Ask HN: I achieved my dream of being a self-taught dev. I hate it. Now what?

There’s nothing wrong with you.

It’s hard for me to sit in front of a computer for 8 hours straight. I feel restless. I’m most alive when running, outside, or generally out and about. Work from home is particularly hard, never leaving the house. I really want to be with people, working with them, side by side.

I’m not saying it doesn’t have things I like. And I do get engaged with fun technical work. I’ve coded since I was a kid. Sometimes I go on a coding tear on a fun problem. But I miss the “computer lab” from high school - friends sitting side by side working on hard problems, one-upping each other.

I don’t have a silver bullet but some things that help me

* I have a local network of friends and make a point to get together

* I try and travel for work to connect with colleagues

* I pair-program a lot with coworkers, which recreates a lot of the “bonding” of being side by side working through a problem together.

* consider whether your problem is more to do with team culture and not the profession per-se. Companies range wildly in how they operate.

* what drove you forward when learning to code? Can you find what motivated you and find work close to that drive?

But I really am empathetic to your situation. And don’t hesitate to ping me (my website in my profile has contact info) if you're interested in a chat.

Thanks for taking the time to lay out your situation so clearly.

Based on what you've said, three immediate questions spring up to me:

1. Do you have any non-career goals you would like to pursue? If so, it might be a great opportunity to drop down to part-time and explore those.

2. Are you curious about other roles within the software world? Developing software is only one part of the supply chain and every link is interesting in its own right. Exploring is a career-enriching move that gives you exposure to other styles of work.

3. Have you considered consulting work of some kind? Consulting is far more people-oriented, but you still get plenty of chances to do deep work. It could be an interesting career pivot if you're that way inclined.

Agree with others here that you should check out Sales, Sales Eng, or Product roles. You can make quite a bit more money than a lot of engineers if you do well with sales, particularly as someone who deeply understands tech that they're selling.

Military experience could actually be somewhat relevant for sales, and the courageous kind of attitude ("I'll perform well and make it work regardless") is pretty much the main requirement.

Starting in Sales Eng could be a good way to get to know a particular Sales team and get them to know you, quickly see what its really like to be a seller, and then potentially work your way into a Sales role. Constantly being in the room to see how lots of different sellers work is like getting paid to do sales training, if it turns out to be interesting to you.

When it comes to school, even if the tuition is free, you're still investing a lot of time and effort. For someone who already knows how to program and has meaningful real-life people/leadership experience, my suggestion would just be to be realistic about what you want to do, what you really want to get out of school, and whether or not it's really necessary. Don't know about you, but I know people who seem to fall into the trap of making that kind of decision as a punt on making any real decisions.

Being able to show a bachelor's degree is unfortunately still a big deal for a lot of hiring managers, but "going to school" is also not really a binary decision; there are ways to very quickly test out of a ton of classes and get a bachelor's degree from a lesser known school, if the key rationale would be to just stamp your card. Also keep in mind that typically, Sales and Software Eng are two of the best examples of roles where being self-educated/naturally talented makes it very easy for everyone to overlook the lack of a degree... if you turn out to be kind of a natural fit in sales, AND already know how to program... having a degree probably isn't make or break for you. Learning and giving yourself room to explore can be very satisfying in its own way, but that could also just be stuff you get paid to do in a new role.

Various groups of engineers from my team and adjacent teams eat lunch together pretty much every day.

Even ignoring lunch, we all still take plenty of breaks throughout the day to decompress, stretch, walk, grab snacks, make coffee, and so on - during each of which we have ample opportunity to chat with the folks around the office. We chat about our weekends and common interests, as well as misc tech topics that may or may not be relevant to the job. Once a week we actually have a scheduled coffee chat for the whole team.

I couldn’t work at a place that didn’t accept these sorts of interactions as a normal part of work life. No one does eight hours of heads-down work every day, unless they’re actually at work 10+ hour days every day.