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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   2327 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for June 18, 2025

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

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I need some advice; I thought about making an alt and really getting my feelings out, but the more I thought about my problems, the less bad they seemed, somehow, once I accepted that something had to change, and it might turn out to be drastic.

I graduated with a bachelor's degree as a computer science major a couple years ago and got a job relatively in my field a few months after graduating: a programming job locally working with embedded systems. It does not pay a lot ($49k a year before taxes) and not much is expected of me, leaving my mind wandering frequently. I never actually figured out the assembly of the things, but programming them was easy enough. Some of the systems are in C, and some of the systems are in Python and PHP and also some C that I don't have to mess with much. Features are sometimes added, but for the strictly C systems, there's this big directory of code for many specific systems, some of them with very minor changes, and a lot of the time, the task is just to add a feature to a system that was already in another system, making the additions pretty simple. I don't feel like a real programmer. There is an HSA and a "parachute" healthcare plan, but no 401k. Very casual attitude. My boss is a bitch and he's difficult to talk to sometimes because of how petty he is, but he can't program worth a damn and he actually does have some good qualities to him. My commute is approximately 43 minutes, meaning I'm driving for an hour and twenty minutes every workday, and I am doing this because I live at home still with my mother. I work in a small town. I am in my late 20s. I have all my student loans paid off and I have $21k in the bank. I don't have any index funds or savings accounts or anything.

It's honestly not bad money, but there is not really room to grow. The plan was to work here for a bit and get some experience, then join the industry proper, but... well, I feel like I suck at programming, and the industry is shrinking, and I don't know if there will even be an industry, a proper pipeline, in a couple of years. I am really reluctant to start job searching for these reasons.

Given all these facts, I am a little lost on where to direct my life from now on. I'm going to list every option I have thought of so far:

  • Move out to be a lot closer to my job. Actually not the worst idea, now that I think about it. It's okay money for a single man, but I would be giving up the career. To be honest, careers seem like they're opposed to human life. Endless competition and bureaucracy, all for more money in an increasingly high cost of living area where you don't actually have a substantially improved living standard.
  • Start job searching for an actual industry job. Again, really unappealing to me. The thought of presenting such a false image of myself as someone competent is quite repulsive, and I don't know that I have enough actual accomplishments on my resume to get any chances. I almost feel worse off than when I graduated, but I actually can't say I regret my decisionmaking.
  • Do something else entirely. This thought scares me, but I've thought of
  1. Enlisting as a military linguist. The commitment is terrifying to me, and I find it hard to believe they would take me, since they have a new system to catch all your medical history and I have a suicide attempt from nearly a decade ago on my record.
  2. Trades. Every computer scientist friend I have has brought this up as an alternative (specifically plumbing and welding), and I am more than a little skeptical. People in the trades seem like they develop substance addictions at a pretty high rate, and it's hard work, and you get shit pay in your first years, and hazing from seniors and I think there's a bunch of accreditation you have to get, and your body potentially gets ruined, and to make the big bucks you have to own your own business which is a risk a lot of people won't want to take.
  3. Go back to school and get a master's degree in something. If I did this, it would be geology, I think, since you can do that anywhere and it's fun to learn about and I already got all the math I need from computer science and I actually minored in geology. I don't like the idea of going back to school, though, because it was difficult enough the first time. I got pretty sick of college since it took me a long time to get through, with a break when covid hit, and I assumed that my life would get better and the existential crises would stop once I started earning money and being useful. That didn't happen, so I guess that kind of thing is just going to stay with me no matter what I do. That knowledge would actually help bear through college again, I think.

I think I have given up on starting a family, which makes these decisions easier. I know this forum is pretty pro-natal, and I had flip-flopped on the issue for a while, but I tend to forget what abject misery feels like until I feel it again. If it's genetic, I don't want my kids to feel it. I guess I'd be open to adoption, in that case, but that's expensive.

I know the answer for what computer science majors should do now hasn't got a consensus, but any advice I can get would be very appreciated.

Provided advice to a guy in almost exactly your situation. He's doing a lot better now after investing ~3 years in his crappy job.

  • $50k is low. If you're competent and patient, you can improve this.
  • You can determine your relative skill by:
    • Exercising via leetcode or codewars to see where you stack up
    • Interviewing elsewhere
  • If you are too lazy to determine your skill or exercise your skills outside of work, do not under any circumstances go get a masters.
  • If you move out of your parents and towards your job, make sure the place you're moving to provides other benefits (economic, social, health [getting outside])
  • Believing "a career" is antiethical to human life does concern me. Expecting growth from yourself in exchange for huge swaths of your time is not asking too much. Nor does a career have to be an endless treadmill of progress. Moving out of your parent's house and having a reasonable 401(k) is an OK place to stop striving. I'm sympathetic to there being limits to how much you should try, especially given progressive tax rates

You're correct that the industry will shrink for people who can't beat AI. I am still hiring, but have lost patience with people who cannot operate independently. The clock is ticking far more slowly than the world would have you believe, but you'll definitely want to muster up some energy to evolve.

