archenemy's comments

I am not OP but have found myself in his post.

I was laid off at the tail end of 2019, a mere week after I returned from my honeymoon. No explanations: money was tight, the higher ups wanted someone out, and I was the only remote worker. At that point I had been there longer than anyone else but the bosses. I was flabbergasted.

Then the pandemic hit. With everything going on, I was unable to get interested in any kind of IT position. I've always felt the need to work on interesting projects where I could make a change, somewhere, for someone. Just not this time.

I just can't. I know I can do great work, I just don't want to deal with everything else: most of the people, the stupid and arbitrary deadlines, the fabricated emergencies, the shifting priorities. I just want a task queue, a reasonable paycheck and being left alone.

So... idk man, you can spill the beans and let anyone who could find it useful get some of that advice.

By this time last year I was starting to enjoy my first summer with a driving license, finishing the first renovation on my recently bought home (no mortgage!), choosing a venue for getting married in September, and earning a decent salary (while working from home) for the first time of my life. Things were looking good!

I started to make plans: renovate the rest of the house, taking my extended family on a trip, and maybe eyeing a second house as an investment.

I was fired the first day I set foot on the office as soon as I got back from my honeymoon on october. No explanations beyond "you cost too much", when I had got the raise without asking. No negotiation, no talking about new arrangements. I got depressed, and then angry, and then depressed again... you get the idea.

I tried to keep myself current, freshen up my skills with some new languages, but I've been unable to think about coding since then. As soon as I see a screenful of code I get angry again.

And then 2020 and you know what happened. Fortunately I still had some savings. The fact that I feel like this and still have it better than many, many people makes me sad, and compounds on the frustration.

So TL;DR: what have I learned?.

- Don't get too invested in your plans.

- Control your expectations.

- So much of life is outside your control.

- F*ck "where do you see yourself in five years?"

(edit: reduced typos and profanity)

cool! I opened it just to check it out and ended playing my first solitaire game in (probably) a decade.

In some countries you can get huge fines and even jail for animal abuse.

lastly: vaporwave. anything from Vektroid is fine.

I have a non-functional Sparcstation IPX that spent _years_ in the trunk of the car of one of my dad's coworkers. I took the electronics out and intend to build something cool inside _any day now_.

I also had a C64 when I was about 6 yo, and I'd like to fetch one from ebay or somewhere and restore it. Any day now, too .

For any kind of work that takes place in an office (as opposed to manufacturing or services), the default should be remoting instead of commuting to that awful places.

videogames damaged a man's liver and KILLED him? nah, i don't think so.

Lo de los padres inmigrantes no era ningún tipo de crítica malintencionada ni nada por el estilo. Me refiero a que seguramente existan dificultades a las que se haya tenido que enfrentar tu familia en cuanto a trámites administrativos, discriminación, no lo sé... y que eso es un conocimiento valioso que puedes tratar de explotar de algún modo (worthy pursuit = un objetivo digno de perseguir). Como mínimo hablas un montón de idiomas, cosa que la mayoría de la gente de tu entorno seguramente no hace. ¡Eso es una _gran_ ventaja!

Articular este conocimiento de forma útil (la manera depende de tus circunstancias: voluntariado, hacer de intérprete para algún recién llegado, hacer una web con información, un canal de youtube en ukraniano explicando como es la vida en españa...) o buscar un trabajo que te dé un poco de autonomía era un comentario un poco más orientado a mejorar tu situación y tu autoestima mientras pasas este momento de confusión vital hasta mayo del año que viene, no como una opción de carrera para el resto de tu vida. Pasar por distintos trabajos en distintos sectores también te dará perspectiva, pero no te ates a ninguno.

Suerte y al toro! (topicazo español que nunca pensé que escribiría en hackernews ;)

because I read what he posted before I post myself:

  > My parents are also from Ukraine, and in my part of Spain the language commonly spoken "on the streets" is Catalan, so within the timespan of a day I always have to changee between and speak 5 different languages (Outside- > Catalan and Spanish, Computer-> English & Spanish, Family-> Ukrainian and Russian)

as another spaniard almost 20 years older than you that went through a similar thing:

- get a service job (supermarket, fast food, warehouse hand, whatever) so you can pay for your driving license (and other stuff) yourself. if you're feeling down, a semblance of self sufficiency will do wonders for you. try to keep that job when you resume your studies.

