Before anything, hi. I just made this account and I'm writing this at 4:27am simply because I'm unable to sleep.
A little background:
I'm 31, studying programming since 20 because of a career change, went and got a technical degree around 26 and after that I started job hunting with minimal experience in web designing (html, css, javascript, php) and oop (mostly Java and C#).
Most of my love for the job came from C# and so I ended up playing with things like Unity out of pleasure despite never making any big projects and just the occasional smartphone meme game back then.
My internships in college involved a startup company in game designing and programming (which seemed great back then) but it turned out to be something devoid of passion where the employees are understaffed, overworked and underpaid (when paid at all) - So this one was my first experience seeing the harsh reality of game dev world. This was not a good experience as I never learned much of anything and was even fired as I refused to work extra hours without a proper paycheck. At the time I warned my college and left the place to try another internship the next year.
The next year I went into an already established company that worked in the fabrication of routers for most communication companies of my country and it was a pleasant experience as, again, I went into C# and managed to build an IP scanner which, considering my lack of knowledge on computer networks, I was kind of proud at the time. But this internship never got me a proper job so I left again without much value to my name aside from a very good grade on my final report and project.
After this part of my life, with college behind me, I went around job hunting and... boy oh boy... nobody hires without experience and now COVID is out! Awesome.
So I kept trying to search while at the same time trying to make do with employment center seminars (they pay you to be present) until, fast forward 2 years ago, I met someone interested in giving me a full internship of a year. I talked to this person, showed my interest and then he gave me an interview a few months after.
So now I'm in this one company in an internship but internship rules say I need to have a house on site, so I move out to pay rent in the small town this company has a main building on, friends and family at 300 kilometer distance. Now I'm again in a startup company, after COVID, a bit rusty on everything and I'm trying to learn everything from scratch at a higher rate than ever.
The place I work in has 2 main employees beside me which include my boss (who's almost always out) and the lead programmer who so far is the best guy I ever met in the field both as a tech guy and as a person (let's call him Top Dog). We have another company building in the closest city but it's mostly for web design.
So Top Dog is basically the one guy who works in programming in the whole company and "overworked" is an underterm for this man. I accept this as a "it is what it is..." kind of situation despite still thinking, this trend of finding places to work on and them being only places hanging by a thread, is getting old.
Meanwhile the same guy who got me the internship is the stereotypical programmer who works his main job and this other company where I'm at at night... it starts becoming a problem when the small team we have starts getting messages for work around 1-2 am because "he needs feedback"... this eventually becomes a problem for a lot of us and the team eventually starts deviating from this person.
I take the whole situation here with a massive grain of salt because I'm learning so much but the stress gets to me a lot:
Quite a few extra hours have been poured into considering otherwise I have no way to do everything.
Meanwhile Top Dog is my source of calm during the process but then turns out he's leaving the company which gives my boss depression. So now this is a situation in which Top Dog still gets a paycheck but works at another company while, at the same time, works on our company when free.
Months have passed and my internship is at an end.
I got an intensive course on C# (class structure, general coding practices, LINQ, XML reading and parsing among many other bits of knowledge).
I'm seeing a contract at the end of this but now I'm really unsure I even want it considering that this stress is making me write this whole thing at this hour and the paycheck isn't gonna be amazing.
I'm hanging in despite the unrealistic schedules and expectations from the higher ups but my "rebellious attitude" at wanting to keep a schedule and realistic deadlines is getting me a huge amount of stress. It doesn't help that, to this day, I still don't work with the guy who got me here which is something that gets thrown on my face (but nobody does so this is something I still don't know what to think). I have no issues with anybody else but seems like I'm also not the only one who refuses to work with the guy... which was my last big fight with the boss:
"So wait, you're saying nobody works with him and yet it's the team that needs to change attitude to accomodate him?" - me to the boss which got him to spin the argument in circles... Things like me needing to do extra hours after work and weekends came into the picture and... look, I see it clearly on the kind of person they want to bring to the table and I'm not that person. I'm not someone who codes all the time simply because I can and want out of the goodness in my own heart. I enjoy the process of coding but I do not enjoy getting a burnout out of it.
It's a bit all over the place but this is my general story...
All I wanted was a job with flexibility where I could work from home and all I get is stress accompanied by a paycheck that I feel equals the amount I get working as a barman or a gas deposit guy which are both less taxing jobs and don't require me to do any extra work once I clock out.
I feel like I could become even better in time but my will to do better is being replaced with anger at my boss for not opening his eyes to see what's really wrong here.
In the end I'm struggling to understand why I'm even insisting on this despite the unhealthy practices and environment.
Anyway, thanks for reading, not even sure this was the right place to write something like this (if it isn't do excuse me) I'm gonna try to sleep a bit again.
