Very subjective view: I stopped caring emotionally. Age made me want family / emotional stimulus infinitely more than technical one. Especially in mainstream dev where things are not new or high level enough (I'm way more tickled when I dabble in combinatorics or graph theory books, I can sense the blood and motivation rushing more).
Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?
111–120 of 326 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?
#112Similar here. In my case I learned stuff like Neoxam and FileNet that I will never use again. It feels like all my knowledge has been throwaway work. I'm 10 years in, a midlevel with no career path, have an MS, and make under $100k. The company has also screwed me over a few times. I feel like why bother trying if it's not rewarded, and why bother learning if I'll never use the knowledge again?
Just go back to the other frameworks that you already know. Either talk to your boss about switching projects or look for another job. At least you have that option and are making excellent money.
Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
You had a depressive episode, and you recovered. It's not getting older, but the fact that time heals most brains just like exercise and antidepressants do. About 70% recover within 12 months [1] [1] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12204924/ Edit: OP said "Was depressed that [...]" and also mentions death of a loved one. Even if I'm wrong, personally I really wish someone mentioned MDD as a possibility to me earlie…
Not attacking you in particular but responding to a sentiment evoked by your comment, that I think is all too common: The pathologization of everything is what's abnormal. So, what happened? Guy went through some grief, had normal emotional responses, understandably reconsidered what's important and felt suffocated in a workplace as an employee, after facing the fact that his dad spent a huge chunk of his life in a s…
I find it sad that instead of designing mood-enhancing small molecules and making these available to anybody so desiring, we have to text each other with long screens of elaborate copes.
This concrete cope presented in the parent comment denies existence of depression, which is really a non-sequitur when we have a solid evidence for substantial heritable differences in baseline happiness: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4346667/
Every human being deserves happiness, it should be an intrinsic natural good, not a scarce lottery prize it is now.
Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?
#114Create something and publish it.
For some reason, it helped me a lot. Also in my mid-30s.
You're probably pretty good at the things you know, just whip something you could easily do but useful and you'll get a lot of satisfaction.
I also think it's burn out. I personally struggled to learn React and perhaps had some burn out but persevered because I was building things on the side. It was fun and great distraction and motivator while struggling to learn React. I think I'm pretty good at it now but I felt like I was in a rut for a long time.
Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?
#115Ecosystem-fatigue maybe? I don't know if there is an existing term for this but it's got more and more common and it's going to get a hell lot of more.
As a junior engineer (20+ years ago, for me), anything new is enjoyable. Damn we even enjoyed .NET, J2EE, Perl.. whatever crap. You name it. But today there are so many frameworks, paradigms, tools, services... and sad thing is in many cases the differences are nuance-grade which for senior engineers might become incredibly exhausting, at least in my opinion. "Why would I want to spend 6 months learning Vue if I can do this in React in 6 weeks?", "Why should I learn Rust if I just can do this in C++?"...
I think there are big differences in how industry evolved in the early twenties to today. I think today's evolution can feel rather disappointing.
Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?
#116This sounds like burnout to me. I am in my mid-40s and used to have spells like this, but no more. I needed some kind of large change, back then, to get myself sorted out, but this could be pretty destructive because if I waited too long, the change I'd need wouldn't really be conducive to staying on whatever project I was on. The key to not having to deal with this problem anymore, for me, was starting to proactivel…
Getting fed up with all the stupid technology grind is not necessarily burnout though. One could call it wisdom or experience too.
I'd like to see it that way for my own situation. But I have no alternatives for making decent money. It's not wise to be a slacker without a contingency plan. I'm just dumb.
Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?
#117Ecosystem-fatigue maybe? I don't know if there is an existing term for this but it's got more and more common and it's going to get a hell lot of more. As a junior engineer (20+ years ago, for me), anything new is enjoyable. Damn we even enjoyed .NET, J2EE, Perl.. whatever crap. You name it. But today there are so many frameworks, paradigms, tools, services... and sad thing is in many cases the differences are nuance…
"Ecosystem-fatigue"
Nice. I'm going use this in my next 1-on-1.
Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?
#118This sounds like burnout to me. I am in my mid-40s and used to have spells like this, but no more. I needed some kind of large change, back then, to get myself sorted out, but this could be pretty destructive because if I waited too long, the change I'd need wouldn't really be conducive to staying on whatever project I was on. The key to not having to deal with this problem anymore, for me, was starting to proactivel…
Burnout has become such a catch-all term as to be effectively meaningless by now. In our professional lives, we are used to set quantified KPIs in a SMART way, and I wonder, why is it that our expectations are so comparatively low in our personal lives?
Any example of a smart KPI ?
Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?
#119Sounds like a mild burnout. I don't know your personal situation, but if you've been earning tech salaries for 15 years, maybe you can afford to take a sabbatical? Six months to furbish a nice home, get some therapy, connect with family. Should at least help put things into perspective.
Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
You had a depressive episode, and you recovered. It's not getting older, but the fact that time heals most brains just like exercise and antidepressants do. About 70% recover within 12 months [1] [1] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12204924/ Edit: OP said "Was depressed that [...]" and also mentions death of a loved one. Even if I'm wrong, personally I really wish someone mentioned MDD as a possibility to me earlie…
> You had a depressive episode, and you recovered. You’re quick in jumping to conclusions.
Agree. I hate my job and clock watch. But I enjoy other things in life. When I get screened for depression it never comes up as a problem. So it seems you can be fine and still watch the clock.