dingsingsing

I think most people at most jobs with stressful deadlines, engineering work, and where individual productivity is measured/praised, feel the same way you do. You aren't crazy or broken for feeling the way you do. Most companies/engineering departments talk about trying to nurture a healthy/pleasant working environment, but that doesn't mean most companies succeed in those efforts. With clients and bosses demanding things constantly, it's not surprising that work environments tend to fall into a negative state despite the noble efforts of a few employees or a VP that talks about building a pleasant work environment.

It sounds like you didn't love your last job, you tried a new type of company (in terms of size of employee count), and you don't love this job or long term project you are working on. There are pleasant companies with fun projects out there to work for, but they are much less common than the companies that suck to work for. Maybe you should write out a list of attributes that you assume an ideal employer/project has, and then start interviewing for those companies/jobs. If you hate your next job as well, rinse and repeat.

Remember your manager is your boss not your friend, so opening up to them that you are unhappy could lead to you being let go or whatever. If you aren't financially stable for 6 months, I wouldn't even tell them this stuff, I would just start prepping for job interviews during off-work hours and try get a new job. If you are comfortable not earning a paycheck for 3-6 months, I would tell my manager this stuff, see what they say, I would not go to HR before manager unless my manager like physically/sexually assaulted me or something. If manager wasnt helpful, I would then go to HR.

At my last job I felt like i was pegged as the dummy on the team, no big deal lol. I think i deserved to be pegged the dummy, maybe you do maybe you don't, regardless of that, you shouldn't worry about it or burn yourself out trying to impress your coworkers because of it (this could all be in your head as well).

Just know, if they are going to fire someone, it might be you and not one of the other all-stars on the team. Try accept that this is out of your control and not stress about it.

What did I do in my last job that i was unhappy with? I spent a few months prepping to interview in off-work hours, eventually I asked for a raise, got denied my raise, interviewed around for a month, and got a new job.

FYI I've worked at a Fortune 500 company (big IT consultant 100,000s of employees), two midsized company (1000ish employees), and two smallish companies > 300 && < 1000. Most places sucked day to day TBH.

In terms of just getting comfortable with a new system, if you have the time, i would suggest trying to get a simple webapp deployed on a new cloud service tool, I've found with Aws, Azure, Netlify, Google Cloud, and other big providers you can just Google search:

-how to deploy static JS website to AWS? -how to deploy java web app to AWS? -How to deploy JS static web app to Netlify?

-For example Google search: How to deploy LAMP server on AWS? https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/install-...

These systems want to take your money so their dev communities, tutorials, and documentation are usually surprisingly readable and easy to get started with assuming you are fluent in English.

From there you can get experience deploying applications to production, and go from there into the more complicated stuff.

A lot of the available tools and systems, aren't required, they just make things run more efficiently and do cool stuff (that you might not "need"). So dont assume you need to use every tool available in AWS's brochure despite some article you read that says otherwise. If you dont want to use containers, don't, and consider learning how to implement your containers when you have time in the future.

In terms of going from a simple web app deployed on a cloud service to being able to handle traffic of thousands of concurrent users, that just requires more reading online about it, consider paying for help if this is a business that you are running with deadlines and not just simply a learning project.

Hello fellow New Englander,

Regarding $11,500 - for six months of training, that seems to be a reasonable rate given the region and competitors costing anywhere from 0-25k$. If the school offers any sort of guaranteed job/interview after completing the program/has good graduation/hired rates i think that makes the 11.5k a bit more digestable.

Before you commit to purchasing a spot in class there i think you should be aware that there are free programs through schools like Platform By Per Scholas/freecodecamp in NYC/online.

Whatever educational institution you end up going with, here are some questions I think you should ask before jumping in:

-get a copy of the curriculum. Start asking IT people you know what they think about the curriculum in regards to your goal of becoming a FILL IN THE BLANK. Even if you don't care what these people have to say, you will get more comfortable with this kind of technical jargon stuff talking to people/awkward IT people who know more about this stuff than you. How does the curriculm stack up to free resources like Freecodecamp and others like that?

-how many people drop out of the program? what happens if you need to drop out (health reasons, money reasons, unexpected blah blah)/or you arent keeping up with the curriculum? Is there a way to prepare for the curriculum with pre-school starting work? Do they take your money and tell you to piss off if you have to drop out? Or do they offer money back/work with you if you have to drop out?

-Can they provide recent graduation/hired/how much money are people making rates out of the program with time since graduation info? You can compare this to other schools.

-What is your timeline? If you do a 6 month bootcamp for 11.5k, would you be happy if you had to continue to learn on your own/interview after the bootcamp ended for another 6 months? Would you only be happy with your purchase if you were hired within a month of the bootcamp? What really is your timeline? I think this timeline and salary expectations really determined whether my peers and I were happy after our bootcamp experiences.

If you are an average learner like I was, I found the bootcamp experience overall positive, but its no magic bullet, as some people, like i did, really needed 2 years to learn stuff it didn't matter that i worked my ass off for 6 months studying night and day longterm. Bootcamp for me 3 months -> studied/interviewed 2 months -> took a job for 8 months in the right direction -> did another school for 3 months -> got a job in the right direction for 1.5 years -> ultimately got a job i am happy with.

I also enjoy Sowell's interviews on Hoover,

Peter Robinson is a great interviewer in my opinion and Sowell and him seem to have great chemistry. (The online/Zoom episodes coming out in recent months definitely lack this fluidity).

I would recommend the "Good Fellows" podcast series which i briefly described. I like most of them sorry I don't have specific episodes in mind.

Political

GoodFellows: Conversations from the Hoover Institution

A panel of fellows from a conservative US think tank interview important people about very macro issues, panel usually includes economists, military generals, high ranking scientists/political leaders

Conversations with Bill Kristol

A well respected former republican politician discusses many American centric issues/historical issues still relevant today with authors/experts

I transitioned from liberal arts degree -> telemarketing / inside sales -> field engineer -> education company teaching IT to underemployed communities -> big IT consulting firm -> normal software engineering job,

You have an awesome background,

Some surprising types of companies that helped me transition into a software engineering role where i am today and am happy with:

-education companies teaching software/IT (lots of online/non-profits doing this nowadays in the US, pays not great, but its fun to teach and you are working with software which is a step in the right direction), i found education hours are usually pretty structured (when you are with students), so that gives you time to continue to ramp up skills outside of those hours, i initially enrolled as a student at my program, at least you will be able to tell your friends/family what you do all day if quitting your job is on the table, and then went on to work for the school for a brief time

-field engineering (installing software systems/robots/machines on client sites), sounds like you have a good background for that, a step in the right direction in my opinion, being on client sites can be pretty brutal though in terms of not having time to improve skills out of work hours due to work deadlines/exhaustion of physical nature of the work and the traveling.

-big consulting firms, big IT consulting firms like Deloitte, Cognizant, Capgemini, handle staffing software engineering/IT departments at a lot of big US corporations. So like Google engineers might mostly be normal Googlers, but there is probably still thousands of IT consults working at Google full time (on projects with like 10 year contracts, obv easier to get hired by IT consultant than a firm like Google) These firms hire both extremely qualified/experienced engineers and newbies like us who might be getting in the industry. Might not be the dream job for someone getting into software engineering, but I found working with senior engineers at Fortune 500 companies to be a great step in the right direction.

I was a field engineer installing robots in factories, more industrial engineering, manual labor (calibrating tools and checking for broken parts), and using software rather than designing software.

The teams that design the software i used sound like the kind of teams you want to be on, so yea, robotics...