Ask HN: Tired of software career. What now?

Find a new job.

My job has hard problems, chill people, and I care a lot about that we build.

We do have boring work and spaghetti code in places but to be honest, I unload all of that onto junior devs.

I'm looking around for a career change. It sucks more if you have a family to provide for since SWE is low effort for high monetary gain compared to other things.

I've switched jobs a few times in the past years as a SWE/architect and even did consulting for many years. I can't seem to recapture the enjoyment I had at the beginning (back in the 2000s), it's kinda all the same now. I'm also tired of stand-ups, Groundhog Day "retros" and generally appearing to be interested. I think the whole cloud thing has taken the fun out of coding for me in the last twelve or so years.

Also, if JIRA was a face, I'd fucking punch it.

Thought of teaching maths or computing. I love that shit, but society doesn't value that as it pays so little.

Seriously thinking about becoming a paramedic, maybe a coroner/ME... time is running out though. Getting old.

Edit: Also maybe a govt. IT job. It's less, but maybe the benefits are enough to balance out. Would be cool to fix up some crumby govt. software.

If you've got a lot of front end experience, you could consider moving into design. That's what I did, and for similar reasons. You do have to pretend to care about what you're building, but that's probably going to be something you have to deal with any time you're working for someone else (or even for yourself, frankly).

The other thing to consider is just letting this industry break your spirit. Only half joking—what's true is that a lot of the problem you have is in the expectations. If you want an authentic, intellectually satisfying experience where you only work on interesting things and don't have to put up with a bunch of bullshit every day, I agree that you're in the wrong business. But, I don't know where to refer you; I don't know of a job where those things aren't a problem. And the money and benefits of this job are pretty good, and you even get to work inside, out of the rain. So, you could just put in your time and live for the other 16 hours a day when you're not working (more if you can swing it). This is how people have gotten through life for thousands of years.

> I don’t care about what we are building

I don't switch jobs much, but this is when I do. If I don't care about it, and I'm tired of the org and its practices, and the system is stuck in some way, I have to bounce. I'll just drag myself and the team/project/org down because my paycheck will only buy so much caring from me. We'll all be better off if I'm somewhere more satisfying and they fill my slot with someone who can muster more care.

The system I'm on now is important (to a lot of people, though not everyone) so my frustrations with it (tech debt, lack of proper sustainment over the years, poor project management) are things I can get past because I care enough to also tackle them and help improve all of those issues. If it was an unimportant web app, I'd probably be gone by now with the quality of this system overall.

So what qualities of a system would make you care enough to get past your other frustrations (which will exist on almost any project in almost any org with almost any team, to some extent at least).

> Software dev is (or at least used to be) an extreme outlier in that regard, propelling people up the economic ladder after just a few months of boot camp. I think those days are over, so if you want a comparable quality of life, I think it will take a lot of reskilling and expensive education/credentials (both in time and diplomas) :(

Those days have been over for awhile, now even the 4-year degrees aren't cutting it. It probably won't return to the way it was, ever. A combination of macroeconomics and market saturation are mostly to blame, regardless about what the AI grifters are selling executives these days.