Quote:
Originally Posted by golddog
jmakin,
First, do some self-analysis. I've been a developer for 30+ years. My employer and I parted ways a while back, I thought I hated development now and was ready to retire or move on.
Turns out, I hated that specific employer. More specifically, the idiotic management; I enjoyed the people I worked with and solving the problems I was solving.
So, after taking some time off and reflecting, I've decided that I really enjoy the problem-solving aspects of development, but not the bull****. So, I'm gearing my searches to places where there's very little management interference.
I can't speak to Irvine, but keep in mind in IT generally, jobs are disposable. If you get into a situation that you're not enjoying, you're allowed (I'd encourage it) to look for something else.
Try to find work that you enjoy doing, with people you enjoy spending time around.
Your situation is somewhat different, as you do need to get your foot in the door so to speak. Do some self-analysis on what part of working in IT you enjoy. Maybe it's networking, or development, or sys admin. "What motivates me?" needs to be part of that analysis.
If that answer is "nothing", then I don't know what to tell you. I've only been in IT. But my understanding is just having a degree opens up a bunch of doors in other fields of endeavor from your major. So make sure to finish that up.
As others have said, keep up with the therapy, that will help. Also that $135K is not enough to make you a "spoiled trust fund brat", or set you up for life. It's a nice chunk of change, but you're not going to live a life of ease on that.
Best of luck. Let us know how it goes.
the answer is sort of "nothing." I've posted about it in /programming but my only real passion is designing and playing video games. it's a really hard industry to get into.
I know of an open source video game project I could involve myself with but the devs involved are total jackasses and I'm not sure I want to deal with them more, it was thoroughly unpleasant last time.
I could try to make my own game and see where that goes but I'm not super confident in my ability to do so on my own.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ChipWrecked
I spent years in infrastructure networking. Now I'm ****ed because networking has been dovetailed into Sysadmin.
I'm trying to step down a level or two to be able to work while picking up Linux / admin experience. There is significant resistance to that in my market. So I'm pigeonholed and irrelevant at the same time.
Moral is in IT stay aware of trends and keep your skill set relevant.
almost the exact same thing with nearly the exact same system happened to my aunt, but she's since moved to a different field.
Quote:
Originally Posted by offTopic
At which point, he will have been a mate, a skipper, a professor and on his way to being a millionaire. If the teaching gig doesn't work out, I'd suggest acting lessons.
i had to google this reference lol but it's really good
Quote:
Originally Posted by foatie
Jmakin,
Maybe you can use your expertise to write an ebook on a subject that you feel like you're an expert in. Give away 20 copies or so for Amazon reviews in exchange and host on Amazon. They can also publish paperbacks and take a vig ($4.50 ish for a 300 pg black & white paperback)
http://kdp.amazon.com/en_us/help/topic/g200634500
Even if it's a dud, it looks amazing on a resume that you published a book and will stand out over other prospects.
Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk
the only thing I'm 100% confident I know a lot about is winning in hearthstone but I'm not sure how much of a market there is for books in that area. someone recently posted a link to a pretty decent one in the /hearthstone sub-sub-forum.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gregorio
Do not go to grad school for something unless:
a) you need it for a career (i.e. you want to be a social worker so you need to get your MSW; or you want to be a finance bro in a field that only hires MBAs, etc); or,
b) you're really interested in something and don't mind spending a few years of your life studying it and don't care if it leads anything in the future; or,
c) you love that thing more than you've ever loved anything and can't imagine doing anything else with your life
If your more interested in math than CS, going to grad school for CS because you can get in and couldn't get in for math without taking some additional courses would be a terrible reason to go to grad school for CS.
i agree with this.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chopstick
jmakin - lots of great advice in here for you. You are lucky OOT likes you so much.
Here are a few more thoughts.
I've only ever not been offered a job from an interview a single time. Probably because that was the only real interview I ever did. Every other interview was a formality, because I already knew someone on the inside who had vouched for me or was the person hiring me.
That's my long way of saying that who you know is usually far more important than what you know.
You know a lot more people than you think. Start leveraging those resources. Having to actually compete against other candidates for a position is for suckers.
In your blog you mentioned some stuff about your dgaf attitude and how that wasn't going to change. Bad idea. Absolutely a major leak in need of fixing. So much of working in a workplace is interacting and getting along with other people, far more important than most people understand. Give me a friendly workhorse who shows up on time and gets along with the rest of his co-workers each and every time over the prima donna. I'll 1099 the prima donna when I have to, but my W2s are all going to be the steady consistent worker bees.
135K is a nice cushion, but that's about all it is. Best to either stick it in an index fund for a jump start on retirement and pretend it doesn't exist, or use a fixed portion for a specific goal like grad school. Don't go oldfoatie with it.
Absolutely finish your degree no matter what. You've worked too hard and come too far to just abandon it. Even if you end up in a completely different field for the rest of your life, having an honors CS degree from a decent school will go a long way for opening doors in your future.
You have a lot of people rooting for you and supporting you. It was smart and a sign of maturity to ask for advice. You're going to be just fine.
If you do end up working for El Diablol, please also move in with him and be his roommate so you can set up a cam and stream your joint wacky hijinks for OOT's benefit.
i don't know if i really know that many people. i don't socialize and i have few friends, no close ones. I just work and study and play video games.
I'm not in danger of not finishing. I can fail every course from here til june and still graduate.
I've never received below a B- in a course before and that was one course, a weird outlier and I 100% believe I got screwed somehow. It's mostly an ego thing that I want to try to finish these last 2 quarters with a B/B+ average.
I am glad this thread was so well received, I hesitated to post it and sort of dreaded reading the responses this morning but I am really encouraged. thank you