Now that I'm no longer working, my wife is the main breadwinner. Her salary doesn't quite cover all our expenses though. We could cut our expenses from ~90k to 70k a year and I can remain a bum. But if we want to maintain our current standard of living, I will need to earn enough income to cover about 20K of expenses a year. I'm hopeful I'll be able to earn more, but being able to cover 20K of expenses is the minimum. Over the years, while working a full-time job, I've tried all kinds of side hustles. I tried PPC ads on niche sites (back in the days), a desktop app, a few web apps, but nothing ever never took off. I would get tired and discouraged and would stop. Even today, my plan back when I quit my job during the summer was to do something SaaS-like. But I realize I just don't have the wherewithal to come up with a good idea and see it through. Maybe I don't have good ideas, maybe I don't have the skills to execute, but nothing has worked out, so I'm resigned to finding another job.
Software development is all I've ever done; it is all I know. Sadly, I don't know what else I would do. I don't want to work retail or anything like that. So I will soon be on the interview circuit for a software job again. It's been 8 years since I've interviewed. I read that "leetcode" questions are all the rage in interviews now. I look at the leetcode questions and just throw up my hands. What does this have anything to do with day-to-day software development? They are like the "why are manholes round?" or "how many ping pong balls fit in a car?" questions on steroids. I have never had to program anything remotely close to them, and if I did, I would just google it. I would google it, learn it and implement it. I know I'm fully capable of that. But coming up with an answer on the fly? That's questionable. Is this what companies want these days?
But I have years to find another job, though I hope it won't take that long. I will be very discerning about my next job. I may work some short term contracts. I'm sure there are some non-crazy companies out there. Please let me know if you know of any.
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