I am so stupidly stressed out about my future as a dev!

Career Advice
1

I’m sorry if this isn’t the place talk about this but I feel like I’m going to explode and I’m hoping for some general advice and maybe reassurance (if i deserve it).

I’m drawing near to the end of my CS degree. I’m not at a great university, and i would not say I’m a great student either. The closer I get to finishing the more stressed out I get about whether or not I’ll be able to find a job. I don’t know what skill level is expected of entry level programming jobs. I don’t even know what area it is I’m interested in. I live in a small town with little to no opportunities and thus i have not been able to do any kind of internship.

I feel like my uni has prepared me poorly for the world I’m about to enter. Every time i watch some programming video there are at least 20 different words or technologies I’ve never heard of and it feels really daunting and overwhelming. I feel clueless and like i don’t even know where to start. In uni the technical part of the career i feel is very poorly covered. All of the projects they make us do are stupidly easy. It’s all C++ and Qt some SQL and a little python (I’ve done allot more in python on my own), that’s it. The rest is just discrete math or logic and a whole lot of theory around information systems, systems design, database design, project management, etc… Which I’ll be honest i just crammed for a test and would not be able to apply in a real world scenarios. And that is exactly my concern.

I have no experience, compared to what i see online i am basically a beginner with a decent understanding of OOP and that’s about it. I’m pretty sure some self taught Andy will learn more in a week then i know right now, and I’m supposed to put on my resume that i have a bachelor’s degree on this stuff once I’m done.

Some advice i have gotten is to work on personal projects but i have no idea what to work on and honestly unless it has real world application and will be used by people i feel like it’s useless. I want to work on something “meaningful”, with people around me.

Considering all this. I have a question. Have i messed up? Is my career over before it even begun. I’ve been studying for 4 years, next year will be 5, I’m 24. I quit my job to be a full time student about a year ago so I can get this done and start working in the industry but now i have sever doubts about my ability and readiness to do so.

2 Likes
2

Hey there and welcome to the fCC forum. I’m sorry your first post is in a moment in your life where you have so many concerns about your future career.

I also graduated with a B.Sc. in Computer Science once upon a time (so long ago that you would not have been born yet) and I had some concerns back then. In fact, the very first thing that happened after I got a job was that I got immediately re-assigned within the company to a role that I was completely ill-prepared for. It was rough. I learned a lot. I could have lost my job easily that first few years. I was asked to sit and read endless documentation and without any system design experience, it was all gobbledygook to me. My team lead hated me because I knew so little, and I hated him because he talked too much. Still, we made it through. Code got written, arguments went resolved or unresolved, managers got involved, whatever. Life right? It’s life, because it can’t be predicted. There was no way I was going to be able to predict anything that happened after I graduated, nor anything I could really have done about it ahead-of-time. (Another example: I ended up working in the databases division of a company when my absolute worst class at university was Databases. Even later still, I ended up working in another area where I had to know something about networking and boy, did I regret not paying attention in class for that either!)

Looking back though, the only thing that I would have changed is how I acted in the moment that a challenge was presented to me. Just in the moment.
What I’m saying is, in this moment, where you are now, is all that you can control or do anything about. Tomorrow is not for any of us to manage.

Is there anything you can do today to learn something new? If yes, do it.
Is there anything you can do today to gain experience? If yes, do it.
If there anything you can do about tomorrow? No. Let the worry go then.

with respect to this:

I really relate to this. But what worked for me was volunteering to help organizations and people who I care about. Surprisingly, when people find out I have a Computer Science degree, they’re usually trying to ask me to help them fix something or write their websites for them or an app or something along these lines. And in the case of fCC, I sought them out to learn, but also I volunteered my time here to help other learners. This led to more opportunities for me to support their mission here.

Since you value working on things that are meaningful, you should definitely consider volunteering to support an open source project like fCC or others like it. Also find other organizations in your area who could use some help. If you’re visiting a local business for example and you notice their website is not working well, offer them some free help. You never know, they may accept and you may learn something from trying to support them. Sometimes I will even do something small like offer to help a business owner fix their google business page, and they tend to take me up on it and ask me questions about my experience. Things can progress from that point as well.

Nope. You haven’t ended your career. You are just going to struggle as much as any of us have. Try to work on a ‘can-do’ attitude (or a ‘growth-mindset’ as they call it these days) and bring that with you to everything you do from now on. It’ll make up for anything you failed to learn prior.

Wishing you all the best as you move forward “into the unknown”.

4 Likes
3

Man, I don’t think I could have asked for a better reply. Thank you.

4 Likes