Ask HN: I am 30+ and bored with life and the software industry, what do I do? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: I am 30+ and bored with life and the software industry, what do I do?

#81

Post by jmui » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 7:39 AM UTC

I definitely see your point of view regarding all the efforts in the community to make the next shiny thing. It's very prevalent on the front page of HN all the time. I can't tell if it's representative of the culture as a whole or just those who are frequent posters of HN.

In any case, I think that you'd have a lot in common with David Heinemeier Hansson. You can see in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBfVxBj61z0 and a lot of his blogs that he approaches things in a much more realistic down to earth manner than many other engineers out there. I think that if that's what you want, then it's all a matter of finding the right company that thinks the same way about using technology to solve real problems.

Re: Ask HN: I am 30+ and bored with life and the software industry, what do I do?

#82

Post by Bahamut » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 7:41 AM UTC

batou wrote: post #70

I'm there. I decided one day that it's just a job and found what I really wanted to do. So I'm reading maths and physics now. The joy in my life is actually from taking things to pieces and seeing how they work and there is plenty of that there. For more of being with you, my company drank the microservices kool aid. Rather than concentrate on building a quality product we've got buzzword soaked boiled shit that does…

I'm sort of in the same place, but I made a choice for less income (compared to the open market at least - still more than my last position) for less over 40 hour work weeks.

I don't mind when a company I join has some awful code - it sucks to work with at first, but it leaves me never bored since I can make my mark improving it and learn while I am at it. I work to schedule fixes to go along with feature development & try not to worry beyond that. There are many things to do in life, most not involving programming. I rather run with friends, travel & visit places with friends, research & code whatever I want without work pressure, play video games, and just overall have the freedom of choice.

I hope the OP hasn't fallen into this trap.

Re: Ask HN: I am 30+ and bored with life and the software industry, what do I do?

#83

Post by batou » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 7:42 AM UTC

Firegarden wrote: post #47

My take on what is exciting yields the following questions: How much time have you spent with design patterns? How much time have you spent with WebSockets? How much time have you spent with Asynchronous coding? How much time have you spent with Taligent MVP concepts? How much time have you spent with Reactive Extensions? How much time have you spent with ReactJS? How much time have you spent with drinking and playin…

Not joking but these are all fads, mostly recycled ideas and nowhere near the leading edge of thought. The moment you hit your mid 30s or ~15 years experience, motivation is driven by two aspects:

1. what hurt you badly in the last 15 years

2. which things have already been done but have been reinvented an repackaged differently.

I've seen all these before in other incarnations.

Re: Ask HN: I am 30+ and bored with life and the software industry, what do I do?

#84

Post by jacquesm » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 7:46 AM UTC

Take a break. 6 Months, a year, however long. In that time do physical work, don't work with your head. Look back at the end of your break and decide what you want to do. For perspective you need distance.

Re: Ask HN: I am 30+ and bored with life and the software industry, what do I do?

#85

Post by jacquesm » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 7:47 AM UTC

meric wrote: post #50

ChuckMcM wrote: post #6

It sounds a lot like burnout, that happens when you've worked really hard to achieve something which, after achieving it, you come to realize wasn't all that important to you personally. It can really take a toll on you mentally. It can also be something of an intra-life crisis. For some reason 34 hit me really hard. I think part of it was that suddenly I knew that there was some things that I had considered "somethi…

You can save up $200,000 for Virgin Galactic, it has some delays and problems but I think it will be ready in time for you to experience being an astronaut. (Training, preparation, take off, landing, and telling stories about it). If it's what you want to experience, go for it. If not Virgin Galactic there will be another company.

Space tourist != astronaut, if they will ever deliver. Roughly like being a bus passenger is not the same as being a busdriver.

Re: Ask HN: I am 30+ and bored with life and the software industry, what do I do?

#86

Post by th4t » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 7:52 AM UTC

How about switching your focus from tech to business? There is a great talk [1] by Jason Cohen, that might inspire you to find joy in looking at the craft from a different angle. Otherwise, in "Start Small Stay Small" [2] Rob Wailing addresses your exact issue in one of the first chapters - after a while you start "topping out" and moving from tech to tech feels like rehashing. That's one of the reasons he lists for making the switch from dev to entrepreneur. Maybe give it a read.

[1] https://vimeo.com/74338272

[2] http://www.amazon.de/Start-Small-Stay-Developers-Launching/d...

Re: Ask HN: I am 30+ and bored with life and the software industry, what do I do?

