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If you have a PhD in CS, your intelligence is probably above average. A former boss of mine in the software business told me that it generally takes five years to become attractive to employers. If you're three years in and struggling a bit, perhaps you just need to keep practicing and gaining experience. It may also be the case that you're more critical of your own performance than people around you. This is known to be common in software as well, and I see it even more in graphical artists – "Oh, I'm so terrible at drawing". And yet, it's somehow their full-time job. It's also possible that you'd enjoy a different specialization more than making CPUs. It could be a different kind of hardware, it could be various kinds of software, the opportunities are endless. You also seem to have an extremely detail-oriented attitude, and sometimes feel overwhelmed by the complexity and the ever-changing landscape. I wonder if that's something you might encounter in most jobs. It's very common to feel frustrated by the incomplete, contradictory, unrealistic and ever-changing specifications and priorities in a project, the constant interruptions, meetings, e-mails and "do you have a minute"s, the office politics and corporate bureaucracy, and many other things that make working very different in real life than on paper. And while there might be a few jobs out there that aren't a complete madhouse, they're probably few and far between. For what it's worth, one of my most intellectual friends is working as a land surveyor, and seems to be loving it. But who knows what would work for you? |