Ask HN: Why are you stuck in a dead end job?

Stability. Once you start to build a family and lay down roots the harder it gets to be able to move because you have to put family first. What may be 'better' for you might now always be better for the family.

I'm learning so incredible much. The job is deadend, the money is not that great but I work on something I really enjoy (programming) with some really smart people in a city which is a rising star in the startup scene.

Sure, I'll jump ship in a few years but until then I'll try to learn as much as possible!

Up until last week I was in this exact same position, Golden handcuffs, enough money to choke a small donkey with as a daily rate but I had lost all job satisfaction. Then they offered me more money, and a 4 year contract. But I bit the bullet and said no! So now I've only just over a month left, with nothing lined up but sometimes you need to just take a leap of calculated faith. I don't know if it is going to work out, but I do know ill be happier on the other end.

"Dead end" is a bit of a hyperbole, but in two years I certainly don't want to be doing the type of work I'm doing now (finance). What keeps me here is my massive student debt balance and the prospect that this job could pay it off relatively quickly. At which point I intend to start my own thing. Side projects keep me sane in the meantime.

I work remote and have plenty of time to work on side projects and learn programming. I still get excellent reviews from my peers and manager so the raises and yearly bonus have been decent. I want to make the switch to a developer role but I am insecure about my coding skills. In addition, I love working from home and I would have to replace my aging car with something more reliable if I commuted to a new job.

Until last year, I was living as an expat in a foreign country, whose laws limited my ability to take another job, since employers need to sponsor foreign workers and go through the hassle of paperwork to employ them. I was stuck, then, and now I'm not.

I was also working in a rapidly obsolescing industry, journalism, where demand for reporters and editors is decreasing sharply. People in those positions often feel like they can't make the jump, because they lack the skills to be considered for work in another industry.

While that's not always correct, it is true that early career choices can commit you to economic sectors that end up not doing well. And then you're playing catch up with other candidates who spent their years building more desirable skills.

I've been a software developer for about 5 years. I love working on my own projects but feel really stressed and bored at a coding job.

My escape plan is to move to B2B software sales. I know I might be optimistic but it has all the points that are appealing to me.

- large salary based on performance (good luck working your ass off on that API or optimizing product for a fixed salary)

- no programming (so I have brain cells left to work on my own projects after I come home)

- profit generation culture (when you are a cost overhead like many engineers, you tend to be treated like a machine and measured for efficiency, you tend to compete with other engineers, I'd rather be paid more to win and I love a good race I can run on my own against others, not have senior engineers or managers slow me down.)

- Everyday is a new ball game

No excuses. Just need to boost/sharpen some skills and apply for jobs that aren't in the rust belt. Nothing holding me here and I have the ability to re-locate.

Anyone heard of imposter syndrome? It makes it hard to change jobs. Although my managers have only ever had good things to say about my work, and despite being promoted several times, the last time I tried to update my CV to apply for a job I broke down, feeling useless and incapable. I never think my work is good "enough" and often wonder when everyone else will realise I'm actually terrible at my job.

Interviews for someone suffering from imposter syndrome are awful - how are you supposed to come across well if you already feel like you're not good enough for the job?

I stayed at my last company for at least a year more than I wanted to because I didn't think I was good enough to get a job elsewhere. Although I feel like I've recovered somewhat from the worst of my I.S, this question made me realise I haven't just yet - the thought of interviewing elsewhere inspires just as many "Oh but you haven't learned much lately, you've fallen behind the crowd, they won't want you etc.. etc...".

I'm at the highest level of the technical track within the division of the company that I work for. Moving up probably means moving to a different town or spending a lot of time in China, based on who is getting hired or promoted into those positions.

I don't want to move.

The town that I live in is a nearly ideal place to raise kids. Good public schools, educated and tolerant populace, nearby university, things like high caliber music programs, and stuff is close enough together that they don't have to spend 1/2 of their life in a minivan.

It's a pedestrian- and bike-friendly town. My spouse and I both bike to work. The kids walk, bike, or take public bus to school. I think this is better for their bodies and all of our brains.

>I'd like to know why you are stuck

Education is holding me back, I started working at a newspaper when I turned 20 as a Graphic Designer, moved to IT, then to the Web Department. Fast forward 9 years, now my position is mash up of all of these. Everything I have learned has been self taught, I feel like a Jack of all traits master of none. I feel I lack a solid foundation on the fundamentals.

>How do you think you can get out of it.

Honestly I don't know if I can get out of it without putting my life on hold. Which, I can't since I'm pretty much paycheck to paycheck and about to get married. I'm currently trying to teach my self Java to add to my tool chain. (html, css, javascript, php). I'm hoping I can collect enough skills that if I do apply for another job my lack of education will not hurt my chances so much.

