ansq
A course, or any kind of structured learning, is just a foundation. I would still expect to spend hours outside of the course, but with a good background I can now search for more specific things than if I had started w/ a blank slate.
Though in my experience, the courses on Udemy/Udacity and the like have been disappointing. I always get the feeling that they're trying to fill up time, and they tend to move really slowly.
I've had more luck with books being very useful.
This is my philosophy after ~2 years of working on distributed systems. I got sick of vague design discussions where everyone has a 5 minute memory.
I am much happier to sit at my desk and figure it out by writing code, then produce a design doc once I have a solid prototype working. It feels more honest and real.
At the same time, I wonder if I'm missing out on a different way of doing things.
Some people take pride in creating products that are widely used + lots of jobs.
1. You can't foresee competition, why give up early.
2. It's a big market, worth a shot even if it fails.
3. Someone thought the project would be good for their promotion. This happens more frequently than you might think :)
My advice is to try to halt all of that and dedicate 100% energy towards traditional ways of finding a job over the next month.
Out of curiosity, what about family?
It's a viable career strategy. It's hard to hire, so if you stick around you'll have more responsibility fall into your lap.
The other thing I notice is that he's great at kissing butt.
As an aside, my advice to people stuck under a crappy manager is to get out ASAP. You can even switch teams and be under the same skip manager.