Lol DR broken?

Burned out but trapped at work for next 4-6 weeks - need survival tips

I'm 31y/o software dev and I'm completely fried and need advice on how to hang on until I can quit.

After 5 months job hunting, I landed a role that turned into a nightmare. 6 months of being bounced between different teams/scopes/projects with impossible deadlines and covering for incompetent managers/colleagues has left me burned out. Problem is, I'm finalizing a mortgage and can't quit or take sick leave without messing up income verification stage. Need to survive 4-6 more weeks.

Work is toxic and unpredictable - not enough resources given, blaming, shifting priorities, undefined tasks, endless meetings. Fake sense of urgency. Never feeling a sense of completion - there is always something extra that comes up. Documenting everything to have paper trail in case shit hits the fan, but honestly it feels like I'm at war daily and it's exhausting. I'm weeks behind on everything.

I have ADHD and my usual meds (18mg Concerta/10-20mg Lisdexamphetamine of Adixemin brand) aren't working anymore. Im able to fall asleep only after taking 0.2-0.3mg of Xanax or smoking some THC/CBD flowers. Constant brain fog, shot memory, never feel rested. Maybe 2-3 productive hours max daily before I become useless - either depressed or too wired and too anxious to function.

Already tried bunch of supplements (all possible forms magnesium, vitamin D, fish oil, my supplements drawer has like 60 different bottles), cleaned up diet, cut dairy/nicotine/alcohol/caffeine, taking strategic vacation days here and there in beginning or ending of a week.

I also suspected some allergies, tried out quercetine + vitamin c + all possible anti allergy meds - didnt help. I even suspected inflammation - tried curcumin and all other stuff - useless.

Anyone dealt with extreme burnout while trapped in a job? How do you function when your tank is empty but quitting isn't an option?

Only thing that helps is that I work fully remotely. Exercise would help but I cant force myself to do it.

Once the mortgage closes, I'm gone. Get a less stressful job lined up. Just need to survive until then without falling apart completely.

Got fed up with my newcomer PO's bullshit planning and constant gaslighting whenever deadlines get missed.

Made a spreadsheet showing our actual capacity vs his unrealistic expectations - turns out all of Q3 work is spilling into Q4, so I'll be spending October finishing July/August/September tasks.

Brought this up multiple times asking for more time or resources. Got denied and blamed instead.

It got really bad to the point where I had to start doing his work for him - make business decisions, create tickets, define acceptance criteria, requirements and etc. Just so I would have some paper trail so that I wouldnt get blamed again in case I'm missing some undefined requirement. Finally couldn't take it anymore and escalated to my dev lead.

Now the PO is getting absolutely chewed out. Feels fucking good to finally see him face consequences for their terrible planning.

On another note - is it a disease or do the most useless people just naturally gravitate toward management positions? For example, this guy is supposed to be a decision maker but answers almost every business question vaguely, ambiguously, or just straight up ignores it. How the fuck such people even exist, it just blows my mind.

Monday - delivered feature1. Manager demands starting to work on new feature2. I start working on feature2.

Thursday - in late evening manager provides feedback from testing feature1 for which internal testing starts Monday.

Friday. I start investigating. Everything is fucking broken. Backend contract broken from BE side, UI broken by another team member's PR from FE side. Missing configuration from FE side that was not documented anywhere.

I start working on issues from my side, inform relevant parties and coordinate that they would make fixes on their side (ofc after getting a lot of pushback trying them to force me to write workarounds to work with their broken implementations)

My manager during the day: what was the reason for us being blocked now?

Me: broken BE, broken FE by another team member, missing undocumented configs. Too late (and incomplete) testing feedback. Having to switch to feature2 priorities before finishing everything with feature1. Basically all things out of my scope.

My manager: so just to clarify we are blocked from internal testing because YOU missed this? Why it wasnt caught sooner?

Me: due to 5 same reasons that I listed before, I can list more but would prefer focusing on getting things working today

Manager: Ok, as WE discussed let's focus on getting things working and discuss about improving this processes in the future.

Seriously it fucking sucks working in this bank as a mobile developer.

We are responsible for basically everything.

From scoping out work according to business requirements, documenting stuff, to creating/maintaining BE contracts and constantly double triple checking everyone else's work across the chain.

