Well, happy New Years everyone. As they say, new year, new me.
I had a relatively restful past 2 weeks off work which was nice. At this point any time off I get I consider a win. What I find funny is that last week (my first week back to work), my brain basically was turned off and still in standby mode 24 hours a day. I still went through the most basic motions of work to make it appear that something was getting done, but internally that part of me had to lie dormant because I wasn’t psychologically prepared to dive back into the office. Today however I finally came out of the shell and thank goodness; now I know my brain still works to some degree.
Anyways, I’ve resolved to a few things this year. More fitness, more traveling, and more gaming. Gonna keep the goals simple this year. I find as I get older that it’s crucial to be nice to myself and treat myself like a human being, even if that doesn’t always happen externally. It’s a core aspect of maintaining a healthy psyche I think. There are still parts of myself that I’m sorting through and figuring out; my development isn’t quite done and will require ongoing work.
About 2 weeks ago I spent roughly a week hiking in the mountains and in many ways recalibrated my body and mind. Many people I know asked why I did it, and it took some time to synthesize a complete answer, but what it boiled down to was removing all the inputs of the grinding machine of life and work. Sometimes you need to unplug and turn off all the channels on the TV for a while to see where you really find yourself in the larger game of life, if that makes sense.
Getting that change of scenery injected into my routine really did help my perspective on what I think is important to me. In fact, what I’ve come to realise recently is that through my life, there was always some kind of concrete big goal to hit and achieve. At various points it was something like graduate from school, obtain a degree, get a job in the field, etc. but now that I’ve achieved all of those things, I’ve been in some kind of holding pattern for the past 5 years where my “next big goal” hasn’t exactly materialised yet. I’ve found as a working adult, it’s much harder to define those goals now because they can be very abstract and intangible. How do I know what success is anymore if I’ve already succeeded? What is the next big stepping stone of life? A house? Marriage? Early retirement? Investments?
Culturally, the norm for people of my background is to get married, have kids, and settle down so to speak. However, I’ve never been the kind of person to want any of that. I was raised by, frankly, dysfunctional people so my view of family is biased towards doing everything in my power never to experience such a toxic environment like that ever again, even if it means I miss out on these so-called good parts of life. I love my music, friends, hobbies, and life itself too much to get bogged down in the muck with the stresses of serious relationships. I even tried such a thing in my mid-twenties and it went to smithereens after 4-6 years of on-and-off with a long-distance partner who did not want to compromise on anything. So, I guess you could say I’ve been jaded by negative experiences in this aspect of my life. I never intended it to go that direction, but things have a strange way of working out at the end of the day.
That said, just because it’s not for me doesn’t mean it’s universally a bad thing. I’m not bitter at all and will gladly support any of my friends should they choose to get married and settle down. It’s just not for me.
So today is Monday. I spent the weekend traveling to a city I lived in 5 years ago, and I had one of the best times of my life in just those 3 days alone.
So maybe this is just the post-vacation blues talking here, but once I got back home last night, a deep regret washed over me. All of my friends in that city are having a blast, while also suffering under the evils of an increasing cost of living, but the point is, compared to everyone I know in the city I live in now, those friends are actually legitimately happy which is something I haven’t seen in 5 years.
The regret began when I started thinking about the circumstances of why and how I left the city 5 years ago. I was seriously injured, requiring surgery, my job at the time was very difficult and toxic, and I was generally in a deeply depressed and financially poor state. I was barely affording my rent and food, every paycheck was filled with fear about whether I could continue supporting myself, etc.
These were all very valid reasons to leave. I needed a major surgery, I needed physical support to move around from family and others, I needed to find a new job, and I could no longer afford the costs of living in the city.
Revisiting now after having solved all of these problems makes me wonder if I should try to move back to the city. Yes, it’s a very naïve and impulsive thought. I have not done any research on how things have changed. All I know is that the city has gotten much more expensive and the auto traffic is far worse than it was when I left.
