Ask HN: Depressed. Find my dream job, or do a startup?
For the past two years, I've been working at a deadend job as a frontend developer. The work itself is extremely tedious because all we do is inherit badly written websites and we are forced to add changes to it - That's all I do. There is also no prospect for a promotion or anything like that.
Why did I stick with this job for 2 years? Because of its excellent benefits. I can work from home nearly any time I want, and I also get 4 weeks of paid vacation (not including holidays).
Although the work itself makes me feel depressed and neurotic, I feel like it gives me the time to pursue my real passion - creating my own SaaS company. I was depressed in college and my dream is what got me through.
But working with horrendous codebases for so long gave me this hunger for writing clean code. Now I fantasize about working with other smart and PASSIONATE people. I want to be around other programmers that are into programming as much as me.
I read engineering blogs from other companies, and can't help but feel envious of what they have. But I feel like in order for me to pursue my original goals, I need to have all the free time that I can get.
I'm starting to get really depressed and anxious at my job. I wake up dreading to fix yet another stupid bug.
I do get job offers here and there because I contribute to open source and regularly attend meetups. But my coworkers tell me that "a job is a job" and that I will hate it no matter where I go.
Is this true? Are all software jobs bad? Should I just stick with my current job with the flexible hours?