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Ask HN: Burnt-out, directionless but want to turn it around

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Re: Ask HN: Burnt-out, directionless but want to turn it around

#201

Post by thisOtterBeGood »

I also believe standards, expectations, perspective is where op can learn the most.

Op, you mention things in your post that indicate what you believe would make you happy: > I have never been a rockstar programmer. > smart people are able to come up with libraries, services and various solutions from scratch

Do you believe the people who fulfil these dreams are happy because they came up with libraries? I don't think so. I did some cool stuff and I did it for free till 1 o'clock in the morning.. For free! No one even knows about some of those apps/libraries, I've never published it and I so much fun I still come back to looking at the result years later. So I believe a key for you might be to try to have fun doing it. Also I don't believe you just choose to be a "rockstar programmer" and also there is no fun guaranteed if someone else might call you this. You need to find a way having fun doing stuff, not achieving things.

There are many gaps in your description of you life. It's important how you fill the rest of your day and also what kind of thoughts go through your day throughout the day, but as others has pointed out you might just suffer from burnout.

Something that might help you to find things you like doing: Imagine you are the last person on earth. What would still make fun for you to be doing alone? If you don't know the answer to that you need to start looking for new things to do. Things you never tried before.

Re: Ask HN: Burnt-out, directionless but want to turn it around

#202

Post by peignoir »

i agree with everyone else here :

1. you are competent! most dev are glorified plumbers we just stitch stuff together to make it work. Also 28 is young :) i remember feeling the same at 27, specifically i burned out and quit to do a world trip! At that time someone told me i was too old :) i was not and reflecting now, i would love to keep that state of mind till i die!

2. you are burned out / need a break maybe even a year, if the issue is $ then start by creating an upwork or fiver profile and see if you can get jobs then consider moving to a cheap place with internet and a weather you would like to work remote (bali / vietnam / brazil / estonia …)

3. to become a better dev i think reading would help, stepping back from code to focus on math / algo and the theory can help with developing an eye for the big picture. another way is like chess study your own games, look at code you produced and zoom into the library you ve used, look at its code hack it try to understand it and reach out if you don t understand something to those who built it. Finally you can also take a theme / something you re passionate about or something new (AI / VR ..) and learn about it, you will then progress like you did before, it always feels good

4. to network join meetups / dev conf / hackhatons etc.. i might be wrong since i don t dev anymore but i remember observing that when i would i could not socialize much, it was even worst when i studied Math, my hypothesis is that you tune your brain so much to logic and solving stuff that it s hard to meet people who don t want nor know how to talk about these obsessions/ but you ll be fine with your peers :)

5. finding your own direction / meaningful life, this one has been a tough one since the dawn of mankind up to existentialists. the usual way is to have a religion or to philosophy. In a more practical manner you can also create your own biz (go to a startup weekend for example) if you have no idea what you love or want to do, try to observe what pisses you off and build something to solve it (could be a library etc) check also ressources like indiehacker another way is to observe what you do naturally when not working, what s your passion a last trick is to imagine what you would do if uou won the lottery and just do that …

good luck fellow human!

Re: Ask HN: Burnt-out, directionless but want to turn it around

#203

Post by laszlojamf »

wildmanx wrote: post #174
scaramanga wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is literally the logic of capitalism. Your value is simply whatever value you are able to negotiate for yourself on the job market. OP is more valuable than a toilet cleaner, or a starbucks barista, less valuable than a corporate lawyer or a CEO. People naturally "compare up" rather than "compare down". Sure OP is probably in the 1% wealthiest people in the world, or top 99.9999% of those who ever lived, but rat…

> OP is more valuable than a toilet cleaner, or a starbucks barista Not to kill your point, but those two are dramatically under-valued and under-appreciated jobs in most societies around the world. Every time you use a toilet (other than the one in your home) which is hopefully clean, somebody had cleaned it recently. Imagine they hadn't. You'd have a terrible day. Every time you go grab a good Starbucks coffee. May…

I think what the parent is trying to say, is that if we really valued those things, they would be paid more. The thing is, cleaning toilets is pretty easy. I do it myself all the time at home. So is making coffee. It's not _the best_ coffee, but it's coffee. The baristas who make _the best_ coffee probably get paid quite a lot. But it's pretty easy to make okay coffee. For most people in this world, programming is hard. And even if you thing that feature of that app is meaningless, somebody else obviously disagrees with you and is willing to spend a lot of money to make that feature happen.

The value is not what we _think_ of it, but what we're willing to pay for it.

