lovetocode

Recently I have become somewhat obsessed with learning to paint and surprisingly enough I am not incredibly terrible at it. It got me to thinking, I love my job being a software engineer but I have always found that my graphics design skills aren't meeting my needs when developing indie projects. However, while painting I really feel like I have the ability to produce images that actually look good and can be used in the design of my web applications. It also pulls me away from my computer which is great but I would love to see my work being used in my software projects. Which begs the question, how would someone design an AI to convert my paintings into scalable vector images? I believe something like this would be possible but how would you do something like this or is there something like this that already exists?

I have an interview with AWS coming up and I was also recently rejected after a Microsoft interview but I can't help but wonder if FAANG is worth it. I have a degree in computer science that took my 12 years to obtain since I started it in the military and bounced between deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan and all the training in between. I have been working as a full-time software engineer for over seven years now which predates me even receiving my degree. It takes me a significant amount of time to prepare for these interviews and fail. I have done take home code assignments for non-FAANG companies that were effectively user stories for their product. It was essentially free labor in my eyes.

Currently I work as a senior engineer and team lead that requires a significant amount of my time. Between 20+ hours of meetings per week, technical mentoring and development tasks it leaves me little time to even eat and relieve myself. I am also a busy parent with two young children who have schedules of their own. I am left with very little time to prepare for these interviews that can last up to four hours. I applied to these companies because I was under the impression that they could be major stepping stones in my career but now I am asking myself if it is even worth it.

I am certain there is someone out there in a similar situation as me that might be able to share their story and provide some sort of inspiration or enlightenment.

Part of me just wants to quit this career entirely because of the interview process alone. I might be having a midlife crisis. I am not sure but I would love to hear the thoughts from our community.