ifail

One of those days..

One of those days that I am incapable of doing anything significant at work. Another wasted day – mostly for the company I am working for since I am getting paid whether or not I do anything.

I think I am the biggest underperformer in the company.

I am not completely useless – there are definitely things I can contribute to. But given my age and my experience on paper (since my experience in reality does not match what my CV says 📝) I should be able to do much, much more. On paper, I have years of Java development experience. In reality I have a few 1 year Java development experiences.

So, ok, focus, focus.. Focus.. What to do? What is the plan now?

OK, the plan is sticking here as long as I can until I am let go. I give myself a few months. I hope I am not being too optimistic. Just one day at a time. Any day I am not let go is a good day and deserves a celebration.

Then I think I will start looking for a new job that I can keep for longer – that fits my skillset better, i.e. something I can actually do. Something simpler compared to working as a developer where I do not need to code searching graphs and so on. Maybe data entry.. Or manual QA. I mean there must be something.. We will see, we will see.. Focus..

OK, I have a solid plan. The plan is solid. Hold the line, hold the line. Solid plan. Let's go..

htgr3pvBr-I

Details on how I failed at work. This should also shed some light on why I hate my work too I think. They are connected. Maybe more on that in another post however – lets focus on the topic at hand.

I am close to 40 years old.. People at my age have titles such as Director of Software Engineering, Head of Backend Engineering, Software Architect and so on.. People sharing the same title with myself are around 25 years old. People interviewing (and rejecting) me are much younger than me.

I am at least 15 years behind, and I am not moving forward a bit.

In 2019 I was hired at a relatively good company and the day I started 2 other software developers had started. We shared the same start day. They have been promoted not once, twice in 2.5 years. They are both Staff Software Engineers now. They are leading teams. I have been promoted not once but zero times. Yes zero. I am not sure if there are any developers in the company who have not received any promotions for that long in my company. I am still at where I started. 👨‍💼 The company gives a bonus between 5% to 15% annually based on your performance. You guessed it right – I am also constantly getting only 5%.

My progress stopped more or less when I had my children. My wife had a very difficult pregnancy. We constantly had to go to the hospital. That was a very difficult 5 – 6 months for us already.

After the birth.. slowly I started not being able to find any time to improve out of work hours. There was constantly something. Then I started being tired at work and not being able to focus for 8 hours. These days I cannot even work for 8 hours. Usually I work for 6 hours a day only. I am literally a thief. I am stealing money from my company. I am also getting what I deserve – nothing. I also tend to always do the most basic tasks all the time. I receive no recognition because there is nothing to recognize.

I did not accept my faith so easily. I was trying to go to the library on weekends. Around 3 years ago, again one morning I wanted to go to the library telling that I was going to do some reading on some new technology – I guess it was Java streams back then or maybe Java concurrency. My wife told me she was feeling very tired and wanted to sleep and if it was ok I stayed. I had to baby sit. That day I realized the situation was hopeless.

For this summer we were looking for summer camps for our children. We have been discussing options with my wife. Summer camps are from 9am to 4pm. I told her it was not enough it would hardly work. She asked me if it was not normal. I got extremely mad. The idea that this is perceived normal made me furious. How am I supposed to drop them off at 9am and pick them back up at 4pm (which is only 7 hours long) and work for 8 hours, given I also need to drive back after dropping them off and need to leave around 3:40pm to pick them up? How can I do this?

Truth is – I have been sacrificing my career greatly since my children were born.

Now there are many more details that can be discussed. I need to clarify I am not blaming my wife for anything. I am not blaming my children either. They are not to blame.

On the other hand it feels horrible to be stuck literally at where you were 5 – 6 years ago. I did progress in my career for a few years – been learning – improving – growing. Then I hit a wall. A wall made from diapers, baby formula, toys, daycare, emergency room visits, hours spent in parks, birthday parties, various courses like swimming, arts and craft and so on.

Nowadays I am doing so little work, I am ashamed of myself. I literally do not have the time. I literally do not have the energy.

