Quit Your Job & Make Some Money!

I have loved writing code ever since I took my first programming class. Analyzing a problem, breaking it down into bite sized business rules, designing a system, and seeing it come to life in code gives you such a feeling of satisfaction and pride. Software development rocks.

Unfortunately, a “software job” often throws roadblock after roadblock into the path of creating software and can make your professional life miserable. All the corporate B.S. that gets in the way of building solutions and then bleeds over into the rest of your life is what makes many software jobs suck.

I’ve experienced enough of the downside of this industry to know it’s not for me. I’ve spent enough nights and weekends away from my family to realize that working as a corporate software engineer is not the job of the future. I began learning how to apply my technology skills to make money for myself, not someone at corporate office. I’m on the road to becoming a full time webpreneur and can’t wait to get there!

Nothing is life is certain except death, taxes, and the fact your boss will bring over an issue at 5 oclock on Friday afternoon.

I don’t know whether it’s corporate inertia, annoying clients, or non-observant testers but whatever the reason, major issues always seem to wait until the end of the day on Friday to crop up.

How many people do you know that won’t answer their phone after 3:30 on a Friday; especially if you have big plans for the evening or are headed out of town. But you know avoiding the phone won’t save you, they’ll track you down with the issue no matter where you are.

Early in my tech career my new wife and I were getting away for the weekend and she stopped by the office to pick me up on Friday afternoon. Of course, 20 minutes before she arrived something went terribly wrong with our new web interface and it was all hands on deck to fix it.

Four hours later I came downstairs stressed as hell to a fuming wife who refused to speak with me the entire drive. I should have known then and there I had started down a path I wanted no part of but I was young and naive. It won’t always be like this, I re-assured her, this was just a fluke thing. Little did I know how wrong I would prove to be.

Friday afternoon outages will always be a part of the tech industry, I’m just glad that I won’t be around the job much longer to “enjoy” them.

Have you ever poured your effort into a project only to have it canceled and shelved? How about this one, have you ever had your boss intentionally delete a project you’ve spent weeks and months of your time on?

Hello Wiki!
Every time we asked for a knowledge base in our group we’d hear some song and dance about issues with implementing the corporate standard until we finally stopped asking. Instead, we took matters into our own hands and created a Wiki site that took off like wild fire. I spent countless extra hours moving documentation from isolated network drives into the new knowledge base and training everyone on it’s usage.

We were rockin and rollin, capturing tribal knowledge that had long been locked inside the head of developers. We were creating a knowledge base that made us more efficient and our jobs easier, it was awesome. We had escaped the inertia of our productivity sucking corporation and were sharing information Web 2.0 style!

Goodbye Hard Work
I guess in a crappy corporation all good things come to an end. The hard drive for the NIS server in our group crashed and work slowed to a snails pace. The architeture team needed a new hard drive and that spelled disaster for our beloved Wiki.

If you’ve ever worked in a big company, you know how many levels of procurement tape you have to cut through just to buy a damn paperclip. There was no way our boss was going to get a new hard drive anytime soon so the architecture group was in a rough spot. Of course we could have picked up a new hard drive at Best Buy, Circuit City, or Comp USA for $100 and gone to the trouble of expensing it but instead the boss decides to scavenge existing hardware.

Software Jobs Suck
With only a few minutes notice the hard drive storing all the valuable knowledge we’d accumulated in the Wiki was wiped clean and repurposed. Thanks to BS corporate policies and a horrible management decision all the hard work and documented knowledge went down the toilet. Just another crappy day at the office.

Don’t you just love sales people? We have a new VP of sales and my boss told me today the new VP wants to have sold $5 million worth of clients by the end of the year. Let’s do a quick review:

• In the first 9.5 months of this year the sales team has sold $2 million
• The new goal is to sell $3 million new business in the next 2.5 months

Of course that’s wonderful for the company’s bottom line but really crappy for my software team. Our job is to put new clients on the system and we’ve been busy as it is. Now they’re trying to shove in all these clients at the end of the year, just in time for Christmas. Ho, Ho, Ho. Guess what our Christmas present will be? You guessed it: work, work, work.

When he delivered the news my heart sank. Visions of long hours during the holiday season flooded my head. The only thing that kept me from kicking in his monitor was the fact that I’m on track to have my best month ever making money online. Someday, hopefully soon, I’ll walk out of that office and never go back.