I don't have friend called "null"

My worst choice was walking out of my first ever job.

The owner of the company was a very kind person and he really liked and appreciated my work, he even gave me a mid level salary straight away even though I was still in college and didn't have any prior experience.

But when I found myself getting so lucky I thought "oh it's so easy to get a job I can get one whenever I want" then I quit the job for college as I didn't want to do both at the same time due to stress.

The funny thing is that when I quit I didn't even focus on college, I just used the money (which was a lot) to go out and buy stuff I don't need and I even failed a course in the next semester after I was one of the top students in school.

As a developer, I constantly feel like I'm lagging behind.

Long rant incoming.

Whenever I join a new company or team, I always feel like I'm the worst developer there. No matter how much studying I do, it never seems to be enough.

Feeling inadequate is nothing new for me, I've been struggling with a severe inferiority complex for most of my life. But starting a career as a developer launched that shit into overdrive.

About 10 years ago, I started my college education as a developer. At first things were fine, I felt equal to my peers. It lasted about a day or two, until I saw a guy working on a website in notepad. Nothing too special of course, but back then as a guy whose scripting experience did not go much farther than modifying some .ini files, it blew my mind. It went downhill from there.

What followed were several stressful, yet strangely enjoyable, years in college where I constantly felt like I was lagging behind, even though my grades were acceptable. On top of college stress, I had a number of setbacks, including the fallout of divorcing parents, childhood pets, family and friends dying, little to no money coming in and my mother being in a coma for a few weeks. She's fine now, thankfully.

Through hard work, a bit of luck, and a girlfriend who helped me to study, I managed to graduate college in 2012 and found a starter job as an Asp.Net developer.
My knowledge on the topic was limited, but it was a good learning experience, I had a good mentor and some great colleagues. To teach myself, I launched a programming tutorial channel. All in all, life was good. I had a steady income, a relationship that was already going for a few years, some good friends and I was learning a lot.

Then, 3 months in, I got diagnosed with cancer.

This ruined pretty much everything I had built up so far. I spend the next 6 months in a hospital, going through very rough chemo.

When I got back to working again, my previous Asp.Net position had been (understandably) given to another colleague. While I was grateful to the company that I could come back after such a long absence, the only position available was that of a junior database manager. Not something I studied for and not something I wanted to do each day neither.

Because I was grateful for the company's support, I kept working there for another 12 - 18 months. It didn't go well. The number of times I was able to do C# jobs can be counted on both hands, while new hires got the assignments, I regularly begged my PM for.

On top of that, the stress and anxiety that going through cancer brings comes AFTER the treatment. During the treatment, the only important things were surviving and spending my potentially last days as best as I could. Those months working was spent mostly living in fear and having to come to terms with the fact that my own body tried to kill me. It caused me severe anger issues which in time cost me my relationship and some friendships.

Keeping up to date was hard in these times. I was not honing my developer skills and studying was not something I'd regularly do. 'Why spend all this time working if tomorrow the cancer might come back?'

After much soul-searching, I quit that job and pursued a career in consultancy. At first things went well. There was not a lot to do so I could do a lot of self-study. A month went by like that. Then another. Then about 4 months into the new job, still no work was there to be done. My motivation quickly dwindled.

To recuperate the costs, the company had me do shit jobs which had little to nothing to do with coding like creating labels or writing blogs. Zero coding experience required. Although I was getting a lot of self-study done, my amount of field experience remained pretty much zip.

My prayers asking for work must have been heard because suddenly the sales department started finding clients for me. Unfortunately, as salespeople do, they looked only at my theoretical years of experience, most of which were spent in a hospital or not doing .Net related tasks.
Ka-ching. Here's a developer with four years of experience. Have fun.

Those jobs never went well. My lack of experience was always an issue, no matter how many times I told the salespeople not to exaggerate my experience. In the end, I ended up resigning there too.

After all the issues a consultancy job brings, I went out to find a job I actually wanted to do. I found a .Net job in an area little traffic. I even warned them during my intake that my experience was limited, and I did my very best every day that I worked here.

It didn't help. I still feel like the worst developer on the team, even superseded by someone who took photography in college. Now on Monday, they want me to come in earlier for a talk.

Should I just quit being a developer? I really want to make this work, but it seems like every turn I take, every choice I make, stuff just won't improve. Any suggestions on how I can get out of this psychological hell?