Actual mobile implementation or proper testing is like the last priority in this case. And yet we are the ones that take all the blame if we fail to meet arbitrary deadline.

Fucking hell. Im gonna start documenting all decisions of this retarded manager, I'm not gonna allow him to throw me under the bus due to failures caused by his own shitty decisions

How do you mentally check out and stop caring at a toxic job?

Been at this big fintech for 4 months. Small teams, impossible deadlines, undefined tasks, missing specs, constant context switching. Everyone's doing overtime/weekends while management sets you up to fail then blames you. Performance evaluations every 3 months.

Was literally about to quit tomorrow but need the paycheck. So I'm turning this into an experiment - I'm a recovering people-pleaser who's never set boundaries at work. 9 years in my career, never been fired, I left multiple times due to burnout in the past.

Time to see what happens when I stop caring about pleasing incompetent managers and their made-up deadlines. Work at my own pace until they get tired of me. How do you actually do this though?

- How to not give into false sense of urgency induced stress?
- Ask for proper specs without feeling guilty?
- Work slower and not hate yourself for it?
- Push back on unrealistic expectations?

I'm burned out and need to learn how to be strategically as mediocre as possible for my own sanity.

Anyone been through this mindset shift?

Speed, quality, scope. Why managers dont understand that they can pick only two and expect all three?

Quitting dev job after 3 months (8 YOE) – thinking of switching to BA/PO. Anyone else been there?

Just passed the 3-month probation at a mobile dev job in a bank—and I’m already planning to quit either tomorrow or Monday.

It took me 5 months to land this job, I’ve spent 3 months working here, and I only need 3 more to qualify for a mortgage (which was the original plan). But I just can’t do this anymore. I’m drowning in endless technical churn every day.

Last week broke me: I was moved without notice to a completely different team and domain, with a massive proprietary codebase, zero onboarding, and totally unreasonable deadlines—in other words, unpaid overtime is just expected. I was hired at mid-level pay but expected to produce senior-level results like someone who’s been here for years. I honestly don’t know how even neurotypicals would cope with this chaos.

I have a bachelor’s degree, 8 years of experience, and usually stick it out at least a year—even in shitty jobs. But this? Either I’m too old for this shit, or taking this role was just a mistake. My ADHD brain is fried. I’ve never felt this anxious, foggy, and burnt out—and it happened fast.

The guilt of quitting this quickly and going back to the grind of interviews and memorizing trivia is eating me alive. But I’m falling apart, and at this point, I feel like I have no other choice.

I’m also thinking of switching to a BA/PO role. I’m actually good at organizing chaos, writing documentation, and talking to people—without wanting to hide under a rock.

Has anyone else with made the jump from dev to BA/PO? Did it help? Would love to hear your experience.

Holy fucking shit, I can't stand this corporate framework they use for this banking app on which I've been working on for 2 months.

I’ve spent the last damn month just building three basic screens, and now my very first PR is buried under 50 fucking comments. Half of them exist purely because their shitty framework has multiple versions stacked and stitched together with so many workarounds that you need so much domain knowledge that intuition or actual dev experience goes out the window.

They’ve abstracted real app development into oblivion. It’s a CRUD app, but they've over-engineered it so much they’re now creating their own problems — just so they can specialize in solving them. It's become this self-sustaining nightmare where they make themselves irreplaceable... and simultaneously unemployable anywhere else.

I genuinely have no idea what I’m doing with my life anymore. The original plan was six months here, grab a mortgage, fuck off, and go back to contracting.

Now I’m stuck questioning my sanity every time I open this project or have to listen to another lecture from my 'buddy' about how everything that I'm doing is wrong.

So in my 6 ppl dev team management had to do cuts and pulled a jira report of story points sum of the past 10 months, it went like this:

1. 307
2. 307
3. 283
4. 274
5. 257
6. 220

The 6. Guy is a teamlead so he was safe. 4 and 5 guys were fired with zero notice and 1 weeks severance pay (we are contractors).

Best part is that remaining 2. And 3. devs produce very low quality code. But hey, they have enough story points. Managament didnt even bother to discuss with teamlead about who to keep. Workload is the same, we were told to "level up".

You can't make this shit up. US based startups man.

