I Need Career Motivation
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So, here's the thing, I like code, I like learning code stuff, I actually think it's pretty fun.
But I know that the money is in straight up web development, I just can't seem to maintain steam for doing it. Like, I can work up all sorts of motivation to learn Python for game shit, or some other shit I like. But buckling down to push through with web development has been very difficult, my motivation keeps dropping like a brick.
How do I fix this? Or what is the alternative solution? I honestly don't really know what to do.
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@HelloProject
Find something else that can pay the big bucks, or learn to get motivated.
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Video games are a bubble market, albeit one with a very low overhead (paying for employees). Once you make the game, you can sell it infinitely at a favorable market rate, but much like 'apps', the market is slowly flooding. There's going to be some weird redistribution of careers, so try to pick up a second skill you can apply elsewhere, like the storyboard portion (that's a communication degree with a creative writing nod) or the journalism portion (also communications) or marketing (that's an associates).
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If you can't get the motivation to learn it, then don't do it. I guarantee that your motivation when working in a career for it will hit the floor often, even when you like it. I go days without having motivation to produce the specific code that people tell me to produce. My coworkers do all the time as well.
It only gets harder when you are being told exactly what to code. It only gets harder when you realize people are telling you to code something you think is a piece of shit (or a bad idea) and you still have to do it because they are the ones paying your salary.
I'd recommend getting an internship asap and seeing how a shop operates. You'll know better then if this is something you could potentially do as a career or not. But burn out in software engineering is a very real and common thing.
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As extended reading:
https://www.kennethreitz.org/essays/the-reality-of-developer-burnout
https://www.quora.com/Usually-after-how-much-time-do-software-engineers-start-experiencing-burnout
https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3o3kw6/how_to_recover_from_programmers_burnout/
https://improvingsoftware.com/2009/05/19/programmers-before-you-turn-40-get-a-plan-b/ -
I can only offer some weird advice from a former creative professional in a variety of... well, a variety of weird things.
If it's what you love most, consider not doing it for a living. This is strange advice, since most people will tell you to pursue that because you'll love what you're doing, but as @Meg mentions, a lot of what you're doing in that thing you love will absolutely not be something you love about it. It makes it real easy to kill your love for that thing.
It is better to pick something you are already decent at, and really like. The thing you love will break your heart eventually, somehow. It sucks, but it's the truth. It is very hard for things to not get really personal when it's something you love. Something you like and enjoy doing is a much better choice, because you're just not emotionally invested in the same way.
Second, make sure you have a hobby. I realize this is something stupid to say on a board literally dedicated to a hobby, where for the most part we all share the commonality of current or former participation in it, but it matters. Have something you love as a hobby but have as little work or responsibility in as possible. If it becomes more work and responsibility than enjoyment, it's no longer really a hobby in the way a hobby is ultimately a healthy thing to have. Your hobby should be a release valve, not a source of stress and frustration.
Do not let people try to pressure you into doing something professionally that you want to keep as a hobby for enjoyment alone. I cannot overstate this enough. As a fellow creative person, who has done a lot of 'this looks like it would be fun to try' creative things, more of them have ended up as 'jobs' than I ever wanted any of them to be. This was due to pressure from my family to monetize literally every single thing I have done even passably well since childhood. I have learned the very hard way that there is nothing that will kill a happy passtime faster than someone strong-arming you into trying to make a buck off it, especially when you're still just trying to learn the ins and outs of it, because they don't know what it entails and aren't interested in hearing anything about how you don't feel qualified, skilled, or ready to take such a step.
As for how to find something to motivate and do? I wish I could be more help, sincerely. I just know the pitfalls above, know most of them far too well, and would rather not see anybody else fall into them if it can be avoided.