A little background:
I'm 31, studying programming since 20 because of a career change, went and got a technical degree around 26 and after that I started job hunting with minimal experience in web designing (html, css, javascript, php) and oop (mostly Java and C#).
Most of my love for the job came from C# and so I ended up playing with things like Unity out of pleasure despite never making any big projects and just the occasional smartphone meme game back then.
My internships in college involved a startup company in game designing and programming (which seemed great back then) but it turned out to be something devoid of passion where the employees are understaffed, overworked and underpaid (when paid at all) - So this one was my first experience seeing the harsh reality of game dev world. This was not a good experience as I never learned much of anything and was even fired as I refused to work extra hours without a proper paycheck. At the time I warned my college and left the place to try another internship the next year.
The next year I went into an already established company that worked in the fabrication of routers for most communication companies of my country and it was a pleasant experience as, again, I went into C# and managed to build an IP scanner which, considering my lack of knowledge on computer networks, I was kind of proud at the time. But this internship never got me a proper job so I left again without much value to my name aside from a very good grade on my final report and project.
After this part of my life, with college behind me, I went around job hunting and... boy oh boy... nobody hires without experience and now COVID is out! Awesome.
So I kept trying to search while at the same time trying to make do with employment center seminars (they pay you to be present) until, fast forward 2 years ago, I met someone interested in giving me a full internship of a year. I talked to this person, showed my interest and then he gave me an interview a few months after.
So now I'm in this one company in an internship but internship rules say I need to have a house on site, so I move out to pay rent in the small town this company has a main building on, friends and family at 300 kilometer distance. Now I'm again in a startup company, after COVID, a bit rusty on everything and I'm trying to learn everything from scratch at a higher rate than ever.
The place I work in has 2 main employees beside me which include my boss (who's almost always out) and the lead programmer who so far is the best guy I ever met in the field both as a tech guy and as a person (let's call him Top Dog). We have another company building in the closest city but it's mostly for web design.
So Top Dog is basically the one guy who works in programming in the whole company and "overworked" is an underterm for this man. I accept this as a "it is what it is..." kind of situation despite still thinking, this trend of finding places to work on and them being only places hanging by a thread, is getting old.
Meanwhile the same guy who got me the internship is the stereotypical programmer who works his main job and this other company where I'm at at night... it starts becoming a problem when the small team we have starts getting messages for work around 1-2 am because "he needs feedback"... this eventually becomes a problem for a lot of us and the team eventually starts deviating from this person.
I take the whole situation here with a massive grain of salt because I'm learning so much but the stress gets to me a lot:
- I do client support for the software we create (which takes a ton of time);
- I correct bugs and add features while trying to explain to the boss that a guy with 1 month inside the company isn't gonna pull miracles out of the software;
Quite a few extra hours have been poured into considering otherwise I have no way to do everything.
Meanwhile Top Dog is my source of calm during the process but then turns out he's leaving the company which gives my boss depression. So now this is a situation in which Top Dog still gets a paycheck but works at another company while, at the same time, works on our company when free.
Months have passed and my internship is at an end.
I got an intensive course on C# (class structure, general coding practices, LINQ, XML reading and parsing among many other bits of knowledge).
I'm seeing a contract at the end of this but now I'm really unsure I even want it considering that this stress is making me write this whole thing at this hour and the paycheck isn't gonna be amazing.
I'm hanging in despite the unrealistic schedules and expectations from the higher ups but my "rebellious attitude" at wanting to keep a schedule and realistic deadlines is getting me a huge amount of stress. It doesn't help that, to this day, I still don't work with the guy who got me here which is something that gets thrown on my face (but nobody does so this is something I still don't know what to think). I have no issues with anybody else but seems like I'm also not the only one who refuses to work with the guy... which was my last big fight with the boss:
"So wait, you're saying nobody works with him and yet it's the team that needs to change attitude to accomodate him?" - me to the boss which got him to spin the argument in circles... Things like me needing to do extra hours after work and weekends came into the picture and... look, I see it clearly on the kind of person they want to bring to the table and I'm not that person. I'm not someone who codes all the time simply because I can and want out of the goodness in my own heart. I enjoy the process of coding but I do not enjoy getting a burnout out of it.
It's a bit all over the place but this is my general story...
All I wanted was a job with flexibility where I could work from home and all I get is stress accompanied by a paycheck that I feel equals the amount I get working as a barman or a gas deposit guy which are both less taxing jobs and don't require me to do any extra work once I clock out.
I feel like I could become even better in time but my will to do better is being replaced with anger at my boss for not opening his eyes to see what's really wrong here.
In the end I'm struggling to understand why I'm even insisting on this despite the unhealthy practices and environment.
Anyway, thanks for reading, not even sure this was the right place to write something like this (if it isn't do excuse me) I'm gonna try to sleep a bit again.
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