Alright Sup Forums, after too much mother fucking time on this website I have to ask you a question...

Alright Sup Forums, after too much mother fucking time on this website I have to ask you a question, despite being fully aware it is the worst place to do so.

4 years ago I was a recovering addict high school dropout working a minimum wage job to have enough money to keep the lights on. I decided I wanted to go to college to try to gain skills to enable me to have a better quality of life, and yes I know, it's not the best route for everyone, but I felt like it was the best route for me. I'm 2 semesters away from graduating from undergrad school, and I have doubled my pay, gained, work experience that will enable me to have a decent safety net with room to grow, and I'm still not happy. The reason I'm not happy is because I actually saw benefit in school and because I'm working all the time still, I can't focus on school. My major is software development and I feel like it's important for me to focus on developing some solid applications to have in my portfolio for starting my career, but I end up skipping all my homework assignments except the easiest/shortest ones to get them over with because I'm so overwhelmed with my job. I'm a "part-time" computer repair technician working 32+ hours every week. I am seeing my colleagues and classmates developing some great code and moving into very successful positions, I just don't know how they financially bought the time to do so. The case, it seems to me, is that they all have families capable of supporting them so that they don't have to work. My issues in life, of course, go beyond financial, but that is always my biggest concern. I've been broke, I've seen low, and I'm not there anymore and don't ever want to return there. I feel like I need to quit either my school or my work to advance my career or stabilize my finances so that I can ensure my financial security in the future. I don't know what to do. I feel like I should either quit my job, drop out, or commit suicide. What do I do?

>cont

Basically, I can't reduce my hours at work because my boss is unreasonable and we're already understaffed. I can reduce my hours of school but then I take a major cut in the percentage benefits of the financial perks to attending college, so it doesn't really make sense to do that in my opinion. Suicide is obviously the easy way out, and I'm not a super depressed guy, I feel like I have a healthy level of concern but that concern just happens to be very high given the circumstances. I don't know what I should do and I don't really have anyone I can ask for help. My friends and family don't really understand my position, I don't think. I'm not **that** close to anyone, really. I'm pretty private about my personal life, in its entirety at least.

Plus, suicide is really dumping my problems on my family and girlfriend. It's really not cool in that regard. But it's easy not to care when you know you won't really care, right? I do want to be better than that, though. I feel like I can make really good products and be innovative and I feel like I have the ambition necessary to pursue great things in life but I also feel that I am too restricted to explore these things and achieve these goals that I've set for myself, and I'm not okay with mediocrity. I am competitive by nature, when I see other people with nicer things or who are more attractive or have a better job I feel inspired to work harder than they do to get even nicer things and I want to go to the gym to improve my physique even more, and right now it makes me want to quit my job and pursue a better job. My issue with pursuing a better job is that I have to attend classes until May, and the classes DO NOT permit me to have a 9-5, which is what I assume most programming jobs are like. I've considered leaving my current job, trying to survive until May, then finding a better job that I can attend throughout the summer and build my school schedule around this other job. I also feel like networking in school is the best way to do find that better job. Unfortunately, because I work so much right now, I can't show people how good I am with coding because I don't have time to sit down and learn all the new things. I'm a fast learner, but I still need time to practice and try new things. I don't know, Sup Forums. I just don't know.

Sorry for using this board like my personal therapy session, I'm not a nut case (I don't think, I certainly hope not). I just want to be listened to and there's no one I feel comfortable talking to face-to-face about these things. It's nice to talk to the abyss once in a while. I guess I miss spending time on here sometimes.

Can't you just study one or two semesters longer? That would take some pressure out of it now. Else, the only possible way to do is to either change your job or lend some money from the bank. Aren't there something like student loan things at your place?

Let me just say that I had all the time in the world - my parents supported me financially. Still I never finished my university degree.

To this day I don't know why.

You blame your workload, but if you didn't have that, you more than likely would just play video games or do something else.

Maybe I'm wrong. What the fuck do I know? I'm a fucking drop-out.

Taking the extra semesters will reduce the percentage of the financial aid perks I have available. It doesn't make fiscal sense to not make optimizations regarding money in situations like this to me.

This is the scary thing, what if you're right? What if I did quit my job and then squander my time? I like to believe I wouldn't do that, and I hope I wouldn't. Talking about it now, I don't think that I would. I'm pretty motivated. I may spend more time playing video games than I do now, but currently I am so pressed for time I barely have time for them as is.

>Motivated
Don't be motivated, be disciplined.

The whole point of getting an actual job, + going to school, is to drive home the importance of discipline.

Well put. I appreciate what you're saying.

Software hiring manager here. I'm 52 years old and have interviewed dozens of candidates, hired a dozen.

> I feel like it's important for me to focus on developing some solid applications to have in my portfolio for starting my career
I don't care about a student's "portfolio." As a manager, I have normal work duties, plus management duties, plus the need to filter out resumes and conduct interviews. I don't have time to review code that is not relevant to my own company's projects. Plus, I have no idea if that code was really original, or was just copied from source forge, text books, etc. I only care about whether the candidate has a degree, what their relevant course work or experience is, and how well they interview.

