Experience matter, but motivation required

Side projects and hobbies that once brought joy now seem like monumental tasks. The energy to code for fun is gone, replaced by a numbness that Instagram barely alleviates. I was drawn to it to be doing something that’s helpful for others, something fun, a hard challenge or impactful. But the best opportunities have landed me in soul-less projects. No impact, no appreciation, no engaging challenge. Just a cog in the machine. Life goes by in the 1030 - 8. Barely making the money to give back to my family and save up to get married. I can’t afford posh restaurants, have no time for hobbies or sports. Feels like I am getting nothing in life. No money, no meaning, no fun, no passion, no societal status.

Relatively new to tech - only 2 years of experience here so far. Yet find it extremely cyclical. Face the same challenges over and over again. Perhaps the setting changes occasionally but that’s really it. I understand this is not unique to tech and happens everywhere. But at least in product management, it seems like it’s research - design - dev with stakeholder management over and over and over again. Feel like I’m on autopilot mode and not truly *enjoying* working. I used to be so full of energy and enthusiasm in college and school, eager to learn. But the cyclical nature of work has wrung it out of me, and I’ve sort of become a cynic lol. Who enjoys their work?

I am a fresher 2023 graduate and have been doing this (applying for jobs) for almost a year, everyone said you have to do internships as it is necessary so did 2 internships one for a year and another for 6 months but apparently no one counts internships as experience even jobs that had 1-3 yoe as requirement and now everyone's hiring 2024 grads as freshers (I tried to look for another internship but there were none during the time of placements). I am now tired of this field, many full stack devs don't know shit outside Javascript world and many of them can't even use tools like git properly and are so cocky of themselves. Saw an SDE on twitter who apparently has 6 years of experience, doesn't even know how to configure multiple SSH and says managing multiple ssh is a downside. A women dev (cause in India you have engineers and female engineers apparently) doesn't know about sidebar cache and calls it a bug and she's in google. and If I try to roast these people with my real name there's a whole cabal of Banglorians who will grab their macbooks inside third wave coffee and start tweeting against me after aggressively drinking their Chocolate mocha frappe. Just go into any random tech twitter space no one seems to be talking about tech it's always about DSA, interviews, LIFE IN BANGLORE, which cafe they visited. I let myself believe tech was my passion and worked hard for but Indian techies and companies are worst, this generation thinks they are better than their predecessor but follow the same politics everywhere even when it comes to Tech communities (who tf does politics in a community that produces open source code wtf). They talk about networking and creating a community all the time but can't even respond to linkedin cold dm and blame the sender by nitpicking about the format 👏👏 and then they'll go on post the screenshot and rant how it's the sender fault to even try to network with them with a message that isn't written from their own blood.

Hey I am an experienced network engineer having experience around 5.5 years but want switch my career profile as a software engineer in any good startup or product company in next 6 months. Any suggestions if it is possible or any route to take to be skilled enough to work as a software engineer.

Off late, the frontend engineering at Razorpay has become more of a data entry job. The design system (god knows how many years it will take to be completely ready) is restricting both the devs and the designers a LOT. Designers are literally fed up with being dictated to design things only in a particular way (limiting even animations, font-size, choice of italics v/s bold). There was even a long 2 month discussion to get font size for a component to support higher value, if you honestly want to know. The so called core team has been developing blade since God knows when. Agree that they've done a great work with tokens and other stuff, but it seems that by the time it's ready, it'll already be outdated design wise (suxs). So, any other devs, all they have to do is follows. 1. Open Figma 2. See if the component in Figma is supported by Blade. 3. If yes, then see if our designer has by mistake used any font-size, color, margin or spacing not supported by Blade. 4. If yes, start a thread between everyone and give them a month to come to a resolution (Blade team always retaliates like it's a personal attack) 5. Eventually end up using your own component to save time and move fast. 6. Explain to your manager's manager's manager why you can't use Blade. (they've funded it for 2 years and no dev likes it, so they push it from top) If your company has some interesting approach to this, please add in the comments.

