I’m a 22-year-old guy and I just recently moved back in with my parents. As I was previously living by myself, working as a software developer, this decision might sound like a step backwards, but for me, it actually isn’t. To explain this further I have to backtrack a few months.
I’m pretty much straight out of university and working at one of the best software development companies in Estonia. I had gotten my bachelors a few months prior and started doing programming full-time then. I’m on a good roll, every morning I pull up to a silicon-valley part of Tallinn and walk to the office with many people dressed just like me – suits, dress-shirts and nice freshly polished shoes. This has been going on for about 11 months now and I feel blessed. All my classmates were in awe when they first heard I had gotten a job here. Everybody that works here, in this company, is picked out very carefully and I was one of the lucky ones to be chosen! The technology I’m developing with at this company has great potential to earn me a salary way above the average a software developer usually gets paid.
Sounds like a dream, right? In a week I’m going to leave the company and no longer work with that technology. “Are you crazy?!”, some might ask. Let me explain…
Every morning you wake up at 7AM, wash up, eat and leave for work. Then at work you squeeze the maximum out of your brain trying to do things other people tell you to do. Then you grab some coffee and do it again until the clock ticks round to 5PM. You get in the car and slowly drive home in heavy traffic. It is 6PM, you reach home and feel like a zombie. You just want to lay down for a little while, but you are hungry and there is no food ready. So you cook something for dinner, enjoy it with some YouTube videos to relax your brain. Then you stalk you friends on Facebook and maybe stumble upon some interesting articles. It is 8PM now, time to start thinking about work again. To not have to do it all in the morning you go and iron your shirt now, and maybe prep some food to take to the office, so you can save some money on lunch. It is half past 9PM and everything is prepared, you go to bed, read a book, fall asleep. The next morning you wake up do the same thing again. Rinse, recycle, repeat. Every week. And for what? Money? Then what? Let’s say you have done this for 5 years. You have a nice car, a roomy apartment downtown and have just started a family. You only get two days out of seven to do what you want (plus holidays of course). But really, you work so hard, just so you can enjoy that small part of your life?
Don’t get me wrong, there may be a lot of people in the world to who this sounds amazing. But for a very long time, I’ve known, this type of routine is not for me. I feel I get lost in it, just drifting along, not feeling anything, just being part of some bigger system – a small cog in a wheel. I had to live, I had to break free and at least try!
I moved back in with my parents and quit my job, so I can start a game development company. I made this decision to minimize my time spent on other duties, so I can focus all my energy on creating the next indie phenomenon.
I keep saying – “This, is the biggest leap of faith in my life!” And I mean it. I have to make it this time!
Hey Paul, Vlad in here.
The situation is more or less the same for everybody. I had same experience back in Ukraine when I was doing the project I didn’t really care about. But that job gave me a solid experience. Everything changed when I moved to Estonia and started working with CM. The project has right solutions and pushes me to create solutions above good quality, forcing me to sharpen my skills, although they are pretty solid already. That being said, when I go to work I feel like today’s gonna be something interesting and I’ve got to solve it properly. On the other side, my experience of working in a gambling company resulted in constant morning pain while doing morning routine.
My point is: you should search for a job that really interests you. If you do it right, you’ll get a lot more then money: skills, broad knowledge of dev, shipping, publishing, clever points of views on the same problem from different colleagues, acquaintances.
I wish you all the best with your new company, hope you’ll have enough passion and patience to play it right and make it work!
Thank you, Vlad, for sharing your experience and for the good wishes!
I will do my best to build a company that has the same effect on all team members as CM has on you.