It's hard not to compare with your peers, colleagues, and classmates. I was a year into my first job as a developer before being laid off and am now planning my next steps. At 23 this sounds fairly ridiculous but the feeling of running out of time weighs heavily on my mind. Here's what I'm struggling through.
1. Following the steps of alumnus a tried and true path seems to be going back to grad school for a masters degree, studying something that requires advanced mathematics (i.e. graphics programming) and then getting that job at Google. But what if <insert dream company> is not cracked up to what I imagine it to be? When I graduated I was head over heels about working full time as a developer. However the actual experience of working with a very large & complex legacy C++ codebase was more frustrating and painful than I could have possibly imagined. Velocity and skills development was slow (it was not uncommon to spend several days investigating a single bug) and most of my time was spent slogging through very complicated and undocumented code, trying to figure out the intent of the original authors. Not having other jobs to compare it to, <dream job at dream company> could be much the same. In any case if I don't upgrade my arsenal or credentials I feel like I will always doomed to work at second-rate dev shops where employees are ever susceptible to unpleasantries like mediocre salaries/advancement and layoffs. Companies here cannot just cannot compete with tech giants.
2. Find another job. I have a 2-3 month window to quickly find another job as there seems to be some stigma associated with unemployment. The city I live in is a technological wasteland and opportunities for pure software development are relatively limited, so realistically my next employer is likely to be an Oil and Gas company. While that certainly pay the bills it kind of limits your career to other oil and gas companies.
3. Forget about societal pressures and do my own thing. I have enough savings to take a year off, develop my skills, fill in gaps in my knowledge and work on toy projects. Unfortunately this means having to explain a gap year where I might have very little to show for it. The skills I develop will probably not be directly applicable to a job.
Like many I aspire to become the best I can be and like to think of myself as somewhat respectable but at the end of the day I'm just an average developer. I guess the point is if you aren't a genius/wizard you have to deal with your inadequacies and "running out of time" is always in the back of your mind.
I think you're overestimating the difficulty of getting a job. It's your life and no one else's. You don't have to fit someone else's mold of an ideal employee just to get meaningful work.
Take that year. Meet some people. Talk to business owners and other money creators. There's always opportunity to improve someone's life and improve or build on existing solutions using your skills. You might even find money in that.
Build your projects. Download the source for an open source tool you use. Learn how it works, write some documentation, and add functionality for yourself. Find problems that frustrate you and others and solve them. You might even find money in that.
Get a job as a freelancer, a server, a valet, a bartender, a hotel front desk overnight receptionist. You'll extend your runway, gain a lot of perspective and insight, pick up useful skills, and meet people entirely different from those you've met up to this point. You might even find money in that.
If none of that "works out" at the end of a year or two, start looking for a traditional programming job. The gap year(s) and lack of a Masters won't be detrimental; in the programming world, it's all about what you've done. Any company worth working for will take one look at your projects and start recruiting you to work for them.
As the article said, enjoy the journey. As Randall Monroe said, "...the solution [to seeing what each moment could become] doesn't involve watering down my every little idea and creative impulse for the sake of someday easing my fit into a mold. It doesn't involve tempering my life to better fit someone's expectations. It doesn't involve constantly holding back for fear of shaking things up."
I don't have the answer to your problems but here's a friendly reminder that your life is not defined by an illustrious career or the size of a bank account, unless that is your personal choice. Richard L. Evans said it best:
"May we never let the things we can’t have, or don’t have, or shouldn’t have, spoil our enjoyment of the things we do have and can have. As we value our happiness, let us not forget it, for one of the greatest lessons in life is learning to be happy without the things we cannot or should not have."
1. Following the steps of alumnus a tried and true path seems to be going back to grad school for a masters degree, studying something that requires advanced mathematics (i.e. graphics programming) and then getting that job at Google. But what if <insert dream company> is not cracked up to what I imagine it to be? When I graduated I was head over heels about working full time as a developer. However the actual experience of working with a very large & complex legacy C++ codebase was more frustrating and painful than I could have possibly imagined. Velocity and skills development was slow (it was not uncommon to spend several days investigating a single bug) and most of my time was spent slogging through very complicated and undocumented code, trying to figure out the intent of the original authors. Not having other jobs to compare it to, <dream job at dream company> could be much the same. In any case if I don't upgrade my arsenal or credentials I feel like I will always doomed to work at second-rate dev shops where employees are ever susceptible to unpleasantries like mediocre salaries/advancement and layoffs. Companies here cannot just cannot compete with tech giants.
2. Find another job. I have a 2-3 month window to quickly find another job as there seems to be some stigma associated with unemployment. The city I live in is a technological wasteland and opportunities for pure software development are relatively limited, so realistically my next employer is likely to be an Oil and Gas company. While that certainly pay the bills it kind of limits your career to other oil and gas companies.
3. Forget about societal pressures and do my own thing. I have enough savings to take a year off, develop my skills, fill in gaps in my knowledge and work on toy projects. Unfortunately this means having to explain a gap year where I might have very little to show for it. The skills I develop will probably not be directly applicable to a job.
Like many I aspire to become the best I can be and like to think of myself as somewhat respectable but at the end of the day I'm just an average developer. I guess the point is if you aren't a genius/wizard you have to deal with your inadequacies and "running out of time" is always in the back of your mind.