Have you encountered projects that were beyond saving?

Been freelancing for a client via agency for the past year. In the beginning the deal was to maintain identity verification sdk for android maybe 10-15 hours a month or so. Their flow consisted of around 25-30 screens, so I took it thinking it was easy. Boy I was wrong.

Codebase was and still is a complete spaghetti, backend weird and overcomplicated and impossible to talk with someone in backend. Had to reverse engineer their complicated flows many times just to make a small change on the app. There also are lots of issues with capturing/sending camera recordings especially on older devices. The fact that Im the only dev maintaining this doesnt help either.

First few months it was just maintenance, later some small features and soon it become a 40 hour a month gig. I was able to deal with it but then management changed, they started micromanaging me heavily and now they want me to do 60-70 hours a month. Also they asked to implement some unnecessarily complicated features and to be honest without refactoring most of the codebase I cant even begin to think of how to implement them.

Also workload in my main job increased. Started sacrificing my evenings, weekends and basically my wellbeing to work on their product. Tried to relax but then I realized Im just spending my freetime thinking about their project all of the time. Best part is that last few updates fucked up the whole flow and I dont even understand where the problem is anymore: backend, 3rd party integration issues or something else that I did.

Last friday told them that my availability changed and Im quitting. Told them that Im gonna provide support till the end of the month but no big features. Just spent a full shift in my main job and another full shift working on their product, trying to untagle their spaghetti.. Im totally lost and burned out. Meanwhile stupid manager is asking why "simple" stuff according to him is taking too long.

I should receive my last payment from agency this week, also asked them to send it to me earlier but no answer so far. At this point Im so burned out that I dont care anymore about the last payment, even if client complains that everything is broken and doesnt want to pay me. Project is beyond fucked and that SDK as well as their backend is a ticking time bomb. Im done.

Joined a new startup as a remote dev, feeling a bit micromanaged. So this week I joined an established startup as a senior mobile dev where I work remotely.

Previous two devs got fired and two new guys got hired (me as a senior dev and another senior dev as a teamlead, also third senior dev will join next week).

Situation is that codebase is really crappy (they invested 4 years developing the android app which hasn't even been released yet). It seems that previous devs were piggybacking on old architecture and didn't bother to update anything, looking at their GIT output I could tell that they were working at 20-30% capacity and just accepting each other MR's usually with no comments meaning no actual code reviews. So codebase already is outdated and has lots of technical debt. Anyways, I like the challenges so a crappy codebase is not really a problem.

Problem is that management seems to be shitting bricks now and because they got burned by devs who treated this as a freelance gig (Im talking taking 8-10 weeks pto in a given year, lots of questionable sick leaves and skipping half of the meetings) now after management fired them it seems that they are changing their strategy into micro managament and want to roll this app out into production in the next 3 months or so lol. I started seeing redflags, for example:

1. Saw VP's slack announcement where he is urging devs to push code everyday. I'm a senior dev and I push code only when I'm ready and I have at least a proof of concept that's working. Not a big fan of pushing draft work daily that is in in progress and have to deal with nitpicky comments on stuff that is not ready yet. This was never a problem in 4-5 other jobs I worked in over the years.

2. Senior dev who's assigned as the teamlead on my team has been working for 1 month and I can already see that he hates the codebase, doesn't plan on coding too much himself and seems like he plans on just sitting in meetings and micromanaging me and other dev who will join soon. For example everyday he is asking me on how I am doing and I have to report this to him + in a separate daily meeting with him and product. Feels weird.

3. Same senior dev/teamlead had a child born yesterday. While his wife was in hospital the guy rushed home to join all work meetings and to work on the project. Even today he seems to be working. That screams to me like a major redflag, how will he be able to balance his teamlead position and his family life? Why management didn't tell him to just take a few days off? He told me himself he is a senior dev who helped other devs out, but never was in an actual lead position. I'm starting to doubt if he will be able to handle this properly and set proper boundaries so that management wouldn't impact mental health.

Right now this is only my 1st week. They didn't even have a proper backend documentation. Not a problem. I installed their iOS app which is released and intercepted the traffic so I know how backend works so I can implement it in android app now.

