Slightly OT: For a decade, software engineers have been facing such a huge demand for their profession that their perception of a 'job' got a bit distorted.
For most of them and those who chose popular stacks it's usually quite easy to get a job. Or any job. This gives them superpowers and enables them to ask for a lot--high salaries, tons of perks, free food, freedom and maybe a company with the right vision, leadership and policies.
But what they forget in all this abudance of options is that a job is a job. You can call it career, give it exciting titles and enrich it with stock options, it stays a job. You can work at Google, at a fancy office, with super smart coworkers and free a-la-carte-food everyday but it is still just a job and you are not free. And even Google has its dark sides the employees accept. Let's not start to talk about Facebook, Microsoft or Apple.
Maybe one company has shady growth tacticts (btw which successful company doesn't have them? Even Google abused all their properties to push Chrome), the next one lacks free food or uses an aged stack. Remember it's always a job. And if one doesn't like it, he might try to find a better option but shouldn't be suprised about new drawbacks. Or he could try to start his own company. A perfect one where everything is perfect for everyone. Then one will realize that many things are more complicated than they seem.
I think this is not OT at all. This is the answer to most job related should-i-stay-or-should-i-go or what-should-i-do questions.
It. Is. A. Job.
If you can't accept that you're in a job and the feeling of entitlement shines thru, that would just be whining in my book. And yes, HN, lots of that in here.
I recently changed career to become whatever I found honest just in case it would make my life different.
Well, being a human beings seems to come with a handicap we almost all have moral compass. And most of my job in IT have been in the dark side of my compass recently.
Right now, I maybe risking my body moving heavy loads with poor equipment and security, commercial making occasional mistakes forces us to do 12h continuous loading of trucks else the company bankrupts and none of us are paid BUT from my perspective it is a great improvement.
Customers are sometimes saying thanks. Coworkers are sometimes saying thanks, and boss too. We are working as a team and when everybody does his/her job correctly we have satisfactions.
A satisfaction I was missing.
And when the day is over, the job is not in my head anymore.
I can once again live a normal life, we don't scam customers, we don't break their goods, we are the most honest we can giving the stupidity of some regulations and of some dishonest customers.
And fuck, being able to feel proud again is worthy the quasi state of misery I live in.
Sometimes, money does not matter as much as feeling you are not wasting your life doing something that makes you something you will come to despise.
Feeling an honest human again worth every single $ and all my savings I lost in the conversion.
For most of them and those who chose popular stacks it's usually quite easy to get a job. Or any job. This gives them superpowers and enables them to ask for a lot--high salaries, tons of perks, free food, freedom and maybe a company with the right vision, leadership and policies.
But what they forget in all this abudance of options is that a job is a job. You can call it career, give it exciting titles and enrich it with stock options, it stays a job. You can work at Google, at a fancy office, with super smart coworkers and free a-la-carte-food everyday but it is still just a job and you are not free. And even Google has its dark sides the employees accept. Let's not start to talk about Facebook, Microsoft or Apple.
Maybe one company has shady growth tacticts (btw which successful company doesn't have them? Even Google abused all their properties to push Chrome), the next one lacks free food or uses an aged stack. Remember it's always a job. And if one doesn't like it, he might try to find a better option but shouldn't be suprised about new drawbacks. Or he could try to start his own company. A perfect one where everything is perfect for everyone. Then one will realize that many things are more complicated than they seem.
There's no perfect job.