This happens to a lot of people, especially 20-year-olds. You just feel worse about it because your job was "high paying", which is really just a quirk of circumstance and totally meaningless.
If you really wanted a soulless but high-paying job you hate, you'd be at Yale preparing for a career in finance.
It sounds like you don't really know what you want to do with your life right now. Nobody really does at 20. So I'm going to give you some advice nearly everyone here will hate: go to college.
My parents threw me out when I was 18, and I learned a few things really quickly. The most important was that in California, you can go to community college for free as long as you're poor (which I was by default as a line cook/graveyard shift baker), and knock out two out of four years of a bachelor's degree just dicking around, trying different things in different departments until something clicks.
You'll learn a ton. Most of it won't have to do with your degree. That totally doesn't matter and it's not the point.
With just a little bit of focus, you can come away with an associate's degree and a killer transfer application to get you in to a better college. Or, you can just drop out, and hopefully you'll at least have a better idea of what you want to do with your life, a little bit of experience, and a larger professional network than you started with.
I built my freelance programming and design career by teaching myself those skills while taking classes[1] and working in kitchens. By the end of the first half of year two, I wasn't working in kitchens anymore. Now my school is paying me to finish my bachelor's degree, and I'm turning down job offers every time I go to a meetup for my field, one that everybody tells me is supposed to be dying or something.
The other most important thing I learned was how to be happy while poor (not fake college student poor where you can always call your parents for more money, but real poor where you have a jar of peanut butter until pay day next week and your heat is turned off), and that poverty is worth not being subject to others' expectations and living on your own terms.
Not having money is not a real problem. Living with shitty parents who yell at you about money and wanting to kill yourself is. Get the fuck out of there and go to college. You will not regret it, as long as you don't pay for it.
I second the advice to stay off of Hacker News, because it's generally full of privileged overachievers who will make you feel worse (though not consciously) about your situation.
If you want any specific details about how to accomplish any of these things, feel free to contact me, info is in my profile.
1. Some of you are saying to yourselves, "Why were you teaching yourself while going to college? That's dumb, you shouldn't have been in college!" It's because outside of "elite" universities, programming knowledge is usually woefully out of date, and the nature of this field is such that the only one with any authority to say it's out of date is the one teaching the out-of-date course material. History, philosophy, and writing skills are much less dependent on the state of the art, and it's easier to find a skilled, accesible and receptive mentor in all of these fields than it is in programming or computer science.
Yeah, actually that is true. I've been taking community college classes for about three years or so. Dropped out of HS in 10th grade, started community college instead of 11th grade. Taking classes helped define what I like.
I thought I wanted to be a chemist, but after taking Chem 161 I realized I HATE EVERYTHING ABOUT CHEMISTRY. I thought I wanted to major in math but I barely passed Calculus III and the class was a huge drag. Then I started taking art classes and realized art was awesome. I've stayed for hours before and after the class finishing paintings, going to the galleries, hanging at the galleries, it was just so fun and I stuck with art for over a year.
But then I realized there's not a lot of money in art (for me) so I started studying design (especially since I have background in web-development so that helps).
I guess I'm better off than 100 days ago (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2725893) in that I at least am somewhat more determined with goals in life, somewhere in the arts/design industry. And that comes from actually designing/drawing and enjoying it, rather than liking the "idea of being a quantum mechanics professor".
The only problem of course is that it'll never happen because apparently I'm destined to slave away at C++ legacy code all my life. Which is really what depresses me.
"....apparently I'm destined to slave away at C++ legacy code all my life. Which is really what depresses me."
Good lord, man. Do you realize how in-demand great designers who actually know how to code/talk to coders?
Even if you don't want to do web app design, plenty of people survive working in art galleries/museums or as pure commercial graphic designers/illustrators.