My point is that I'm not a child who needs hand holding. I already took on 2 tickets and gonna push an MR with fixes. This is my first week guys. In more corporate companies people sit 2 months just reading documentation and are not expected to be useful for first few months. All I want is for management to fuckoff and let me do my thing. I already join daily standup, respond to my teamlead daily and I ping people if I need something. I take on responsibility and I deliver.

How to handle this situation? I think maybe I came off as too humble in the interview or something, but basically I feel like I'm being treated like a junior or something. I think I need to deliver a few times and establish some firm boundaries here.

In all workplaces where I worked I was trusted and given freedom. I feel like if they continue treating me like a junior/mid workhorse who needs to be micromanaged I will just start interviewing for other places soon.

How do you deal with multiple git identities?

Im working fulltime + freelancing + working on my own projects and all of them are on different gitlab emails. It was very annoying to keep remembering to set my git email to a proper one each time I switch to work on another project.

Right now I came up with something easier:

I started using just 1 gitlab profile (personal one) and added my both company e-mails as secondary emails to my personal gitlab profile.

This way I can keep my git identity the same (personal e-mail address) and if I push to company1 repo or company2 repo the commit author e-mail addres is shown email@company1.com and email@company2.com as these emails are given access to private repos and they are added to my personal gitlab account.

Just wondering if these companies will see my commits to other repos by viewing my personal gitlab profile or no? Or if there is an easier way to handle multiple git identities without having to switch between them each time I open another project and want to push some commits.

Just had a junior/mid dev who worked in our company for around 3 months quit because in his words "he is unable to win any argument".

I saw his comments in MR's and other seniors were just being meticulous. Had he compromised a little or atleast got to knew the devs in person and took this offline most of his problems would have been resolved. Never scheduled any meetings before implementing stuff, he just followed his gut and then shot himself in the foot plenty of times.

Personally I think it wasnt even a skill issue but a communication issue. We have a relaxed culture where u can work in the office or fully remotely so the guy came in on his first day, picked up his laptop and we never saw him. Tried to invite him for an afterwork beer or some activities, he never accepted.

If he had met the devs in person he would have seen that:

1. One guy has OCD and he never agrees with anyone but if theres a timeline hes able to make compromises and hes actually chill
2. Second guy is also a perfectionist but has mentor capabilities and you can always go to him about anything and he helps to mediate with the first guy. You can run everything through this guy and he will never give you shit
3. Third guy in the team is just a junior hotshot whos a bit insecure and disagrees in comments just because he can. But he can be dealt with very quickly with showing a little backbone.

Like seriously these are just people that you can deal very easily when u know their personalities. Instead he saw everyone in company as these 2D robots that he wasnt able to win his arguments against.

Communication shouldnt happen only in standups and MR comment section. U have to learn to deal with people otherwise u will burn urself out like this guy and quit.

End of my rant about 35 day recruitment process for anyone interested to hear the ending.

Just got rejected by a company (name Swenson He) for a remote Android Engineer SWE role after wasting 35 days for the recruitment process.

First intro interview went good, then I did an assignment that had 72 hours deadline (asked for couple days longer to do this task, did it in around 40 hours, it was purely an assignment not free work, I could have done it in a day but I choose to overeenginer it so I could use the project as a portfolio piece, no regrets there and I learned some new things). After that It took them 2 weeks just to organize the technical interview.

2 days after the technical interview I received an offer from a second company with 1 week to decide. I immediately informed the Swenson He about it and politely asked whether they could speed up their decision process.

Now I know that I could just sign with the second company and if the big Swenson He would decide to bless me with and offer I could jump ship. But out of principle I never did that for 7 years of my career. If Im in a situation with multiple offers I always inform all parties (it's kinda a test for them so I could see which one is more serious and wants me to work for them more). Swenson He didnt pass the test.

6 days of silence. I pinged the techlead I interviewed with on LinkedIn about my situation, he assured me that he'l ask his hiring team to get back to me with feedback that day.

2 days of silence. I had to decide to sign or not to sign with a second company. I pinged the techlead again regarding their decision and 10min after received a rejection letter. There was no feedback.

I guess they got pissed off or something. Idk what were they thinking, maybe something along the lines of "Candidate trying to force our 35day recruitment process to go faster? Pinging us so much? Has another offer? What an asshole! ".