Worked for a not particularly prestigious company as a developer for a few years before doing an MBA and moving into product management. Tier 1 institutes all the way through. I've been a product manager for 3 years now, in some pretty reputed companies. At this point, I feel like the product management role is just not for me - I do not get job satisfaction out of it. The work is not particularly interesting or challenging, and talking to people all day feels like a chore. Its no fun to be creating random reports for leadership based on wherever the winds of the day blow. Plus tbh, I could be making far more money if I had remained a developer. Just cannot see myself doing this kind of work 10 years down the line. Thinking of applying for some dev roles - it'll take some practice, but I could probably crack senior developer interviews. What does the community think? Is there stigma for people who ditch product roles for development roles? Are there people who even do this? Am I being realistic about this?

Hey Grapeviners, I need some serious help. Bit about myself - just graduated this month and working as an APM at a seed stage startup. I have 1.5 years of product experience and 3 years of overall experience. Lately, not sure why but I am loving what engineers do. Closely working with them, and I guess it's nostalgic for myself. Because I did coding for 6 months and moved on for some reason. So, I understand how tech actually works. Have got good feedback regarding this. At the same time, I am not really finding the true value of what I am doing everyday. Feels a void inside. Also, I am not able to discuss all these things in person with someone, because I fear that they will judge me after doing internships for 3 years, I still haven't figured out my career. Such a loser I am. I have been thinking about starting coding again and maybe switching to a coding job in the next 6 months maybe. But again it would be tough for me as I only got weekends for me to learn all this stuff. What do you all experienced folks suggest? What should I do? Please comment if you can help🙏

Hey Grapeviners, I need some serious help. Bit about myself - just graduated this month and working as an APM at a seed stage startup. I have 1.5 years of product experience and 3 years of overall experience as an intern. Lately, not sure why but I am loving what engineers do. Closely working with them, and I guess it's nostalgic for myself. Because I did coding for 6 months and moved on for some reason. So, I understand how tech actually works. Have got good feedback regarding this. At the same time, I am not really finding the true value of what I am doing everyday. Feels a void inside. Also, I am not able to discuss all these things in person with someone, because I fear that they will judge me after doing internships for 3 years, I still haven't figured out my career. Such a loser I am. I have been thinking about starting coding again and maybe switching to a coding job in the next 6 months maybe. But again it would be tough for me as I only got weekends for me to learn all this stuff. What do you all experienced folks suggest? What should I do? Please comment if you can help 🙏

I am in a peculiar situation and feel that I have lost all the trust my immediate leader had on me. bi weekly 1x1s - usually hell of a 30 mins, cross questions, interogation based on what my manager hears about me from my peers, validating my inner strengths, etc. one conversation in a month involves some casual talk consecutive 1x1 will be hellish and it is happening in cycles for a few months My business acummen - for whatever reason my leader does not care about my business results or the way how I am leading an engineering team. Instead he focuses on petty people dynamics and is pushing me to fix people issues which cannot be fixed Loosing motivation - I don’t fancy anymore to pursue awesome ideas and business related improvements as my leader is too demotivating Comfor level - Managers in big tech companies just want the name to appear Who cares for customers - No one. Employee survey on leadership and company - My leadership team in Bangalore and onshore senior leadership is only driven by the fact that we do everything so that yearly employee feedback survey shows our department positively and is never ready to take any risks or bold decisions for the rightful growth of busines. Weird growth expectations - Everyone in my department thinks they deserve to get promotion and opportunities once they reach a certain years of experience. No one cares about performance. Leadership encourages this. Competition - There is no such thing for us, as my leader is mainly focused on drawing the monthly pay check and do all king of unwanted projects and lose sight on project/opportunities that provides actual career growth for my direct reports. Our skills are being outdated and it is becoming very hard to find a job based on our work profile. And so many more .. will make a new post.