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My Engineering Craft Regressed

5 years ago when I graduated University, I had a whole host of open source projects under my belt. I put my heart and soul into them - for thousands of hours. And users loved them. I still remember some of the faceless users whose messages gave me a smile. [https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/518a9cb2-59d2-4412-a846-567377b8fd9e.png] When I went into the job market - which was much better back then - I had some incorrect assumption that recruiters would care about this work. Or at least technically inclined companies. Or at the very least, companies I would want to work for would care about this. But that never happened. My Indeed profile shows I applied to over 600 jobs back then. With 3 offers, I accepted the only one that didn’t treat me like a baby, and had a great time working for that company. During the day, I worked 8-9 hours for this startup, and until late at night I continued my open source contributions. Surely, they would take me somewhere. [https://lemmy.ml/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2F6vUNA8Y.png] I hopped to another startup and oversaw major projects - for pitiful pay - but enjoyed it. My skillset had never been so strong, and my impact was measurably through the roof. Surely if I kept this up, I would land a high paying gig anytime soon. But of course, that didn’t happen. Waking up at 6am to make some commits, reading documentation on the subway, and coding to dubstep at night wasn’t getting me anywhere. But I was happy. Eventually I came to face the music - Nobody gives a crap about real projects. The people who knew my value weren’t the people who could pay me. I peeled back, and started grinding Leetcode instead. [https://lemmy.ml/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FcXM1lJd.png] My projects slowed to a crawl. The communities slowly got demotivated. It was sad to turn my back to, but it got me a 5x salary bump. When I joined, I was treated like a baby for having “4 years of industry experience”. Whatever. I did work here and there, and apparently my impact exceeded expectations. But what about my skillset? Despite significantly regressing, now my email is filled with recruiters begging me to come to be “Amazon SDE II”, “Tech lead at YC startup X”, “Part time job paying 150-290$/hr”. Pathetic. I was so much better (and happier) before, yet I’m only seen when I do the fake crap like update my LinkedIn to celebrate 1 year at $FAANG. I’ll collect some money and retire in a couple years. Hopefully the open source world stays the same until then.

During the day, I worked 8-9 hours for this startup, and until late at night I continued my open source contributions. Waking up at 6am to make some commits, reading documentation on the subway, and coding to dubstep at night wasn’t getting me anywhere. Despite significantly regressing, now my email is filled with recruiters begging me to come to be “Amazon SDE II”, “Tech lead at YC startup X”, “Part time job paying 150-290$/hr”.

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