Didnt even receive any feedback in the end. Pinged their techlead regarding that but no response. Anyways fuck them. I felt during entire process that they are disrespecting me, I just wanted do see how it ends. Techlead was cool and knowledgeable but recruitment team was incompetent and couldn't even stay in touch properly during entire process. Had I didn't force their hand I bet they would have just ghosted me like they did with others according to their Glassdoor reviews.

Glad I continued to interview for other places, tomorrow Im signing an offer. Fuck Swenson He.

P.S. From my experience as a remote B2B contractor if a company is serious the entire process shouldn't take longer than max 2 weeks. Anything outside of that is pure incompetence. Even more serious companies can organize the required 2-3 meetings in a week if they have to and if they are interested. Hiring process shouldnt take longer than MAX 3 weeks unless you are applying for some fancy slow picky corporate company or a FAANG, which is out of topic for this post.

Lmao Microsoft started spamming all Skype users like some sort of scammer from early 2000's.

Imagine being laid off from big companies such as Meta after basically doing jack shit for months if not years.

Employers are aware of the "day in the.." videos and gonna interview u thoroughly in order to make sure that you are actually competent.

I doubt many of the laid off bunch (especially the incompetent ones) will get an easy pass.

Where do you search for Remote jobs?

Ive been using LinkedIn in the past but this time no luck for a few weeks. Applied only to jobs with easy apply though. Should I start applying to jobs without easy apply as well?

Tried to headhunt recruiters and expand my network but that didn't really help much.

Got a few calls but its either lowball offers or hiring process is a drag.

Anyways I think it's time to start applying in some other platforms.

From your experience, where else do you search for remote roles? Perhaps you could recommend some good western agencies that don't just search for cheap labour?

I appreciate any advice.

Im in a tough place now. Received 1 offer from a company and on Monday afternoon I did the last tech interview with the second company.

Now by Monday I have to respond to the first offer while I dont know about the decision from the second company.

Tried to speed them up a bit with an email on Thursday afternoon by emailing the guy who interviewed me and also CCed both of the recruiters who were involved in the process. Basically told them that I have another offer but Im still interested in them and I would like to hear their decision. No answer yet.

Its sad bcs the guy from company no2 who interviewed me seemed really cool to work with and I think I did good enough to get an offer. But apparently Im not that good enough that 5 working days would be enough to respond to me with a decision given my current situation.

It sucks because now Im gonna spend the weekend wondering what should I do next.

Is it normal for US based companies to lowball EU based remote senior hires that much?

Just had this weird experience:

Applied to a US based company as a remote senior android dev.

Told them my rate was 55usd/hour.

Their internal recruiter who is based in Poland told me that their budget is max 45 usd/hour max for a senior role.

I was like ok maybe its worth a shot.

Passed the initial interview, did the technical interview, seemed like I did really great.

Today I receive an offer from that recruiter of 30 usd/hour. Feedback was that Im senior in some areas but in most of them Im a "really strong mid level" so they cant offer senior rate for me. Right now Im thinking of how to respond to that.

What is this? Seniors are expected to know everything 100 percent? Every senior I worked with usually specializes in 2-3 areas and looks up others as he goes. I guess shes trying to lowball me or something.

To be honest this is hilarious for me. If I wanted I could land a contracting gig with same 30usd/hour in my city 5 miles away from my home (Im based in Latvia, capital city Riga). But this is US based company so what the heck? Am I being gaslighted? Or is this rate the new normal?

Maybe Im being delusional here, should I manage my expectations or something?

Can you share your experiences with negotiating hourly rates as a senior dev and what rates you guys charge for EU/US B2B contracts?

1. Applied to a company as a senior dev and sent them my prefered rate
2. Got rejected
3. Contacted recruiter and asked why. The rate seems to be not within their budget
4. Knocked down my rate by 15 percent, did their intro and technical interviews
5. Received an email with feedback that on some topics during technical interview I displayed senior knowledge and on others a very strong mid knowledge. Basically they are trying to gaslight me and presented me a final offer with a knocked down rate by another 30 percent this time. Bitch thinks if I reduced my rate I will do it that for second time.

And they are supposed to be US based company. Offering me a rate that I could get 10km away from my home lol.

