Reflection – Page 15 – The Renegade Coder

If you've made it this far, then you know how I feel about engineering as an industry. However, I feel like I wouldn't be doing this series justice if I didn't at least share my story. Strap in for the finish! I have a lot to cover. Three Strikes and You're In If you think all the way back to the Sinister Start, then you know that I got a degree in Computer Engineering. I loved my undergrad because I was able to continue enjoying my hobbies like playing video games and practicing trombone while making a decent income working jobs that I actually enjoyed. In addition, I was surrounded by people from several different disciplines, so conversations never went dull. In fact, I spent a large part of my time in the Residence Hall Association where I actually served as a National Communications Coordinator. Needless to say, my day-to-day was filled with variety. On any given day, you could have found me working from 8AM to midnight, but I rarely got burnt out. I like to think that was due to the variety in my life, and the fact that I could always look forward to decent vacations. As you can probably imagine, my first "real job" was a major bummer. At any rate, let's pickup where the Sinister Start left off. Strike One I began my brief engineering career on a rotation program (read: company cult). The program is pretty exclusive as interns serve as the primary hiring pool. In fact, it's rare to even see someone from outside the company in the program. To get hired, the intern must go through a series of interviews over four hours. In order to get the job, every interviewer has to give their approval. Otherwise, the candidate isn't even considered. From there, the four interviewers discuss the candidate with a committee. If successful, the candidate is awarded the job. Now, keep in mind that this process happens well before the start of the intern's senior year of college. As a result, the intern is basically forced to make a decision before they even have a chance to go to their local career fair. For some perspective, most companies don't even start opening up positions until late November and possibly later. I had plenty of friends who didn't have jobs lined up until after graduation, so that should have been the first strike for me. Strike Two When I was going through this process, I received my offer in early September. I was ecstatic even though I knew I didn't really want the job. I was just happy to have the job. The problem was there was a bit of an issue of integrity. Back when I interviewed, I was told that they were aware of how early the interview process was in job hunting season. As a result, they were going to give us 8 weeks to accept our offer. To be fair, that amount of time is more than generous. I know teachers get 48 hours to decide, so I shouldn't really be complaining. That said, they gave us their word. When my offer arrived, it stated that I would only have 2 weeks to accept: That's quite the difference from our original agreement which is enough to constitute a second strike. Strike Three In the meantime, I was actually interviewing with a much more prestigious software company. They had reached out to me over LinkedIn and got me started on their interview process. After my first interview, they offered me a second. At that point, I received my offer from the original company to which I was shocked by the amount of time I had to make a decision. I was then forced to push my interview up to try to expedite the process a bit. Unfortunately, these interviews were technical, and I was so stressed that I didn't even get a chance to really study. Needless to say, I bombed my second interview. At this point, I really had no other options, so I took the job in the rotation program. After riding out my senior year, I started my job in July. Actually, I didn't really start until August because we didn't have roles yet. We were sort of just soaking up company resources for a few weeks until we had jobs. That was strike three. Again, I shouldn't be complaining because it's free money, but I was getting this sense that we weren't really valued by this company. Honestly, I could have made other plans during those few weeks, but instead they chose to schedule silly activities for us for a couple of hours every day. Rotation Activated When we finally did get roles, everything was sort of smooth sailing. The problem is none of the teams I had ever rotated to had work ready for me. Instead, the first two weeks of every rotation was more like an onboarding period. I was always instructed to sit around, read documentation, and install programs until they could figure out what the hell to do with me. By the time they finally assigned some real work, it was always some meaningless task to pass the time. Sure, I was feeling a bit better because I was actually working on something, but I quickly realized that the projects themselves had no value. Automated Verification I think one of the biggest wastes of time I ever worked on was a tool which was designed to do some automated video verification. Basically, the tool was supposed to determine if some homegrown video files were corrupt or not. Unfortunately, the tool didn't actually detect if frames were corrupt, but it could tell if frames were missing or out-of-order. In addition, the tool could verify a handful of other features which could be found in the video header. Then, all this information would be displayed to the user in charts. I actually had a bit of fun with it because at the time it seemed useful. However, I quickly saw how little impact it was going to have on the team. After all, the manager who asked me to make it quit their job—make that my third manager to quit their job during my tenure. That said, I was lucky enough to finish the tool before I rotated, so the