51–60 of 124 posts
This whole article is great, but the first 2 paragraphs really resonated with me: http://www.loper-os.org/#selection-29.0-44.0 Here's an excerpt: Sadly, the above scenario is more truth than fiction – for computer enthusiasts. There is a particularly cruel discrepancy between what a creative child imagines the trade of a programmer to be like and what it actually is. When you are a teenager, alone with a (programmabl…
Hobby coders can escape into the unrestricted world of building stuff without limits to satisfy their imagination and curiosity. They can also change hobbies and increase or decrease the amount of time they want to spend on coding to stay in the sweet zone.
Paid coders can only carve out little, temporary nooks of freedom within the requirements and demands that come from somewhere that is external. In the best case they can dictate how things shall be built but the "what" part generally comes as given: from the boss, from the CTO, from the company strategy, from the customers if you're an entrepreneur coder.
If it takes 15 years to get bored with coding I can think of a number of professions where it would only take 1.5 months to get bored. Boredom doesn't equal all is lost. It's just a sign to work on something else for a while.
I've recovered the excitement of coding several times, sometimes through hobby coding and something through talking my way into some interesting work project. But your interest needs to spend some time elsewhere before you can find it again in coding.
Try testing, interfacing customers, managing, or change jobs. If you can, try a job that's not in IT to get some perspective. This should be considered an ongoing process anyway as you will be constantly rethinking your place in life anyway. The process might lead away from coding or getting back stronger than ever, but the goal is to find something that makes you tick again. How all that realises itself in practical work life is mostly secondary.
Let it flow.
Certainly one of the more predictable paths is moving up into engineering management.
In my case, after experiencing a bit of burnout in my late 20s, I debated between going back to school for an MBA---another common route in this scenario---and trying to find a more customer-oriented role within an interesting technology company. I ended up deciding to join a late-stage startup in order to help found their Solutions Architecture team, which has been an absolutely terrific experience. I could imagine going back to an engineering role in time, but I've enjoyed and learned so much traveling the world to work with a wide range of companies across industries---just long enough to understand their business and (hopefully) help resolve their core difficulties...
Feel free to message me (account @gmail) if you're interested in hearing about my experience or of course if you're looking for a new role (https://stripe.com/jobs/positions/solutions-architect).
Once you're experienced, it's pretty hard to find an exciting project that can stoke your fire because you've done it all before. Things just become an exercise.
How often do you get to work on a totally unsolved problem or world changing piece of software?
It's a sign of burning out. I've felt the same way many times during my career. I started making websites when I was 15 (I'm 33 now) and moved to a management role. When I wasn't coding for the last few months, I realized I missed building stuff. I just quit my job this month and now looking for contract/freelance work. One thing I realized very late was I needed some kind of hobby outside writing code and spending t…
Got any recommended books on product management?
PM:
- Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love
- The Lean Product Playbook: How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback
- Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value
- What Customers Want: Using Outcome-Driven Innovation to Create Breakthrough Products and Service
- Strategize: Product Strategy and Product Roadmap Practices for the Digital Age
- Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers
- Brand Identity Breakthrough: How to Craft Your Company's Unique Story to Make Your Products Irresistible
- Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
- The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition
- Originals: How Non-conformists Change the World
- Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company
- Lovability: How to Build a Business That People Love and Be Happy Doing It
- The Thank You Economy
- Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery
- TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking
- Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
- How To Win Friends and Influence People
- Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It
- Thinking in Systems: A Primer
- Thinking, Fast and Slow
- Rich Mironov's Product Bytes
- Aha! Blog
- Inside Intercom
- Mind the Product
- PMHQ blog
- Silicon Valley Product Group
- The Accidental Product Manager
- The Product Bistro
- The Product Guy
- The Secret Product Manager Handbook
I think it's natural to reach a plateau with whatever interests you, where you understand enough that the original challenge is gone, and/or you meet a new challenge that you can't overcome. Change something up, come at it from a different angle and you will probably regain your enthusiasm.
And can I just say, you are the first person I have ever heard say that 'talking to customers' is in any way 'fun'... :)
It's a sign of burning out. I've felt the same way many times during my career. I started making websites when I was 15 (I'm 33 now) and moved to a management role. When I wasn't coding for the last few months, I realized I missed building stuff. I just quit my job this month and now looking for contract/freelance work. One thing I realized very late was I needed some kind of hobby outside writing code and spending t…
I have been coding for like 10 years now. I feel it has become more .... routine? Coding itself starts becoming a tool for me, a modeling tool that realizes when I speak to it, like I know soundly winter will freeze the water into ice, and fire can turn woods into ashes.
But I think that means for me that coding itself is probably not going to provide more challenges or growth I would expect into next stage of my life. Coding has to been associated with the problem I am trying to solve. After all, understanding a problem then dissecting it into solvable pieces is what is fun. I would try to seek problems at a bigger scale, and maybe that would bring new perspective of coding to me by facing ever growing complexity.