Lastly, you're not destined for a damn thing at the age of 20 (or any other age). I graduated with a psychology degree and worked min-wage/retail for 3 years in Anchorage, Alaska. I then worked the graveyard shift at a residential treatment facility. I've since built and sold 3 startups (one a venture-backed YC company). My dad was driving a cab at 35 and retired an SVP of Sun Microsystems (he spent lots of time with Steve Jobs, Ross Perot, and Ron Conway in his career).
If you talk to people in their 30s and 40s about what they were doing when they were 20, I think you'll find that the majority of them have reinvented themselves a few times. Figure out what you want to do and take the first step in that direction. Then take the next. You'll get there!
>...apparently I'm destined to slave away at C++ legacy code all my life. Which is really what depresses me.
Well, there's another difficult lesson there - there's no such thing as 'destiny', however much it may feel that way sometimes. Many people willingly or unwillingly follow the random wind of fate and think of it as destiny but it is just the nature of life that 'things happen'.
The good news is that knowing this frees you up somewhat - your life is yours to control. The trick is working out what you want (and you apparently have some idea now, more than most 20 year-olds) and then what steps you need to take to get there.
Some suggestions:
1) Beware the myth of the overnight success - getting where you want to go in life almost always involves many incremental steps and lots of work, yet we are surrounded by stories of companies and individuals who hit the jackpot and found success instantly. In reality that almost never happens and what we usually don't hear about are the years of trial-and-error and effort that went into building that success.
2) If C++ is your strength, perhaps you could find a way to use that to finance the transition? In the short-term, another coding job could give you the money to pay for art/design training and help you move into the career you really want. The key here is to get the best out of your free time. This is one way to avoid the 'fate' that you fear - use the lemons you have to make the lemonade you want.
3) As some other people have said, tell us what you can do and what you've been working on, and perhaps someone here will be able to offer you some freelance work to help with your cashflow.
Sorry to hear that your Dad and your friends are being so unhelpful. All I can offer there is one of the great 'aha!' moments in my life so far - when people are being persistently unpleasant to you, it almost always reflects insecurities that they hold about themselves, rather than something you've done wrong per se. You've come to a difficult point in your life and throwing blame or sarcasm around does nothing to change that, only appeases their demons for a short while. I don't know if that helps at all but it helped me to realise that I wasn't to blame for other peoples' anger - we all make mistakes and have difficult times but the constructive thing to do is to find a way deal with them and move forward, not wallow in the problems we perceive others have visited upon us (I'm referring still to your father and friends, not to you).
Enough rambling; I hope that helps and wish you the best of luck in the future.
Hey bud, not to be an ass, but it's times like these that define you as a person. It isn't when you have your cushy salaried position being the office bitch -- it's when you have to man-up and hustle your way thru. The easy times don't make you stronger, and if you're a hustler you'll learn from it. I've left two salaried positions to work on my own venture, and I've failed both times -- and I'm fuckin proud of it (I'm 20 also). Yeah you feel like shit when you're down and out, but it's only temporary. Take this time to learn about yourself.
After running out of cash on my second startup I got a job waiting tables. I took the opportunity to learn to sell and interact with customers. It's become a handy skill. Now I'm a lead engineer with a nice salary, just got a 20% raise, but guess what.. FUCK THAT. Guys like us weren't meant to live the middle path. Your dad doesn't get it, just like my dad doesn't get it. We're not here to make our dads happy. They made their life, and we're making ours. I've got my next-product that I'm working on, I have customers that I talk to, and now I'm going to leave my comfort (salaried job) to hustle some deals. Each failure is one step closer to success.
When we're 40 and homeless, we're gonna have some damn good stories to tell. Get some exercise, get your mind off your situation, watch Office Space to remind yourself why we're not some yes-man schmucks. It really does get better, trust me.
But then I realized there's not a lot of money in art (for me) so I started studying design (especially since I have background in web-development so that helps).
Most artists aren't professional artist. The people that consider themselves professional artists are a sliver of a percentage. All the artists I know have day jobs, be it bartender, office manager, public administration. So bang out the C code, clock out at quitting time and enjoy your life. Contrary to what you may read on YC, no one is ever an overnight success.
