The 5-year plan to 50k posts - part douche

[FoxEye]

GD, press "back" now to keep your sanity and not become enraged by my utter uselessness

Or don't, but don't say I didn't warn you...

OK. One of my many (many) flaws is one I share with Homer Simpson That is, once anything get difficult, I quit/run a mile.

So I've had a progression of fairly elementary jobs since flunking out of college many years ago. During this time I kept telling myself that I'll develop some useful skill, start a career, get fit (etc). And I have /started/ many things (mostly past tense).

For example, I've tried to "learn to code" many, many times, scratching the surface over and over. The basics of any programming language are easy to learn and that's great - I love easy But sooner or later, I realise that I'm way out of my depth, which terrifies me and convinces me I'm not meant to be doing it. Only people who already know what they're doing should be doing anything!

But more to the point, learning to code - as with getting good at anything - gets seriously hard, once you move beyond beginner level. Suffice to say, when given the opportunity to build something from scratch, it was awful. Seriously, potentially the most bug-ridden, fragile, assumption-ridden spooge masquerading as "code", that the world has ever seen. And so, truly ashamed and dejected, unable to even look at what I'd spawned, I chose to give up, put away the editor, and go back to the (easy) day job.

But this thread isn't about my journeys and frustrations with BASIC (no, not really ).

It's about quitting when things get hard. I don't know /why/ I do this. It is obviously the worst thing to do. You'll never succeed (duh, obviously) if you quit. But pushing through the hard times just seems impossible. Or conceivable. And then I have the voice in my head telling me, "Even if you learn to code, the market is full of people way better than you, so why bother? You'll only ever be sub-par. And old; your average 14-year-old will be way ahead of you. At 40+ you'll never land a coding job. Why bother? It's hard AND you'll never get anywhere with it."

And I have no idea how to break out of that mindset, which is pretty crippling. How to embrace difficulty and challenge. They seem like hostile things to be afraid of.

Do you personally embrace challenge and difficulty? Do you see them as opportunities to progress and develop? If so, I'd love to be you. But I'm not.

So, what would you do if you had my mindset? Dignitas aside? Did you used to be me? Can you even relate, bro?

 

[Orangeade]

Yes I relate. And to be honest? There is no magic bullet to fix the problem and even worse there is no way to get you to want you to fix the problem.

If you can ruminate enough on the topic it means by and large you have the ability to influence the problem. The fact you don't is purely in your head.

Also why does it have to be coding? Plenty jobs pay far far more than that without having to be a monkey tapping away?

Edit: I solved it myself by putting my many many many mistakes behind me and just saying **** it. I wasn't going to win by doing the same career path as others who started younger so I dodged and weaved. Ended up alright so far.

 

[Nitefly]

Don’t beat yourself up @FoxEye - some walls are impossible to climb, at which point you either need to find away around them or start climbing a different wall.

I have found myself ‘floundering / treading water’ for years because I’ve been of the mindset that I wasn’t quite ‘good enough’ to progress faster. Actually, I now think it’s been the environment that’s holding me back. The wall is unclimbable... for me, at least not without gross sacrifice.

In these situations, I think one has to think outside of the box.

 

[tom_nieto]

You need to decide on what your actual priority is in life rather than torturing yourself with things that you think you should be doing.

If your priority is to make £50k a year then you don’t need to do complex things, but you need to put hours in.

If you want to develop a skill, then again you need to put hours in.

If you actually just want an easy life, then do that! Nothing wrong with this at all.

Do what’s right for you.

 

[Martynt74]

I’d agree with the above. Why does it have to be coding? There are plenty other options available to progression which don’t have to be “technically” difficult.

I’m similar to you in a way. Anything where I can’t instantly be decent at it gets left behind and then I’ll rarely push myself to the point where I’ll excel at it.

However there are plenty things you can just be good enough to do well without being brilliant.

I accept I’m approaching this less as a career point but as a general viewpoint. But just because you can’t excel at coding doesn’t mean there’s not something else out there you could progress with to a good point.

I also accept it’s not easy to find these other things and generally people fall into them. For instance I trained to be an accountant and wanted to pursue that. However in all honestly I’m not great at accuracy and consistency and find I’m much better at finance systems and modelling and the more IT side of it. As such I’ve found a pretty unique niche that always in demand. I didn’t set out to be this guy. I just naturally fell into it.

