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Ask HN: Developer burnout – how to rediscover the passion, or new career?

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Re: Ask HN: Developer burnout – how to rediscover the passion, or new career?

#31

Post by trcollinson »

Rjevski wrote: post #25
trcollinson wrote: post #5

I have been coding since the 90s. This year I finally felt really burnt out. It got so bad I was upset, miserable, and lost all passion for working. I have 6 kids and a wife with a chronic untreatable disorder so I couldn’t just quit. And I’m glad I didn’t, it turns out that wouldn’t have helped. Here’s what I did and what I would suggest: 1) after talking to my wife and my doctor I got a counselor. Well really a tea…

> through therapy I realized that I didn’t have an identity outside of being a software developer. That’s what was burning me out. I wasn’t Tim the person who has a family and interests and develops software. I was Tim: software developer. The end. This turns out to be really bad. I had to remember who I am other than software developer. All I ever did was work or think about work or work on other things that were ju…

Well, the number one way I solved this was by going to therapy every week for months. My counselor helped me to realize it and gave me assignments and had be follow up on those assignments to figure myself out. I had to ask myself a lot of questions. Why do I want to spend more time watching videos online than actually work? Why do I have a hard time opening up my code editor? Why do I not get enough done during my working hours and then come home and feel like I should work more? Why am I so guilty? How can I feel like I’m getting so little done and yet my employer is so happy with me? Do I even know what I’m doing?

Mindfulness helps with this so much. And very quickly problems started to go away and I felt so much better. I became significantly more productive. I was having fun. I felt relaxed. I felt confident. I’m absolutely amazing.

It wasn’t very easy and it wasn’t a fun process at all. But I am so glad I did it.

Re: Ask HN: Developer burnout – how to rediscover the passion, or new career?

#32

Post by geekjock »

newhotelowner wrote: post #30

I quit my FE engineering job and bought a hotel. I don't think I can go back to what I used to do. I still love writing code. Now I just build stuff for myself.

Hey! Would love to hear more of your story. Can you email me at a at abinoda.com?

Re: Ask HN: Developer burnout – how to rediscover the passion, or new career?

#33

Post by akulbe »

trcollinson wrote: post #5

I have been coding since the 90s. This year I finally felt really burnt out. It got so bad I was upset, miserable, and lost all passion for working. I have 6 kids and a wife with a chronic untreatable disorder so I couldn’t just quit. And I’m glad I didn’t, it turns out that wouldn’t have helped. Here’s what I did and what I would suggest: 1) after talking to my wife and my doctor I got a counselor. Well really a tea…

One issue I see is that it seems like any mention of seeking the help of a counselor/psychologist/psychiatrist is SOOOOOO stigmatized that folks are repelled by the idea.

It's very counterproductive and stops many from doing something that has the potential to completely turn things around.

Re: Ask HN: Developer burnout – how to rediscover the passion, or new career?

#34

Post by gorbachev »

Burnout is entirely different from disinterest or loss of passion.

If you're suffering from a real burnout, you need to seek professional help.

If the latter, do some self reflection and figure out what it is that truly interests you and see if you can change your life in ways that would allow you to do more of that.

Re: Ask HN: Developer burnout – how to rediscover the passion, or new career?

#35

Post by Insanity »

juliend2 wrote: post #26
Boulth wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is definitely it. I've got kids and I was also unprepared for the amount of time that they will take. Usually as a developer one has a lot of time to explore wider area of topics (playful exploration). That keeps the mind energized. So: get plenty of sleep (a golden rule is when the child sleeps the parent should also sleep), then invest in some topic that's not in your comfort zone (e.g. working on CRUDs? Learn…

> Learn embedded programming Yes, this. I'm currently learning electronics, with the Arduino environment, and I think I never had so much fun with programming since the days I learned to do some ActionScript 2.0 with Flash MX, back in the days. Not a very glamorous example, but I genuinely enjoyed the simple fact of programmatically moving stuff on the screen. Now, with Arduino, I get to programmatically move things…

When I was going through a bit of what I'll call "Coder's Writer's block" this is also what helped get me out of it. I got an arduino, a keyswitch tester, soldered the keyswitch tester to the arduino and wrote some code to use the keyswitch tester as an actual extension for media keys.

Silly things, but had a fun time doing that, and got motivated to code again :)

Re: Ask HN: Developer burnout – how to rediscover the passion, or new career?