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"Web design" is about as well-defined a field as "visual art". The well of frameworks and tools and CMSes goes deep, deep, deep, and besides the low-paying scutwork that you might get from people who don't know what they want, you can't build a career in this day and age on just having familiarity with CSS/HTML/JQuery. If that's your focus, then get in line, because everybody can do that. Now, you do have an option that works well with what you're passionate about: Django. It's a solid CMS that's somewhere in difficulty between Drupal and rolling your own Wordpress plugins, and Python is broadly used in fields where storage and manipulation of data is valuable, like data journalism and academic research. If you go balls to the wall on customizing your game's Django site, build all of the bells and whistles yourself, you will have a basis for saying that you are confident with this tool. You will have a personal project (that you can diagram and explain) and a GitHub history to show potential employers, and those things are some of the most valuable assets for someone entering the software development space.
In this day and age, you need a tool that you're good with. Preferably more than one, because these things change all the time, but the broad CMS platforms like Django don't usually go away. The ulterior motive here is deciding whether this sort of work makes you happy. If throwing yourself at customizing your game's site doesn't inspire you, then you probably don't actually want to do it as a job.
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Actually, this is definitely motivating, and I definitely intended to do a lot of crazy shit with my site, so that I'd have a very nice presentation.
It can be hard pushing through general "studies", because I hit a wall and it's like, you don't feel the incentive as hard as having an actual project. I think that's where my lack of motivation comes from. But when it's stuff like what you said, then I feel a ton of motivation to jump in and do it.
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What are you studying? If it's CSS, go design a Bootstrap theme for your game, use Sass, and upload a boilerplate form of it to a separate GitHub repo so that you can show what you've done. If it's JavaScript, take a look at Dragula and then write a web-based chargen system with bits that the player can move around with their cursor or fingers. One of the great things about web technologies is that they're all working with the same set of tools, so they're basically all intercompatible (though sometimes it's not worthwhile to try). Most things could apply to your game, and once you've learned how to do that with your hands, the curriculum will seem obvious.
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I've been using a lot of HTML and CSS, and I know how to use Bootstrap because I've been using Free Code Camp. Gonna go onto Javascript soon.
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@HelloProject if you like coding and you like money then the easy answer is DevOps. Knowing Ruby/Python and/or any number of scripting languages and using them for automation will get you PAID.
I'm not sure what kind of background you have in the IT world but if you ever worked in the field reading something like "The Phoenix Project" will be a game changer.
URL below for some context on pay:
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/devops-engineer-salary-SRCH_KO0,15.htmIf you interview for a gig like the ones listed in the link you need to say stuff like, "Making improvements to something inconsistent is like wrestling a pig: It's messy and you probably won't win."
Then when it's all over and the rest of you are ready for Dead Animal Pickup, I'm gonna go balls deep into Dahl. But only because she asked me to. Sweet-like. - Riddick (2013)
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@ThatOneDude I'd say, "It doesn't matter how many times you re-analyze the same thing, you're just reinventing the wheels for different types of wheels."
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@ThatOneDude said in I Need Career Motivation:
@HelloProject if you like coding and you like money then the easy answer is DevOps. Knowing Ruby/Python and/or any number of scripting languages and using them for automation will get you PAID.
I'm not sure what kind of background you have in the IT world but if you ever worked in the field reading something like "The Phoenix Project" will be a game changer.
URL below for some context on pay:
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/devops-engineer-salary-SRCH_KO0,15.htmIf you interview for a gig like the ones listed in the link you need to say stuff like, "Making improvements to something inconsistent is like wrestling a pig: It's messy and you probably won't win."
This is very interesting. I've heard of DevOps, but had no concept of what it was until now. Thanks! I'll do some research into it.
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If you like getting paid and don't like web development, Embedded systems are booming right now, what with every new product needing to be on the IoT or controllable via a smartphone app.
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I'll look into this, too!
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FFS, do not go into QA unless it is as an automation engineer.
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@Cheesegrater said in I Need Career Motivation:
If you like getting paid and don't like web development, Embedded systems are booming right now, what with every new product needing to be on the IoT or controllable via a smartphone app.
Welcome to my life! Though we've definitely gotten to work on some cool stuff.
