Being hired as a web developer is making me depressed

Hi,

I am depressed. Like severely depressed and I have been for a few years.
I have been on huge doses of Effexor for 2 years.

I have Asperger’s syndrome (high level autism), so because of the problems I have with physically being around people, I used to work as a freelancer from home. I used to be a lot happier working remote even though I HATE web development , but it’s all I can find.

I recently moved to Australia because that’s where my boyfriend wants to live, but I don’t care where I live, so that’s not the problem.
But because I need to look for a sponsorship job and pay rent and everything, I can’t afford to keep on working as a freelancer.

So I had to find a job. And fast.
But all the offers I could find was web development. So what I did is I applied to all those offers despite not having the required skills, and when they would give me an assignment, I would quickly learn the required skill. That’s how I landed a job doing node.js and angular all day without ever having even touched javascript in my whole life.

I don’t have a choice. I need a job and web is pretty much all I can find.
Also, having such a hard time and working so hard to lands jobs I hate and I knew I was going to hate is making me even more depressed. I think the worst part of it was having to deal with recruiters who didn’t understand anything about my work and judge me unfit to do web dev.

So I am currently hired as a fullstack software engineer…
Spending all day doing something I hate is making my depression a lot worse. I feel stuck and underappreciated.
I can’t find a job in what I actually enjoy doing and I am becoming a very angry and bitter person.

I need to build a more solid portfolio in order to be able to land one of the very few positions that still do what I have been passionate about ever since I was a young kid, but I can’t work on my spare time because I am ill.
I am undiagnosed at the time (doctors don’t know what’s wrong) but I am currently being tested for lupus and cancers among other joyful things.
I an dizzy 24/7 and I can no longer walk for more than 3 minutes, and sometimes faint, and I get exhausted from walking to the bathroom for example…
Being that sick doesn’t stop me from doing the job I was hired to do, but working on my personal projects is way too hard because I am suffering from severely impaired cognitive functions from being ill… but I still need to pay for the health tests.

Sometimes, I am not even worried about probably being about to die, anymore. I am just scarred of physical pain.
It’s like I can’t escape the maze.
Please help !!

Sorry to hear that you’re having such a rough time. It looks like the first thing to take care of would be your physical health issues. Hopefully you will be diagnosed soon and you can start treatment.

As for the job situation, there are two things I think of. You seem to currently have a job, and are learning the skills you need to do it properly. One option is to just stick with the job and get better at it. If your company does something that’s not web development related, maybe you can try moving into that once you’ve built up a reputation in the company. A second option is to keep looking for other jobs that are more to your liking on the side. If you’re unable to put in a significant amount of time towards that, maybe just try one or two hours at a time?

Just to clarify, when you were freelancing - you were also doing web development (& not liking it)? Is the thing you actually enjoy doing something tech/code-related or in another sphere?

It sounds like you have a LOT of stressors on your plate right now. Dealing with a potential new diagnosis that will affect your health on top of your existing depression and stress is A LOT.

Is it possible to explore options that would allow you to take a short term disability leave from work while still making ends meet/being covered? It sounds like not only would it benefit you health/stress-wise but also potentially allow you to use what minimal energy you have towards something you are more passionate about.

(I can see why you feel like you’re in a maze; there are a lot of components overlapping. It’s such a weird silver lining to know that you aren’t that angry & bitter person usually but to see yourself embodying those traits because of these other causes.)

Thank you guys so much for answering.

Yes I did find a job as a web developer, but it’s only a startup, so I don’t think I am going to be moving to another position within the company anytime soon.

I love coding, I’ve been programming since I was nine. I recently built a voxel engine with an octree + frustrum culling optimization, and I also run my own http server. I love embedded and I built a few linux kernel modules and I love assembler, But how do I make a living out of this sh*t ?
All I am doing all day at work is centering divs and node/angular… I feel like crying thinking I have to go back in a few days but I don’t have the physical + mental strength to do anything while being so severely cognitively impaired from being sick. The doctors don’t find anything…

Please help…

I know the feeling. I took a break from my PhD program and took a job where I was writing translation code, not the most interesting thing in the world. Sounds like you like low-level and embedded system development. Perhaps you need to look at companies doing device development, perhaps someone making an Internet of Things-type device, or a more traditional electronics company.

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Effexor made me sick. Really sick. Have the cognitive issues been as bad even before effexor?