firestri

You can push back or negotiate the deadline. In my short career, I found that most deadlines are BS. They're just there because someone somewhere made the arbitrary decision that it needs to be delivered by then. There is no reason behind it.

Cool, so when I started out I took a mindless survival job. And on my evenings and weekends I learned using online courses and books. I also asked questions on forums/chats related to that technology and went to local meetups. It took me about a year until I knew enough to get my first junior role.

Good places to learn are things like the Rails tutorial on their website, the Ruby koans, or the Doug Crockford book about JS, frontendmasters.com. Treehouse was also helpful for learning the basics of CSS but I didn't love the cartoonish story around the lessons.

Above all, find a problem you have and think about how you could solve it with technology I would say, it will let you put into practice what you're learning and guide your direction by researching the things you're stuck on.

Are you asking because you're curious/looking to do the same or because you think that it will help find answers?

> Why 40 hrs? Try 24-32 and you might find the pace suits you better. This might work for a small org that needs a tech person but can’t support a FT tech person.

How do you find these? I've looked for PT work and everywhere wants FT employees or nothing because they say the marginal cost to them between PT and FT isn't much more (admin, training, office space and health insurance costs are pretty much fixed regardless of hours worked)

I end up leaving because I get burned out, because I don't want to drink the Kool-Aid and that doesn't sit well with management, and because I get bored: companies never do something so amazing that I want to keep doing it a year in. It's interesting in the beginning because you learn how the company works, how the software works, you meet new people, maybe discover a new area of the city where the office is in but all that eventually wears out.

How do you find those contracts? I don't have all that much of a network, my former colleagues are either still at the startups I left or working for another startup.

I'm in Canada. I don't think I could land a job at Microsoft or Google or the other big ones, I wouldn't pass the technical interview.

As for a PhD, don't you need a masters degree and a topic you feel strongly enough about to spend years dwelling on it? It's not that I don't know what to do with myself, but rather that I don't know how to live my life without playing the rat race.