Being a mediocre how do you survive?
I feel that I have been in the software industry since 2005 (BS & MS Computer Science) and I haven't progressed much. I am just getting older day by day 41y now. With responsibilities increasing day by day, 2 kids, non-working spouse, aged parents, single earner in the home. I am not even sure how to concentrate on anything and I feel that it's going to be more demanding when kids start going into the college (elder one is going in 7th grade and the younger one is going in 1st grade, public school).
I don't have much savings too, only 40k in 401k, 23k in brokerage and about 30k in kids education accounts, no cash balance, and 48k worth of loans (27k personal loan, 12k credit cards, 9k auto loan).
Whichever instrument I try to put in my money I am always a late entrant and bound to lose (even people laugh in a way in my office saying I am gonna buy put if I say I am buying a call), let it be currency futures, crypto, oil, options, etc. This is purely my laziness, and only when it appears in any news, I just go straight up and put a couple of thousands and lose it all :-(. I am getting so lazy day by day that I can't continue anything for 7 days straight, wtf. I wasn't like that at all, I was a hardworking person and some dejection happened and I came to the US looking for better prospects and now I feel I am stuck. Everyone here talks about cars, money, crypto, vacations and my family didn't have any of them :-( Every time a read a post in blind, I get the energy and work on a couple of LCs and then I am again down for a month, honestly, I may be fired any day due to transition happening now so I don't have much work in the office and my day is completely free, didn't even remember when was the last time I did push up a nice change to git :-( )
I got good advice in this forum to follow a pattern of doing 2 questions/day, that also I screwed up after solving 100 problems (only easy ones :-( ).
I read about the people in all kinds of forums and how they made money in crypto, how they cleared FAANG, It's my dream since 1998 to join a FAANG and work there, being from a very small part of the world some might find it insane but that's how I grew up hearing about the stories of people who joined Microsoft after 10s of the interviews and they were brightest of them all.
Tell me where I did wrong, how I can be a better version of myself (non-smoker, occasional drinker (mostly late nights when everyone is sleeping), food lover, making excels for every single thing in my life)?
Would anyone of you be my mentor to guide me to reach some level of success, I would highly be indebted. I just find happiness when I code and SWE is the best thing that happened to me in my whole life. Thank you for reading it & please help.
tc: 130k
yoe: 16
#tech #career #fire
comments
For getting out of the funk and getting a better job, yes it’s good to be self aware and want to improve but you are starting that journey on a negative note. First of all you have to set achievable goals and work towards those. Getting into FAANG is definitely possible for anyone but there’s a lot of work and luck involved, so maybe start with some other company that pays better and has better work prospects than what you have now. You don’t have to do crack LC hard for those. Then a few years later you can up your game again. Not many people get into FAANG as their first company, it takes time and sometimes years.
Basically right now you sound like an overweight guy who is sad that he doesn’t have a 6 pack right now. He can get it, but it will take a lot of time and effort, but he should not give up either
Get your retirement savings inline or your going to burden your wife and children to a life of poverty.
Maybe take a break off blind? Enjoy time with your family.
I'm 25 not a swe but have tried a few times and am now in a swe adjacent role.
However, I got really lucky with some side gigs and saving when I was working a 25/hr job.
If you really want to improve, I think its always nice to just build something you care about and introspect on some whatever personal issues you have so you can be disciplined in studying/learning new things or whatever goal you set yourself up for.
In 2016 I got kicked out of pharmacy school (3 semesters from graduating). In 2018 my gf of 5 years left me for someone I considered a friend. In 2020 I made it as an SDE at amazon after all that shit. How? LSD got me thru it in 2018