161–170 of 178 posts
Become a high school technology/science teacher. Reassess in five years to see if you still hate programming.
Given the process required to obtain the credentials for that, might as well go into something interesting.
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My job before coding was working 12 hour days, 30 days at a time on a cement tug and barge. I'm never going back. I'll take all the on call you can give me.
I know tech leads who consistently work 11 hour days. Different kind of work though. Were you hourly?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know tech leads who consistently work 11 hour days. Different kind of work though. Were you hourly?
Daily. And it wasnt 12 on 12 off, it was 6 on 6 off 6 on 6 off, so you couldn't get good sleep
Most hourly positions with longer hours are nice. I have a buddy in construction that would make great money with all the extra hours. Any salary or daily pay stuff is not cool.
> " I sat down the other night to get started in a grand project I’ve been getting so excited about and I just couldn’t and this seems to be pretty common lately. The projects I dream up are super cool feats of hacker ability " "I keep dreaming up these high status projects and imagining all the people who will respect me and all the money I'll make, nothing to do with code or fun or problem solving. They need skills…
Just want to add that trying to analyse away any fear, uncertainty, and doubt one feels is a mugs game.
If you find something you enjoy working on, keep doing it.
If you don't, still keep doing stuff and enjoy the act of "doing stuff".
To pause is the little death that leads to total obliteration (with apologies to Frank Herbert)
This has happened to me after a 20 year career and successful side business. Instead of fight it, I accept it and look at it as a natural part of growth, not stagnation. It opens up the possibility for you to take your job for what it is—a job—and explore new hobbies and interests. If nothing is interesting, take a break from trying and play video games or watch tv for a year. Youre going to bump up against a lot of…
I know what you mean there, and I've gotten there a few years ago, but I'm still not entirely satisfied with my overall situation.
What I find is that as I get older and progress in my career, new "challenges" are things I never signed up for, and have no interest in.
I was rather satisfied with things as a junior and then mid level engineer. I was assigned tasks/projects, got them done, called it a day. The paycheck was already pretty good. I wasn't particularly interested in a promotion to senior, given how stressed out senior engineers seem to be. I had (and still have) no interest in taking on leadership roles, much less management. I already get anxious enough about my own responsibilities, so no, thanks, I don't want to be responsible for other peoples' actions as well.
It's all moot though. Despite having made the above clear to my managers, they promoted me to senior. And now whenever I try to retreat into doing individual, technical work, they throw the "that's not work suitable for your level" card at me. I'm being coerced into a leadership role to build an entirely new service, despite 1. having never built a service from the ground up, 2. having never been on a team that did it (thus being exposed to the decisions being made), and 3. having no particular interest in it. I'm expected to be the person who makes cross-team collaboration happen, despite not being a "people person." And I'm expected to do all that while mentoring younger team members, despite having no reasonable time to do so.
Companies pay lip service to the whole idea of helping you define your career goals and direction, but it only really applies to when you do what they have in mind for you.
Likely need to tackle from multiple sides: 1. Physical: Sleep more. No screen days. Diet changes. Sport. 2. Emotional: [1] CBT. Get rid of perfectionism and huge romantic /heroic ideas that make you suffer. "burnout is heartbreak". Choose way way smaller projects: You commit, finish and get a good feeling from feedback within a day. [1] https://www.quirk.fyi/distortions
This sounds like the beginnings of burnout or depression... do you find joy in anything else? Does anything motivate you? I went through this for about 3 years after my divorce. I couldn't find motivation or joy in anything. I turned to helping other people solve their problems because at least I was helping others to get through what I couldn't figure out how to get through myself. There was a lot of time spent in r…
Really if I think about it, the movie Office Space nailed it. Go do something else, coding will always be here.
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Something I learned during my career is that if you support and mentor the competent driven youngsters, the good ones will look out for you when they pass you on the career ladder. Rather then treading on your fingers.
Do you find this to be one of the more rewarding parts of your career / day-to-day? One of the things I regret most about my time in grad school is not mentoring younger students / interns. I was only frantically trying to prove how great I was (to salvage my downtrodden ego). I definitely don't want to avoid such mentoring opportunities in the future (once I finally work my way into such a position).
Yes, I did find it rewarding, and latterly, more rewarding than many of my interactions with customers or managers. Especially when I learned things from the younger people.
Try new things: entrepreneur, conference, product manager, even sales. i'm not saying it's necessarily an easy switch but the reality is that you may not have choice. your body is telling you something.
Or maybe you should just do a round trip around the world and meet exciting uncommon people...
Likely need to tackle from multiple sides: 1. Physical: Sleep more. No screen days. Diet changes. Sport. 2. Emotional: [1] CBT. Get rid of perfectionism and huge romantic /heroic ideas that make you suffer. "burnout is heartbreak". Choose way way smaller projects: You commit, finish and get a good feeling from feedback within a day. [1] https://www.quirk.fyi/distortions
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