Questions from a young developer that "just" started working aka: how do you manage it?

I'm in a similar situation as you. Recently, however, it's a little worse because I actually do have less time to work on my own projects than I did before. So most of the time I can't work on my own projects, even if I wanted to, because I have other priorities and responsibilities.

So at times I feel frustrated when I wish I was hacking and learning but I can't. And it's not that I'm unhappy when I'm not hacking (I am very happy), it's just that I never get a chance to do what I _really_ want to be doing.

And the root of the problem is not that there isn't enough time or lack of energy. The problem is that most of my time is spent at a job where I'm not doing what I like to do, and it is draining. I'm a software tester, and I test other people's buggy software without even having the chance to fix it myself because there's a hard line between Engineering/QA (coders/testers) in this company.

However, even if I was working as a full-time programmer I would probably not be doing what I like doing anyway. I'd still be a monkey (or robot, however you look at it) coding what other people (i.e. PM) have badly designed.

So after reading some of PG's essays, I came to the realization that the solution to my problem is to start a startup. I'm young enough to take the risk, and the worse thing that could happen if it fails would be to look for another, better job possibly in a startup where corporate culture is frowned upon. And then maybe correct the mistakes I (or my team) made the first time around and try again.

I'm kind of rambling here now, so I'll just end it now by saying that if you don't think you'll ever find a job where you will do what you love to do, you should start a startup instead of keeping that day job. If that's too far-fetched of an idea you would pursue, well then others here have posted some good suggestions.

Agreed. I couldn't program as a hobby when I was a software engineer. So what I did was simply to change my job. I moved into more business-y consulting, and regained my interest in programming almost immediately!

It's tough to start working on something after you just got home from an 8 hour stretch of work. Some of the things I've done are:

- In the beginning, start projects on weekends or holidays. If you're not already burned out, you can get a solid start on something that will carry you through the work week. It's tough to start something at 9 PM, but if you've got a foundation, you can come up with 1-2 hours of work and not feel disappointed that you didn't do more.

- Pick a project that will allow you to accomplish things in 1-2 hour work sessions. If you try to build the next Google, you probably will never have a working result. If you try to build a simple app, you can take it in small pieces, adding functionality in short work sessions.

- Pick tools/projects different from what you do at work. Tired of lousy source control systems at work? Use Git for your next project. Tired of J2EE/Spring/Struts? Use Ruby on Rails or Python. The goal here is to make your project different from your work activities, so it doesn't seem like an extension of your work day. This also lets you pick up other technologies you might not have a chance to learn through work.

- Find somebody else to work with. If you have a friend to encourage you, you'll be more motivated and can split the work, getting more done.

(I should also mention there are employers with 0% suit-monkey DNA, and building cool things for their own sake draws out these employers as well.)