However like you, up until now I’ve never pushed myself to go further. I’m trying to do things differently though and have set myself a goal with a 5 yr plan of where I want to be (specifically a role in consultancy not just an arbitrary target).

I feel this is a lot of rambling now (lots of bank holiday booze). But maybe it’s time to look for other options where your skills lie rather than trying to focus on something you clearly don’t have enough drive with?

 

[cheesyboy]

Different problems, but certainly I'm limited by my personality.

I've come to suspect I've got ADHD, and in terms of career it means I'm only particularly good when under pressure and can focus. And that doesn't last all that long.

Fortunately, despite being utterly disinterested, I scraped through A-levels (terrible grades), a degree (a Desmond), and then a proper accounting qualification (ACCA), and my real strength seems to be in interviewing well (except, occasionally, where it just doesn't click).

So, to maximise my particular talents, interviewing well and being decent short-term, I just have to change jobs regularly.

Recently left a position I'd stayed at for far, far too long, treading water on experience and pay, so plan to stick new role for a year, then change at least twice more within another 3 years, and after that I should be earning about what I aim to be on.

All that is to say, be real with yourself. Recognise what you can and can't do, and then solve the puzzle of how to maximise.

Just apply for jobs that you aspire to, whether or not you think you can really do them, and spend some time method-acting what you think they want from you. Exaggerate or embellish your experience in respect of what your last job consisted of. Eventually, you get a job, and then you have to solve how to do it. Or not - just leave after 6 months and lie about how great you were to your next employer.

 

[arknor]

One of my friends was a psychologist or something like that doing medical research with kids.
next thing I know she's telling me she got a new job coding.

somehow she self learnt enough to get a job in like 6 months, I think it's only java though.

I tried learning python and was like no way I'm ever going to get this..

what did language did you try? it's probably better to jump in somewhere simple.

BTW if you watch pros coding in python on twitch they still hit up google a lot for solutions

 

[FoxEye]

If you actually just want an easy life, then do that! Nothing wrong with this at all.

I can't help but think there is something intrinsically wrong with taking the easy route.

I think partly that's because my siblings have done well for themselves, and they all have a fighter/worker mentality.

But also my upbringing. As a (young) kid my teachers all said I had ability but not drive. They said "He just needs to apply himself." And I never did Seems like a squandering of a life if I just keep taking the easy way out.

Also as a (young) kid I thought I'd be a game dev. But I was wrong, I just liked vidya. Today I don't even have a passion for vidya I'm more enthusiastic about passing my dinner than playing games these days.

I've just drifted into my current job and I'm bloody awful at that too.

It's frustrating, and even more so when I acknowledge that nobody is driving this ship bar me. I'm a **** captain!

I guess I fixate on coding because it's just what the kid me thought I'd do. I'm terrible at it tho and should leave it to those with the right mindset to excel at it. Does mean I've got to find some passion for ... something else, tho. I have no passion for anything to be frank!

what did language did you try? it's probably better to jump in somewhere simple

It's not the language. I've played with dozens of them, from assembler to Pascal to C++ to JavaScript to Powershell, with splatterings of SQL, RegEx, CSS, HTML, X-Path, yadda.

I just can't engineer well-formed solutions for toffee. Coding is not just language familiarity. It's the related methodology, patterns, creating modular and re-usable code, logical solution design, etc. The more you know the more you realise your efforts are amateur-hour But you don't always know exactly how to get better.

I guess part of that is attempting to be 100% self-taught and not working with anyone else. Something I hadn't considered until reading an article tonight.

Hell if somebody looked at the code I've (occasionally) written for work they'd frog-march my ass out the building, stat! It's awful. So bad.

 

[jsmoke]

At the end of the day it's about passion and discipline, you obviously are luke warm, at most, with both. How do you invoke sustained passion in somebody, that's a good question. A lot has to do with your early years, the experiences you had for you could argue there are an infinite different number of realities or outcomes.

You need a purpose to code, whether it's to make money or to compete against others or maybe your a bit autistic and just love to endlessly puzzle away at things, or maybe your quite arrogant and like to show off your new skill set.

