Man...that sounds bleak! Certainly there are better day jobs out there. What is your skill set and where do you live?
Software developer. Mostly doing bugfixing and maintenance since by nature of this field new development is a scarce resource and/thus fought for through politics. And when changing jobs, the default place for you is there at the bottom, shoveling shit. New development is not just good for skillset (convince management you absolutely need to try 7 frameworks if Java or that everything needs to be C++ 17 metaprogrammning) but also you can move fast, pretend you've done 90% of the work and leave the troubles to the poor saps who have no option but to takeover your crap. And the maintainer always starts with a 10x productivity handicap compare to the original developer, reverse engineering is hard, slow and error prone. Also while new development is scarce and "completable" in the sense that you can say "I'm done with that", bugs are never ending. No matter how many you complete, even more are coming. The only place where I can actually do "development", not to add "research" is on my own project. Plus it's mine, when it'll work, I'll reap the benefits in an exponential way (add more capital, get more money, only the sky as limit) instead of a flat salary limited by the number of work hours I can put in.
I understand. I have been working on a "green field" project for the past year at work and while new development is cool, you are still stuck solving other peoples problems. Fortunately, I have been saving for a long time and am about ready to make a move. Hang in there!
@fan27, could you talk about your saving plan and what kind of cash reserves you are keeping for living and for trading?