I sometimes look at career opportunities. There are interesting jobs that I would be interested in. But I am unable to work in them even if I were hired. It is interesting that I do not have time to work. I am not even discussing if I have the time or energy for any sort of hobbies or personal time. I am in a situation where I am complaining about not having enough time to actually work.

Well you may be saying – as usual – why are you complaining? You could/should have seen all this and have a plan. Well we have been in the wait list for before and after school for 15 months now. It is that easy – they just say there is no room available. Well you can hire a nanny. How can I hire a nanny for 2 hours in the morning and 3 hours in the evening? Who would work like that? How much would that cost?

I told my wife not to work – she did not accept. Now she is working full time – thanks to the fact that I am dropping off the kids and picking them back up from school – and that I will be doing so in the summer.

Today was not any different – I got home around 9:05 am and I left by 3:10pm so I could pick up kids from school. We wake up around 7:00am. The first 2 hours of my day drains all my energy already – repeating the same things over and over again to the kids.

I feel demotivated and demoralized with very little to no hope on any improvement any time soon in this situation. I envy the developers around me working on much more complicated stuff in contrast to me working on same things over and over again.

It is too late now – I can't make that change now. I actually did try but ran out of battery and accepted the defeat. I feel like a fallen soldier. It was probably not possible to achieve both – and I made my choice.

Now – one must be careful what they wish for – it may become real. I would not trade my kids for anything in the world. I wish the best for them. They are precious. They are innocent, full of joy, with so much ahead of them. All the potential – it is unbelievable.

I am grateful for what I have. I will keep pushing. I will keep trying. I will keep working with the limited time and energy I have. I will suck up the truth that I am in teams with much younger people only and will not be able to work on more complicated tasks for a while. I do not have the required knowledge. I could not build up the required experience. I will keep moving forward where in my case I think moving forward means just being able to keep what you have. I should at least be able to keep what I have – I wish to keep what I have. I am scared of falling even more behind – I wish to be able to at least keep what I have.

2Nd6trewC68

Nobody knows.

🤫

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Literature.

I loved reading books when I was .. can't tell now. Until high school I think. Until when I was around 15 – 16 years old. Until the only books I started buying became test preparation books. I also loved writing. 📗

I started a game magazine with a few friends when we were 13 years old. We tried selling it in some game shops. I also used to write book reviews myself.

I used to write a lot of poems. Probably they were horrible. I do not care. I loved it. I was strong with words. I might not be as strong here as English is not my main language.

Back in my days in high school we had to choose a path – lessons focused on Math and Science, Math and Literature, Literature and Social Sciences. I went the Math and Science route. Not because I wanted to. My parents just made me do so, so I could be rich in the future. So that I would become an engineer. Little did the know I never was meant to be an engineer.

Well, well.. I am now blaming everything on my parents – how mature.

I feel like I am wearing a suit that fits me perfectly when I spend time with words, paragraphs, chapters, stories, ideas.. I do not like numbers, I do not like formulas.

How I wish I was brave enough to face myself when I was 15 years old. How I wish I was brave enough to tell my parents I only had one life and I would much work as a librarian, a historian, an editor..

I was raised with the fear of unemployment, not being able to find work. Look at me now. Struggling with life and everything.

OK, shut up and make the change. You do not understand – I do not have that kind of money. I do not have that kind of time in my hands. It is too late. Now that I realize all this (or at least I think I realize all this), it is too late. I am almost 40 years old. I have a family to support.

You are lying, you would have been complaining that you always wanted to be an engineer had you taken that route. No.. I mean, I do not think so. I cannot know for sure..

Then I am doomed.. Or the problem is elsewhere. I literally cannot untie this knot myself. I am scared I do not know what I want. Do I just want to complain? Please no, that would mean there is no escape. I want to escape.

I will just admit it.. I sometimes think I was raised very badly. Not intentionally – but does that matter? OK – there were many others who were raised badly – much worse than me. How come they are not a mess? See, again it is my fault. It is my fault because that is who I am. It is my fault being who I am.

You must show some effort. What effort? I want to but what effort?