Re: Ask HN: Burnt-out, directionless but want to turn it around

#205

Post by michaelmior »

feanaro wrote: post #200
colanderman wrote: post #9

1. Take time off, like a month or more. [1] Use it to do anything other than coding. Hone a hobby, travel, volunteer, etc. No-one will care about a month or two gap on your resume. 2. You are worth more than you currently think you are. Internalize this, know this, that is key. "I am a sole developer for Mobile and Web platforms at this startup in a very small team" --> is a desirable skill in and of itself. 3. Stop…

> No-one will care about a month or two gap on your resume. On a related note, this "gap in resume" thing needs to stop being a thing at all. I don't know when it became a thing, but it feels distinctively like forcing a wage slave class to keep their head down and continue wageslaving. Why would an employer care whether I took time off to pursue other things otherwise?

I would agree for small gaps. But I think it's at least somewhat understandable why a significant gap would be a concern. With the pace technology moves at, if you have not been working for an extended period of time, it's reasonable that you might have fallen behind. Certainly this shouldn't be reason in itself to reject a candidate and it at least somewhat depends on what you were doing during that time, but I find it hard to expect employers not to consider it at all.

Re: Ask HN: Burnt-out, directionless but want to turn it around

#206

Post by 4lp »

wildmanx wrote: post #174
scaramanga wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is literally the logic of capitalism. Your value is simply whatever value you are able to negotiate for yourself on the job market. OP is more valuable than a toilet cleaner, or a starbucks barista, less valuable than a corporate lawyer or a CEO. People naturally "compare up" rather than "compare down". Sure OP is probably in the 1% wealthiest people in the world, or top 99.9999% of those who ever lived, but rat…

> OP is more valuable than a toilet cleaner, or a starbucks barista Not to kill your point, but those two are dramatically under-valued and under-appreciated jobs in most societies around the world. Every time you use a toilet (other than the one in your home) which is hopefully clean, somebody had cleaned it recently. Imagine they hadn't. You'd have a terrible day. Every time you go grab a good Starbucks coffee. May…

> But they are paid crap

The pay is usually indicative of employer's ability to find a person with the necessary skillset to do the job and not some abstract "importance to society" value that the job has.

Re: Ask HN: Burnt-out, directionless but want to turn it around

#207

Post by 1337biz »

colanderman wrote: post #9

1. Take time off, like a month or more. [1] Use it to do anything other than coding. Hone a hobby, travel, volunteer, etc. No-one will care about a month or two gap on your resume. 2. You are worth more than you currently think you are. Internalize this, know this, that is key. "I am a sole developer for Mobile and Web platforms at this startup in a very small team" --> is a desirable skill in and of itself. 3. Stop…

If point 3 is not communicated propperly ( and it sounds the OP is not that great at that) it might put his job into jeopardy. If an environment exists where this has been done by OP for a longer time now, the change will be reflected as a lack of commitment. OP would probably be better off looking for a new job and set new boundaries.

Re: Ask HN: Burnt-out, directionless but want to turn it around

#208

Post by t_mann »

fshr wrote: post #30
colanderman wrote: post #9

1. Take time off, like a month or more. [1] Use it to do anything other than coding. Hone a hobby, travel, volunteer, etc. No-one will care about a month or two gap on your resume. 2. You are worth more than you currently think you are. Internalize this, know this, that is key. "I am a sole developer for Mobile and Web platforms at this startup in a very small team" --> is a desirable skill in and of itself. 3. Stop…

But what if they aren't worth more (as a dev, financially) than they think they are? They could be awful, but naively put in a ton of hours. Why do we assume people are worth more? Are we trying to make them feel better by making assumptions and potentially leading them horribly astray? Most people are supremely mediocre and there are just and many horrible devs as their are great ones.

Wow, this is a textbook example of trying to solve a deeply personal/emotional problem with logics and data instead of compassion. To anyone who activates their empathy sensors it's evidently clear that the OP is having a mild burnout crisis (not surprising after 70h weeks), and needs a bit of support first and foremost. What's really doing damage is your language, not a biased estimate of which percentile of a bell curve we're looking at here. It's simply. not. the. problem. If they are on the wrong track they'll figure it out on their own, but they need support and compassion.

Sorry for being so direct, but this culture of trying to substitute logic for compassion really pervades the IT scene in a rather toxic way.

Re: Ask HN: Burnt-out, directionless but want to turn it around

#210

Post by clearcarbon »

Firstly I think this idea of rockstar programmers is truly damaging. Yes there are differences in peoples coding abilities but the vast majority of your ability to develop good software, that solves peoples problems is in how you and the team works together, not your ability to write a technically proficient algorithm. It's important to find a team you can work well with and that works well with you.

Secondly 70-90hrs a week is not a healthy work schedule, you're going to be constantly working while exhausted. Even the most productive people I've seen are tired at the end of a 45-60 hour week. If possible give yourself time to rest.

ps. Piecing together code from multiple sources is what 99.9% of programming is. Calling libraries is piecing together code just as copying and pasting from stackoverflow is. You need to understand that code to be able to piece it together effectively as you clearly do.

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