If your school has Hackathons, try to do those, ideally with friends. The atmosphere is honestly a bit horrible in my opinion and you may get instant imposter syndrome, but it gives you a project to talk about.

You can start by using plain, semantic HTML and grabbing a classless CSS with a license you like. (Check out this list.)

It’s good enough for a simple app or site, and it’s honestly impressive how good something can look with just this. It’s the “plain t-shirt and jeans” of web design.

Great advice, you two. Have a bunch of kids and teach them APL, Actionscript, and Autohotkey. On it!

:)

Thanks for the response. I agree that the project’s big boss has an impressive ability to BS on the greatness of our project, and it may be enough to push the project past the finish line.

It seems you put a lot of weight on the project’s “triumph.” If the project fizzles out or fails spectacularly, does that not make you more of “the fool who couldn’t do it and didn’t know when to quit?” I don’t think I’d hold it against my coworkers for leaving if they think it would improve their situation. (And doesn’t a sound project plan account for the fact that you may lose people every so often?)

Interesting note about small job market though. I only have a ~20 person IT department without much churn so it feels quite small to me still. How do you see this reputation spreading? Just the diaspora of former coworkers is wide enough that most/many companies tend to have someone who knows / has heard of you?

Yes, considering it as a paid education always helps. I don’t really think of anyone here as a mentor, so I usually have to study on my own to learn what I need, and I still tend to regret most design decisions I make. And there’s just that looming feeling that everything I’ve worked on is ultimately worthless. But I guess all of this is just part of the software development job, ha.

Interesting that you say jumping damages the personal image, since it seems what most others here advocate. This job gives me good perspective, so I still wouldn’t want to go elsewhere without convincing myself that it’s a meaningful improvement.

I agree that I tend to enjoy my personal projects far more than anything at my company. My typical problem is that I burn out quickly once I get really into anything long term. And frustratingly, I tend to want to work my own projects most when my work gets most stressful.

I guess it’s just hard not to get attached to something you spend so many hours working (and unintentionally thinking) of. But this sounds wise advice.

My project fits both. It took about a year before this was shown to more than a couple business users. But we still had Scrum sprints and pressure to get items done at the sprint, even with no deployment or demo for feedback.

Sadly not. This post comes after my frustration of this same exact meeting, and now the project is delayed by a nebulous 2-4 (or more?) months. Sounds like I may actually be moving off of it temporarily since it’s been pushed so far back, to another, slightly less ambitious project that’s getting started. To be determined if I can help this next project go much better.

A big fear I had was that a failed project would reflect poorly on me looking for jobs. But hearing how common dead projects are, I guess it’s no surprise that many people go so long not seeing a successful one.

We are reasonably consistent with estimates, but there’s this hidden assumption that 1 point equals 1 developer day. So even though we consistently get 20-25 points done per sprint, we typically cram more items to meet that 30 point threshold.

Oh, and of course you may end up dragging items sprint to sprint if they don’t get finished.

I admit it’s possible the project “succeeds” and gets out the door. My prediction in that case is that we limp along and eventually give up after maintaining it for a while.

I only work my ~40 hours a week. When I did much more than that, I think my output went negative.

I think I learn a lot, at least. The project has a more “modern” stack than the company’s other main product. And management/leadership being hands-off means I make a lot of big decisions myself. Many bad decisions, but at least I learn what not to do next time.

High on all fronts on that test, which does not surprise me. Though what you describe sounds worse than what I have. I’m just generally tired and pissed off, despite thinking myself a normally happy guy.

I’ll take this as my nudge to put my casual job search into overdrive.