> "Living with shitty parents who yell at you about money"
Doesn't sound like Dad is doing great here, but we don't know enough to apply bad words to him. Maybe he's a jerk. Maybe he's confused about why his son doesn't value something he's pursued all his life.
We're an immigrant society, with each generation trying to improve the prospects of the next. When it works, we have the strange problem of the rising generation experiencing problems and desires the prior generation can't even imagine. This can recur over several generations. It's very confusing, because the old-school perspective often has a lot of common sense but it's very hard to transpose this into the new context created for the new-school. I'm sure a lot of good wisdom has been lost, along with the you-are-totally-out-of-date.
So, mannicken. There was a day when a high-paying job signalled security. If that is Dad's frame of reference, he likely thinks you're insane. The more someone learns about technology and change, the more they realize that corporate stability is an illusion. You're unlikely to convince Dad of this, not until you've demonstrated you can take care of yourself. So get busy figuring that out.
You quit your last job because they were jerks. Probably a good move, maybe would have been better to find the next job first but there you go. Your next job may not be ideal, but it just has to pay the bills without degrading you. Go find that, and keep working at figuring out what you're good at and getting better at it. College really isn't a bad way of doing that.
Yes, this is very hard. Do not find that surprising. This is why people hate uncertainty, and will put up with so much crap to avoid it. _You_ are not the cause of the difficulty, the difficulty is an unavoidable part of finding your way into the world. When you finally figure out your place, it will be _yours_, founded on your skill and effort and integrity. No one can take those from you, once you find them. And you will have something deeply valuable to offer your own children.
Whom you will not want living with you at twenty.
"When you're going through hell, keep going!" Churchill
If you really wanted a soulless but high-paying job you hate, you'd be at Yale preparing for a career in finance.
It sounds like you don't really know what you want to do with your life right now. Nobody really does at 20. So I'm going to give you some advice nearly everyone here will hate: go to college.
My parents threw me out when I was 18, and I learned a few things really quickly. The most important was that in California, you can go to community college for free as long as you're poor (which I was by default as a line cook/graveyard shift baker), and knock out two out of four years of a bachelor's degree just dicking around, trying different things in different departments until something clicks.
You'll learn a ton. Most of it won't have to do with your degree. That totally doesn't matter and it's not the point.
With just a little bit of focus, you can come away with an associate's degree and a killer transfer application to get you in to a better college. Or, you can just drop out, and hopefully you'll at least have a better idea of what you want to do with your life, a little bit of experience, and a larger professional network than you started with.
I built my freelance programming and design career by teaching myself those skills while taking classes[1] and working in kitchens. By the end of the first half of year two, I wasn't working in kitchens anymore. Now my school is paying me to finish my bachelor's degree, and I'm turning down job offers every time I go to a meetup for my field, one that everybody tells me is supposed to be dying or something.
The other most important thing I learned was how to be happy while poor (not fake college student poor where you can always call your parents for more money, but real poor where you have a jar of peanut butter until pay day next week and your heat is turned off), and that poverty is worth not being subject to others' expectations and living on your own terms.
Not having money is not a real problem. Living with shitty parents who yell at you about money and wanting to kill yourself is. Get the fuck out of there and go to college. You will not regret it, as long as you don't pay for it.
I second the advice to stay off of Hacker News, because it's generally full of privileged overachievers who will make you feel worse (though not consciously) about your situation.
If you want any specific details about how to accomplish any of these things, feel free to contact me, info is in my profile.
1. Some of you are saying to yourselves, "Why were you teaching yourself while going to college? That's dumb, you shouldn't have been in college!" It's because outside of "elite" universities, programming knowledge is usually woefully out of date, and the nature of this field is such that the only one with any authority to say it's out of date is the one teaching the out-of-date course material. History, philosophy, and writing skills are much less dependent on the state of the art, and it's easier to find a skilled, accesible and receptive mentor in all of these fields than it is in programming or computer science.