My 2024 Manifesto

This is a rant, but therapeutic for me.

I have lived abroad for the last nine years. It has been amazing, but due to circumstances out of our control, my family has decided to repatriate to the US. I have had some amazing experiences, and part of that was what I did in my job.

My title is "Senior Software Engineer," but that is only the tip of the iceberg. I was a one-man band. I was a UX designer doing research, an architect and tech lead planning the overall technical direction of the project, the backend engineer, frontend engineer, project manager getting feedback in sprints, the DevOps engineer deploying it, support when I did training and wrote documentation and answered support tickets for it. I did this for over a dozen projects.

Over the last couple of years I've also mentored a junior developer. I can confidently say that I feel qualified for any senior or staff-level engineering position.

But it was for a small education company that operates international schools called LifePlus. It's a terrible rebranded name and a story for a different time. And, yes, I built that website, too.

The current job market

The tech industry has seen pretty massive layoffs. The headlines have dominated tech news for some time. The market seems to be flooded with some decent talent. My resume doesn't have any FAANG names on it (a terrible one, actually), and thanks to our AI overlords, my resume doesn't have the right keywords or combination of buzzwords to get it in front of a human's eye. Or the human doesn't seem to care.

Since each job posting for a large, high paying, big tech position gets thousands of applicants, many of which are probably smarter and better qualified than me, it's not a great time to be job hunting.

But I know that any company would be damn lucky to have me. My skillset, work ethic and "culture fit" make me a great candidate. I am sure that I could excel at a remote $200k/year-health-and-dental-insurance-generous-leave-and-holidays-401k-matching-home-office-stipend job.

Fate, it would seem, has a different path for me.

On the Indie Path

Constant rejection is hard to take. Especially when I feel like I'm qualified. After reading so many amazing posts over the last few years from other Indie Hackers sharing their successes and failures, I'm going to use these rejections as motivation to forge my own path.

I've been building Archboard since 2021. My current position has led me to see huge opportunities in the education space. I'm committed to open source and have recently changed my business plan for it.

I'm also co-founder of TeachRN, which is a nurse mentorship marketplace. Think Fiverr for nurse mentorship. It has a lot of potential, but is just getting started and I'm not taking any money from its earnings.

There are more ideas in the pipeline. I'm in my current position until August 2024, after which I'm hoping either an idea is able to take off or the market cools off enough for me to get a decent job.

I'm ready to stop proving I'm qualified, playing the recruitment game and renting out my time for someone else's gain. Despite it all and regardless of what happens, Indie Hacking FTW!