I felt a lot safer when I was a young grad than now that I have kids to support and I can't just up and move to wherever the best job opportunity is or live off lentils to save money or whatever.
Yeah, kids change the landscape a lot. On the other hand, if you don't have any personal ties, its easier to grab opportunities, but you are unlikely to build any kind of social network when chasing jobs all over the country/world.
Either way, there is very little to no path toward "family + place to live + stable job" model.
When I was single with no kids, I felt pretty comfortable leaving a good job to join a startup. I took a 50% pay cut to join when the risk seemed high, but the reward also seemed high.
It paid off for me, but who knows if I would have taken that leap later in life.
There must be "dozens of us" with this fear right now. I'm kinda surprised there isn't a rapid growing place for us to discuss this... (Youtube, X account, Discord place..)
I'm confused as to why someone who freely admits they have been broke & unemployed for 15 years feels they are qualified to provide "advice", make critical judgement calls about others and brag about their awesomeness.
>> My actual accomplishments in the world of computing ... are the stuff of legends
I don't have a college degree either. I am about 50. I have never been unemployed and have had high paying software dev jobs my entire adult life. Your claim that the lack of degree is the only thing holding you back is very much incorrect.
I suspect the problem is elsewhere and you are unwilling or uncomfortable to discuss it.
Protip: When you consistently present yourself as somebody with a massively inflated ego who will be a constant pain to interact with, nobody's going to hire you, skills or not.
> "going back to school" to learn what I already know pretty damn well already, given that I've been programming since I was 8
It's small consolation if sitting in a classroom is something you truly hate, but the guys who are programming pros before they go into a CS program are very often the ones who do really well and get the most out of it.
I left high school with average results and immediately got a job as a junior web developer, and I’m nothing special. I feel there must be more to this story… You don’t come off very well in your post, I imagine it could be the same in person and perhaps therein lies the issue?
> There is MUCH you still have to learn about life.
This response, along with your OP, it’s so pretentious and condescending. It seems you feel that you’re superior to everyone intellectually. I assume that you hold the same attitude in person and this is not helping your situation.
The irony is that I’ve done exactly this. I tried to start a business in my early 20’s and failed dramatically. I stopped developing altogether for a decade while I did minimum wage jobs and struggled to find a career. I started developing again in my early 30’s and half a decade later I’m running a software business.
You may well be intelligent but severely lacking in other necessary areas. It seems it is you who has much to learn.
I created my first Linux from scratch when I was a freshman in college in a third world country (not India). Fast forward few years later, I now write Linux kernel code for a living. Not sure what you did wrong, bud, to end up miserable like this.
I'm on the flip side of this - not exactly young but no dependants which is making me a little bit less nervous. Seems like the next 20 years will be a wild ride & it doesn't seem optional so lets go I guess
True. This is one of the best arguments for not having kids. I could never imagine putting myself in that uncertain situation. Much better to reduce those risks, and focus on yourself.
Having kids is a personal choice. The stress of having to support them is real and it might mean, at times, you sacrifice more than you would have without kids.
It's been entirely worth it for me and I cannot imagine my life without kids. But it's a deeply personal choice and I am not buying or selling the idea. I would just say nobody is ever ready and the fears around having them probably are more irrational than rational. But not wanting them because of how it might change your own life is a completely valid reason to not have kids.
> the fears around having them probably are more irrational than rational
My $0.02 is that if anything, the fears people have about how much their lives would be transformed are significantly lacking, and a lot of the "it's not so bad" advice is post-hoc rationalization. I mean, it's evolutionarily excellent that we humans choose to have kids, but it's very rational to be afraid and to postpone or even fully reject this on an individual basis. And as an industry and as a society, we should probably do a lot more to support parents of young children.
Ya, this is a fair callout. I moreso meant fears around being a bad parent. If anything, people experiencing those fears will be fine parents because they've got the consideration to already be thinking about doing a good job for their newly born.