#36

Post by Insanity »

frfl wrote: post #28
DoreenMichele wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great idea. How do you find code you want to write?

What is a problem you face regularly? Write code to solve it, there's probably a market for the solution.

When you start thinking of bringing something to market, it already adds stress to the 'just coding' part to me. When I write something for fun I don't want to have to think about making it usable for other people and everything that comes with that

Re: Ask HN: Developer burnout – how to rediscover the passion, or new career?

#37

Post by wott »

juliend2 wrote: post #26
Boulth wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is definitely it. I've got kids and I was also unprepared for the amount of time that they will take. Usually as a developer one has a lot of time to explore wider area of topics (playful exploration). That keeps the mind energized. So: get plenty of sleep (a golden rule is when the child sleeps the parent should also sleep), then invest in some topic that's not in your comfort zone (e.g. working on CRUDs? Learn…

> Learn embedded programming Yes, this. I'm currently learning electronics, with the Arduino environment, and I think I never had so much fun with programming since the days I learned to do some ActionScript 2.0 with Flash MX, back in the days. Not a very glamorous example, but I genuinely enjoyed the simple fact of programmatically moving stuff on the screen. Now, with Arduino, I get to programmatically move things…

> Pure fun.

Well... that gets quite different when you do it in a professional context. I'd say there is more pressure than in pure software development.

1. The deadlines are harder. You cannot really ship a half-baked product and tell yourself you'll ship an update every week after. This is of course even more true if you are on the hardware side.

2. The pressure is higher. Because of point 1, you have more pressure to get things right on the first launch. You also have to deal with the intertwined timeline of the hardware design and manufacturing. And the money involved is arguably higher, so a failure can represent a big hit for the company.

3. The final product is a bit more likely to have a real use. That gives a better sense of purpose, but it can come with a greater moral responsibility (it depends on individuals, of course). You may not carry the same weight for the Nth rewrite of a random advertising webapp and for a critical safety related device (to take extreme examples).

And now after you've overcome all this, you get thanked by being paid half what the advertising software developers get ;-)

Re: Ask HN: Developer burnout – how to rediscover the passion, or new career?

#38

Post by jowiar »

See a therapist.

Do explore a bit. Play with your baby. Pick up some hobbies. Particularly creative ones. Make music, art, sing, dance, act, etc.

Re "my first child was born in the past year"... If you're like any other new parent I know, you've been running on fumes, and I lose all ability to produce code when I don't sleep.

You don't need passion to be a successful, productive, professional developer. many have it (and many of those passionate people drive me batshit crazy with their protecting their passion and making software-crafting an intolerable place to be).

For me, I've burned out of it several times. One of the things that brought me back was realizing "the tools suck, and whenever I'm doing something else, I end up drawn back in by the need for better tools".

Writing code isn't the end. I don't particularly enjoy the act writing code. But I really hate working with crappy tools. And while writing code isn't particularly fun, it helps me deal with other shit. It's a damn powerful skill to have, even if the major output isn't "software".

As to what you can retrain into? Anything you want. Find out what matters to you, though, then figure out how to get there. One of the great things about being a developer is you can usually make enough cash happen in such a way that you can find a path anywhere you want to be.

Re: Ask HN: Developer burnout – how to rediscover the passion, or new career?

#39

Post by JDiculous »

I don't know what the solution is, just know that you're not alone. It's been 7 months since my last job and I still don't have any desire to go back. Not sure what I'll do going forward though. There are things I enjoy doing, but as soon as I have to do it for money it no longer becomes enjoyable.

Re: Ask HN: Developer burnout – how to rediscover the passion, or new career?

#40

Post by mrlyc »

akulbe wrote: post #33
trcollinson wrote: post #5

I have been coding since the 90s. This year I finally felt really burnt out. It got so bad I was upset, miserable, and lost all passion for working. I have 6 kids and a wife with a chronic untreatable disorder so I couldn’t just quit. And I’m glad I didn’t, it turns out that wouldn’t have helped. Here’s what I did and what I would suggest: 1) after talking to my wife and my doctor I got a counselor. Well really a tea…

One issue I see is that it seems like any mention of seeking the help of a counselor/psychologist/psychiatrist is SOOOOOO stigmatized that folks are repelled by the idea. It's very counterproductive and stops many from doing something that has the potential to completely turn things around.

What worked for me was to tell my employer that I was taking the time off to get allergy shots.
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