1154 I'm A Programmer Stuck Working For A Company I HATE, Help!!! - Simple Programmer Podcast
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Hey, what's up? John Sonmez from simpleprogrammer.com. I'm going to do a video that has been requested a few times. I've been putting this on off for a little bit because this is a bit of a difficult topic. Basically, I wanted to talk about what do you do when you're in a work environment where essentially you hate your employer and you don't like your employer because you don't like how they operate, how they do business and you're just—

You're just kind of disgusted but you can't leave because you're stuck for some reason. You got the golden handcuffs on. You're in this small town and that's your only choice. Your wife is going to medical school or whatever it is, whatever the problem is, you can't leave there. How do you deal with it? How do you get through life every day and survive? Can you make a difference?

I'm assuming that you're stuck because I would just say get unstuck. I think that's the first answer is if you can get unstuck from that situation and you're not happy then maybe that's the best thing. Let's back up a little bit and let's say maybe that's not the best thing. Maybe that advice, maybe even if you could get out, maybe you should—maybe

tolerate it for some reason? Is there some value, some kind of personal growth we could get out of dealing with that kind of environment? Could we kind of look internally and say, "Why does this bother us so much?" That doesn't mean that there's not bad—I've talked about toxic work environments before.

I think we should first, again, to take the stoic approach and look at what can we gain, what is good about the situation, what kind of value it is.

In his perspective, especially if you're trapped, you need to change your perspective because if you're trapped, what you need to do is you got to realize that this is like a battleground. This is like a testing ground. This is tough. This is like you're going to be growing from this. You're going to grow in character. You're going to grow in perseverance. You're going to grow in dealing with people's skills. This is like—

This is a God's sin. This horrible situation is not so horrible when you think of it as a trial, the tribulation that's going to help you grow personally. If you can do that and change your mindset that's the best thing to do. It's honestly true in a lot of cases. A trial and tribulation should last a period of time.

You don't want to—a 20 year—if you're not happy in an environment you don't want to stay there for 20 years. Maybe in the situation you're in now maybe you can have a two pronged approach. Maybe you can say, "Look, I'm going to change my—this is what I want out of my life. I'm going to change my future. I'm going to envision what my ideal is. This is where I want to work. This is how I want to work. This is the kind of people I want to work with. This is the kind of environment that I want to be in."

but that's like 3 years out because I have this chain that's holding me right now and I got to stay in this sort of toxic work environment where I don't like the company, I don't like the people. What I'm going to do is this. I'm going to figure out a plan to get to where I want to be. Maybe it's 3 years out, maybe it's 5 years out. I don't care. I'm going to someday get free, right? But

But while I'm here, I'm going to make the best of this and I'm going to figure out how. What's up, guys? John Sonmez here from simpleprogrammer.com. I want to tell you about my free blogging course that you can sign up for at simpleprogrammer.com forward slash pblog. Now, this free blogging course is going to tell you how to create a blog to boost your career. It's something that you definitely don't want to miss. Thousands of developers have already gone through the course, the free course that you're going to get by email and have learned how to create a blog

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I'm going to utilize this to not just get me to where I want to be but to grow personally, to grow my character, to grow as a person, to grow as a professional. I'm going to figure out how working on this stupid VB6 app is going to make me better. I'm going to use this time wisely. I'm going to learn people skills to deal with difficult people because this is a good test. My boss sucks.

Great, that's awesome. That means that I get to learn how to deal with someone and I'm going to read up on that and I'm going to practice it and I'm going to learn how to control my temper and how to control my mood and maybe I'm going to start meditating. I'm going to do all these things.

Then I'm also going to work on influencing people. A great book on influencing people about this kind of concept is 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. It's a book I've always recommended. It's such a good book, but he talks about the sphere of influence. You start with this smaller sphere of influence and you kind of—it grows. You don't have necessarily—you can't make people do what you want, but—

No matter who you are you can have some amount of influence. Even in a huge mega corporation where they have stupid rules and they're unethical or whatever it is, the problem is people don't care and they just want to get their paycheck and they have no passion for their job, you can ignite a spark.

It might be small, right? You can get people to start to care. You can start to make some small changes. You might be able to change the whole thing. You might be able to. Don't say that you can't. It's possible, but you can at least make changes while you're growing yourself, while you're growing your own character. At the very least, even if you can't, you can still say, "Look, I'm enduring this environment and I'm going to make the best of it and I can see this as an opportunity to grow

Who cares? I'm going to have fun. You guys don't have to, right? Whoever wants to have fun with me and wants to grow and we're going to have a jovial old time in this horrible place, let's do it. If you don't want to, I'm going to be at my desk smiling because I'm going to— when the crap hits the fan and I'm like—

and someone is just being rude or doing some stupid thing, I'm going to laugh. I'm going to do the right thing. I'm not going to get upset about it. I'm just going to realize that I can't change everyone and I'm just going to do the best that I can. That's all I can. I've got my dream. I know where I'm going in the future. I'm working towards that goal. I'm going to get out of this place but while I'm here I'm going to make the most of it.

That's it. I thought my video froze up here because I got a notification on my phone. Anyway, I hope that helps all of you who've sort of asked me variations of this question. I got one person in particular that I did this video specifically for. You know who you are. Anyway, hopefully that answers your question. Let me know if it does. Shoot me an email. If you like this video—actually, if you know someone who needs this video, shoot me

Shoot it to them. Send it. Share it. Send the link. Share it on Twitter, whatever. Definitely subscribe to the channel. Talk to you next time.