>What keeps you there?

The steady income.

>Benefits?

We have them, but definitely not here for them.

>Pay?

Awful, I'm a couple of dollars over an In-N-Out burger flipper. I'm on the Central Coast in California, not many tech jobs around)

>The job is easy?

After 9 years it better be. :-)

I was on a remote position for several years, maintaining code written by several other developers over the course of 10 years, poorly written and no spec in sight. I sincerely tried to move it forward to current standards, one bit at a time. It improved a bit for a while but from the distance it was a mess and I doubt some of the improvements will ever get deployed.

I went to a lot of stress during that period, but on the other hand it felt comfortable, sharing only a few hours of the day to touchbase gave me freedom to organize the time with the family, there were not many challenges other than managing a big ball of mud, and the hourly rate was much better than my colleagues did working on-site.

On the other hand, there was no prospect of new challenges, or technologies or salary, this was a small business. I did some side projects recently and it gave me confidence to move forward: there were many other companies willing to work remotely with newer technologies and with a better rate.

I have shared custody of my 7 year old daughter in an area (Amarillo, TX) that is geographically distant from metros w/ developer jobs, and Amarillo has little IT presence.

I've reached the pinnacle of technical jobs in my area (lead developer). The job is easy, I do pretty much what I want when I want, work 40 hours or less a week, the commute from home to office is 5 minutes - I can bike it in 10, and eat lunch at home each day. My quality of life is hard to beat. My job also allows me to experiment with many new technologies, so it can be somewhat challenging.

Beyond that, I make a decent salary for the area and combined with my wife's income and low cost of living, we are able to save A LOT.

I'd like to have a remote position, but the above reasons + imposter syndrome keep me from even applying.

I've been looking over the past couple years for a different dev job. I'm currently in a giant corporate setting with all the horrible paperwork and useless red tape that goes with it. I get to develop maybe 20% of the time, the rest is trying to figure out how to fill out paperwork about what I'm developing. I really don't like it.

My pay has dropped over the past few years when you factor in health care premiums and cost of living. I'm living paycheck to paycheck, but in my area developer pays are only now just slowly creeping up from 2008 levels. I don't want to move with kids in school.

I really, really keep hoping the pay in the area goes up soon, as I'm disliking my days more and more.

I had ever experienced once, and pay isn't so much, I keep staying there for 3 years, it is because I think I still have much to learn there.

I hope I'm not stuck, but after a few months not working and an expensive cross-country move, I ended up taking a job working at a university with an old, messy codebase. It's really low-pressure, and if it turns into full-time the benefits would good. It pays just enough, but nothing like people are getting in SV right now. I'd rather do something more cutting-edge and more challenging, and I'd rather be around people who are a little more driven. However I've got the syndrome real good, I feel like "all those people with jobs I want are pro programmers who go write big, beautifully structured, complex software on the weekends for fun; I'm just a guy who knows some scripting stuff that can muddle through some bug fixes." So my plan is... work through some of the interview books, and try to find a personal project that's interesting enough to pursue. I have a hard time motivating to actually write software for myself, rather than for an employer.

Because it's easy and one of the few Rails shops in my modest northern city (England).

Sometimes I roll in, don't code much and finish at 5 on the dot. It's partly due to laziness but more to do with weak moral and lack of autonomy. Moral where I work is appalling because the company I work for has been on a steady decline due to the clients being in their 70s/80s and almost being wiped out by a competitor a couple of decades ago.

I'm surrounded by suppressed talent that wants to do a good job by exploiting a younger market in order to secure the company's future, but the management here won't listen.

I know this job won't be here forever, but I'll have jumped ship before the cuts get made. I'm moving to Canada and hope to get into the startup scene or start something by myself (consultancy or startup). Until then, I'm resisting a move to London, which does have much better opportunities but the insane cost of living is not worth it.

Because the first development team I joined worked with a dying language, and then I moved to different teams using a language that was losing ground to things like Rails, Python, .Net (read anything really). I haven't kept myself up to date, instead blaming my tools (my 7 year old laptop with no battery) or the fact I have a partner/life and thus too busy to do (home)work in my spare time.

But i'm in a comfortable position too. I have a team who respects me and my input, I have good friends at work who i would hang out with any day of the week, I have decent holiday, increasing pay, great benefits... but I won't make my company a $million company, nor will I change the position of this company in many significant ways. Tech is not their focus, so suggesting we use Neo4J goes on deaf ears.

and so i'm still writing a language that should be dead... that few other companies would take a chance on me because of this... and still i walk the earth

I've been trying for 2 years to escape but apparently I don't have have any useful skills. Or maybe I just am terrible at interviewing and the entire process. It's really hard to come off confident when deep down you really think you're a piece of shit.