You are living a life you do not even deserve. It should have been much worse. OK, I can see that. I can accept that.

Enough for today, I am very tired. It is a Sunday evening, weather is very nice outside – it is perfect actually. I should be enjoying life right? It is near impossible when you finally find the courage to admit yourself all the mistakes you have made in the last 35+ years. It is near impossible when you are a prisoner in your own life.

pkcJEvMcnEg

Alive but not living.

The worst state a person can be in. 💀

You can be alive and living – that is I think the best. You are enjoying your life. You have plans, hopes, loved ones, hobbies.

You can be dead and not living anymore – this is the state what majority of the people are in. I think in the scale of billions. They lived their lives, they have been buried and mostly forgotten.

You can be dead but still living – there are only a few thousand such people I think. Think of great leaders, musicians, inventors and so on. People remembered by someone every single day, their names being called daily. They are still living even though they are not with us physically. Their legacy keep them alive in a sense.

And there is the absolute worst state to be in – alive but not living. You are technically alive – you breathe, you eat, you sleep and so on. But you have no ambition. Nothing you hope. No plans.

It hits the worst when the weather is nice, people around you is enjoying life. It hits even worse if you actually had a life before. It is akin to losing an organ later instead of being born without it. It mentally hurts so much knowing what you once could do but cannot anymore.

This is why I like rainy days much more I think. I at least feel like I am not missing on anything. It feels like everyone is just home getting bored.

There is nothing wrong with dying – the problem is no one else is dying. This is a quote I heard somewhere but cannot remember when, where or to whom it belongs to. But it did resonate with me. I do agree with this statement. If we knew we were going to die tomorrow – but everyone else was coming with us – if we knew we ALL were going to die tomorrow, I think we would have been ok. It hurts if you know in case you are the only one departing this world – interesting.

It is the same if you are mentally dead as well. I know because I am in that state myself.

I need someone to support me, to pick me up. There are more such people around you when you are in your teenage years. There is hardly anyone when you are in your late 30s.

nL3RLO1-oQI

Zero. Zero, zero, zero. I have absolutely zero interest in my work.

Everyone is the next Steve Jobs in the meeting. Ideas – brainstorming – different tools – using jargon.. 👨‍🏫

Let's take this offline – this can be a good topic for a next discussion – let's iterate over this.

It is so interesting, the time and money the company spends on this garbage. I am right now in a meeting with 2 Product Managers (not 1!), 1 Growth Engineer (wtf is a Growth Engineer), 1 QA, 2 Engineering Managers (yes not 1, 2!), 1 Agile/Scrum/Team Coach (not even sure what she is called – mostly in the company for diversification since she is an elderly woman and seems like all she does is meaningless chat), 1 Design .. person, engineer, designer – again I do not even know and 4 developers. 12 people! 12 people discussing some shitty thing for 1 hour. What a waste..

Post its – t shirt sizes – scales – arrows – colors – grouping stuff – tables – user stories – personas – scores – matrices. Oh my god PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME. Please. Please. Please.

If you hire all these people of course they will want to do things – they can't simply sit and do nothing. And the things they do are usually dragging the company down. They are stealing the time from people who are actually doing the work. I mean what is a “Solution Ideation meeting”, why is it 1 hours long and why do you need 12 people to decide on how you will communicate a new feature to users? Why do I care? Why do you need so many peoples opinion? Just make a decision yourself, who cares if we are going to have a banner on main page or we email everyone or if we email everyone after they use the product? I DO NOT CARE. If we keep doing these meetings, we will never be able to come up with new features anymore – we will just spend all our time on brainstorming.

Just breath..

kDz2Xk-LRN0

Fall of a hero.

This particular person, I admired a lot. Let's call him RG in case we reference him later.

I have been friends with him for 10 years. I cannot summarize everything in a single post. We also have been living 12000 kms apart from each other for the last 4 years. Unfortunately I have not been speaking to him for almost a year now.

We have been speaking to each other over WhatsApp all the time. In the last few years he had some very serious problems. He has been using a lot of substance. He became a narcissist. He has been talking almost only about how superior he was – how superior his thoughts were.

