Learn new skills, both technical and biz. On the biz side, learn product management, project management, Agile, scrum, etc. Play with new tools and try out new things. And yeah, welcome to the real world kid :-)
Ask HN: Bored at my dev job. Don't know what to do
21–25 of 25 posts
Re: Ask HN: Bored at my dev job. Don't know what to do
#22Your claims as I understand them:
1. Lack of social skills.
2. Lack of ideas what to do with your spare time (at least I see it this way).
3. Lack of challenges and meaningful tasks in your current work.
The 1. is only a problem if you pay close attention to it and refuse to go out because of it.
The solution I see is to find a hackerspace (or similar association) nearby and just drop in to hang out with others. You'll get socialized, you'll find new areas you can look at and most probably it will give you an inspiration and new ideas, all at the same time.
This could solve your 1. and 2. problems pretty quickly, and in the long run, either 3. will become unimportant or you'll find a better job.
Re: Ask HN: Bored at my dev job. Don't know what to do
#23A lot of people feel this way, especially when they are developing on legacy systems or doing standard line of business apps. I would suggest finding an open source project you are passionate about. There are some really cool open source software applications popping up that need passionate developers like you to get involved. That's how you make an impact - get involved and do something that benefits the community,…
I'll add to that; if you program in C# and functional reactive programming on a single codebase across all native mobile phone platforms sounds of interest then take a look at https://github.com/reactiveui/ReactiveUI and send me an email. I'll get you up to speed / invited into Slack. Contact details are on my HN profile.
Re: Ask HN: Bored at my dev job. Don't know what to do
#24Quoting verbatim from jlcfly's excellent advice from another AskHN:
"Teach them to be better than you. That may seem counterproductive. I have a type A personality, and I have decent coding skills. I've been in your situation a number of times. I also know there's these mythical expert developers out there that I can't seem to find (or afford). So, what to do? A few years ago I realized that if I continue down this path, I'll end up with some serious health issues due to the stresses that come along with having a reputation for being a really good developer. So, I decided that instead of searching for developers better than me, I would teach developers I work with how to BE better. It's taken a lot of patience. And it's taken me quite a bit to LET GO of my way of doing things. I had to take my ego out of the picture. (VERY hard to do.) Nowadays, I realize that developers don't have to BE better than me. I simply have to ALLOW them to do what they do without being so obsessive about it. Turns out, even junior developers really CAN do good work. They just need a little guidance that only comes with experience, and then they need me to get out of their way."
Specifically, I would suggest volunteering to teach those who traditionally don't get the opportunities to learn coding.
Re: Ask HN: Bored at my dev job. Don't know what to do
#25If you are bored of your job first figure out what interests and motivates you. Maybe you are in the wrong profession?
Zubair, NemCV.com