In that vein of thought, I put together a few points on what it would take for me to basically press the Yes button on this initiative and actually move back:
I must have a job lined up
The salary of the new job MUST be above market rate and MUST be enough for me to comfortably live and have good amount of money leftover to put into savings every month
The new work environment MUST be a friendly, collaborative workplace where I feel good about contributing my thoughts and ideas to others without fear of retaliation from above or below
The new living accommodations must be very close to the new workplace. I refuse to sit in traffic for 45 minutes just to get to and from work, leading to the next point which is…
The new job must have remote WFH options as a capability. I should be able to work from home as often as needed
From point #2, I need to be out and about more socially, and not get stuck in a routine where all I do is go from home to office to gym and repeat ad nauseum
So if all of the above criteria are met, I could very realistically see myself back in that city within the next year or so, depending on how my current job goes. I will need to save a decent amount of money to have some buffer to move, find a new place, settle in, and relax for a few weeks before the next job starts.
One additional regret I had over this past weekend was not having enough time to see more friends and eat at my favourite places. I think what this means is another trip is in order, bigger and bolder than before. I think I will plan the next trip to coincide with a holiday that falls on a Friday or Monday. This way I can string together 4-5 days of time off consecutively and actually have more time to hang out and have fun on a relaxed schedule.
I was going to write something during the holidays, possibly a return to my “Holidaze” series, but it just didn’t feel right at the time. It was not a good time for me, being sick, and having a miserable, measly ten days off for the end of the year. I felt cheated out of happiness in a big way last year. I felt like I’d missed out on many things, events, lives of people I know, etc. just due to work.
That said, it’s a new year. A time for new resolutions, goals, etc. In that vein I’ve mapped out a goal of working on my diet a bit more and being more mindful about what I’m putting into my body. It’s not really a lofty goal I would say, it’s one borne by experience and personal knowledge of my own capabilities. A big part of this includes regularly tracking my daily calories and macros on MyFitnessPal, which I’ve found useful in the past.
I’ve found myself becoming bitter and a general fatigue has sort of set in for the past six months. Work has stripped away much of my personal satisfaction and happiness.
My friends can read it in my demeanour pretty much immediately and the cracks of burnout are starting to show here. There’s like 3 days a week where I’m genuinely psyched about life, and those are Friday evening, Saturday, and Sunday. The rest of the week is a straight meat grinder.
I used to joke with friends last year repeatedly dropping the line “Guys, I need a spa day” but never actually having time to spend to do such a thing. Honestly at this point, I think this is the most important thing I need right now. I’ve never even been to a spa before, despite claims to the contrary, and the thought of having to plan and set up the damn thing just makes me sick inside. Not because I don’t want to go, but because my mental capacity for doing anything outside of work has eroded to near-dust.
In the big box knowledge industry, what happens to us pawns is we get ground down hard by the mechanisms at play without having much of a say or any real agency in the nature of the work. It is a system designed to break the human spirit in the most insidious and Sisyphean of ways: death by a thousand cuts. It’s not a truckload of work being dumped on you all at once. No, no that would be too easy! No, the reality is actually much worse. Think of the work itself as the bloated corpse of a whale, gradually leaking bodily fluids and gases out everyday and slowly filling your pristine little beach with a stink you don’t recognise. Sure, at first you raise the alarms and spread the word that something is not quite right. But the people you’re telling are too busy digging a tunnel so far underground that it takes days, weeks to relay a message from the surface. And guess what? When you finally get a message from the tunnelers down below, it’s a used diaper filled with the shit of a thousand pigs that has, scrawled on the outside with a sharpie: “Too busy, we’ll get to it later”. They might as well just drag me all the way down to the gates of hell where, as Dante famously describes written on them, the words “Abandon hope, all ye who enter this place”.
So there you have it. It’s the Winchester mystery house problem scaled to infinity. If you’ve been a long-time reader, you’ll recall the Winchester mystery house problem in one of my posts from like 2017-2018ish or so. I’m honestly too tired to link it, but if anyone can find it, please drop it in the comments. It’s a great read and gives a cursory introduction to the sometimes hellish world I subject myself to 5-6 days a week. Yes, you heard that right. Occasionally I have to work on Saturdays too. It’s one more cut in the death by a thousand cuts that has just ground me down over the past year. The weekends are my recharge time. Why the hell am I spending them at work? This is the epitome of nonsense incarnate. I am running on a hamster wheel, deep in the rat race without much of an end in sight. My old calculus professor was absolutely right. If you see light at the end of the tunnel, don’t run towards it. It’s a lorry.
