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Do you ever feel like you've had enough of working in the IT industry?

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Re: Do you ever feel like you've had enough of working in the IT industry?

#31

Post by enasterosophes »

Yep, absolutely. I share the first-hand experience of this paradox: it's good to work on something you feel passionate about, yet at the same time working on something is a surefire way to kill your passion for it.

I'll probably be stuck doing tech forever, because I'm good at it, and although I feel bored and exasperated with the bullshit, I wouldn't go so far as to say I hate it. There are worse ways to keep a roof over your head and food on the table. Tech is reliable like that.

Still, the last year or so I've started putting more effort into learning non-STEM skills like music and art. Things that don't involve staring at screens (which rules out writing, which I'm also okay at.)

While I doubt I could ever earn a living from such things, it's nice to have options. These pursuits also provide an avenue for meeting people who don't feel the need to fill every conversation with inane debates about the same old cybersecurity issues, enterprise vs FOSS, text editor and other workflow holy wars, and what steaming piles of tech stacks are "cool" this year.

Re: Do you ever feel like you've had enough of working in the IT industry?

#32

Post by GianFabien »

Yes, about once a week.

I still enjoy the core technology. But as a contractor I constantly come across the most incomprehensible mashups of technologies. Managers buy stuff from the pushiest salesperson and then demand the technical team to make it work. There also seems to be a tendency to define the budget and deadline before the requirements are even gathered, documented and understood.

Re: Do you ever feel like you've had enough of working in the IT industry?

#33

Post by mxuribe »

SeanAnderson wrote: post #14

I've found that the further away I get from "hacky, simple, works" scripts that wow the uninformed the less I enjoy my work. I wrote a Greenhouse bookmarklet for our Head of People a while back. All it did was click buttons, poll the page for content, and copy/paste some text. It took me two hours. It was such a magical experience hopping on a call, demoing the bookmarklet, and being told I'd saved someone tens of ho…

> ...I've found that the further away I get from "hacky, simple, works" scripts that wow the uninformed the less I enjoy my work...Over time, I learned to tolerate all the BS that gets in the way of making magic happen in exchange for an ever-growing paycheck. Each step along the way made sense, but, upon reflection, the magic has been incrementally bled out from my passion...

Wow, its like you just wrote the intro to a chapter in my life!

Re: Do you ever feel like you've had enough of working in the IT industry?

#34

Post by rsj_hn »

altacc wrote: post #28
xwdv wrote: post #11

> I could focus on my current hobbies and start a business based on those. Not because of money, but because I'm looking for that excitement again. A life without money while slowly killing your hobbies is an interesting way to chase excitement I guess.

Indeed. I know quite a few people who turned their passions into jobs and ended up not enjoying their job or passion anymore. Familiarity breeds contempt, or just boredom. I ignore the trite 'Do a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life' and recognise that jobs are complex and have their ups and downs and for most people the activities you love are outside of work and that's OK.

The (always insightful) Joel Spolsky discusses this in his essay "The Developer Abstraction Layer"

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/04/11/the-development-ab...

Bottom line, what is necessary for a business to run requires a lot more infrastructure that you, as a developer, will not enjoy maintaining. Here, I'm not talking about infrastructure just in the sense of what Heroku gives you, but marketing, billing, dealing with customers, keeping track of bug fixes, release engineering work, etc.

Re: Do you ever feel like you've had enough of working in the IT industry?

#35

Post by mxuribe »

smcleod wrote: post #17

May I ask: - How is your happiness and your energy levels outside of work? - How is your cognitive performance at work? (Can you focus, are your thoughts 'foggy', do you have any issues working out complex tasks/solutions that you used to solve without issue etc....) - Are you empowered in your job/role/team to make changes / improvements as you see fit, without being significantly limited or blocked by others? -- I'…

As @flockonus noted, i'm also curious how you solved your cognition issue. If you're comfortable sharing, would love to learn!

Re: Do you ever feel like you've had enough of working in the IT industry?

#37

Post by kcartlidge »

> I feel like I've lost that passion I had for technology. I don't feel like working in the industry anymore.

I had that about a decade into my career, and left tech.

Gave everything up and joined a community, living 4 years with no personal possessions. Went homeless for a stint. Spent a while living in a room empty but for a mattress on the floor, in a house of drugs and ex-cons. Helped others on the streets through cold turkey.

Tried my hand farming (fruit, veg, chickens, pigs etc). Did a stint pricing up new kitchens. Worked a trade sales counter at a builder's merchant. Ran fleets of delivery vehicles. Did door-to-door sales. Loaded trucks. Drove a forklift in warehouses.

Ran an overnight support service for an ISP in the days of CDs with AOL and Demon Internet software on them. Ran a nightshift call-centre for a startup telecoms company. Worked in a credit collections department.

Eventually I got back to where I started - in tech and with a fresh appreciation for it. It seems that everywhere I went and everything I did kept steering me back to my original passion. Unavoidably so. Decades later I'm still here and am daily grateful that I do work I can (mostly) enjoy.

As alluded to elsewhere in these threads, sometimes you just need a break from it all. Take the time to step away, then come back with a renewed perspective.

Re: Do you ever feel like you've had enough of working in the IT industry?

#38

Post by eep_social »

Yes. I burnt out of FAANG, took a funemployment break, worked as an automotive service tech for a while, and am now back in tech.

I returned with an appreciation for the flexibility and variety. Car work was varied but inflexible and the pay was terrible. I dabbled in other hobbies over the course of my break but in the end tech is the best overall way to support myself so I expect to stay. However, my next gig will be at a much, much smaller company because it keeps variety high and the ceo/founder/decider close.

To me it sounds like you have the mildest version of being burnt out. Have you introspected on why in particular you have arrived where you are? Projecting, was it a couple bad team fits? When were you most happy in your job? What were prevailing conditions? I realized that I need to run my life with Dunbar’s Number in mind or I risk othering my coworkers in ways that make me a kinda shitty peer. So I’m looking for smallish companies just starting to scale as my ideal work environment. What’s yours?

Edit: fixed a typo.

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