- it seems that you're born to immigrant parents. THIS is a competitive advantage if you frame it like so: you know how hard it is for immigrant people to thrive and adapt. maybe easing this difficulties for newcomers is a worthy pursuit?. volunteer while you find a job.

- stop faking, for other people and mostly for yourself. you seem to know a lot about economy and the job market. you don't. IT in spain doesn't pay that well (moreso if you are inexperienced), and is highly volatile. 'stable' jobs don't exist anymore.

good luck, and be patient. most people around here will treat you as a child until you're at least 7-8 years older. it's okay and normal to feel lost and disheartened.

seems like you didn't have that much 'flexibility' if you had to argue each diversion with your company. it's not the hours, it's the results.

Sou, let's say a new deadline sets you up for failure. You communicate this perspective. You manage the pang of panic, get to work, do your best.

It's still failure.

It's not that you disappoint yourself, since you _knew_ it was practically impossible to succeed. You dealt with your reality, you mastered your domain. People will still get angry and disappointed that the deadline was not met. Not always, but some (most) of the time, you'll end up taking the blame, or even disciplined/fired.

What you're met with is "So what, change jobs, reframe your perspective, grab life by the balls".

This kind of positive thinking does not solve anything. It's simplistic and misdirected. You'll eventually find this situation in every job you take (or make). What can you learn from the experience? No amount of "mastering your reality" will make this a positive experience. Ok, maybe the first time, you learn that you can't always win. But that is all, no lessons learned for all subsequent ocurrences.

Yes, I'm bitter. But you're saccharine.

Not your fault, but i'm sick of seeing this kind of naive responses that belong in mugs or motivational posters.

as one who took a pay cut to work on a place like you describe: this is not 100% good solid advice, although i'm sure it comes from good intentions.

it might work for the OP, but then, these places are usually PLAGUED by political maneuverings and restrictions that end up ruining most of the work done by the workers 'on the trenches'.

Visible signs of anxiety might make the clerk think he was shoplifting. It has happened to me.

Maybe you should practice what you preach. I'm 34 now and I'd side with the OP on this.

I did a similar thing on my first job: took their web app codebase and totally remade it in the first couple of months, with demonstrable gains on efficiency (Mind it: it was the first web application made by some guys whose previous experience was in Sybase PowerBuilder). I was given a raise the same week I demoed it to my bosses.

I still do programming and I'm still being humbled frequently by the awesome things some of my younger coworkers code effortlessly.

I also share with OP the impression that 8 hours coding as a daily thing is totally overkill. That's suited for factory work where every minute you're not cranking out stuff means losses.

My 'sweet spot' for coding seems to top at 4 hours, a few hours resting and then maybe another couple hours at the end of the day if I feel like I found a better way to do it.

Fortunately I have flexible hours where I work, but I'm still suppossed to put in 8h every day. The result is: when things go well, I complete my tasks and are left with at least 3 hours a day where I'm supposed to be working (so: no relax, no rest, you're on the clock); and when things are not going so well, mostly due to planning mistakes from high up, I have to put in my 8 hours, and then some more.

So please, go tell to be more open-minded to the right people, and let people work to the best of their abilities.

so... it would be a ploy by an early version of Winterm.. I mean IBM's Watson, who is using bitcoin-laundered money to bootstrap itself into a weird-art-making godlike IA?

aaaand there's the expected pay-to-win.

I have always wondered what use is this with regards to spam and sneaky address lists. What exactly prevents someone from cleaning up the addresses before letting them out?

If I were a bad behaved site and sell (sold? sorry, tired and non native speaker) my userlist, i'd probably remove all plus-suffixes from the addresses. Same as if I were a blackhat stealing them to be sold.

Honest question, no snark.

it saved me some work recently as I got to the 'ok, time to dress this up a bit' phase of a project. still recognizable as Bootstrap, but also an easy way to inject a bit of design and good taste in a prototype.