Gonna ghost them for a couple days and respons them on Monday that I would like to proceed with the original rate that was quoted by them.

Fucking idiots expect a senior to know everything. If there was a person like that he would be charging at least double of what they are offering.

Another shithole agency reached out to me out of the blue 4 weeks after my application.

The senior bro sends me an assignment with 30 requirements to build an app with multiple screens. Ofcourse no design provided and no API provided. Timeline 2 weeks.

Tried ask to expedite the process and reason with him because now Im in other processes where Im expecting an offer next week so I can send him a link to a very similar project I did, he can review and if he wants to I can jump on a technical call and I can answer all questions. Guy ignored the proposal entirely and wants to stick with his stupid timelines and stupid requirements which he wrote probably down while taking a shit with zero research.

Best part is there was no introduction, no discussions about hourly rate or expectations, nothing.

Disorganized shithole. Told them to get their shit together and withdrew my application.

Question about hourly rates.

As remote EU based senior frontend dev (I do android native) how decent is 45usd/hour rate?

This is what a US based company is offering me. Im freelancing currently in a local agency and Im getting same hourly rate locally.

I work under an individual business licence which means I will be paying around 18 percent of taxes.

Few years ago as a junior android dev with couple years of self taught experience of working in startups I submitted a simple android app assignment for a junior android dev role. Assignment had only like 8 requirements so I followed them to the letter. That didn't end well.

App was simple just 3 screens. Login screen with username and password input fields, login button.

Had to call a login endpoint after login button was clicked, redirecting to home screen, calling items endpoint, displaying a list of items and when an item was clicked passing item data and redirect to item details screen.

Needless to say big swinging dick senior was not impressed. UI was not perfect, I forgot to display a loading animation when fetching data, didnt handle back button properly.

I agreed with some points but other comments were clearly just nitpicking: his preferred variable naming conventions, his opinions on architecture that was not up to his standard (official google arch at the time was not up to his standard).

He also was mad that app wasn't prepared for release to googleplay (another out of the ass requirement). Like I would prepare a 3 screen app for prod release that he will forget ever existed after 20min of his review.

Lots more of nitpicking, encapsulation this encapsulation that, omg now hes shocked that there are a few warnings after the project is built.

Regardless my self confidence was destroyed at that point and after few more negative experiences I dropped android dev alltogether for a couple years and switched to game dev.

After game dev ran its course I went back to android dev and found a supportive place where I could grow.

Looking back, they were actually hiring atleast a mid level for a junior position but I was grilled as a senior. The guy literally didnt wrote any single positive thing in that review about my code even tho my senior peers said my project was decent back then, its just that I didnt handle a few edge cases and that's all.

I looked up the guy in linkedin, turns out hes a uni dropout who posts all books that he red about software dev in his education section of his linkedin profile. Found a bunch of other narcissistic stuff on his profile. Guy was a fucking idiot. Even if I worked under him it would have probably sucked.

Learned some important lessons I guess. Always get a second, 3rd and 4th opinion and dont take criticism too seriously. Always check what kind of person is providing feedback.

Got rejected by a company in Italy because in order to work for them remotely apparently I need to have Italian VISA. Tried to reason with them that I'm an EU citizen and I don't need a VISA but they wouldn't budge. Its either VISA or ASTALAVISTA

Today's interaction with indian recruiter who's recruiting for us based android dev role that requires experience with Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality.

Him: Hi.
Me: Hey. Nice to meet you! Can we discuss this role and etc.?
Him: have ar vr?
Me: have English?
Him: I think you dont understand ar vr.
Him: We need usa candidate anyways.
Him: Its augment or virtual.

Needless to say, insta blocked.

Started my Monday morning by dm'ing all recruiters that are dragging their feet (for 1-2 weeks) to expedite their recruitment proccesses because I "received" an offer to which I have to respond by end of the week.

Let the chips fall where they may.

I love my gf but she broke her leg 4 weeks ago and since then both of us are stuck in home WFH. I feel like my soul is being sucked out, I am being suffocated with the neediness, responsibilities and I alone have to take care of everything in home including taking care of our dog, food on the table and running errands. Its hard to even force myself to have sex anymore since my hormones are fucked up and Im in a constant state of stress that I rely on now just to get through the day.