More to come, just want to bump the thread in case it disappears.

Please do go on, and if possible could you provide any evidence toward your claim of being a hiring manager? I really want to believe I'm hearing this from a credible source, because it's very calming.

>I end up skipping all my homework assignments except the easiest/shortest ones to get them over with

As long as you can get your degree, this seems fine. However, I am concerned that by skipping assignments, you're going to flunk classes and not get your degree. If you don't get a degree, your resume will never get past the Human Resources department and I will never see it. I have never asked or paid attention to the GPA of a candidate. In fact, knowing how to prioritize your work is a very great skill. If you can minimize your school load by skipping assignments and still get a degree, I'd say that is a very valuable real world skill. But again, I'd really be concerned that skipping assignments will lead to class failure, leading to degree failure.

This is my concern too, as well as not learning the material necessary to be a valuable member of the work force.

I will scan my business card, but I'm going to have to redact so much info it's going to be pretty bland. Hold on.

bro Iol coding is life why are you so stressed? just be happy that we get to live in this world and code which is literally the most fun thing to do in this world and that only few understand ;)

Pretty bland, right? I'm afraid you're just going to have to trust that I'm a decent, experienced person by my proper punctuation and general wisdom - something you won't see a lot of on Sup Forums.

>they all have families capable of supporting them so that they don't have to work

This is probably true. Most entry-level candidates I see had very little work experience, and it shows in their work ethic after a couple of months. My company has preferred to hire people who showed they were experienced in a real world job, because they are much less likely to leave once the hard work starts.

Fair enough. So is there any advice you can offer me to reach my desired outcome? That being: gaining the ability to focus on school as my primary goal to gain the skills necessary to be a valuable member of a development team.

Currently, I think I need to find a way to afford to quit school until May, find an entry level programming job to work over the summer, and negotiate with them minor work inconsistencies over the course of my last semester in order to finish school to complete my degree. Is that feasible, in your experience? Do you think a company is going to be willing to work with me in this situation?

I know what real world work experience looks like, I've held multiple jobs during full-time school before. My concern is regarding actual programming skill. I feel like I am behind some of my classmates and that concerns me, because I've never felt that way before.

>I feel like I need to quit either my school or my work to advance my career or stabilize my finances so that I can ensure my financial security in the future.

Getting a college degree, especially a STEM degree like Comp Sci, is the best financial move the average person can make. It's hard up front, but it pays off very well in the end. Do not quit school. If you run out of money, go to your professors and lobby the financial aid office. It is the job of these people to find ways for students like you to finish their education. They really really want to help you. Give them the chance by talking to them about your issues.

I honestly can't imagine my professors caring enough about me as an individual to go out of their way to assist me, but it can't hurt to try. I'll talk to them within the week and explain my situation and see if they have any ideas or assistance that they can offer. I suppose asking can't hurt too much if I do it the right way.

I know STEM majors reap rewards for their work, which is part of the reason I went into a STEM field. I happened to develop a passion for the work, which definitely makes a nice plus. I'm happy when I'm working, but I want to be working with what makes me happy.

>Currently, I think I need to find a way to afford to quit school until May, find an entry level programming job to work over the summer, and negotiate with them minor work inconsistencies over the course of my last semester in order to finish school to complete my degree.

IMO many companies will be willing to work with you as long as you are actively in school and taking classes. Once you leave school, you fall into the "failure" category.

Think of it this way - the value of your degree is that you can accomplish a long-term goal that someone else has defined, to their satisfaction. This is the essence of employment. As long as you are successfully working towards your degree and gaining ground, a company will see you as someone who can accomplish THEIR goals. Once you drop out, you become someone who can't accomplish someone else's goals.

IMO, if you are finding your current job too demanding, the most attractive employment would be through the college you are attending, as IT support, etc. There is also opportunity for internship employment, specially in the summers.

The hidden secret of most software companies is that there is always money to hire someone they trust to do a job. If you can present yourself well as a trustworthy person who can accomplish goals suited to your skills, you will find employment.

What companies are really worried about are the flakes - the people who apply for jobs, get them, and then don't do the work, don't show up, or leave within a few months. In the last couple of years, I have actually had 3 - YES, THREE - employees that I hired actually not show up, or quit within one month of being hired. You know how much time that cost me and my company, just going through the interview process, setting up their accounts, doing initial training, etc? Getting hired is really about presenting yourself as someone the company can trust to invest time in.

way tl definitely did not and will not r

This makes a lot of sense. Thank you for the fresh perspective and outlook. I really appreciate you taking the time to respond to my issue. I think this is some good advice, too. I could likely make a fairly seamless transition into IT support for my school, as I am working in IT support for a corporation as an advanced technician currently. I appreciate your insight.

>I honestly can't imagine my professors caring enough about me as an individual to go out of their way to assist me

You know why college professors have that job instead of working in a professional field? It's because they want to be part of college life. They envy your life. They are desperate to be part of campus life, which revolves around student life. In a way, they are people who really don't want to grow up.