You mentioned not having a plan, not thinking about money. You'd be surprised how easy it is. If you're starting at ground zero, can I suggest I will teach you to be rich? It's 80% correct and a short read.

Exercising via leetcode or codewars to see where you stack up

Listen, I know this is popular. I know leetcode bullshit comes up all the time in interviews. But IMHO, a better proxy for skill is open source contributions. Can you dive into a foreign code base and understand it? Can you code in the style/language already extant? Can you check out a project and have it compile?! I'd suggest using more open source software, and if something bothers you, fix/change it! Be the meme about the engineer who joins a company, fixes one bug that's been bothering him for 10 years, and then quits. Leetcode is a complementary skill, relevant 10-15% of the time at best, in actual day to day coding. Frankly if leetcode is all you can do, or all you enjoy, I wouldn't suggest sticking with it.

I agree with you, man. But you're talking to a depressed guy who doesn't really understand a retirement account and hasn't mustered the energy to move out of his parent's house.

What these platforms give you is simple setup and a quantifiable number of where you stand. When you contribute to an OS project you're trying to determine the starting quality of the project, how much "cache" it has, the value of your contribution.... much more complex.

What these platforms give you is simple setup and a quantifiable number of where you stand. When you contribute to an OS project you're trying to determine the starting quality of the project, how much "cache" it has, the value of your contribution.... much more complex.

I don't do any of that shit. I use OS software, and occasionally, when I have an excess of free time, I fix bugs and add features that I personally care about. Sometimes I even get them merged back in. I'm not resume building explicitly (but maybe, I donno), but it's great for my confidence. Getting anybody to accept code you wrote is great for confidence.

I think that'd be the difference. Your approach is great for actually getting better and building confidence. For benchmarking, I'd argue it's not providing as much value.

Where do you live that programmers are earning $50k?

Start job searching for an actual industry job. Again, really unappealing to me. The thought of presenting such a false image of myself as someone competent is quite repulsive, and I don't know that I have enough actual accomplishments on my resume to get any chances. I almost feel worse off than when I graduated, but I actually can't say I regret my decisionmaking.

A good industry position is quite cushy, although obviously not without the usual downsides that come with working for a big company. Who knows what will happen in 10 years.

What do you mean by "presenting a false image" of competence? If you write stuff you did on your resume, why is that presenting a false image?

Two things:

  1. You can interview with other companies while employed.
  2. You don't have to take an employment offer if you don't want to.

Start applying to jobs and interviewing. Don't restrict yourself to embedded, you can pick up other skills/languages. You don't need to lie, just present yourself fairly. You'll get a much better appreciation of your standing, and what other companies are looking for. Also interviewing is a skill, and it's worth practicing on its own.

After a few months, you'll be able to make a much more informed decision. Also I echo the others saying that embedded development generally signals competence in our field.

I think working as an embedded systems C programmer actually signals a lot more competence even if the salary isn't impressive. The embedded space is notoriously low pay since the economics around that are for the manufacturing industry rather than pure software industry which tends to be able to spend a lot more for software development.

Agreed. I think that embedded systems programming is one of the hardest programming jobs there is. There's just so much stuff you have to handle yourself that higher level environments give you for free. Don't sell yourself short, @oats_son.

Genuinely, I don't know. No idea how I would figure it out, either. The idea has been suggested before, but I am at an impasse, because I'm the only one who programs there, so nobody else could judge. I did okay on my projects at school, though sometimes I lost all motivation to work on stuff if it looked too hard, and I had my share of real bad semesters.

DM me if you'd like a (free) practice interview + feedback or just general advice. (I'm a FAANG SWE.)

If it would help, I do code reviews as part of my job, and I have a very similar tech stack to what you do. If it would be something you’d be interested in, I’d be willing to take a look at some code you’ve written and give you my assessment of where you’re at and where you can improve at.

I didn't like applying for jobs at all in my early twenties, because they would always ask why I was the best candidate, and I would always feel stupid about how fake I was being and give up. So I put out some super lame applications, until someone in middle of nowhere Alaska called me and talked me into working there, and it was actually really interesting, even though it was not very pretty and -60 and I wasn't really teaching the kids all that well, and I spent hundreds of hours reading Edgar Rice Boroughs novels (I would not necessarily recommend Alaska, specifically, to someone prone to depression though).

