hacking

Let’s start with little bit about me, what do i want from life? I want to prosper. Since most of our lives we are spending on the job it means the i want a job that allows me to prosper. Biggest factor in here is the team, you can prosper MUCH faster in a competent team. I was *this* close to having it. From what i’ve seen i would work with two hackers how their stuff and a boss who:

• can communicate properly
• knows what ain’t of his business
• is proper marketing person
• stays real
• is enthusiastic

Perfect right? Wrong. I don’t have a fucking piece of paper which tells people i can hack. Lemme repeat that, i can’t get what i value the most because of a PIECE OF PAPER? It must be pretty damn relevant piece of paper right? Wrong.

My university attempted to teach me about the infinite potential well, now find a SINGLE use case in the professional life of a hacker where he needs that? How about an use case for knowing internals of doppler effect? Than there was math, lots of math (almost half a year of pure math). Some of it was arguably useful, but i bet an average programmer needs like 5% of that, at best. Our C programming professor used to spend more time drawing colors on his screen than explaining us things. Not to mention that some things he was explaining us were just wrong. That is just the first year (the only year i took). I’ve seen a LOT of theory people from later years didn’t understand but knew at the day of exam, and perhaps few days later but forgotten by the end of the week. Again why is this methodology useful? I’m not saying that ALL content sucked, just MOST of it.

OK, so the content sucks, what about people? Well, most students i’ve met in university were lost and didn’t really know what would they like to do. At that point most were IMHO unemployable. But you go to university to become employable, right? How come you than have people in last years who can’t type a fucking “ls” in the linux command line? Or who can’t understand the most basic networking principles after long explanations? I’ve met my ex schoolmate on some IT event (he was in the senior year), so i asked him “what would you like to do”? Surprise surprise, his answer was “I don’t know”. I’m not saying that ALL people there are incompetent, there are a guy and girl i used to hang with who IMHO have quite bright future in front of them. They are just an exception tho.

To think that i lost something i care about due to a system with way more holes than swiss cheese just…. hurts :’(

The same disclaimer as for the last post applies here as well: don’t read this post, i bet you have better things to do.

First a reminder, for me staying here it would mean a start from scratch, like some low end non IT job. A thing i didn’t think of in the last post was personal prospering (”maturity”, “world awareness”, experience that comes with age, “life experience” from now on). A major fuck-up on my side earlier this year proved that i’m not as mature as i thought i was. My parents were very protective mostly isolating me from negative experiences from environment. Another important piece of my history is that i never really had a full blown job. As a side note, seeking life experience is why i moved from Koper to Ljubljana in the first place. A way to fix that? Pain. Lots of it. For example if i would have to struggle to survive that would give me considerable life experience (assuming we are talking about any meaningful time frame). What negative consequences would working a low end job have? Less tech meetups and less pydra hacking due to time constraints.

In this context, let’s have a look at what i had from RTV. I learned that not all things can be treated rationally, seen enough ego based decisions. I realized the importance of communication == wasted considerable amount of time and energy due to miscommunication. As far as professional pressure is concerned, I was pretty much completely isolated from it. The problem is that is the source of most pain and consequently most life experience a job gives you :/.

So far i thought technical experience was way more important than life experience, I’m having second thoughts on that one. Tech stuff comes and goes and you have to keep working not to forget it. Not only that you have to keep learning not to be run over by youngsters and new technologies. With life experience it’s different, once you learn it new things keep stacking on top of it (excluding mental illnesses & co). So getting life experience at not-so-late stage (i’m 22) of my life seems like a good investment.

Could this be the cause i’m willing to fight for?

Here is an advice, don’t read this post, i bet you have better things to do. I’m not kidding.

Let’s first start with, i come to San Francisco more than a month ago with the intention of getting myself a decent job. What are the results? Well, VEEEEEEEEEEERY bad, ~95% of companies won’t even talk to me (the others say “sorry no”). How does that look from my perspective? I want to work and i don’t even get a chance :/, this is sooo not fair. But i have a problem, i know “not fair” doesn’t exist. A lot of things affect our life, some we can control others not, there is no place for things ala “not fair” in there. You see, if i weren’t looking at the world that way i would just bitch about the world not being fair and got over it. Ignorance can indeed be a (short term) bliss.

Now to be “fair”, let’s look at my position from employers point of view, why would they spend their money talking to me? I’m not a rock star hacker, i have barely anything to show, they don’t know me and i have some weird requests. Add to that to the fact that they probably have lots of people with more to show than i am on a waiting list for a job and the result becomes completely understandable.

The first of my two options is to keep on going, but what consequences does that bring? For start if i want to stay here i’ll probably have to find myself an illegal job (that has nothing to do with IT). That will give me more flexibility (like buy a marriage). There is certain risk associated with that, than there is always risk that the officers won’t let me back in from the trip Mexico (to renew visa waiver). If any of those should happen i’m out of US (at least until i become a rock star). And all that for what? Best chance is to change one of my most basic personal characteristics (i’m asocial :/) and do something that miserably failed so far. Not very appealing.

The other option is to give up, what consequences does that have? The first one i’ll have is a great disappointment, depression like state. That is the immediate price to pay for failing at an important life goal. How strong? No idea. Next thing is my personal downturn, no more cool stuff ala dorkbot, way less decent costumer services in stores… But perhaps the biggest consequence is that i’d have a comfortable job position, trading that for ability to prosper requires LOT of willpower. If you add above mentioned disappointment to that i don’t see myself changing the job soon :-/.

What i should really ask myself is how much would my professional life suffer if i give up, to see if it is worth fighting for. Given how much ads for cools jobs i see i’d say plenty (and this is the recession!). Is the Slovenian job market really complete crap? Not really, there is videolectures.net doing some cool python stuff, Marand is or will be doing some as well (but that requires to bend over and digest java) and probably couple of others. All together it is still light years from the Valley tho.

But would really that much change if i found a job here? YES! Let’s have a look at me 2 years ago and me 2 months ago. 2 years ago i was on daily basis smoking pot, didn’t have slightest an idea where i want to go nor i knew where i’m gonna be that evening. Did i mention i didn’t have personal income? 2 months ago i had a scheduled job (which i respected, the schedule not the job), ergo was at certain place ~8 hours a day and knew am gonna be tomorrow too. Also i had above the average monthly income. What has changed? At one point i went nuts and decided that i want to make something out of myself and changed pretty much everything in my life (moved from Koper to Ljubljana, got job, pretty much stopped smoking). A change comparable to what i’m trying to do now in US. Where would i be if i haven’t made that change? Realisticaly would have some lousy job, earning at best half of what i do now and “occasionally” smoking a joint, or two (or seven ). Assuming that is right, if we draw the line between move to Ljubljana and this, where will i be in year and the half? Rotting at my current job :/.

Another thing about me is that i’m “creature of extremes”, for better of worse a lot of things i do is taken to extreme. If we look at some longer time span at those extreme actions mostly they didn’t pay off. Will i now embrace that my characteristic and push my “luck” in so many ways?