team at least had a working executable. Unfortunately, my replacement was a mechanical engineer, so you can probably imagine that it was never touched again. Back to School In addition to my day-to-day work, I was required to complete two 9-month courses through the company. Fortunately, I was able to go software track which catered much more to my skills, and it was quite a bit easier. Instead of working in groups of four or five and presenting solutions every week, I got to solve software problems in a pair every week. Oh, and I didn't have to grade any of the assignments. No one told me continuous learning would be a 60-hour a week investment. That said, I still lost 4 hours of every week to a lecture taught by a business "expert." Unfortunately, most of these lecturers were not equipped to teach, so we'd each compete to stay awake as they read directly from a 200-slide presentation. In our free time, we'd be stuck working on problems like "use this tool" and "read these documents." After completing whatever meaningless task we were asked to do that week, we'd be forced to write a 10-page report on it. I think we all became quite fluent in the art of bullshit. Heavy Responsibility Eventually, I found myself in a role which gave me more responsibility than I would have liked. For instance, here's a list of tasks that I had to do: Convert existing scripts into an API Architect and develop API Test API Document API Move scripts into version control and train team on how to use itImplement continuous integration/deployment Pull source code from version control regularly Test source code Deploy compiled application Develop test stands Create simulators Document simulator use Train team on how to use test stands Assist in database managementTest software on dangerous hardware (*cough* locomotive *cough*)Train team During that time, I owned about 50% of a field service application. The responsibility only got worse when my manager quit, and I was forced to train their replacement. Nothing was worse than receiving calls and texts when I was supposed to be off work. In fact, the responsibility got so bad that the team asked me to stay on for a second rotation. When I tried to finally leave, they begged me for more time until they could hire a replacement. Honestly, I considered quitting and contracting for far more money, but I knew money was never going to improve my situation. Riding The Rocky Road The last straw came about when I finished taking the required classes through the company. With these classes—which were a colossal waste of my time and company resources—out of the way, Morgan and I now had the freedom to move to a different location. Bring on that Atlanta heat! This newfound freedom gave us the opportunity to find jobs elsewhere. As a result, we decided to make the move to Atlanta. Failure to Innovate Everything was going smoothly. Morgan was contacting principals like mad, and I was reaching out to various software managers in Atlanta. It seemed like things were really lining up. Except something pretty terrible started to happen. Like many other industrial manufacturing companies, the one I was working at was beginning to fold. Executives wanted to blame it on down cycles and whatnot, but the inevitable was happening. As a result, they were trying to cut costs in every way possible except from the top. The first group to get laid off was the union. Then they were starting to cut down on older employees and human resources. At some point, the program I was in started to face scrutiny. Rather than firing us, the executives cut a deal with some partners. After four rotations, we were basically forced to roll off into one of these partner companies. These partners were growing quickly and were in dire need of some employees, so it just worked out nicely. At the time of this news, I was just in my second rotation, so it really wasn't a big deal. I was hoping to roll off somewhere else anyway. However, this basically meant that there were still too many of us for the company to handle, so the types of roles available were going to be quite a bit more strict. Rotation Denied Fast forward a couple of months. Morgan was getting interviews and offers left and right, so we were getting pretty excited. That was until the manager of the rotation program released the final list of rotations. As fate would have it, my rotation in Atlanta was not approved. I still really can't believe it. I put in a lot of work just to ensure that rotation was a possibility only to have it denied by some faceless gatekeeper. That's right. I couldn't even tell you who approves these roles. It might as well be Merlin because it doesn't make any damn sense. Now, I get it. I'm a firm believer in the idea that nobody owes you anything—everything is earned. And by the sounds of it, you probably think that I put myself in the position to fail. I'm totally aware of that. I had backup plans like mad, but I didn't think I would have to resort to them. I was hoping to ride this job out at least another year to cover my student debt, then I planned to start doing something I actually enjoy. But, I just felt like I was cheated this time. I had plans and dreams, and I just couldn't believe that they could be taken away so easily. Everything up to this point had taken me to my wit's end. Something had to change, and I knew it wasn't going to be the industry. It's times like these where you realize that maybe things really do happen for a reason. Maybe I was forced to be put through this, so I could appreciate the little things moving forward. This moment was the turning point. The Transition Around this time, summer was in full swing. I had a brand new intern who was an electrical engineer, and he was improving my situation every day. That's because he was genuinely interested in learning like me. One