I hate my job. I made some stupid mistakes in picking my first job out of college and it's pretty bad. I was shuffled into a position I didn't sign up for (business analyst work instead of development) and the culture is extremely toxic.
I've been trying to get out but so far having this company on my resume has been a huge red flag to anyone hiring actual developers making it very hard for me to find something better.
Side projects are my way of proving myself as a software developer. I'm trying to build up a GitHub profile of projects which I've seen through from start to finish. My current project is an excuse to learn about the Play! Framework and asynchronous web development with Akka actors.