Money is like sea water. The more you drink, the thirstier you become.

-someone on the internet, somewhere, sometime

I am a web developer since 4 years.

I do not have a degree, and I'm not good in maths. I just took a bootcamp course and started digging into the industry.

I had nothing in my hands, so I literally searched on google "highest payed job without degree", rearranging my query until a foggy path opened in front of me.

Now that I know that every answer I seek is actually on google, I look at that young lad quite admiringly. Boy, I had developer habits before knowing it!

However, I started studying using my telephone as a code editor, and a wireless keyboard I had. I've literally written down code in a small notebook. Yes. On paper.

It surprised me how much i enjoyed studying web development: suddenly the world was my white canvas and I could do pretty everything! Plus, I could make a living out of that! I was so excited. I read articles, watched youtube videos...man, I hit jackpot!

Meanwhile, the world was screaming me I needed money, and I used every ounce of my energies trying to get there, learning how to do that money while I discovered the world of coding.

And then, finally, I got there.

I left my broken basketball career behind and started my journey into programming.

My first web agency was terrible, and the pay low, but hey, still I got something!

Coming from a sportsman background, I realised immediately they lacked one single thing: teamwork. They couldn't organise a single project, and the frustration coming from this team issue poured all on me, the intern.

Sometimes I dreamt about my boss mocking me because I could not land the results. My dream was turning literally into a nightmare. I lasted only six months.

I panicked. I was jobless, cashless, worthless.

I started sending my CV everywhere. They called me from north Italy, and I landed a job for a software house. I could not believe that!

At first, it was like a dream. I was learning about frameworks and everything.

They were super organised but still they lacked teamwork: I was dragged constantly in my boss office listening him talk bad about some other coworker they chatted 5 minutes before. Everyone was jealous of everyone else. I thought code was sharing, but here It wasn't like this.

But hey, my salary was good, really good!

So I shoved down all my insults toward that kind of behaviour and continued working. I was doing my thing, they were paying good, plus I was learning a lot of stuff, even if I couldn't stand all that negativity.

Then COVID happened.

I was a consultant, hired by another agency and borrowed. It's a common practice in Italy.

And the first ones to being cut were us consultants, without an explanation.

While my agency tried placing me in Milano, I was looking at the world crumble down: every little piece of certainty was being torn.

The world was changing and so was I: after telling my "body rental" agency that I wouldn't accept a job that would force me to work in the company building, since I was traumatised by my previous experiences, I started looking for full-remote opportunities, but had no luck. I didn't want to share a desk with anyone, no more! Web developers on the internet were kinda nice (except for Linus Torvalds), but in my experience I only met frustrated people.

After a month of fruitless tryouts, I got a chance with a local company in Bergamo, and followed that lead.

They were kinda strange, but hey, again, the pay was really good! I needed that money.

So I started working there.

And something happened.

The whole devs team fired themselves, and I was the only remaining with a pair of other guys.

I discovered soon why: the tech debt was so high, no one could run a SINGLE project on a local machine! Everything was worse than ever!

On top of that, nobody in the agency knew that, because financially the company was doing great. Except for the web devs turnover, that I discovered being very high in recent years. And now I knew why.

So we did the only thing that we could do: we rebuilt the team, and it went really good, actually.

We fighted against prejudice, bad practices, it was and it is awesome.

We had pipelines for CI/CD, versioning and all common good stuff.

But then, again, something happened.

Something ever happens.

My linkedin inbox was full. I received higher and higher offers for more challenging jobs, and my ex-girlfriend pushed me towards those offers, because of financial security.

My relationship with her wasn't going great, but we tried. So I thought about making a step towards her accepting other higher-paying jobs.

I talked to my boss, and he immediately made me a counter offer.

It was lower. A lot lower.

"I could not offer your those money, but I offer a vision. Here we are a family, and I guarantee you that if you stay, we will be great together."

I thought a lot about that.

I thought about my past experiences. I hadn't have many, but at the same time the felt like 3 different lives.

I changed a lot.

At first, coding was just an happy exercise I did day by day. It was so joyful! Then I got my first job, and i felt worthless. Then my second, and I freaked about all the frustration.

My third was the perfect one, for my present self.

I rejected other offers, and start working for my company's sake.

It's not perfect, but we support each other. We balance each other.

And in a world all about cash and performance, maybe a dream is what we need.