Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?

news.ycombinator.com

61–70 of 135 posts

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?

#61
post #11

I don't and I'm bored AF!

This is unhealthy, try to find what you enjoy! At least a little bit. If you haven't noticed it yet this will start wearing you down.

I dont enjoy any of it and have been looking for an out into management for 12 years. At this point im a depressed robot with hardly any useful output. Life sucks.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?

#62
It's hard to work on a product that you didn't even use... or do not want to use.

Maybe the fundamental key is to work on a product that you care, that you want to use... I think it's important being proud of your job to keep motivation high.

Something like that I think.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?

#63
post #19

Motivation 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?

Trial and error as a programmer dealing with depression and anxiety accounts for a lot, but for resources I'd point you to Robert Sapolsky's lectures on Behavioral Biology (here: https://youtu.be/NNnIGh9g6fA). Sapolsky's lectures are great for getting a Biology perspective to how human's operate. Jordan Peterson's has lectures on Personality (here: https://youtu.be/kYYJlNbV1OM) which are also great and echo similar ideas from a Psychology perspective.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?

#64

I 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…

Sounds like you went the corporate route in your career, which is totally fine. Compared to the startup route, it has its pros and cons, one of which is HR filters and people gaming the system to advance their careers. Just wanted to say that it’s not everyone’s experience, there’s a whole other world where that’s not a problem, but.. you know, there are different issues.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then after you get laid off from the vanishing few remaining companies using old tech and can’t find another job, you’ll be complaining about “ageism” on HN. If the market is paying higher than market salaries for the buzzword compliant “digital transformation consultant”, that’s what I will learn.

> And then after you get laid off from the vanishing few remaining companies using old tech and can’t find another job... As we speak, banks are migrating from systems written in cobol/fortran to systems written in java. I just got quite a few recruiters contacting me for open java jobs. Sure, frontend code was in angular and they offered training for it, but for some even angular might be considered to be "ancient"…

I know just enough about the front end to call myself a “full stack developer” and get past the HR filters. But front end developers are a dime a dozen and the pay shows it. I keep up just enough in case I need a job now and I want to get something fast.

When the day comes that I do decide to leave my job and I leave by choice, I’m staying buzzword compliant enough to be an overpriced “cloud consultant”, “digital transportation consultant” or whatever the hype of the day is.

But, I wouldn’t take a job doing Angular knowing that React is more popular and I would rather add React to my resume than Angular.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?

#67
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sounds like you went the corporate route in your career, which is totally fine. Compared to the startup route, it has its pros and cons, one of which is HR filters and people gaming the system to advance their careers. Just wanted to say that it’s not everyone’s experience, there’s a whole other world where that’s not a problem, but.. you know, there are different issues.

The startups are even worse when it comes to ageism, “culture fit”, and overwork.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?

#68

I 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…

You do learn framework of the day while job hunting. You do not have to learn every framework of the day while having a job.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?

#69
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You do learn framework of the day while job hunting. You do not have to learn every framework of the day while having a job.

No job is permanent - always keep your running shoes around your neck.

Whether I am actively looking for a job or not, optionality is important.

Post reply on HN