thing led to another, and I found myself teaching my intern weekly lessons on data structures. It was at this point that I decided I needed to find a way out, so I applied to take the GRE. I wasn't even sure that I wanted to pursue graduate school. All I knew was that I needed to keep my options open. That's when I started to research schools. This task was pretty daunting considering I had already been out of school for over a year. How the hell was I supposed to get letters of recommendation? Do I even want to do research? Do I have any idea what I'm getting myself into? The entire situation had me at a level of stress that even I was having trouble containing. Hecho en Mexico Fortunately, something pretty great happened right around Independence Day. I took a short break from work to travel to Mexico. Of course, the trip was for work, but the time away from the office gave me back some life. Nothing like hanging out at an Irish pub in Mexico I realized pretty quickly that I was the happiest I had been in a long time. In fact, I was so happy that I even considered that maybe engineering wasn't so bad. After all, I really do enjoy challenging myself to create and innovate. Unfortunately, that positive energy began to fade as soon as I got back in the states. To cope, I decided to take the Monday off before Independence Day. However, I did make a bit of a mistake; I checked my email. I found myself buried in hundreds of emails related to GitHub issues that seemed to have just surfaced out of nowhere. In fact, there were a few emails from my manager begging for my help as if the world came down while I was gone. A Little Inspiration Around the same time, I was having a conversation with a few of my peers in the program. We ended up chatting about what we would do if we got laid off—oh, if only. That conversation eventually led to a discussion about past jobs where one of the guys brought up that he used to be a pizza delivery person. The thing that really struck me about the conversation was his response to the question, "would you ever go back to that job?" He started to crack a genuine smile before he answered "yeah, it was pretty easy job, and I really enjoyed it." His face lit up as if he had some sort of epiphany surrounding the meaning of life. That was the moment I knew I wasn't the only one who dreaded waking up every morning. No Relocation for You Just a couple of weeks later, I was working through the process of moving down to Atlanta. I decided to ask my program manager if I could get any relocation money. Of course, I figured it was a long shot, but I had to ask. I also asked if I could get a desk at the Atlanta office. I didn't really want one, but I wasn't trying to look like a slacker. The following is an excerpt from their response: Okay, I think we need to talk about some details. This scenario won’t be eligible for relocation and I’m not so sure that I can get you a place to sit in Atlanta. We can certainly try, but it is not a slam dunk by any means. Can you setup some time with me to discuss further? I want to understand your longer term plan. That's pretty much the response I expected, but I was still frustrated. I had already discussed with them that the move to Atlanta was for personal reasons. I wasn't about to spend the next year away from Morgan. She's always taken priority over my career, and I was hoping my program manager would at least understand that. Stressful Expenses Eventually, I found myself down in Atlanta. No thanks to work that's for sure. Morgan and I had moved everything we owned in a U-Haul before I had to come back up to Erie for a couple more weeks. Those two weeks were a really tough time for us. After all, we were juggling several life events at the same time. Obviously there was the move, but I was also dealing with resistance from work, applying to grad schools, studying for the GRE, planning a marriage proposal, and spending tons of money. I think by the time July was over I had spent somewhere around $5000. I'd love to say that a good portion of that money was spent on a ring, but I had to be a bit more frugal with that. I was too busy forking over lump sums of cash for things like the U-Haul, gas, security deposits, the GRE, and fixing up my Jeep. If that doesn't seem so bad, think about all the time I had to throw away at a job I hated: # Python script that calculates hours spent on products (after tax) def money_to_hours(money): HOURLY_RATE_AFTER_TAX = 1600.0 / 80.0 # $1600 every two weeks after tax time_spent = money / HOURLY_RATE_AFTER_TAX return str(time_spent) + ' hours' # Interpreter >>> cost_of_uhaul = 1250 >>> money_to_hours(cost_of_uhaul) >>> '62.5 hours' >>> >>> cost_of_first_months_rent = 1200 >>> money_to_hours(cost_of_first_months_rent) >>> '60.0 hours' Now this script doesn't account for all the fun times spent working over 40 hours. Most engineers would love to only work 40 hours a week, but we all know that never really happens. A GitHub punchcard showing when code was typically submitted on one of my teams. Unable to Catch a Break Anyhow, back to the point. Morgan and I were both struggling quite a bit at this time. Bad things just kept happening, and we were starting to wonder when we were going to catch a break. When I got back to Erie, I was stressing out about this discussion I was going to have with my program manager. Meanwhile, Morgan had to sort of figure out life in Atlanta on her own for a couple of weeks. At this point, even the little things were getting tough to overcome. I remember getting a text one morning from Morgan that read "I f***ing hate everything." Apparently she was about to head out to visit her classroom for the first time when she found out her car battery was dead. Usually this sort of thing is no big deal, but it just goes to show how frustrated we were with the day-to-day