This isn’t even a real blogpost, more a cry for help

Job hunt

I’m in the middle of applying for jobs again. The more I apply, the more I realize I don’t align with these companies at all.

I’m in a position where I don’t have enough years of experience to comfortably choose where I work. I’m basically forced to join a company as a junior and "climb the ladder". I still don’t know why I would care to.

Climbing the ladder

When I started working, I thought it was important to always do better, improve, help out the team and stuff. I don’t think this is important anymore. When I look at what might happen to my job at $CURRENT_COMPANY I don’t think much will change for me. There’s nothing for me to work towards to. In 5 years I will still earn the same and my boss will be sitting comfortably in his (already bought) yacht. It doesn’t benefit me. I’m not looking to make rich people richer.

Small companies

My first thought is to lean towards small companies that are not looking to grow. They are hard to find, and usually have no time/energy to "train" me. I’m still a bit confused what this means. Train me for internal processes? Train me because I write bad code?

I’ve lost a sense of what companies measure when it comes to performance. If I do the work, and the work is maintainable (dev is happy) and works (customer is happy), then what else are you looking for? Is it a tug of war to see who wins? Should I get squeezed out more for less money? Then u can throw me away when I’m burnt out?

What satisfies a person?

It seems that whenever you ask someone what motivates them software-wise, they will never mention work as their number one motivation. Yet we’re supposed to act like it. What’s up with that?

Ask any software dev about a project they’re excited about. 9/10 times it’s a personal project that vaguely sounds like an escape plan. How did we end up here?

I hope everyone has their own plan, screw the market war growth. I just want enough money to pay my rent and food. I’ve never felt satisfied from a bonus, either.

Conclusion

If this post wasn’t honest enough, I don’t want a new job in this corporate world. Nothing about this excites me. I’m not working on cool projects. I’m even getting denied for the crappy jobs no one wants to do because they want a 5+ YOE person to clean up their crap.

I want to work on personal projects that I find important and help out other projects, that’s it. If rent wasn’t an issue I’d be working full-time on open-source and spend my spare time cycling.

Maybe all of this is short-sighted and egotistical, maybe I’ll realize this days after posting this blog. Maybe all of my blog posts are very negative and I come off as spoiled. All I know is that this is how I feel, and I’m pretty sure there’s no alternative.

I’ve added the things I value to my homepage to hopefully give people a sense of who I am, so we can see if we’re aligned.