I don't do side projects, I have other hobbies. Whatever exciting thing I want to do as a Software Engineer I'll do it during my work hours.
Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?
21–30 of 135 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?
#22What killed your motivation to be exact? Most programmers don’t find their work boring... you must’ve hit a really dead end company to feel that way.
You're telling me most people just love making the "latest" and "greatest" CRUD web app? Because that's what most programmers do.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?
#23Motivation is usually a product of mental health. Mental health is a product of a variety of things like work-life-balance, good sleep, healthy diet, physical exercise, and measured progression towards realistic goals. Optimize and improve on those, and you'll have more motivation and mental energy overall. Since full time work rarely makes good use of focused mental resources, you might be lucky if you have a couple…
This is a fantastic comment. Did you get your Motivation formula just from experience, or do you have a suggested reading where I get more info?
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?
#24I lowered my expectations, just like you know when I was teenager I wanted to have a ferrari, but when you are 30 current year sedan is quite an achievement compared to 15 year old beat up car I drove when I was a student. The same with projects, I am not inventing or optimizing complicated algorithms and I am OK with that, CRUD apps that have long life are also a challange. Handling people is a challange, which I like because I work with really nice people now. Getting that new feature in a CRUD app from concept to production feels good as well! (I am also not going to work in FANG and I am not going to earn $250k a year)
I had luck with my current employer, ended up in a company that needs me and are greatful for what I do for them. It is a software shop, so I am not a cost for them but an asset. So one thing to note, try to find company where software is their main product. Earlier I was working in a company where software for them was: "those silly kids fooling around", boy that was bad.
Some people say they stopped doing development after work. There is so much stuff to learn that I cannot just let it go. I was mostly Windows person, I learned loads of Linux stuff. I don't do the same stuff I do at work after work. I don't have deadlines, my projects don't have to provide any value, I don't have to open source them. I don't have to learn after work to stay competitive. I am just fooling around just like I want and there is no sprint, no points, no product owners so it feels so much better than what I have to do at work.
I think all those words I used could be summed up by: take it easy, don't take it too serious, have luck.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?
#25[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?
#26Anybody doing competitions ?
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?
#27>Working on boring, crappy projects for a living is just killing me, and you never know until you get on the job. How do you deal with this?
I deal with it by choosing not to work on crappy projects.
If a company or the project they want you to work on is crappy, don't choose them!
There aren't many non-crappy tech jobs in my neck of the woods, so I branched out on my own.
I do the odd consulting gig if you're a small company who has a few technical problems and want to pay to fix them ASAP.
And I work on my own projects in the meanwhile... websites... saas... working on an algorithmic trading bot right now.
It's working out OK.
Yoga helps fill the downtime between ideas... and is really helpful at generating new ones I find.
In fact, I just had an amazing idea on the way home from practice earlier today that I should really get working on!
Or hey, perhaps programming just isn't your thing and you've finally realized that. It's not for everybody.
It's a tough world out there, but you're doing the right thing by asking questions and trying to change yours.
Take care now.
Chin up!
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?
#28I don't. Turning my hobby into my career killed my hobby and, really, that's fine. It affords me a good life and the ability to discover and enjoy new hobbies. If you're worried about "keeping up," then I would suggest you 1) ignore the rat-race that is framework-of-the-day and 2) focus on learning fundamentals of your domain. Sure, you'll miss out on some hip startup jobs but typical employers don't care about your…
I feared that this would happen to me, and avoided a dev career for a long time. Eventually I realized that I needed a career and gave up.
What I found was that despite how good I thought I was, I'm way better now and enjoy programming even more than before my career. I don't program at home nearly as much, but when I do it's for something I really want to make and it's very satisfying to be able to just whip it up.
I spend all my struggling hours at work and can just use the knowledge at home now. Much, much better than spending all my free time struggling to figure things out and getting little done.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?
#29I don't. Turning my hobby into my career killed my hobby and, really, that's fine. It affords me a good life and the ability to discover and enjoy new hobbies. If you're worried about "keeping up," then I would suggest you 1) ignore the rat-race that is framework-of-the-day and 2) focus on learning fundamentals of your domain. Sure, you'll miss out on some hip startup jobs but typical employers don't care about your…
Ignoring the framework of the day and “learning the fundamentals” won’t get you past the either HR filters or make you competitive with developers who are constantly doing Resume Driven Development and have a resume that is buzzword compliant. Especially if you are an older developer (I’m 45) and you will just be seen as just another old out of touch developer. That being said, the further down the stack you go, the…
So what? I don't care to compete with those developers or work for the companies who hire them.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?
#30When I had a job like yours I quickly left for a company with more interesting projects.
These days to keep up my side projects I set attainable daily goals for the projects/languages I wanted to work more in using WakaTime to track my progress. I get daily emails that motivate me to keep reaching my goal of at least 2 hours coding per day.