Never depend on your job for your livelihood. Depend on your network. Make sure your skills are in sync with the wider market. Keep your resume up to date and your “career document”. Always be interview ready.
Of course, save and invest money and live in a position of f%%% you.
> Alternatively you can always decide to work on something outside of work that can help sharpen your skills.
I do, a lot. It's all garbage, though, and no one really looks at it.
Don't get trapped into work you don't want, but perhaps don't quit your job yet, either. Don't wait. You don't want to be a near-40 year old loser like me before this hits you.
quit. I mean it's that simple really. If you don't like the job you're doing and it's not meaningful, get another job. You'll have a good resume, so that shouldn't be a practical issue.
I think any other advice is really just copium. Collecting more money and joining a knitting circle or the bowling club isn't fulfilling, neither is retiring at 40 and even in a non FANG dev job you likely earn twice a middle class wage, and the only thing you don't get back is your time. It's scary but nothing's worse than not changing and regretting it later.
> But if you’ve never ever held a single job for more than 2 years, it really makes me question whether you’re looking to jump to a better opportunity as soon as things get hard.
So a company expects me to stay loyal to them through the worst of times and not jump ship to better opportunities, but when money is tight for them or the founder just wants a new yacht, they'll gladly downsize/sell/merge and lay off hundreds in a heartbeat.
I'd actually recommend that young professionals try a variety of situations as they switch jobs. I learned much different lessons from different situations at different stages of my personal development. Though starting that growth path with a position at a large company isn't a bad idea if it's an option.
> Personally I hate having to job hop just to get what I wanted from this industry.
A couple of times I've landed at a good company, where I figured I could stay for a long time and build something resembling a traditional career. But something invariably changes - the company gets acquired by some MegaCorp, a leadership changeover, your awesome team gets disbanded and scattered, etc... c'est la vie.
> I felt like I had to leave the company I was with to get up to the level I wanted to be with. I probably could have managed it with the company I was already with if I had been more patient.
Ah there it is. Nothing is more junior than seeking this advice.
> Get over your ego immediately and take whatever job you can get now, while you continue to look for work in the software industry. I drove a city bus (surprisingly to me, I loved it.)
Getting over your ego is always good advice :).
I also would suggest contracting if you are interested in that. It's a different experience than just coding, but you can learn a lot about the business side of this (marketing and getting paid). That's what I did around 2002.
The best bet for the future is to pick a career path that is not massively over supplied with candidates. Once you get to that situation there's no system that will not cause most everyone to be unhappy.
>of all the people I have known, who got rich rich are primarily people who stayed at one company a long time, and their career/responsibilities grew through promotions, eventually c-suite.
Yeah, that kind of career advice worked fine (great, even) many decades ago at stable companies like Boeing. It doesn't work now, including at companies like Boeing. because companies just aren't run that way any more.
> I feel like I've made a terrible decision and don't know what to do next.
My advice is straightforward. First, stay in the position until an adequate amount of time has passed so it won't raise eyebrows on your resume. Second, begin looking for other work doing what you want to do, using this job as a stepping stone.
You took a chance, it didn't work out as expected. That's life. Move on to the next thing!
> Breathe, and take some time to figure yourself out.
This! I lost my job a few months ago and the knee-jerk reaction was to just get a job ASAP (no income next Friday!? PANIC!)
But we seldom make good decision in such state. Look at your career, and what you enjoy out of it, what kind of company/project/team you'd like to be part of AND what kind of company/project/team you wouldn't like to be part of.
As a software developer we sometimes can afford the luxury of choice, so don't let it go to waste.
And when you are ready, tons of luck and enjoy the ride!
> I've decided to adopt the attitude: Enjoy it while it lasts, but don't count on it lasting forever. Live a lifestyle consistent with your market value, and squirrel the rest away. I'm also conscious about keeping my tech skills up to date.
Same here. Its kinda easy to be fooled into feeling complacent when you get compensated very well and are respected for what you do and have done so far. But it will never be enough to keep you around forever; there are so many failure modes that you have to think about the possibility of being on the job market again.
Which is another reason why (apart from plain old human decency) I do make it a point to reply to most of the recruiters that try to recruit me with a polite explanation that I'm happy where I am currently but please lets stay in touch so in the future if things change we can try again.
"If you're on a sinking ship, get off"
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