I think it's perfectly normal to want to do something else after you've been doing one thing for decades. Humans like variety, the "mid-life crisis" is a thing for a reason. I think IT work in particular is tricky to escape, because it's such a large step down in pay to switch to another career. People end up stuck here for longer than they ought to and burn out or coast, because they don't want to take the pay downgrade to find a new career path.
Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding
11–20 of 301 posts
Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding
#12That doesn’t sound like you’re falling out of love with programming. It sounds like you’re frustrated with the red tape at work.
Try working on something fun on the side. Make a game, or a mobile app, or something you’ve always been curious about that doesn’t have anything to do with your job. You might be amazed by how productive you feel when you work on something ambitious that doesn’t involve all of the corporate machinery.
I’ve been getting a nice dose of that with game development. Sometimes I sit down on a Saturday with a big plan that should last me through the weekend, and I get it done before dinner that evening, and I feel like some kind of programming wizard. It’s been a great reminder that I am a talented programmer, but I’m just feeling burned out on all of the tedious process that’s involved when coding professionally.
Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding
#13I had that feeling about a year ago, sat down with some fun hobby project and the love was there instantly.
I do know some people that had to switch careers entirely, but often it's the job tearing one apart.
If you think there is anything worth salvaging, just go to your boss and tell them that this ship needs righting or you're gone. Preferably with some things you feel could be done right now.
Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding
#14I hear you! Transpiling, bundling, CSS in JS, image imports, hooks, dependency hells, huge stack traces, the list goes on and on.. Such a mess.
Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding
#15> Any project I work on is connected to a million different tools, workflows and services,
I was just skimming and read that, and I thought "he is working in Javascript" and yep, later on that's it.
I stay away from the Javascript/TS ecosystem (npm et al). I program mostly in Go, but also quite a bit in Typescript.
I would learn/use (even if for personal projects) more boring tech stacks, like Java/C#/Go/PL-SQL/T-SQL. For myself, Go has extremely stable tools that just work and have well-known limitations. Consider a lateral move within tech.
Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding
#16> Any project I work on is connected to a million different tools, workflows and services, I was just skimming and read that, and I thought "he is working in Javascript" and yep, later on that's it. I stay away from the Javascript/TS ecosystem (npm et al). I program mostly in Go, but also quite a bit in Typescript. I would learn/use (even if for personal projects) more boring tech stacks, like Java/C#/Go/PL-SQL/T-SQL…
I do the same but Go can't help me with frontend, right? What do you do?
Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding
#17> Any project I work on is connected to a million different tools, workflows and services, I was just skimming and read that, and I thought "he is working in Javascript" and yep, later on that's it. I stay away from the Javascript/TS ecosystem (npm et al). I program mostly in Go, but also quite a bit in Typescript. I would learn/use (even if for personal projects) more boring tech stacks, like Java/C#/Go/PL-SQL/T-SQL…
I do the same but Go can't help me with frontend, right? What do you do?
If you don’t like JS/TS then just don’t do front end? There’s plenty of backend only jobs.
Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding
#18Switch to work for a small company where you can focus on your code and choosing your solutions. I've seen a lot of people around me working for large companies being well payed but also really unhappy with their jobs. Money will not buy you happiness.
Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding
#19Been there, felt that. Have you tried learning a new technology just for fun? When I got tired of PHP, switched to Ruby and the love and feel of wonder was there. When I got tired of my corporate job tech stack, I looked for a freelance side gig where I now spent most of my time and weekends because the challenge is fun.
Maybe finding a side project you actually like and understand can help.
Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding
#20You don't dislike coding, you and all your coworkers work at a shit-tier company.
Get a job doing something else that involves coding. Do you know advanced math and physics? There are tons of opportunities in the applied sciences and you'd be a god-tier coder among men at federal research labs etc.