Use that to your advantage. They really want to make bonds with students. When they have office hours - they are required to have office hours - sit down and just talk with them. Make a bond. Tell them about how much you love the field and how hard it is to balance your work and student life. Most likely, these professors have access to a budget for hiring student employees.

I did not understand this as a college student, I only understood it once I became an adult like them. Students are very selfish, self-centered, and they see their professors as outsiders, an authority figure that judges them and has to be overcome. They don't see them as people who have dedicated their lives to helping other people become better educated, stronger, etc. These professors desperately want to feel like their life has value - give them that value by giving them the opportunity to help you achieve something substantial. Give them the opportunity to help you get a degree, either by financial assistance or employment.

Finish your degree mate. Most people learn decent programming after. It's normal. Get degree - > get entry level job - > git guide on real life projects. It is very rare to meet a kid straight from college who is actually good at coding.

you know clownfish aren't immune to the sting of the sea anemone, they have to get used to it
so clownfish are actually hardcore motherfuckers

Software manager here again, and I agree with this. At entry level, I really don't care what you accomplished in school, as long as you graduated. What I care about is how well you will adapt to my company's standards and goals.

Last word from me, the software manager.

What really makes or breaks an interview candidate is the whiteboard exercises we do during an interview. We have 3 basic software questions, where the goal is to write a simple algorithm to meet the specification of our question. Because interview time is short, these are not complex procedures - perhaps 12 lines of C code involving a single FOR loop. But it really shows the difference between someone who can write software, vs someone who is just phoning it in.

If you have a C, C++, Python, etc text book, just look at the exercise questions toward the middle and end of the book. Practice writing them down on paper - not through an IDE, but just pencil and paper - so you can do it in an interview.

At my company we don't really care what language you use, if your syntax is exact, whether it's pseudo-code or literal - we care that you understand data types, branch logic, and procedures.

>I really appreciate you taking the time to respond to my issue.

Good luck to you.
Stop talking about suicide, that is useless wasted energy.
Stop worrying about how much your peers are accomplishing or how much easier they have it - there will always be people who get better breaks than you. The goal of life is to play your hand that you are dealt. It is not fair, but once you get into middle age you will start seeing how the people who had it easier suddenly start to flounder when suddenly health, family, relationship etc problems start to arise.
Remember that your professors, bosses, etc want YOU to succeed, because it rewards their own selfish feelings. Be open with them and give them the opportunities to help you succeed, because it makes them feel better about their own lives. These really are win-win situations once you get the right perspective.

I know you said you were leaving but you've piqued my interest with your interview insight. Are we talking about binary tree traversal, inheritance management, or do you mean things like sorting algorithms, or even things like generics, stacks/queues/lists, or other data related information?

To clarify, I'm asking because I want to know what I'll be using in the workforce. I don't have any idea what actual commercial coding is like, and frankly it scares the hell out of me. I try not to worry about it, but I feel like I'm walking into a room full of specialists when I'm a beginner.

I have heard about all-day interviews where they cover such sophisticated algorithms as binary tree traversal, etc. We did not have time for that.

We had 1-2 hours for the technical side of the interview, which included general discussion. For whiteboard demonstrations, there was only time for a 2-3 exercises consisting of a single procedure, one for loop, with maybe 1-2 if branches. These were focused on bitwise operations since they are important to my field.

I would say if you can demonstrate the basic datatypes and loops of a language - for, while, if, some recursion - and basic datatypes - bits, bytes, lists, arrays - then you'd be fine in our interviews.

Commercial coding is way more boring than course work. Here is how I would break down commercial coding:

50% of your time: meetings, etc.
25% of your time: fixing bugs in existing procedures (more at entry level/maintenance jobs)
20% of your time: writing new routines based on basic boilerplate techniques - dialog boxes, daemons, etc - basic meat and potatoes of your chosen field
4% of your time - writing code that is original in some way, but not particularly complex
1% of your time - writing code that is complex, original, and might require reference to a published paper

In my whole career of millions of lines of programming, I've only coded a few really substantial algorithms that depended on recursion, spanning trees, high optimization, etc. The vast majority of work is just accomplishing basic boilerplate tasks, but doing it stable enough that it won't produce bugs in the field. For example, checking data types on user entry fields, assertions and error handling, etc. This is important work that is glossed over during university course work, but is essential to a useful and stable application.

Answer is painfully obvious

To clarify, when you go into the workforce at entry level, you are obviously going to be talking to people who have spent 100x more time coding than you have. But that coding has been very routine, boiler plate.

The coding you will have done at senior or graduate level of college course work will probably be more sophisticated than anything they've done in the past year, but you had the luxury of glossing over the important details such as error handling.

There is a saying in computer programming, the 80/20 rule: 80% of the functionality takes 20% of the time. The remaining 20% of the functionality takes 80% of the time. In school, you don't have to deal with the 20% of the functionality that takes 80% of the time, but that is what your coworkers have been paid to do.