!rant

Had a meeting with the head of my department concerning the status of many of our current projects. Them projects are huge and it is 2 dedicated devs(me and the lead) working on them whilst training our CMS admin in development to help out(dude is talented af and really digs programming) and my manager was so worried about what he was gonna say.

The thing is, she doesn't know how to take a break, she never pushes us, but she does push herself and it pains the team to see her take so much heat. She really is a bomb manager, and we want her to be more at ease.

Well a couple of days ago the vips of the board decided to bombard her with shit since out dptmnt head was on sick leave. The stress they put on her was some military grade bs and even then she never...EVER took it out on anyone.

The head of our department walked in to talk to us about it. Dude is a tall older gentleman, suits up every day(Texas style meaning cowboy boots and everything) and is quite imposing. Has a stern look man, one of them 1000 mile stares and a huge mustache that more than surpasses mine(which mind you, my mustache is fucking outstanding)

Our boss walked into the meeting room, sat down and heard what she had to say, she was not excusing herself. As bomb as this gorgeous woman is she was all about telling him what we were going to show the board on next week's meeting.

He sat there quietly listening to her as well as the presentation that me and my boys had to do.

What happened next blew me the fuck out of this world.

He said that he was sorry that so much stress had come down to her and us whilst he was gone and that he was happy with the leadership showcased by her and the initiative that the team took to put forward a presentation for him and the board. He also said that he was going to make said presentation for us since the vips had no business stressing us out, he asked for our assistance for any of the technical stats since even though he was a programmer he is not aware of all the inner details of our apps. He said that it is commendable that such a small team can hold 2 campus(college level) and that he was aware of the technical proficiency of me and the lead and that he knows that our shit is not something that gets done overnight.

He then said that at any given time that we get antagonized by matters such as timeframes or shit like that that we can direct everyone to him, regardless of what.

.He was also really amazed at the progress we showed him on the current projects(most are on their respective testing phases).
He then reiterated on how proud he is of all of us before biding us a good weekend and leaving to his office

As i sat there watching how the world was lifted from my manager and happy that he enjoyed the progress of my work I could not help but feel a deep sense of admiration and respect for this mysterious man.

I would damn skippy take a bullet for him....just in case my draw gets sloppy that is, ain't no one taking aim at the boss.

Seasonal depression is starting to kick in. I'm feeling like I'm not doing good, whenever I ask for help with code people usually just rewrite all of it when they fix it so I feel like I'm not improving at all. I'm almost to the point in my life where I have to move out and be on my own I'm 19 I still have about 2 more years but it's so stressful. My room is the most comfy place for me I cant be away too long or I'll just get depressed so how am i supposed to find somewhere i like more? And what would I even use the other rooms for. I want a roommate (particularly a friend of mine) but I'm not even out there and I can see the future depression I'm gettin myself into with all the Bill's and jobs and shit, and college doesnt help with stress or depression at all. I probably shouldnt worry about that right now but i just cant help it.. it goes by too fast fuck.

Sorry guys this is the only real outlet for my feelings nowadays

/* Not a rant, more like a story with a good ending */

Le me finally got an interview for a big company, started preparing for technical questions, white board test, basically anything related ti a technical interview. The role was for a graduate software developer as i just finished my college and is my first ever interview with a company.

At the interview, he sat down and said " it will be a friendly and a very informal type of interview " and then carried on to ask me about my interests and past experiences and shared some details about the company and technology they work with. At one point i started ranting about some problems i was in due to javascript's nature of compiling even though syntax isn't right and we both had a good laugh as well about it. Idk but i felt like the interviewer made me feel really comfortable so that anything we were having a chat about was without stress, as i was nervous the whole time before the interview for being my first expereince ever.

After leaving the office i felt like this was too simple for the role i applied for and thought the company might not be interested, 4 days letter i got a mail that they are offering me the role as the feedback from interviewer was excellent.

Pretty wierd but fun experience frankly.

Is a BS in CS even worth it? I’m struggling so much right now with many different aspects of “online learning”, to the point where I spend the entire day shaking in misery. I was fine until I realized how close we are to finals this semester. The worst part is, this semester isn’t my last hard semester. Taking two miserable CS courses in the Spring as well, so it isn’t as easy as just keeping my head up and making it through this semester.

I finished my AA in CS from a local Community College, and I’m wondering if it’s worth the stress of the next two years in this degree track?

