Neurotic Workaholism [vent + looking for advice]

[SwiftQuill]

Roots

I come from a lower-middle income family. My parents divorced when I was a teen, one of them lost their job, and the other had their sallary cut. I experienced a long period in my life living financial scarcity. Even basic shit like buying deodorant, buying new clothes, it was a struggle.

When I turned 17 I started looking for a job. But even that was incredibly difficult. Because I couldn't bring normal clothes to job interviews, only old ones. And often times I couldn't even go to the interview, because it was in the center of the city, and I couldn't afford to buy the bus ticket to go there.

This period of scarcity lasted about 8 years.

***

Change

When I finished college (degree in IT) I got my first job. My first sallary was a bit low, but I was content with it. Over the years I got raises in my sallary. Now, I make about twice minimum wage (I make 1400€ a month, in Portugal). I experienced a huge shift in my life. From lower-middle income to middle income, life changes a lot. I no longer feel like I'm suffocating on a daily basis. I can actually afford to do normal things like go to the theater and even buy myself a few treats like videogames once in a while.

***

Present Day

My biggest issue now is I've become a workaholic. I feel fine now, content with my sallary, but I am always worried in the back of my mind. Especially now that AI is taking over so many programmers' jobs. The thing that stresses me so much about the IT industry is there's such a bullshit large amount of technologies they expect you to master.

• Backend development (which I have mastered)
• Frontend development (not mastered)
• Database management (mastered)
• Scrum (mastered)
• DevOps (not mastered)
• Cloud (not mastered)
• Networking (not mastered)
• Cyber security (not mastered)
• Docker + Kubernetes (not mastered)

To the 99% of you who aren't in the IT industry, this is alien stuff. But I'm telling you the IT market expects software engineers to know all of these. And each single line above takes a really really long time to master.

Currently, I'm touching a bit on frontend development in my free time. But it's so fucking stressful. It sucks ending my 8 hour shift and then going back to programming and studying. It's exhausting.

And whenever I'm not studying IT concepts or new tech, I feel guilty on the inside. It's been ruining my life satisfaction. Stage orange capitalism has gone so far here in Portugal. It's so fucked up. I've developed workaholic tendencies out of my need to survive in this market, and because of my past circumstances (no way in fucking hell I want to go through that period in my life ever again).

I'm half venting, half asking for advice. I just want to enjoy my life more and worry less about this bullshit.

Edit: I'm also currenty doing a Master's in Business Management in my free time. I expect to conclude it in 6 months.

Edited Monday at 12:44 AM by SwiftQuill

[LastThursday]

8 hours ago, SwiftQuill said:

But I'm telling you the IT market expects software engineers to know all of these.

I would disagree with that.

It's ok to specialise in certain areas and you can still get work from it. For example, I know backend and database stuff extensively and enough front end to get by, I don't know dev ops hardly, and a small about of cyber security - I have a comfortable job. The point is that most companies hire a mix of people who have strengths in different areas. In general the bigger the company the more specialised you can be. All these IT recruitment adverts that list everything are just typical sales bullshit, no employer in their right mind would expect you to know everything. 

Of course, you can become a champion IT person if you like, and employers will happily recompense you for your knowledge. But you can let yourself off the hook a bit.

[SwiftQuill]

@LastThursday the thing is the IT market here in Portugal has become really competitive so I always feel pressured just to keep up. And yes they may not require every single line, but even just withing the backend development world there's a huge list of things to master (architecture, unit testing, docker, etc). I find it very stressful.

[LastThursday]

The IT world is vast and constantly changing. You can't know all of it. Most of the technologies I know I've learnt on the job, and every place has its own unique mix of technologies. When you spend 8 hours a day at work learning stuff, you soon master it - even if it's stressful at first. So I've needed to know enough to get my foot in the door, but once I'm in a job I learn everything else.  I code outside of work on my own projects, but I do that out of interest rather need, and I've found that that helps keep my skills up too. A lot of what you learn on one technology is transferable to other technologies: programming in PHP has a lot of overlap to programming in Javascript for example.

Maybe the Portugese market is more competitive than the UK market, but it's like anything, you choose how much you want to learn. The more you learn the more employable you'll be, that's just capitalism. The stress comes from within, because you don't want to return to hard times.

Edited Monday at 10:16 AM by LastThursday

[Applegarden8]

I think you will figure it out. The best you can do from my experience is spend 1 day per week to only solve diet, health, physical activity, mental health (relieving the worry), mindfulness and improving your routine topics. It will make your day to day life much better.

Edited Tuesday at 03:53 AM by Applegarden8

[SwiftQuill]

I haven't worked on my thesis since sunday and I got a shit ton of research to do ughh

It's overwhelming. Even intellectually. It requires so much fucking mental resources. And I feel so guilty for not working on it.

About 6 months left of this bullshit. It's so annoying.

Edited Wednesday at 10:23 PM by SwiftQuill

[The Caretaker]

I don't find long working hours a problem but poor rest or bad priorities.

Creative problem solving takes a lot of mental energy, and cobsidering IT is very heavy for the mind, maybe you could reschedule your day to start with your thesis.

Also, I haven't noticed you mentiong much about sleep and fitness. I know it's a broken record, but I swear that good health improves everything x3. And you can't even start to comprehend how it affects you before you move back and forward on this area a few times.

[SwiftQuill]

36 minutes ago, The Caretaker said:

I don't find long working hours a problem but poor rest or bad priorities.

Creative problem solving takes a lot of mental energy, and cobsidering IT is very heavy for the mind, maybe you could reschedule your day to start with your thesis.

Also, I haven't noticed you mentiong much about sleep and fitness. I know it's a broken record, but I swear that good health improves everything x3. And you can't even start to comprehend how it affects you before you move back and forward on this area a few times.

I started hitting the gym last week.

And yeah my sleep has been fucked lately I fall asleep very late.

But even on days when I had a decent amount of sleep I still struggle to focus on my thesis.

Edited yesterday at 12:05 PM by SwiftQuill

[The Caretaker]

2 hours ago, SwiftQuill said:

I started hitting the gym last week.

And yeah my sleep has been fucked lately I fall asleep very late.

But even on days when I had a decent amount of sleep I still struggle to focus on my thesis.

It might be because of overthinking.

From what I've noticed, I have the most mental clarity either after a hard training, or when I meditate for at least 20m, in silence or with some music like this.

Just try to give yourself some time before every session. The mind needs space to focus.

Also, this simple concept helped me tremendously in the days when I didn't "feel like it". Just do the second-best thing. And if you can't, the third best thing, and so on. A lot of times, you don't need motivation, but momentum.