Ask HN: anyone ever drop everything and leave software dev behind?

Getting into software development is similar. At first you get excited by your first "hello world", then you find all sorts of cool things that can be done with code. Eventually the passion flame wanes, you discover maintenance, management. The boring stuff.

First, realize that pretty much everything you get into will follow this pattern because everything has good and bad sides. Then ask yourself: are the bad things in filmmaking/SF start-ups more tolerable than the bad things in your current situation? Are the good things in filmmaking/SF startu-ups more enjoyable/rewarding than the good things you currently enjoy?

As far as happiness goes, maximize the amount of time you spend thinking about the good parts of what you have. Write code for a hobby project, use your money to indulge every once in a while. Dream about things you want to do.

Or just take the leap and do them. Then, you'll just have different good things to focus on.

Your problem is: You are bored from your current job. You have been working for 5 years and it had become a monotonous job. You like coding but you hate your work as a coder.

The solution that I found is: Build something -> Your own -> Not only coding is involved -> unleash the sens of adventure

Take for example a SaaS service. You have to do the design, coding, deal with databases, setup the servers and then test and launch the product. Next is marketing, customer support, may be you'll try Google Adsense in the way, start a blog to enlarge your audience, do some open source work to attract related audiences, travel to x to promote your y to z....

You see? a SaaS (or uISV or any other crap really) will make your salary and also your journey. Start in the side and launch in your vacation, support it in the side until it supports you like your job does and leave. Don't spend your savings as they can be helpful in though times.

You'll get motivation every time you sit at your day to day job desk and feel really bored about it. This boredom (for me) will up lift your working power gauge in the night.

Don't burn yourself, work for 1-2 hours per week-day and 10 hours week-end. You can raise the number of hours, just make sure you enjoy your work. Make light schedules and plans in a way your web/desktop development becomes like an adventure journey. If you are bored read other unrelated-coding/related-project stuff (think marketing, SEO, scaling, culture...)

I'm not sure if this is the correct answer, if so, let just your journey begin!

Hope someday we meet in Dream Land, once each of us achieved his dreams.

Try telling your wife and kids you are going to leave programming and the money you make and start again on something else, it's possible yes, but generally not so easy. Your "support group" of friends is much harder to leave the longer you have had them around. And "aspirations" are generally slightly harder to fulfil as you get older (trainee hairdresser at 25 OK, at 50 it seems a bit weird).

Also don't assume that if you leave you wont be able to step back into it. There is always a demand for good people and unless you are in an extremely limited market you quite possibly will be able to step straight back into where you are.

My wife and I (late 30's) are about to pack up our family and move countries and I'm contemplating what I want to do when I get there so I'm kind of going through the same thing.