#87

Post by bprater » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 7:53 AM UTC

zippy786 wrote: post #59

yankoff wrote: post #22

Try diving deeper into real CS, there is the entire world of things that can revive your passion. If you mainly were focused on building CRUD apps and websites it's not surprising to get bored and burned out. Get out of your typical routines and try finding challenging stuff to do. Some ideas: * Figure out how to write AI for games. A simple example would be, how to write a bot that finds shortest path out of labyrin…

I used to love low-level graphics programming (drawing polygons, fractals), closely worked with people doing kernel stuff, have a CS degree in Machine learning, doing infosec for fun and have dealt with quite a bit of distributed/system/database stuff to scale. After some time, these challenging stuff have the same problem, being mundane. Specially constraint of work environment and people you have to deal with. Plus…

How does someone like John Carmack continue to find passionate areas of interest for himself? He's still painting pixels on a screen, but he seems to continue to explore parts of his programming palette that excite him -- most recently, Occulus Rift. If you are truly not feeling inspired for anything programmatic, maybe it's best to take some time off and wait for new inspiration to strike.

Re: Ask HN: I am 30+ and bored with life and the software industry, what do I do?

#88

Post by AdieuToLogic » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 7:53 AM UTC

youngButEager wrote: post #51

Invest in Real Estate. Period. I've made million$ in Silicon Valley property. I bought a bank-owned, decrepit 9-unit apartment building just 2 years out of college. Making huge monthly deposits into savings/brokerage account is exciting stuff. Reason I mention this -- RE save my arse when I reached your level. Easily replaced the coding income, even though I was consulting in my last few years for $120 to $400 per ho…

Glad you shared your monetary success in real estate, but how does that have anything to do with the OP's question?

> I have friends who could not get hired in their 40s.

In the software development field, this is just plain BS. Of course, your friends "who could not get hired in their 40s" may not be in software development. My apologies if interpreting your statement led me to an invalid conclusion.

Re: Ask HN: I am 30+ and bored with life and the software industry, what do I do?

#89

Post by batou » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 7:54 AM UTC

Bahamut wrote: post #82

batou wrote: post #70

I'm there. I decided one day that it's just a job and found what I really wanted to do. So I'm reading maths and physics now. The joy in my life is actually from taking things to pieces and seeing how they work and there is plenty of that there. For more of being with you, my company drank the microservices kool aid. Rather than concentrate on building a quality product we've got buzzword soaked boiled shit that does…

I'm sort of in the same place, but I made a choice for less income (compared to the open market at least - still more than my last position) for less over 40 hour work weeks. I don't mind when a company I join has some awful code - it sucks to work with at first, but it leaves me never bored since I can make my mark improving it and learn while I am at it. I work to schedule fixes to go along with feature development…

Yep. I decided to take the piss as much as possible.

I wanted the income and less hours and demanded it. They said no, so I automated most of my responsibilities and do a 25-30 hour week anyway. I work from home and most of my job is thinking and that's non-deterministic.

You only live once (I shudder saying that but it's true).

Re: Ask HN: I am 30+ and bored with life and the software industry, what do I do?

#90

Post by ak39 » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 7:56 AM UTC

yankoff wrote: post #22

Try diving deeper into real CS, there is the entire world of things that can revive your passion. If you mainly were focused on building CRUD apps and websites it's not surprising to get bored and burned out. Get out of your typical routines and try finding challenging stuff to do. Some ideas: * Figure out how to write AI for games. A simple example would be, how to write a bot that finds shortest path out of labyrin…

An Ode to "CRUD" Apps:

There's nothing unexciting or less complicated or challenging about producing good CRUD [sic] applications.

I don't understand the industry cynicism towards producing good quality "bread and butter" software for any vertical market.

It takes years of experience to learn good (relational) data modeling.

It takes years of dedicated attention to assemble tried, tested and efficient user interface designs that your user community loves to use on a daily basis. User interface design (and yes, we are talking about your "boring" invoice capture screens here) may seem easy at first glance to be dismissed as unexciting, but almost every real world example is a challenge that requires creative thinking. Many are implemented badly.

It takes hard knocks experience to add gems of strategies to your repertoire of "boring" reporting solutions. Producing industrial volumes "TPS reports" may sound boring, but architecting reliable and efficient reporting solutions is hardly easy.

Another challenge of the "1 inch deep and 1 mile wide" mental specter associated with "CRUD" apps is managing the challenge of excatly that - the 1 mile wide sprawl. Each CRUD app may be simple and boring on its own, but how do you manage several of them on one site such that each one not only operates efficiently with its own specialisation but also as an integrated whole with others? These are not simple or by any means boring.

I love CRUD apps. I love seeing different CRUD apps in specialised domains and how similar concepts of the CRUD world manage to solve specialised needs of a particular niche.

Fascinating.

:-)