from Hacker News

Ask HN: Stuck and Depressed – Need Guidance

by OulaX on 7/9/22, 6:13 PM with 2 comments

- I started my programming journey in 2012, by creating small scripts for a SA-MP (A Mod for GTA SA).

- In 2016, I started college, studying towards my Computer Science degree. I loved all programming lectures, and was constantly among the best students in these lectures.

- In 2020, I graduated with a GPA of 2.9/4.0 (73.9%/100%), I was among the top 10 students of my class.

- Shortly afterwards in 2020, I started working as a freelance trainer at a coding school in my city, but the pay was not good, and since I was doing as a freelancer, I had months with no students at all, so no pay.

- I liked training, but I thought it's not for me, since I have to re-explain the same concepts over and over again, it gets boring pretty quickly.

- At the same time, I built a website for a client using Django.

And that's almost all I have! Now you might be wondering what's the deal here, why did I just post all of the above?

I am currently stuck in Tutorial Hell! I have no idea whether I should be after Mobile Development or Web or something else entirely!

I am not even sure whether my current knowledge is sufficient for a job or not.

I know that I need to work on projects and a portfolio, but I have no idea of projects! And even if I did, I just can't finish the project and I leave it halfway.

Is it possible to evaluate my current knowledge and get customized guidance on what I should do? Because I really need someone to help me out. I can't just research on my own anymore.

PS: I live in a city with almost no tech jobs.

  • by bigredhdl on 7/18/22, 9:13 PM

    Keep at it. You may just need some persistence. Have any of the people you have trained gotten jobs? Do you have any kind of network to leverage? Can you follow up with your client and make sure they are satisfied and if so do they know others that could use your services? I would scrounge up paying work wherever you can get it and use that to build from rather than churning "Tutorial Hell". IMHO, delivering stuff worth paying for is more valuable than building skills through tutorials. Not that both aren't worth doing, but I would be biased toward things you can get paid for while you build your skills, network and portfolio.

  • by gravitate on 7/9/22, 7:36 PM

    Try working remotely if your city has scant tech jobs.

    In terms of what you want to do, pick something that scratches an itch, for you personally.