My boss confronted me today telling me that my progress towards a full-stack developer isn't as far along as he had anticipated in 9ish months. He had put me on irrelevant projects towards that goal so it was frustrating to hear. I know 9 months is a long time and I wish I was further along too, trust me. Anyway, he said right from the start that everyone in the dept works extra hours “because we all like it” and I said right from the start that I wasn't interested in unpaid work. “But it's not work. Like I do it because it's fun like instead of reading or fishing.”
“So do you not see that you're telling me how to spend my free time and what hobbies to have?”
“No, you're misunderstanding.”
Am I… Anyway. I feel that my tech education was somewhat irregular (Went to a subpar game development school and had a hard time getting a job in the industry. I'm now at a marketing company assisting in maintaining and creating web apps) and my impostor syndrome is strong and, unfortunately, somewhat justified. When I had a lead on another job, a buddy of mine in the biz assessed my skills and said that I might be able to do the job, but I'd never survive the interview questions. I'm working on that, truly, and my goal first and foremost is getting a different job asap, but I have a long recommended course and a 400-page book ahead of me. Not trying to complain or garner sympathy, but just matter-of-factly, I'm doing the best I can to get through the content but it's a little slow going amidst, like, today's norm of depression, nihilism, and lethargy.
Alright sorry. TMI. Was trying to keep this short. The end of our conversation was that my boss said he'll be pulling me from my responsibilities that are irrelevant to the job he wanted me to do and putting me on a full stack project for a month and strongly implied that if he doesn't like my progress after a month, I'll be fired. Basically was like “This is gonna be tough and I think it'll require you to work outside of your '9-5 guy' schedule, but if you don't want to do that then…” *Shrug*
Ofc none of this has been in writing. He's so adamant that this isn't a bad ask and yet only ever wants to discuss this verbally. What do I do other than just continuing to keep grinding away to find a new job?
Ah another golden line that I didn't find a place for in the main post: “It just doesn't add up to me that you say you like being a programmer and yet you're not driven to spend some of your free time doing it. It makes me think you don't actually want to be an IT guy.”