Especially if you're American, a young man who doesn't necessarily want a family or retirement can just go do something that's interesting and low pay somewhere random for a few years. Low level English teacher abroad, Americorps, Peace Corps, pineapples, contractor for a military base; whatever sounds slightly interesting.

I feel like you’re omitting the story of your Hock.

Lol.

The highlight of my social life was going to people's houses for Bible studies where they recounted their dreams, a funeral wake, and "Slavicing" (visiting everyone's houses for Russian Christmas, where people exchange silverware and eat moose stew and Crisco with berries).

pineapples

Lol, I love that this is a thing here now.

IMO, step 1 in devising a long-term plan is figuring out your financial outlook. At what age do you expect to be able to retire in your current position vs. in your alternative scenarios? If you're in the US, you can use the Consumer Expenditure Survey of the Bureau of Labor Statistics as a baseline budget (size of consumer unit by income before taxes: one person, < 15 k$/a). Plug that into a spreadsheet and add some assumptions for investment growth, inflation, and life expectancy.

If I had to be honest with you, I never really planned out retirement. I figured I'd probably work until I couldn't work anymore and then die somehow shortly afterwards, and let someone else take the money I had put into whatever funds instead of frittering it away on my own failing health. I always just wanted some way to live in a respectable way and live a relatively normal life, passion be damned, just do whatever you can tolerate.

You seem to imply in your first comment ("I have a suicide attempt from nearly a decade ago on my record"; "I tend to forget what abject misery feels like until I feel it again. If it's genetic, I don't want my kids to feel it") that you suffer from depression. As a person who contracted depression after around five and a half years of employment, I can say that my life ABSOLUTELY REVOLVES AROUND the promise of retirement and unlimited relaxation (just a year and a half away!!!), and "living a relatively normal life, passion be damned, just doing whatever I can tolerate" is impossible while my relaxation time is crippled by working.

Do the calculation! You may be pleasantly surprised at how quickly your retirement date is approaching.

I agree with you on trades. One of my friends in grad school has brother who is now an electrician. He's up every day at 5 am, comes home by 3 absolutely filthy and exhausted. Some amount of hazing, but doesn't seem to worth the money.

Have you thought about organic farming? Or alternatively transitioning to a more management role within the same industry?

Haha, I think only a vegan would recommend organic farming out of the blue like that. In the Midwest, not sure how many of those jobs there even are. I have a relative who worked in the farming industry, I helped out a couple days when I was a kid. Working with pig shit sucks. I thought management was something you worked your way up to.

Man, late 20's huh? When I graduated in 2006 my starting pay as a programmer for the company I interned with was $65,000. I moved out, paid $1200 in rent to live 5 minutes from the office, and had more money than I thought I could ever spend. I was super confident, wading into code bases and fixing difficult to find memory leaks, or converting a small C++ code base for an ArcGIS extension into C# because that's what they converted the SDK to primarily support going forward.

In 2006.

Looking at the industry in 2025, making $45,000 and being lukewarm on the actual task of programming, I'd do trades, hands down. I mean, myself, right now, with 20 years experience, making what I make, no way. Though even still, if my industry exploded enough, it's a thing I'd consider, but it would be a downgrade. But it doesn't sound like that path is open to you. Don't worry about what vices other tradesmen end up developing. Plenty of software guys have self destructive habits too. Just look at WallStreetBets.

RE: Family, never say never. Just, plan as though you might. Don't go full hedonist and spend every penny you earn, or wreck your health

When I graduated in 2006 my starting pay as a programmer for the company I interned with was $65,000. I moved out, paid $1200 in rent to live 5 minutes from the office, and had more money than I thought I could ever spend. I was super confident, wading into code bases and fixing difficult to find memory leaks, or converting a small C++ code base for an ArcGIS extension into C# because that's what they converted the SDK to primarily support going forward.

How did you get to this point? If you don't mind I'd love to know

  • How inherently interested you are/were in programming
  • How many hours a day you put into effective study
  • Whether you think the job market is still good and worth putting that time in

I'm at a dead end in my CS career and have been contemplating going back to school to actually become a good programmer. I'm smart enough but find programming itself quite boring. Not sure I have the work ethic. Having a good idea of how much work it would take would be really helpful to me.

Do you already have a bachelor's degree in CS?

I have not found that the CS bachelor's degree syllabus is particularly useful for becoming a good programmer, much less becoming a good software engineer.

I think the best way to become a better engineer is to find a good engineer and work with them and learn from them. At least, that is what I have always been able to do, and that is what I have found helped me the most. If you are the best engineer around, it's time to find a new role.

The job market right now is not good, and while I don't think it's a permanent downturn, it's not easy to move around. If you have connections, leverage them.

I dropped out of college to get a software development job in crypto. I don't have a bachelor's.

