I was firmly against them but an opportunity showed itself early in my career and figured I could stick it out for 2 years to get a big name on my resume… and somehow it’s been ten years now. But it’s a company with a genuinely good culture and my career has grown constantly over those 10 years, so I’ve been happy. TBF, my employer before this was extremely toxic so in comparison it’s been amazing.

Just curious, do you mean specifically the job as in role, or do you think this about going back to a company as a whole?

I can name easily a dozen, maybe two dozen people at my company I personally know who left then came back, although generally to a different role. And I’ve seen most of them get promoted after coming back, even to high roles like Director or VP. I don’t know if that’s just because of a good company culture or if it’s because it’s a larger business (2-2.5k corporate employees).

My company has started using a survival metaphor of air/water/food.

• Air - “keep the lights on” work; things that will fundamentally stop the product or business (legal, compliance, security) if not done in the next year
• Water - foundational work; tech debt is here
• Food - strategic work, new features, experimentation

It works because it recognizes that you need all three to survive and you have different time scales on which you can survive without them.

We will choose not to drink water sometimes to make sure we can eat some food. But we will die if we only consume food.

I’m on the product side and trying to buy my teams as much capacity to pay off some of our wayyyy overdue tech debt, and this metaphor has made it easier to convey where we are to my higher ups.

You and I are on the same page. My only point was that there are unfortunately many people out there now who believe they have a “healthy” level of skepticism, but are actually misled, misinformed, and not educated enough to distinguish reality. And I named specific groups who frequently fit this pattern.

When skepticism is truly healthy, it’s great. But there are many people who are unable to identify what “healthy” means here. No where did I say or mean to imply that some skepticism is a bad thing.

Unfortunately this also gets abused by some people who believe they have a healthy level of skepticism, but actually are way off the deep end. Like anti-vaxxers, flat-Earthers, and other anti-science people.

So “healthy” in this context shouldn’t be defined by the individual.

This is the advice I was coming to give, with the addition of a specific possible group.

I know there’s a lot of the anti-religion sentiment on Lemmy (for many good reasons) but one community I’m familiar enough with to suggest are Quakers (AKA Friends). Quakerism is rooted in progressive values and even those who practice have a wide array of religious beliefs, many of whom lean agnostic or even atheist.

It’s one of the most LGBTQ+ friendly groups I’ve ever been a part of, and there is a Friends meeting in Columbus.

I hope OP is able to find a community that supports and loves him for who he is.

Lots of advice here but I haven’t seen anyone mention coding boot camps. There are free ones like FreeCodeCamp or lots of paid options. You can do these to learn or validate what you have been taught.

My company hires associate-level software engineers directly out of college programs and boot camps. They don’t expect people from these to know everything; you may not have ever even used the language that you will be expected to code in! But by completing a program you’re showing you understand the logic of programming and that is applicable knowledge.

Look for entry-level jobs and you’ll be fine. Even better, look for companies that intentionally hire from programs like yours. They’re more likely to have internal programs to help teach new-to-career folks.

I recently finished reading The Cult of Trump by Steven Hassan. It’s from 2019 and so depressing with how much has happened since then that’s not accounted for, but it was interesting insight into how people like that can accumulate a following. It might help answer your question.

My older sister had a boyfriend move in with her shortly after she moved out of my parents’ house. From the first time I met him I had bad vibes.

Fast forward maybe a year or so they were renting a house and adopted a dog together. His “job” was motorcycle racing, so my sister basically just covered all costs. When they broke up, they aligned on who would get what with parents as mediators. He kept the dog, she kept the TV, etc.

He moved out while she was at work and took the TV, but he forgot all his motorcycle gear in one of the closets. So he had to come back with his tail between his legs to get that after stealing from her. She got the dog back at that point.

General scumbag. My intuition had no reason but was right!