I’ve never tested well, but these CS and Math courses hit differently when online. I pass every single coding project with ease, but fail exams (literally). I realize my AA doesn’t mean much, but I do have lots of experience coding (Way beyond what I’ve learned in school).

Truth be told, I think I just want to hear you guys say it’s not worth it. Most companies that I see requires either a BS or equivalent experience, how do I get that experience, especially with COVID?

I feel like a failure, and I can’t deal with this pressure on me daily. My mental health has taken a giant hit recently. I know for a fact that I cannot endure another two years of this.

Someone, guidance. Please.

I spent 4 months in a programming mentorship offered by my workplace to get back to programming after 4 years I graduated with a CS degree.

Back in 2014, what I studied in my first programming class was not easy to digest. I would just try enough to pass the courses because I was more interested in the theory. It followed until I graduated because I never actually wrote code for myself for example I wrote a lot of code for my vision class but never took a personal initiative. I did however have a very strong grip on advanced computer science concepts in areas such as computer architecture, systems programming and computer vision. I have an excellent understanding of machine learning and deep learning. I also spent time working with embedded systems and volunteering at a makerspace, teaching Arduino and RPi stuff. I used to teach people older than me.

My first job as a programmer sucked big time. It was a bootstrapped startup whose founder was making big claims to secure funding. I had no direction, mentorship and leadership to validate my programming practices. I burnt out in just 2 months. It was horrible. I experienced the worst physical and emotional pain to date. Additionally, I was gaslighted and told that it is me who is bad at my job not the people working with me. I thought I was a big failure and that I wasn't cut out for software engineering.

I spent the next 6 months recovering from the burn out. I had a condition where the stress and anxiety would cause my neck to deform and some vertebrae were damaged. Nobody could figure out why this was happening. I did find a neurophyscian who helped me out of the mental hell hole I was in and I started making recovery. I had to take a mild anti anxiety for the next 3 years until I went to my current doctor.

I worked as an implementation engineer at a local startup run by a very old engineer. He taught me how to work and carry myself professionally while I learnt very little technically. A year into my job, seeing no growth technically, I decided to make a switch to my favourite local software consultancy. I got the job 4 months prior to my father's death. I joined the company as an implementation analyst and needed some technical experience. It was right up my alley. My parents who saw me at my lowest, struggling with genetic depression and anxiety for the last 6 years, were finally relieved. It was hard for them as I am the only son.

After my father passed away, I was told by his colleagues that he was very happy with me and my sisters. He died a day before I became permanent and landed a huge client. The only regret I have is not driving fast enough to the hospital the night he passed away. Last year, I started seeing a new doctor in hopes of getting rid of the one medicine that I was taking. To my surprise, he saw major problems and prescribed me new medication.

I finally got a diagnosis for my condition after 8 years of struggle. The new doctor told me a few months back that I have Recurrent Depressive Disorder. The most likely cause is my genetics from my father's side as my father recovered from Schizophrenia when I was little. And, now it's been 5 months on the new medication. I can finally relax knowing my condition and work on it with professional help.

After working at my current role for 1 and a half years, my teamlead and HR offered me a 2 month mentorship opportunity to learn programming from scratch in Python and Scrapy from a personal mentor specially assigned to me. I am still in my management focused role but will be spending 4 hours daily of for the mentorship. I feel extremely lucky and grateful for the opportunity. It felt unworldly when I pushed my code to a PR for the very first time and got feedback on it. It is incomparable to anything.

So we had Eid holidays a few months back and because I am not that social, I began going through cs61a from Berkeley and logged into HackerRank after 5 years. The medicines help but I constantly feel this feeling that I am not enough or that I am an imposter even though I was and am always considered a brilliant and intellectual mind by my professors and people around me. I just can't shake the feeling.

Anyway, so now, I have successfully completed 2 months worth of backend training in Django with another awesome mentor at work. I am in absolute love with Django and Python. And, I constantly feel like discussing and sharing about my progress with people. So, if you are still reading, thank you for staying with me.

TLDR: Smart enough for high level computer science concepts in college, did well in theory but never really wrote code without help. Struggled with clinical depression for the past 8 years. Father passed away one day before being permanent at my dream software consultancy and being assigned one of the biggest consultancy. Getting back to programming after 4 years with the help of change in medicine, a formal diagnosis and a technical mentorship.

Well here I go my first rant.