 

[tom_nieto]

You don’t have to take the easy route, you just need to find what it is that you actually want to do. Coding is clearly not it!

Also, stop focusing on the deficits (perceived or otherwise) and focus on your strengths.

Beating yourself up about things that you’re no good at is wasted energy.

 

[FoxEye]

You don’t have to take the easy route, you just need to find what it is that you actually want to do. Coding is clearly not it!

True. But if I give up on that then I'm at square 0... "What do?"

It's no doubt for the best, but it means saying, "The last 40+ years never happened, you're starting from scratch and you don't even know what you might want to do, and you've got bills to pay."

Heck I pretty much stopped enjoying IT in general. There's little/no job satisfaction. People expect things to work (and rightly so) so generally the kind of IT work I do is just fixing stuff to meet their 100% uptime expectations

It's not like I'm in cutting-edge AI work or anything exciting. Just keeping the lights on. Really uninspiring stuff.

 

[Nitefly]

At the end of the day it's about passion and discipline, you obviously are luke warm, at most, with both. How do you invoke sustained passion in somebody, that's a good question. A lot has to do with your early years, the experiences you had for you could argue there are an infinite different number of realities or outcomes.

You need a purpose to code, whether it's to make money or to compete against others or maybe your a bit autistic and just love to endlessly puzzle away at things, or maybe your quite arrogant and like to show off your new skill set.

Also, passion is contagious and excitement and drive is spurred on by peers. If you find yourself without competent and excitable peers or mentors, then it’s foreseeable that you too could stagnate.

 

[explicit4u]

Ever tried therapy? Something like CBT might be worth exploring.

 

[Mr Badger]

Also, to get the big bucks it's customary to be prepared to fake it.

 

[Mysterae_]

I originally thought this thread was about taking 5 years to get to 50k posts on this forum . Same answer applies though, you're more than half way there, don't give up!

 

[Pawnless Endgame]

If there are elements of computing that you are already good at, don't let that slip away. My Dad made that mistake in that he was a chartered engineer, got into computers early on e.g. Fortran in the 1970s. Was an early adopter of PCs, kept his brain busy with his engineering career and then became a lecturer. Then he decided to just let it go completely and actually became a technophobe while he was still of working age. When the pandemic struck, he was unable to figure out stuff like WhatsApp and Zoom/video calls. Became a complete luddite, still wrote cheques etc.

I'm the same with the music instrument that I picked up during school years. I stopped playing and I lost my skill in that, so similar situation.

 

[jsmoke]

It's not like I'm in cutting-edge AI work or anything exciting. Just keeping the lights on. Really uninspiring stuff.

Your the tea boy.

Seriously, your too caught up in norms. Most programmers just get on with teaching themselves.. It's hard work. Read, Masters Of Doom, it's about iD software in their early days. Often they'd work 18 hour days and sleep under their desks, wake up, eat the stale pizza beside them then back to work.

 

[builder22]

And then I have the voice in my head telling me, "Even if you learn to code, the market is full of people way better than you, so why bother?

think of it as a sliding scale rather than an either/or situation...aiming to be the very best isn't a bad thing but for most that's not going to be possible for whatever reason, as mentioned determination/environment etc

 

[RoboCod]

Considering your last thread about this and then where this thread looks to be going to, I also support the suggestion of therapy. Maybe life coaching or something like that. Seriously, it might help you focus on what you really do want in life and how you are going to achieve it.

 

[[FnG]magnolia]

@OP - I read all your posts and I know you think I'm an unfair and unreliable narrator (I don't disagree with any of this) so some thoughts to disregard:

- So, what would you do if you had my mindset? Dignitas aside? Did you used to be me? Can you even relate, bro? Yes.
- It's about quitting when things get hard. No.
- Ever tried therapy? You should.
- And I have no idea how to break out of that mindset, which is pretty crippling. How to embrace difficulty and challenge. They seem like hostile things to be afraid of. Sometimes we just need to keep on keeping on. There's always tomorrow.

On a wider note, and one that does upset me, Samuel Beckett was wrong. I schooled at the other place and had this hammered into me and it is still wrong.

Estragon: Nothing to be done.
Vladimir: I’m beginning to come round to that opinion.

There is everything to be done, to be studied, to be ignoned, to be riled, to be waved at, frowned at, big box little box, and be happy.