grind. When the discussion with my program manager finally arrived, I was debating whether to tell them everything or to just keep quiet. As I walked in, my gut suggested I stick to the latter. All I said was that my future was as uncertain as the state of the business. We were both on the same page. During that conversation, I was careful not to mention that I was applying to schools. I felt like karma would come around and make sure I never got into any, so I kept quiet. Nothing really came of the meeting except I was guaranteed a desk in Atlanta. Gauging the Options After that, I felt like pieces were starting to fall together. For once, I finally knew all the possible outcomes: Complete the program as scheduled and start school in the fallLeave the program one rotation early, take a brief break from work, and start school in the fallFinish the program as scheduled and roll off with another business These three options haunted me for the next six months. I wasn't able to select an option until I heard back from schools and knew if there was an Atlanta role. The breakdown started to look a bit more like some basic boolean algebra. However, my algorithm was stuck on hold until I got the two pieces of data I needed. It's a wonder I never timed out: Atlanta AND SchoolNOT Atlanta AND SchoolAtlanta AND NOT School Clearly, I didn't even consider the worst case which was no role in Atlanta and no school. I just couldn't let that happen, so I upped my odds by working diligently on getting into schools. By buying some tools to help me study for the GRE, I felt like I was taking control of my situation. The goal was to score at least a 160 in the quantitative section. Of course, I needed a higher score than that, but a 160 would at least make me feel like the test wasn't holding me back. Burnt Out Eventually, I gave up on work. There was really only one thing for certain—I was living in Atlanta for a year. I was tired of spending my life at a desk where 80% of the time I wasn't doing anything and 20% of the time I was being rushed to push something out the door. Management was garbage, and they had no appreciation for their employees. The work was draining, and I didn't really care if they kept me for another day. I was dreaming of picking up a part-time job and spending the rest of my time on this site. I was praying that I'd have the support of the community, and I'd be able to earn a reasonable income away from the office. That was really where I was at as a person. Never had I ever been more motivated to change my life than then. It was time to do something about it. There I was looking for a spark to rekindle what energy I had left. As a result, I found myself ready to pursue a new career path. I needed something that was going to be flexible and cater more closely to my values. After all, I just want to be excited about getting up every morning. I don't need a lot of money. I'm not materialistic, so it's surprising that I went into engineering at all. I guess I thought I could create something that would change the lives of others. Unfortunately, there's too much greed in the industry. That's why I ultimately chose to pursue something else. I want complete freedom, so I can continue to develop myself and those around me in ways I never could in corporate America. That way, I can live the life I want to live. Adding Options Once I hit rock bottom, I started looking for options beyond PhD programs. Honestly, the application process made me a little frustrated with academia. In fact, I have a little article about some of the struggles with applications. As a result, my list of backup plans had to grow. For starters, Morgan and I took a Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) course. With the certificate, we basically opened ourselves up to thousands of jobs across the world. In fact, this almost became the new plan. Though I had applied to universities, TEFL seemed like exactly what I wanted. I had seen TEFL jobs that were as low as 8 hours a week. Can you say "sign me up?!" Of course, I didn't stop there when it came to planning. If TEFL didn't end up being all I could ever imagine, I was planning to return to school for higher education. I've probably mentioned this somewhere, but I used to be heavily involved in student activities in college. Wouldn't it be amazing to make that a career? Process of Elimination While I was expanding my pool of options, information slowly started clearing up my future. By January, I knew there wasn't going to be a role in Atlanta. So, my only option was to finish my role and exit the company. After all, I was not willing to take my current role again. The trouble was my program manager was fighting me on it. I remember them questioning my decision as if I hadn't already planned to leave. "Are you comfortable with that?" they would ask. Apparently, I wasn't clear in my intent because my program manager was quickly trying to find me some alternative until the fall. Perhaps the worst part of this confusion was that I was forced to continue going to class and doing homework until my program manager had everything sorted out. This led to a week-long period of 12-hour shifts where the last 4 hours were spent pretending to have paid attention to the lecture. I had no business being there. Making an Agreement Fortunately, I finally settled on an agreement with my program manager. They allowed me to pull out of my coursework as long as I would stay until the end of the quarter. That was about six weeks longer than I wanted, but it was a nice deal. I got my nights and weekends back, and I could use the extra money to support the wedding Morgan and I were planning. From then on, it was just a matter of patience. Morgan and I started 2018 in a fog, and slowly things started clearing up. On January 25th, I received my first offer for