Ask HN: Take low-stress job to learn web dev in free time?

[zekim]

I am currently teaching myself to be a full-stack web developer with the goal of developing my own apps and making it into a career eventually. I currently have a full-time job as a clinical programmer. It's boring and stressful but does have decent pay and benefits. I've just started applying to valet attendant jobs in my city so I can have a low-stress day job while I continue to learn how to hack in my own time. I've made some good progress in the past year and is starting to churn out some code for real projects. I feel that if only I had a less demanding job during the day I can be more productive in my self-learning.

Has anyone else done this sort of thing? How did it turn out? Any thoughts/advice?

[jackcouch]

I would think that even if it's boring time spent coding is going to be more beneficial than time spent parking cars. Is there a way to make it less stressful? Could you offer to take a pay cut to work from home and have more freedom?

[zekim]

It's stressful because I really don't enjoy the type of work that I do (I don't like the business domain/industry I've found). I actually work from home quite a bit, but that really isn't the cause of my misery.

I think the only way I'll ever be happy in a coding career is if I get to work on my own projects or if I work for a startup that I'm deeply passionate about.