[insamniac]

I joined the army and got trained to be an Arabic linguist. That was getting old and frustrating, so I taught myself javascript/ksh/Tcl and made some dumb applications at work, which was enough to get noticed by some neighboring IT shops (I was out of the army, working as a contractor by this time).

I ended up doing Groovy, then Java, and now I'm in the government version of "Enterprisy Java" and I feel stuck myself. 150k isn't that much if it leaves you empty inside.

[servlate]

True, but do you think it would be different if you had chosen a different stack? Honest question.

Doesn't that 150k lets you afford other fun stuff?

[insamniac]

It would if I didn't have mouths to feed, taxes and rent. I'm starting to prefer time over money at this point.

I think my stuckness has more to do with working at a place that's always a few steps behind the private sector, so nothing I'm doing really translates well into finding new work. It doesn't help my confidence, that's for sure.

Besides, if anyone is looking for an experienced Java 7, Spring 3.2, Oracle dev, I probably don't want to work there either!

I know the way out is side projects, building a portfolio, contributing, etc.. and being able to prove (to myself too) that I can do more than what I'm doing currently..

It's the odd coupling of frustration and complacency that I need to figure my way out of.