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!rant !notrant !confession_maybe? Bit of a read.

Last year, around September (around 8 months into my first job in the industry), I started loosing motivation to be a developer. By then I had consistently dropped out of 3 or 4 courses for my degree (no penalties as it was pretty much within the starting weeks of the each course). I was think that I do not want to do this. It got so bad that I was looking for other jobs and even trade apprenticeships (I am old-ish so chances of that are so bloody low).
I had my mind set. Including not wanting to finish the degree I had started, which only had 1 year as full time to complete.

My missus supported me in my decision making, but she insisted that I finish the degree as the years I spent on it would have been a waste if I don't. So I agreed, with the idea that I will do this part time when I find another job.

Fast forward to New Years and a very spontaneous decisions was made. I resigned from my dev job and we ended up moving away to another city, two weeks later. By this point on I was so certain that I did not want to be in the IT industry. I had not done any dev work (personal projects or learning new technology etc) outside of the job for months. It had been months since I've visited devrant (to be honest it was not even installed on my phone, mainly because I broke my phone and after having it replaced I had not reinstalled a large portion of the apps I used). I had sold my custom built pc thinking that we do not need two PC's (we kind of don't, she's fine with her laptop) which meant no more dev stuff as none of this stuff was set up on my missus pc. I was looking for all kinds of jobs outside of the IT industry, anything really.

But then something happened. And this is that something. I mean this, deverant. I was flicking through the apps list on google play store, and I saw devrant, and I choose to reinstall it. I began reading rants and comments and I am certain that this made me realise why I want to be a developer. Within about 2 weeks of redownloading deverant I was enrolled full time as a uni student fully motivated to earn my degree.

There are bits and pieces left out of the story. I don't regret leaving my first ever dev job and moving away, it does seem drastic but it changed me for the better I believe. I have the experience from that role and I new fresh start so to speak. I think my missus new this was just a phase, although it felt so certain about it.

I am more of a lurker than a ranter or a commenter on this social platform but I felt that I need to share this. Thanks for reading this. Not really sure what to tag this. Has anyone else experienced this before?

Comments
  • 1
    Can't say I've been through exactly that journey, but I've definitely dropped out of a fair few things in order to move forward! Ultimately, if it got you where you needed to go, then that was the way it had to be. Glad to hear you like the way things are going now, it's a great feeling :)
  • 4
    Been there. After 1st job as a dev I resigned and became a sales agent! but programming calls me and after one year of hiatus, I'm happy to be back :)

    giving you a virtual tap in the back! :)
  • 1
    I can relate to this in many ways! I also earned me degree in my mid 30's, and always feel in over my head.

    Worked in construction before, and back then I thought that a dev job would be nice compared to that. It is in many ways, but I seriously thinking about getting back into construction again. I suck at IT...
  • 0
    @lb13 It does feel good. I recently started learning Laravel, and I am definitely going to stick to it after the hassle of setting it up locally that it seems pretty good.

    @yzhea Thanks man, technology improves quality of life and I do want to part of that. It's a bit different creating something you can't really see, so to speak.

    @anon81 Funny you should mention that you have worked in construction. I actually got myself certified to allow me to work on construction sites. What attracted me to IT initially is that you can pretty much get into any field, and I think that is pretty cool. I watched a lecture with Bjarne Stroustrup a couple of years ago (not sure how old the lecture was at that point) in which he said that it is easier for a programmer to get into CERN that it is for a physicist.
  • 4
    @juniordev it's a woman actually. HAHAH anyway, sometimes we just need to lose things so that we can appreciate them more. Cheers to more magic in our codes!
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