During the day to numb myself emotionally I cope with coffee and smoking. During the evening to relax I cope with alcohol and nettlix and to sleep I take a xanax. Staying until 3-4am kinda became my alone getaway time.

I pray that in 2-3 weeks her leg heals and she goes back to the office and then I will again have my daily 10-11 hours of uninterrupted work/personal time again.

Were together for 4 years already and she expects me to propose to her and make babies soon. I dont know if I am capable of having a family if Im thinking of breaking up after 4 weeks of taking care of her. Idk what I will do but for now it is what it is.

Tips on getting promoted on work:

1. Collect a list of all improvements and achievements that u did during your time in that workplace

2. Compare your output with your colleagues output, check their MR's, their complexity and compare with yours.

3. Talk with your manager about a raise. Tell him about your achievements, like maybe you are working on a wider scope than others. Maybe you are mentoring junior devs. Or maybe you deal with a bigger workload than others but still deliver on time. Maybe your communication is good or maybe you document stuff very well and in that way you make your team more efficient and increase team output. Whatever. Pitch and sell yourself. Also provide some personal reasons why you need a raise, like maybe u have kids or maybe your rent doubled. Inflation and so on. Selling point is that u are a human not a greedy bastard.

At the end of that talk the manager most likely will say that he needs to speak higher ups, he needs to gather feedback from your colleagues and so on. Give him a week or two if possible, no more.

He will probably get back to you with an offer. If there is none start applying, get an offer and put in your notice. In my case I waited 3 months for my raise to go through. I put in my notice, had a stressed call from manager, showed him my offer and my raise was arranged the next day.

Kinde messed up my first contract.

I am a senior frontend dev who until now worked only on full time gigs. For the first time I picked up a short term gig of 1 week that consisted of 2 packages and I wanted to share my mistake that I made so hopefuly its useful to you.

So last week I started working on this gig. First package went through fine, I delivered in 2 days and collected the first half of the payment.

However I messed up with the second package. Not messed up the implementation per say, but I didnt manage the communication well.

Before implementing it I raised a discussion about a missing backend endpoint that is required to implement the perfect solution. Client got cold feet, had a discussion with his manager and now decided to postpone the second package and even got mad at me that I already did and pushed half of the work of the second package without waiting for his decision from his manager. So now obviously Im not getting paid for half of the work of the second package (I dont mind, I should have waited for clients response), anyways it took me like 20min to implement so thats fine.

My takeaways:

1. As a short term contractor you are hired to solve a concrete problem. Scope out what you can, agree on a task list and stick to it. Anything out of scope will cost the client extra.

2. Your priority is to get paid. Not to deliver the perfect solution that confuses the client and potentially can impact your delivery. If he wants something and you see its only a half of what he really needs, deliver it anyways. Keep that idea of improvement for the future. More work for future = more invoices = more money. I know its not ethical but your priority should be to get paid and in order to do that you need to deliver. Dont shoot yourself in the foot with unnecesseraly overcomplicating things.

When pandemic hit in 2020 I found myself out of work. Until then I used to have a java based pirate gameserver of a MMORPG as a hobby.

When pandemic hit I noticed that online players count increased from like 70 to 200 without much advertising because purely of people being stuck in home. So i decided to scale and spent 2 years with that. What a wild ride it was.

So i invested a bit in ads, managed to reach around 500 online players, opened my own company and launched a couple other successful spinoffs of that gameserver.

First year it was a goldmine but I was doing 10-14 hour days because I had to take care of everything (web, advertising, payment integrations, player support and also developing the server itself, ddos protections and etc.). I made quite a bit of money, saved for a downpayment for mortgage and got an apartment.

Second year I noticed that there was a lot of competition and online players count dropped, but I double downed on this and invested a lot into the product itself and spent most of the time developing a perfect gameserver that would be the big bang while also maintaining existing ones. Clasic overengineering mistake. As you can guess, I crashed and burned on all levels, never even managed to launch my final project because simply the scope was too big and I had trouble finding decent devs to outsource it to, since it was a very niche gameserver.

In the end I learned a lot especially about my own limits and ownership, now Im back to being a dev but working as a contractor.

I believe having actual business owner experience allows me to have different perspective and I can bring more to the table rather than focusing on crunching tasks.