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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2202 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:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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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.

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