Preferences

I’ve been struggling with just purpose in general for years. I’m a husband and father - those are supposed to be my purpose. But sometimes I don’t feel very good at them. Hang in there. We’ll figure this all out.

Me too. I've stuck with my miserable job for the last 4 years so I can support them. I feel like if I quit I'd be failing them.
I'm probably not one to be giving advice but I feel like your family might gain more from having a happy fulfilled parent with less wealth possibly? How that might affect you/the way you act/the things you do day to day could be more valuable long term. Obviously thats ignoring a lot e.g. finances, practicality.
That would be nice, but I'm responsible for all our bills and I can't get a job that pays the same or better due to my experience in obscure tech, like Neoxam.

I'll just continue to grind in this job until I get fired, die, or hopefully can retire someday (maybe coastFI).

Yeah, it's never simple unfortunately. Good luck all the same.
Feeling like you're not doing well at something is a key motivator towards growth & getting better. And yet through growth you have to grapple with the truth -- you're not doing as well at something as you could be. Some days I really struggle because the more you're growing the more you'll deal with intrusive thoughts that originate in that growth. Like you said -- keep going :).
Yeah, I'm familiar with the pyramid/staircase of mastery and the inertia period as it pertains to intrusive thoughts.

I like to learn new things, struggle (within reason), and iterate on my previous attempts or prototypes to build a better product that I can be proud of. I did this when I was building my android apps and loved it.

My problem is that the company sets us up for failure and doesn't even realize it. The business consistently gives us terrible requirements. They can't build a business process map or anything else to describe the processes they follow. They constantly miss big pieces so we end up with systems that are spaghetti code to cover all these things they miss.

The company also views struggling with new tech or roles as a negative. They don't provide any real training either, but I guess the Plural Sight self-learning trend is more of an industry thing. I joined my new team about 4 months ago and worked on a AWS Lambda in Python, Slunk alerts/dashboards, Tableau dashboards, and I have no training in any of it. I had to self-teach AWS (2 certs), Python, Splunk (User cert), and Tableau. The demoralizing part is that little of this seen as valuable. I can't improve my career by "developing" Tableau or Splunk dashboards. I need to have a steady diet of AWS and Python where the requirements are 90% there so I can architect and develop elegant, or at least practical, solutions to an interesting business problem.

I've gotta read up on the staircase of mastery cause I am not familiar :D

When you say self-teaching you mean you're paying for certs/doing on your own time? Or work is paying on one hand but going out after it isn't seen as valuable on the other? I'm just curious but by no means am I saying that there's not just bad situations to get out of, just that discomfort and feeling like you're not doing well aren't _solely_ reasons to leave. Hope your situation improves though, sounds like you're doing the work.

They will pay for AWS certs (contract price goes down as certs in org go up) and a few others, but you have to do it on your own time, which is fair.

I guess the better way to put it is: would you assign Tableau work to someone who has no training or experience in it and then tell them they are taking too long? The only way to do it is to learn it as you go, which is going to be slower than someone who is trained. I really want to become an expert in something useful/marketable like AWS and Python, but these no-value assignments are throwing a wrench in that.

This item has no comments currently.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Story Lists

j
Next story
k
Previous story
Shift+j
Last story
Shift+k
First story
o Enter
Go to story URL
c
Go to comments
u
Go to author

Navigation

Shift+t
Go to top stories
Shift+n
Go to new stories
Shift+b
Go to best stories
Shift+a
Go to Ask HN
Shift+s
Go to Show HN

Miscellaneous

?
Show this modal