He also had some theories on mRNA, covid, vaccines.. They were a hot topic then. He was constantly trying to convince me on his beliefs. I was always listening, and sometimes politely telling him that I was skeptical of his theories and sometimes politely letting him know that I had no interest. I already had my jabs 💉, I could not care less if covid was human made or if vaccines were injecting other things in my body.

One day, again I saw dozens of messages in WhatsApp and again I was as polite as I could be.. I told him, very politely, advised him maybe it would be better to find others interested in these topics since I was not able to have a meaningful conversation with him on these topics. I told him there were surly online groups people discussing these.

I did not think this would be perceived in a bad way. Previously my friends told me they did not have interest in topics I talked to them about like the stock market, rockets or true crimes. I simply stopped talking about them to those particular people.

He got extremely mad. I understand, he was already going through hard times. But he said very strong words. He told me he was cutting communication with me effective immediately. He accused me of things I never thought about. He said something in the lines of me judging him over leaving his sons behind. I never had a single word about his sons in my life.

And well there was nothing left for me to say at that moment. I did not reply. I was very sad. He meant a lot to me – he was a big part of my life. I admired his intelligence, kindness, humor.

Several days later he sent me a message like nothing happened. I did not reply.

Several days later, it was my birthday, he sent me a message saying happy birthday. He was the only one who celebrated my birthday except my wife and my parents. I did not reply.

Several days later he sent me a message saying he will not send anymore messages but he will be waiting for me to contact him.

I never contacted him. I miss him. I wish him the best. I do not contact him not because I do not like him. I like him a lot. We all have super-heroes, he is one of my heroes.

I wish you the best RG.

6agSGuHEln4

Not feeling comfortable.

Although I am supposed to be anonymous here, I still cannot share everything I want to. I actually cannot share anything I want to. I need to find some place where I can share some of them. It is painful holding them in. 🤕

fm7ntyycGbU

Not motivated. Not one bit!

This therapy, writing everything down, is not working for me either. I am not comfortable writing anyway. Still keeping everything in.

So difficult being happy. I do not remember the last time I was happy.

I have a lot to say but no will to speak. I feel devastated. I feel like a mud puddle.

I can hardly work. I am running out of time. And I will not be able to find something new once I am let go. I feel drained mentally and physically.🔋

There is so much noise around me. There is too much noise in the world. I want silence. I want darkness. I want to be far, far away. I want to be ageless, pastless and futureless.

Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.

nllmm7Q4sj0

Nothing to see here.. Reminder: This is only for myself.. I am seeing this as some sort of a therapy.. It has not been helping much, yet.. But I will keep trying.

Another red day for me.. I need to enrich my vocabulary to express how I feel. Insecure.. Anxious.. Dull.. Misplaced.. Foggy.. Misunderstood.. 🌁

Even though I am supposedly writing here anonymously, and not stealing anyones time – I still feel bad like I am stealing peoples time and energy.. Still I am trimming the things I want to say. I feel bad I am repeating myself.

Maybe I should just start therapy. Even the idea makes me feel exhausted. I wish I could go back in time. I wonder if I can mess up my life in a different way.

I am ashamed of all the times I have been a chicken. I lived my life as a chicken. I think I will talk about this more later.

Every father wants their kids to do things he always wanted to do but never could. I want my kids to live. To truly live. Experience this world, life. Not be a chicken like their father. Please kids, figure out who you are, find what makes you happy, do not be a chicken – ask for it. Demand it. Do not be scared of being refused. Do not be scared of being laughed at.

I still have plenty of years to live – in theory of course. Who knows, maybe it is my last day today. But considering I am not special in any way and I will live to the average age.. How do I live through all this time, it will not be easy.

I feel like my heart sometimes is skipping a beat or two. I just want years to pass. I want to wake up to 2032. My standards right now are so low – all I want to be is healthy so I am not a burden on anyone – I do not get fired, well so I am not a burden to anyone and actually provide for my family.. I do not even want anything else at this point.

Future is so bright..

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