But especially for me; I do not have the tools to find work outside my locality, with the desire to work abroad. In my locality, technology jobs are almost non-existent. The very little that usually comes out or is covered by experience or by contacts, and I have neither of the two things. I accept that life is unfair and that I almost only have to submit to self-employment or similar, but I don’t want to go through there precisely because it is unfair. Is the way to get more probability, but I don’t like it. I cannot pay the price of finding a job by giving up my self-love and integrity.
You said it: I am a tough sell due to my own circumstances. Not accepting to submit to abuse or poor conditions makes it more difficult.
To be honest, I am not interested in a job that pays me a lot of money.
I prioritize life quality over salary. Have as much free time as possible, and give your most affordably only at work. Of course, the salary should allow me to cover all my needs, avoiding situations of precariousness and poverty.
Generally, here in Spain, if you don’t meet the deadline, you are fired. Normally the most important thing in Spain in terms of technological projects is to finish them on time.
When I dedicate myself to program, I do not have to constantly recycle, because I mess around with abandonware stuff.
True. But in this case, I am talking about the stuff I program (ISIMotor 1.5). I am doing this since 2007, so I have the experience. When I program, I program. I only help when asked and very rarely do I navigate the forum helping anyone who asks unless it is in my area of interest and benefits me. Excuse me if I may sound rude.
Although there are people who ask, I am taking advantage of my time in programming. In my hobby, helping others is not an integral part of the process to move forward. But here it is because you can make contacts and build a reputation, so you have to add more time apart from that dedicated to programming, creating your portfolio, negotiating, staying up-to-date in the communities, collaborating on other projects… this for me is too much, not even with my hobby I have reached this point of dedication. As I have said before, I love programming, but not enough to live for it or make it my lifestyle. Even if through my hobby I could get a job, I do not want to do something like that.
When I was a full stack web developer student between 2014-2016, 12 hours per day was my daily dedication. In 2015, I spent Christmas and New Year Eve doing a final project in programming. This amount of dedication is not uncommon to see for me. In fact, Mr. Quincy Larson (founder of FreeCodeCamp) told in an answer in Quora that he works about12 hours a day. I remember perfectly how it was my last day doing the final project for UNED: I woke up at 09:00 and I ended coding at 19:00… of the next day. In other words, 34 hours of coding if you add there the time eating and taking a bath. Although I have the virtue of rarely getting tired of this, in my three years as a student I have never managed to figure out how to study and learn to program effectively. Maybe because at that time I was alone and didn’t know how to approach properly.
As I have written before, I have no problem in giving a dedication like this if it is temporary, one or two years, and then doing the 40 h / week in a job, and that’s it.
Larson’s efforts are a perfect example of making programming your lifestyle or just living to work. His efforts are more than laudable and I have absolute respect for him, but even paid and even if web development was a higher passion than programming in ISIMotor, I don’t want something like that for me. Even if that’s the real thing to do for someone like me to have a real chance. Freelancing, self-employment, or living to work temporarily with the finality of working abroad under a full-time (or part-time) job contract should be an option, not an obligation. Please understand.
I achieved with my own stuff something special too: in January there was an earthquake in Elazig, Turkey. Hundreds of people died. Between the people who survived but lost its house was a modder who is my “workmate”, called Kerem. One of the buildings that remained relatively intact was cyber. He had the mod I and other members programmed in a pendrive, and he use to play leagues. In that cyber, the young people entertained themselves mostly playing online the modification of the videogame I programmed with a team in CMT. My creation has helped several young people in the area to cope with a tragedy.
Thank you very much for reading me and answering before.
Cheers,
Chris.