a Computer Science PhD program with full funding. At that point, it was just a matter of making a decision. I was finally back to embracing the little things. Thanks minimalism! Struggling to Part Ways Or, at least that's what I thought. On March 13th, I received yet another call from my program manager begging me to stay for another month. I was told that they were still struggling to hire someone to fill my place, so they wanted me to stick around and wait. No, thank you. Of course, even when I said no, they told me to think it over the next couple days. In fact, they even tried to persuade me by saying things like "it's always good to stay employed" and "they really could use the help." Hold on, where's my Kool-Aid? I'm sorry, but it's not my responsibility to save the day. Needless to say, I was incredibly frustrated. I couldn't believe they were trying to move the finish line on me again. But perhaps worse of all, I couldn't believe they were guilt tripping me into staying. Their inability to hire someone is not my problem. Tying up Loose Ends Despite the request to stay from my program manager, I decided to leave anyway. Unfortunately, that came at a pretty rough cost. Apparently, the contract I signed back in 2015 had major strings attached: For some background, they provided me with a $3500 relocation stipend as a lump sum which I used in July 2016. According to my contract, I was required to pay that back if I quit within 12 months of the "expiration date" of that benefit. Since it had been over a year since I had received that money, I figured I was in the clear. Apparently, that stipend "expired" July of 2017, so I was contractually obligated to pay back the full amount. Of course, the full amount wasn't just $3500. After all, the lump sum was tax assisted, so the grand total came out to be $5107.85. Talk about getting worked over: >>> cost_of_stipend = 5100 >>> money_to_hours(cost_of_stipend) >>> '255 hours' That amount of money was literally my last six weeks of income. And even when I called, I couldn't get them to prorate it. In fact, I asked them if they would have made me pay it all back had I quit a day before the deadline, and they said "Absolutely! Rules are rules." Holy hell, no wonder people can't stand Corporate America. After all, everything is just about the bottom line. Businesses don't care about people, and they certainly don't care about the grunts doing their labor. From now on, I'll be working for myself. I think what made it worse was that I actually contacted HR before I quit to try to strike some sort of deal over this relocation fee. Conveniently, they never responded. How's that for professionalism? Reflecting on Shady Business Practices Earlier in this article, I mentioned three strikes that I should have noticed when I started: Hiring occurred way before hiring season as if to snag talent earlyOffers were extended with a two-week deadline instead of the agreed eight-week deadlineRoles weren't solidified until at least two weeks into the job At this point, I figure I can tag on the shady handling of the relocation package to this list. I guess the company's answer to retention problems is to con ignorant college kids into thinking they're making the right decision. Well, the shady business practices aren't working. After all, I'm not the only one who left. Out of the original eighteen members of my class, four of us left the company before the end of the program. In addition, another several switched divisions. By the time I left, there were maybe 10 members left. How's that for retention? Looking Back Phew! That was a marathon. That said, I want to take some time to reflect a bit on this series and some of the things I've said, so sit tight. Open Season I realize this series is just one huge rant. At times, parts of my story probably don't seem that bad, and many of you are probably screaming "that's what a job is you stupid millennial!" Yeah, I get it, and I've heard it all before. I just don't care. I wrote this piece for me, and I hope it helps others realize there is more to life than work, bills, and taxes. There just has to be. I just can't imagine sinking 40 years of my life at a dead end job just to provide for my family—especially given that nothing in life is guaranteed. That's the ultimate sacrifice, sure, but won't the cycle just repeat for my children? I had to stand up against conventional wisdom which meant I had do something just a bit crazy. That's why I ultimately decided to quit my job in engineering. No Hard Feelings Of course, quitting hasn't come easy. I had to prepare for over a year, and I had many days filled with tears and anger on this journey. In an effort to clear my head, I made this website my place to vent. Unfortunately, that means some people might get their feelings hurt. While I don't particularly care if some anonymous person gets offended, I do care about the people whose lives may have played a role in this series. That includes friends, family, managers, colleagues, and many more. To those people, I just want to say no hard feelings. I understand what it's like working a job that your life literally depends on, so I won't judge people based on how they may have treated me within that environment. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the people I wrote about could easily write their own articles about me. With that said, feel free to reach out to me if you feel personally offended by this series. I won't change the stories, but maybe we can reconcile our differences. Honorable Mentions While this series is made up of 15 parts, there were definitely more topics floating around. Unfortunately, not all of them made the cut. So, I decided to make a little section here to detail a few of the topics that didn't make it. The Corporate Lexicon I refrained from keeping this topic because it does only apply to corporate jobs, and it's not exactly exclusive to engineering or software development. However, it is an enormous headache. For those of you that don't know what I'm talking about, the corporate lexicon is the series of phrases that only make sense within the corporate environment. Here are a few examples: "Touch base""Get the ball rolling""Touch point""Low-hanging fruit""Action item""Big picture""Take it offline""Bandwidth""Work-life balance""Reach out""Let's table this""Circle back""Ping" If you've been in the corporate world, you probably cringed at most of those. So, I apologize. Also, another annoying bit is all the acronyms. It seems every company prides themselves in their secret jargon, and it's so irritating. Reinventing the Wheel Again, I didn't include this topic because it's pretty closely related to the Looming Legacy article. In addition, I just didn't have a ton of content for it. That said, reinventing the wheel is still a huge problem. In my experience, a large portion of any engineering job is reinventing the wheel. Think about it. How much engineering is actually new? The best example I can think of is the story feature on Snapchat. To compete, both Facebook and Instagram added the feature to their apps. That means both of those companies had to find a way to reinvent the wheel. While that's a big industry example, there are plenty of examples from my day-to-day grind. For instance, sometimes features need to be migrated to a new language. Welp, I guess we're rewriting it. Or, maybe the feature already exists, but we'd have to pay for it. Again, I guess we're going to write it from scratch. I remember a perfect example of this. On one of my teams, we were building software to do some data analytics in Python. Typically, the average person would just grab NumPy and go to town. The problem was we were bundling our solution into a standalone executable, so we had to include all the libraries. Normally that wouldn't be an issue, but NumPy is absolutely massive. When the executable would launch, we'd spend a good twenty to thirty seconds waiting for the executable to unpack because of NumPy. As a result, we were stuck writing some of those computational libraries ourselves to save on that overhead. You just got to love reinventing the wheel. Condescending Experts Like the other two, I didn't write a complete article for this topic because I didn't have much to say. That said, it's still a major issue. When I talk about condescending experts, I think April of Compassionate Coding said it best: When you gain any sort of technical skill, you come to possess specialized knowledge that others around you may lack. Unfortunately, learning a technical skill doesn’t necessarily come pre-packaged with the ability to communicate effectively with those who lack this skill. A common result? In discussions with others, your inability to empathize with those who don’t share your understanding can make you seem like a condescending jerk. And, that's exactly the problem that I find to be almost ubiquitous in engineering. Most engineers are incapable of sharing their knowledge without being jerks. Honestly, I could have included this in the Artificial Arrogance article, but that article was targeted more at the "fake it 'til you make it" mentality in engineering. In other words, a lot of engineers have this elitist mentality despite a complete lack of proof. To be fair, I find that engineers are less likely to be jerks in person. That type of behavior tends to manifest itself in online communities where people are semi-anonymous. Just take a look at the comment I recently received on my Hello World in Every Language article: This response was completely unneccessary. Not only did the author fail to read the article, but they spent half their comment bragging about using archaic languages. Congrats, buddy. Of course, I still have to deal with these elitists despite leaving the field. I guess they never really go away. The Future At this point, Morgan and I have solidified our journey together. We have decided to move to Columbus where I'll be starting my PhD in Computer Science. Sure, I'm not confident that I want to do research, but conventional wisdom has failed me before. After all, I don't mind writing. In fact, I enjoy it quite a bit. If I didn't, why would I have this website? Also, I have an eternal curiosity for knowledge. In fact, one of my CliftonStrengths is Learner—as well as Adaptability, Developer, Restorative, and Strategic for those who care. I figure research is the type of thing that will never get old for me. I'll never be doing the same thing twice. And besides, I already do loads of research, at least in terms of Google searches on my smart phone. As an added bonus, a PhD allows me to make a difference in someone's life. I feel like my quest to become a professor will allow me to do just that. I would at least be able to do what I love which is teach, and I'd get away from that dreaded cubicle city. But Don't Take My Word for It When I was first trying to cope with how much I hated my job, I looked to Google for some answers. I felt like all I needed to do was find someone else to share my sorrow with, and I would be fine. As it turns out, there are tons of people who made it all the way to the industry and found out they hated it. Normally, I would share all that information below, but I've decided to make an extra article just for that kind of content. It's called the Affirmable Addendum, and it contains a collection of links to articles I read along this journey. Thanks for making it all the way to the finish! If nothing more, I hope this series gave you a good laugh. If you're in a tough place like I was or just want some advice related to engineering, please feel free to reach out either below or directly through email.