A little bit of background:
So I started working my first job a little over a month ago. found devrant about a week in. I was lucky that at a very young age I found programming and liked it (about 6 or 7). I went to college just to get a degree (bachelors of game development).

The job that was a "Great" opportunity that would be bad to let slip by (not a game dev job sadly). Well during the interview they asked me simple thing like what programming languages I know and some simple stuff like that, they never did ask me to demonstrate my knowledge though. Then they went to the weirder questions.
Do you know SQL? yeah at a very base level.
Do you know Excel? I mean I used is a bit, but not very much.
Etc.
A few of the questions felt a little out of place for the field, But it was the only "programming job" that would hire an experienced junior developer, so I took it. Guess I should have asked more questions.
Now I'm here at a job to help replace someone who is retiring. He wasn't a programmer really, but he wrote some code out of necessity well his platform of choice was VBA in Excel. Oh, and that's not the best part, he also dealt with mistakes that happen in the lab (electronics shit). So when ever there is a fuck up I have to go figure out how to search a poorly designed database (that is constantly changing), and today is the day he leaves, so no more help after today. My biggest fear currently is that I wont be able to fill a request that someone makes and I'll be the reason the company is losing money. And with all the stress/burn out that's building up I haven't been working on personal projects, which being my main source of entertainment might be making me depressed. Even when I do work up the effort to work on my projects I don't get very much entertainment. (If anyone has a suggestion for this that would be helpful.)

TIL: Even if the job is a great opportunity don't stop searching and ask a lot of questions.

How do you guys motivate yourself to work out.
Its been 2 times... First i tried 2 years ago in Aug 16.
Back then , my college started and i got busy in that so left the gym after a month. I blamed myself, the tiredness it gave me and lack of friends/work out partners there at that time.
Second time, i tried more hardly in jan 2018. This time, i had my gym companions, nd i was doing better. At the start i was handling the stress well, since it was just the clg and gym,then came along the internship, but i still handled it. But after the internship, i felt the need to up my skills and do more personal projects which was still not happening because of the gym tiredness. And then came along a scholarship into one of my favorite courses, and then the papers, and then.... A lot of 'other' things started happening, so i leftthe gym jn may 18.
I am concerned about a few things. 1)These days, I am usually entangled between entertainment, clg work, self learning/ scholarships. I used to do gymming in evening hours after clg and self learning on weekends, but now i am like everyday am straight to home from clg, onto bed, into the sheets, laptop on, and am doing scholarships task till late night. I fear that my work is now so important that i cannot push it to weekends. How do you guys manage learning and maintaining your body together?
2. Gym is a sick environment. We see pumped up people with 8% body fat , skin sticking to their ugly muscles while i am there , juggling my belly fat on the treadmill. For 2 months straight i was just doing the cardio. It gave me some results i guess, my belly got a Little loose but no one really saw much changes. I am not concerned about other people or fast results particularly, but when combined, i feel like am going to a royal house party everyday, where everyone except me is a beautiful king or queen , except me, a lowly peasent . Those pumped up kings are beating their bodies and getting more beautiful, while i am trying to beat these dead belly meat which won't flatten up .

Meh.

I can't help but stress out about finding work in development. I just want an internship / entry level summer position to put myself in a better position for post college and to explore and learn in new environments. But it seems like my best chance for scoring that internship is building a solid portfolio or experience, something that I haven't had time to do..

I wrote my first line of code (that wasn't HTML or CSS) when I got to college. Since then almost all my time has gone into my cs engineering curriculum and working a real shitty blue collar job during breaks (for 4 years now) because Im broke and got denied by the 20+ positions I applied for. I can't really do anything with the code I wrote for my schoolwork because I can get fucked if I post it anywhere or share it. I have loads of ideas, but am worried that they are too big to do while maintaining my GPA and scholarships. It sucks too because I am a quick learner, and would even venture to call myself good at what I do.

So since I have hardly been able to pursue any independent studies, I haven't been able to really explore the field, so I don't even know what to areas i need to focus on to make myself a better candidate. So basically I'm broke, don't have shit for pet projects, don't know what I want to do with my life, and can probably expect to work like a dog next summer too because I've heard most companies hire for the summer in the fall.

I don't write this because I feel bad for myself. I write this because it's likely that most people here have been in a similar situation. I also don't like to make excuses for myself like I have been doing. Any advice folks? What should I be doing differently?