I don’t know, really. The misery of work, plus the misery of being on a diet are getting to me. I just want a steak and a week of sleep. And more and more, those are becoming distant dreams. Or memories of a time when everything wasn’t so batshit insane and hectic. Either way, I’ll try to get some rest this weekend unless I get pinged/buzzed to work tomorrow. In which case, I will play the entirety of Slayer’s “Reign in Blood” and slowly devolve into madness, ending in a small cup of lavender tea and a good cry on the floor of my shower Sunday evening as I slowly muster the courage to do this bullshit all over again.
As I said earlier it’s a meat grinder. Or as Dickens would say in the Tale of Two Cities, it is “a face hardened by fires in the furnace of suffering”.
In case it’s not apparent the post title is a nod to the classic film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
I’m tired. My sleep has become biphasic. After work I nod off from 7p to 11p, then wake up, eat dinner, go back to bed at 2am, then wake up at 6am to do it all over again. Life has become a series of never-ending virtual meetings, commuting, sleep, and Youtube binges. By the end of the week I cannot even muster the energy to socialize with the people who matter in my life, and it’s taking a toll. My mood sours and I have no real recourse on how to fix this destructive work-life balance I’ve now found myself in.
It’s happened before years ago at another company and I literally packed my things and disappeared for the sake of my health when it became too much. I may do something similar now but in my mind I want to do the old habit of giving my employer 2 weeks notice and seeing where that goes. Most importantly I should have a job lined up before I decide to exit and a plan of what to do next.
The good news here is that with the few prospective companies I’ve talked to over the course of July, they’ve mentioned that fully remote and relocation are options for me. I’m very flexible when it comes to where I live, and frankly I fancy getting the hell out of the city I’m in if it means I get to go somewhere new and be someone else. Maybe I can reinvent myself. Maybe I can find that spark again that made everything worth it. Maybe I can even find a partner. I’ve come to terms with the worst experiences of my past and I’m comfortable living above my demons instead of trying to force them out. It’s been a real wakeup call for me as it required a serious attitude adjustment and a lot of self-help, patience, and forgiveness.
So to add to the already-hectic 50-hour work weeks I’ll now need to begin a study regimen of 20 hours a week to get used to interviewing again. I’ve bought some flash cards to get started on memorizing important terms and jargon again. It’s like going back to university but at a much faster pace. I’m like 60% sure my brain still works well enough to do this because if it doesn’t, I’ll be trapped at my current job until I’m sharp enough to land another role in a better place. So by that metric it absolutely has to work. Again, I’ll forgive myself and just get back on the wagon and continue interviewing if things don’t pan out because somewhere out there, there’s a job and a city that will treat me like a human being and not a record in a database.
4:30pm. This is usually the time Monday through Friday where my brain is mostly fried from work. My workday starts at 6:45am.
Wanted to spend a few minutes venting about the nature of legacy applications but I don’t have enough petrol in the tank to do so. So I’ll do one better. The 4:30 hellscape.
So at 4pm today I was pinged by a coworker and dragged into a call for a prod support issue on the spaghetti garbage legacy shitter application my team was long ago doomed to support. 4 o’fucking clock lads.
So naturally the first question I asked is “what the fuck am I doing in this call?”. I received only a businessy hand waving answer of “oooh this issue was reported this morning and it may get escalated up to management if we don’t get it fixed immediately!!1!”
Well ladies and gents, I don’t respond to threats or ransoms. I told the person that they know as well as I do that WE ARE RUNNING A SKELETON CREW. We don’t have the capacity to respond to last minute user requests!!!
I simply don’t stand for this petty blame game bullshit. It doesn’t solve any problems and in fact drags things out even more than they need to be. And more importantly, it’s not professional. Act like an adult goddammit. Follow the established protocols! Read the writing on the fucking wall dumbass! Is that too much to ask?
