately I just don't have
the energy to pretend I'm someone else in interviews. Usually once I get hired
and they see I can do the work the introvert/extrovert part doesn't matter as
much.

I really just can't figure out if I'm depressed because I dislike my job or I
dislike my job because I'm depressed.

------
bluedino
No excuses. Just need to boost/sharpen some skills and apply for jobs that
aren't in the rust belt. Nothing holding me here and I have the ability to re-
locate.

------
curiously
I've been a software developer for about 5 years. I love working on my own
projects but feel really stressed and bored at a coding job.

My escape plan is to move to B2B software sales. I know I might be optimistic
but it has all the points that are appealing to me.

\- large salary based on performance (good luck working your ass off on that
API or optimizing product for a fixed salary)

\- no programming (so I have brain cells left to work on my own projects after
I come home)

\- profit generation culture (when you are a cost overhead like many
engineers, you tend to be treated like a machine and measured for efficiency,
you tend to compete with other engineers, I'd rather be paid more to win and I
love a good race I can run on my own against others, not have senior engineers
or managers slow me down.)

\- Everyday is a new ball game

~~~
thatswrong0
My uncle's friend was an engineering sales type decades back.. I think worked
for IBM. Had something to do with laying cables in Berkeley. He recommended I
do a similar thing after a while because of the reasons you listed.

~~~
johnward
Sales Engineering seems like a pretty good gig. You get to come in and do
proof of concepts. Make things look like they work. Tell the customer anything
is possible and everyone loves you. Then I, the consultant, have to come in
and break it to them that no, not everything is possible. Also as the sales
person you get a commission but I actually have to deliver results to get us
paid and I get no additional compensation for that. To top that off my take
home pay is about 1/10 of what the customer pays for my time.

