Should my sense of failure be helped by knowing the stories of others in similar or even worse situations? One former co

These days, what I hear from internet trolls and even some left-of-center people is that you have to shut up and take “x” career, regardless of what your strengths and weaknesses actually are. What on earth is the point if, after paying your dues, it’s a rarity — that is, not merely difficult, but rare — to attain even a middling career that reflects your actual talents and interests? One might as well go back to medieval serfdom. At least serfs are bound to the land! If you’re American, you would get more days off, and you would have actual job security.

Being a developer is hard — especially while you’re finding your flow in the early stages of your career. I’m still going through it. Being productive? That’s even harder.

There is one sense of entitlement that our culture encourages, and that perhaps I take part in. I grew up learning that one of the perks of living in a capitalist, democratic society is that, as long as I work hard and perform well in a field that interests me, I could have a career that suits me. Now, I don’t think most people really grow up believing that as long as they get good grades they can become the next Stephen King, the next Oprah Winfrey, or what have you. From what I hear, the next generation of Americans below me has been taught not to dream this way by the cruel reality my generation experiences. But for us, the expectation was that things would work out reasonably well as long as we didn’t completely screw up. Getting a doctorate and publishing a book doesn’t seem like it should lead to flaming out.

As for me, I did something I vowed I wouldn’t do: go back to school again. I enrolled in a Library and Information Science graduate program because I have seen that archivist and digital humanities jobs are relatively well-advertised (at least until the pandemic hit). It would be a career I would find satisfying and that would draw on my interests and skills and my past degrees. However, taking this path will mean taking on more debt, and there is still no guarantee I’ll get a well-paying, full-time job with benefits when I graduate. A couple of former colleagues of mine have gone into K-12 teaching, but even that requires a grueling, expensive process that leads to one of the most essential yet underpaid professions in America.

This is not just a problem for academics cast into the wilderness like me. If you ask anyone, being able to make a living just as a writer of your own work is now highly unlikely unless you catch lightning in a bottle and capture the attention of the right editor like J. K. Rowling or you’re born or marry into the class of Ivy League legacies and media dynasties. In an article for The Atlantic, Andy Horwitz wrote, “Large, mainstream arts institutions, founded to serve the public good and assigned non-profit status to do so, have come to resemble exclusive country clubs. Meanwhile, outside their walls, a dynamic new generation of artists, and the diverse communities where they live and work, are being systematically denied access to resources and cultural legitimation.” American journalism is in no better shape. The recent history of print and even online journalism has been a dirge sounding off a long list of shut-downs and mass layoffs.

I would usually find myself slacking in the middle of the day. I would be writing many lines of code per minute only to find myself looking at motorcycle reviews a while later. One day, I had to fix a serious bug before the end of the day since it was affecting a large number of customers. On that day, I worked better, faster, and more clearly than ever before due to one simple reason: I had a concrete and easy-to-understand goal.

Still, I’m sure some would tell me I’m entitled, or that I should “learn to code.” But a literal reading of that advice has its own shortcomings, as learning how to code is not much of a guarantee you’ll get a job (ask anyone in the video game industry). Applying it figuratively, as a suggestion about going wherever market opportunities happen to be, it’s fine but similarly fraught with pitfalls; there are always problems and uncertainties in a market. I could become, say, a nurse, a potentially promising path to steady employment. But given my track record with anything involving technical equipment, you really wouldn’t want me to tend to your parents or grandparents, unless you’re hoping for a nice inheritance. Healthcare is a wonderful field, but it is not for everyone. Ideally the people working in life-and-death fields would have gone into it because they were drawn to it, not because they settled for it.

I’m left scolding myself over things I can’t go back and change, and that shouldn’t foreclose a life of the mind in an academically accomplished adult. Maybe I should have taken my early education more seriously. In high school, I didn’t join the Honor Society because I didn’t like most of the people I knew who were in it. Maybe toughing it out would’ve helped with college placement. But I wouldn’t give up the path I’ve chosen. I love writing. I’m good at it. I fit in well in academia and greatly enjoy the atmosphere of a university community. If every person is indeed “meant” for a purpose, I have found mine.

It is true that being an aspiring writer or artist or even academic has never been easy. However, whenever I look around at news articles on the state of the media or just the Twitter accounts of struggling creatives and academics, the stories I often see are quite similar to my own. Even people with sterling resumes and impeccable credentials and actual jobs still have to resort to “the hustle” of freelancing, side gigs, podcasts, crowdfunding, YouTube shows, and small businesses.

In this meritocracy where we are all supposed to be potential Horatio Algers or Tess McGills, losing out in the race for the American dream is far more expensive than winning.

As a dev, you have to put up with long meetings that eat up time you could spend on writing code, management that takes too long to make decisions, acceptance criteria that are vague, etc. These are all time-suckers, and we hardly acknowledge the worst of them: our habits and practices.

Rationally, I know the fundamental problem I’m facing is a social one, not an individual one. We live in a nation that minimizes the arts, the social sciences, the humanities, and general education in favor of business, finance, and entertainment (or, at least, certain kinds of entertainment). According to the New Faculty Majority, just over half of all college instructors are adjuncts. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the average pay for adjuncts is about $3,000 per three-hour course while, in 40 states, college football coaches are paid more than any other state employee with annual salaries in the millions.

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year bull market a historical event. That was the unique event that accrued unprecedented wealth to a fraction of the population. And the corporations that benefited didn’t save for a rainy day — which always comes — or pay it out to their workers so they could build up a protective cushion of wealth, or invest in capital projects that would grow the economy. Instead, they poured it into dividends and stock buybacks, juicing executive compensation (from 2017 to 2019 the CEOs of Delta, American, United, and Carnival Cruises earned over $150 million in total compensation) and shareholder returns. Since 2000, U.S. airlines have declared bankruptcy 66 times. Despite the obvious vulnerability of the sector, boards and CEOs of the six largest airlines have spent 96% of their free cash flow on share buybacks. That bolstered the share price and compensation of management but left these companies dangerously exposed to a crisis.

Things are still not quite as dire as Jules Verne predicted in his novel Paris in the Twentieth Century. Verne anticipated a soulless technocratic society where all popular art, literature, and even music is based in science and engineering and centuries’ worth of classics are left to rot untouched. Today, one of the most successful podcasts is Jamie Jeffers’s The British History Podcast, a chronological telling of British history, and a glimpse at social media shows people are still very much invested in film, music, and literature (although one wonders what Verne would have made of slash fic). Also, one of the biggest cultural milestones of the past decade was a hip-hop stage musical reinterpreting early American history, even if it was until recently accessible only to the very well-off. Essentially, we are not heading toward a f