Furthermore, this last minute idiocy also just cost me a movie date with someone I’m seeing. I was supposed to watch a new film with them in about an hour and it’s very likely not gonna happen now. I can usually turn the other cheek with work-related crap but when it bleeds into consequences for my personal life, I have to stand up and say enough is enough. I feel like a tram donkey today. Fucks sake.
So I’m approaching that time of year where I’ve started thinking more seriously about new opportunities for professional growth. I’ve had a few point-blank no-bullshit conversations with people at work about the general state of affairs and as it turns out, my company’s upper management is deeply worried about lack of retention. Apparently people are quitting in droves mainly due to the announcement of return-to-office.
No one wants to go back. That’s a fact. We’ve been remote for just over 2 years now. There’s less stress, no commute, no stupid office parties, team events, HR wrangling, etc. All of the illusions around the idea of pretending to be busy have been shattered. I’m getting more work done in less time now than I ever have at any point in my career before.
That brings us to the topic of shopping around. The natural question, you might ask, is how does that work?
Generally speaking in IT, if you’re a semi-competent individual contributor with experience under your belt, chances are your inbox will be getting daily hits from recruiters from all over looking for new talent. What that means to me is, I don’t exactly need to actively go out of my way looking for a new job.
My responsibility here will be to filter through all of these recruiter emails and figure out what’s shit, what’s fake, what’s real, what are the salary ranges, what are the benefits, and so on. There’s a tiny handful of companies I’d ideally love to work for due to my love of music and fitness, but I don’t know if I could handle rejection from any of these “dream” places, y’know? And furthermore, so far I haven’t seen any recruiter emails from the companies I actually want to work for.
So ironically, it may be that I’ll need to actively apply to those companies I want to get into.
Some basic criteria in what I’m looking for:
– 10-15% salary increase
– Fully-remote (this is a hard requirement. I’ll reject anything and anyone who tells me they want to do any form of on-site work)
– The company gives a shit about tech
– The company is working with bleeding-edge tech. No more legacy application rubbish.
– The role must be development-heavy. I don’t mind bugfixes, these are a natural part of the software delivery lifecycle. What I mean here is that the role is not that of a fucking support helpdesk. The ideal ratio of dev to support should be 85-15 to 90-10.
I’m perfectly happy starting a new role by taking on bugs. Bugs are a great way for new developers to understand the codebase, how it fits together, where the pain points and bottlenecks are, etc. My point here is I’d like to build new features and I’d like to see the fruit of my labour. The latter is idealistic, but hey we all need to aspire a little bit, right?
Dream bigger, darling.
Anyways I’m off my soapbox. Hope everyone is doing well out there. Happy Friday, and enjoy the weekend if you can. Cheers 🥃
So I guess this is now a recurring series called Myth of the Sinking Ship. The name is inspired by the idea in software development that one good developer cannot steer a failing project back on course when it was doomed to fail in the first place, whether it was by the powers that be (management tying up funding, lack of a team, impossible deadlines, growing requirements without limits, etc.), or the personalities that be. The analogy is similar to a master oarsman on a slowly sinking ship, who, no matter how good his oar, how great his strength, simply cannot shovel out enough water faster than it is coming in.
Parts 2 and 3 of this series covered my experiences at a small company (<100 people total) and the glaring red flags that popped up at a certain point in the projects that I contributed to there.
In this chapter of the series, I’ll go a little into the red flags now showing up in a big way at the current company and project. Once again, as I said before, it’s time to find a way off this rock.
About that time
The good news in this edition of the corporate circus is that I now have enough experience to “see” when things are going to get ugly. Because of these powers of prophecy (sarcasm? maybe? who knows) I smell the bs hundreds of miles away now instead of opening my front door and seeing it on the welcome mat. I have more runway to escape than I ever have before due to what I know now about how projects are managed at this company and how these scenarios play out.