I'd love to find a good engineer mentor--everywhere I've worked, I've been the only one doing anything similar to what I do. But so far I haven't been able to pass interviews at the larger crypto companies, which are getting quite competitive, and don't have any lateral connections to take advantage of. So I'm stuck in that regard unless I can figure out something that really makes me stand out.

I fucking love programming, and noodle around in random unprofessional bullshit all the time.

But i spent my childhood obsessed with computers. I also did Computer Engineering with a software focus versus straight comp sci. I felt it gave me a better perspective of how computers actually work.

What's been good for my confidence has been contributing to a smattering of open source projects I used, but which had bugs that annoyed me. Emulators, open source bios, etc. Jumping into foreign code bases is great for experience.

From where I sit, the industry is scary. My little corner in my small government contractor company is fine. But I do wonder if the ladder got pulled up behind me. Some of it is hardcore culture war material, so I have to leave it at that.

Yeah this is what I was worried about. I don't really like programming--maybe partially because I'm not great at it yet. I enjoy LeetCode but in practice putting things together is just drudgery. It makes me wonder if I should instead go into something which other people find less interesting, but I find equally or more interesting, like law.

Do you just feel like you suck at programming, or do you actively dislike it? You’ll get very different advice depending on your answer.

I don't actually hate it, I just find it difficult, mainly because I have gotten very good at amusing myself over the internet. I feel like I am slow to code and I do a lot of googling and a fair amount of thinking without coding when I am actually focusing on problems and not distracting myself from said problems. I don't know how much of that is normal (I suspect some, but not all, is), because I don't have any coworkers that code. I'm no hand with screwdrivers or drills, which makes me think I ought not look for another embedded systems job.

I don't know that there is much room in the industry for someone like me that has no passion for it, because hiring is getting tight and there is an oversupply of computer science graduates.

Do you find it bad difficult or just difficult? I love solving problems that I first saw and thought, there's no way, it's too hard. Then banging my head against that wall and thinking I am the biggest idiot who ever was. And then finally getting a glimmer, or a thread to tug and then ... Boom. This can be done! A lot of my programming life has involved a lot of that, also because it self selects. I will grab the impossible over the mundane because I find it more interesting. There are also plenty of keep-the-lights-on programming jobs. That VB6 app that the company needs and also doesn't want to pay for rewriting? Someone has to be willing to baby it and surround it with as much protection as possible. And then there are folks who are in between. But if all this sounds awful, it might just not be for you. Is there other stuff in computers you like? Don't limit yourself - I (think I) got a job offer because I bonded w/one of my interviewers about hours spent making patch cords in my early career. The job has nothing to do with patch cords, cabling, and the only networking was virtual. If something interests you, give it a shot!

You sound stuck. Dust off your resume. Think about perfect world jobs. Could you, or someone who really believed in you, make your resume look ok for one of those jobs? If not, what are you missing and how do you get it? Just do one step today. One more tomorrow. You can look for and even apply to jobs just for practice. You have a job. You're in good shape. Just poke your head out, see what other opportunities there are, see if there's something you would love to grow into.

One of the benefits of looking for a new job when you have a job is when you get an offer, you can decide if you want it. It's safe. (OTOH it is a tough job market right now. My kid is a new grad and she's made it through more 2nd and 3rd round interviews with no offer than is reasonable. Since when does a job suitable for a 21 yr old with the ink on the diploma still wet need 3 interviews?)

I don't find it bad difficult. I do struggle to comprehend what an actual programming job is like. I don't feel like my codebase is that complex, and when I do figure something out, it feels ultimately simple in hindsight. I use grep a lot to look up related functions, which works out most of the time, though sometimes I miss where something is being modified because it's too indirect to be found by grep.

You know, I think you might be right. I think I will dust it off and find something to put on it and fake it 'til I make it, just head to the library with my laptop. Maybe the industry isn't so bad after all. I guess no one here may know, anyway.

I have had several different programming jobs, as has my spouse, and they have all been different. I am betting you are a good programmer within your niche but your isolation is eating at your confidence.

Faking it until you make it is legit. Also, maybe direct your workplace time wasting to something more productive - do you have industry relevant certs? Work on any open source code so your GitHub looks decent? Have a spiffy resume site showing off some stuff your proud of/working on?

And. Get away from the computer a bit. My daily lunch walk is crucial. I also set an alarm to get up and move every hour or two. Let your eyes see something further away than the monitor.

Well, I have had some limited ability with it. Changing my Discord password to something I can't remember or access at work can help, as Discord is my biggest leech, but the problem is that I can waste time in a lot of different ways. Wikipedia, Google Maps, many things I would have to block that I think would probably not be great to block. I just need to find it within myself to focus, but some days, it's hard.

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