It’s been nearly 5 years since I started working as a software engineer professionally, and I’ve got enough experience (and bag of tricks) now to leverage myself as a competent mid to senior level engineer. Hell, I’ve hardly written any code at work for the past 3 months. My time has been divided between:
Helping senior engineers troubleshoot and designing multiple possible solutions to their problems, partially because I’m fearing becoming obsolete as a developer, and partially because I’m frustrated that people who are senior in title to me cannot grasp Google well enough to find answers to their problems and come up with solutions.
Mentoring junior developers on coding standards and best practices (effectively, the big no-no’s of writing code in an enterprise environment)
Delivering completely ad-hoc on-the-fly reporting data and application analysis to my feature lead (at this point, in title only. He’s never had this type of role before and every 15-min call I have with him is a 45-min long panic attack from him about management)
Uncovering the skeletons in the closet (recall my old post about the Winchester Mystery House diarrhea detective work) in this new project I was assigned to. To give you some idea of what’s going on:
The application is for all intents and purposes, legacy. Uses outdated and vulnerable frameworks and libraries. Running on old servers with poorly designed technology. The majority of the codebase was justified to me with the literal rationale of “because we had to.”. Fair. But if you’re gonna be like that, then at least dedicate some time, any time, to cleaning up your messes. A sloppy janitor only works for a day, after all.
Before I joined it, the way the work was done was by a single engineer who heroed through every single request sent his way from every direction, every team that asked for anything, he was the SME and point of knowledge for everything in the project. In software we call this tribal knowledge, and it’s a sign of very bad things to come. If Joe Blow suddenly ups and outs from the project, no one else has any idea of what really went on under the hood. This is the current predicament, funnily enough (but I can’t even laugh at my own schadenfreude today).
A spread of junior developers on the team, who are literally less than a year into their careers post-college. One of them is somewhat competent in a very narrow capacity, the rest are requiring a lot of mentoring and education on the application they’ve been a part of for the past year WHICH I ONLY JOINED 3 WEEKS AGO. Imagine that, someone new comes into your project and in 3 weeks of digging through your disgusting spaghetti, is able to provide answers to questions from the rest of the team WITHOUT CONTEXT.
…
Anyways I’m starting to rant now, lol. Enough talk of the present monkey freak circus. The next logical question you might ask after reading the drivel above is: So what are you gonna do about it?
Well my friends, I am not a superhero coder anymore. I operated like that in my first job out of college, if you recall, and it did a big number on my mental and physical health. These days I do my job, only my job, and that’s it. When that starts to bleed into my personal time, it’s time to step back and analyse wtf the point is of work.
So as the series suggests, I am finding a way off this rock. I’ve spent the last 2 weeks heavily coding in a new language to prepare for interviews. I’m putting in 3 hours a day after work to reteach myself Java, but this time for the enterprise world. My background with Java goes back to 2008 and the days of Java 6. Back then, I coded mostly for fun and school projects. I had no serious aspirations of returning to the language when I picked up C/C++ in college, nor did I think I’d go back to it for the past 5 years, as I’ve mainly been a C#/.NET Core head. But like all great programmers before me, I must continue to be language-agnostic and start looking at languages as tools to solve a problem. Not everything is a nail to be hammered, and the approach to problem solving has to be well-tuned. Pick the right tool for the job and nothing more.
That said, Spring Boot seems to be the API framework of choice these days in Java. I’ve been following https://spring.io/guides/tutorials/rest/ to get a general understanding of the pieces and how they all fit together. It’s a lot of work for someone who (in all honesty) does not burn the midnight oil studying programming nonstop everyday. What I did at work for this company was generally enough to satisfy that itch, and after fighting for 8 hours a day through red tape, approvals, back-and-forth emails about bureaucratic processes (all necessary evils of the job I admit), and finally 1-2 hours of focused coding, I’m no longer scratching that coding itch at work. So I must do it outside of work, for better or worse.
I see this as a net positive. If I don’t get the job I want somewhere else, I’ll at the very least have learned something NEW and TRANSFERRABLE that I can take with me to the next place.
That’s about all I can muster for now. If life throws me any significant updates, I’ll broadcast that here.
The Life and Times 