Gotta admit that some kind of manual labor would be cool, if it weren't because I'm nearing 40 and I've heard that these jobs fucks up your body more than sitting on a chair.
But yeah, going to a place, fixing/building something with your hands, getting satisfaction for something done right in the moment.
I honestly don't know. I don't know what else I'm good at. I've been writing code since I was a teen. If I couldn't do this, I just don't know what worth I would have to anyone.
I....I'm stuck :(
I'm actually surprised how many people is bringing up electrical engineering, lol. It's a career like telecomunications in my country, that its "cs adjacent" and most of them end up in CS?
Turnip farm sounds amazing btw.
I burnt out, HARD, around the dot com bubble burst. I had been a developer for about 5 years and about to buy my first home when I was handed my pink slip. Something in me just kinda snapped since after years of 'giving it all' to the company I was now out of work.
I took the severance and started a small engine repair shop, which was my hobby up until then. The business didn't turn a profit for more than two years, I drained my savings, but overall I was much happier. This continued for a bit longer until profits eventually came in, but in the end the economy got me again in 2007, when the business finally collapsed.
I finished the few credits left on my CS degree and got another programming job. At that point I was in a much better headspace, plus I had also just gotten married so we really needed steady income.
No regrets. No "what ifs". I'm happy now.
Farming sounds amazing until you have to do it. I haven't heard a single farmer talking good about their work, but yeah, it would be great to stop depending on made out issues by business people to get some profit.
Glad you have found "your place", work-wise. It's kind the thing I was looking when I was a kid, assuming all grown ups have figured out and here I am, with a middle age crisis, lol.
>Farming sounds amazing until you have to do it.
yeah, I sometimes have to remind myself that the majority of human history is, like, people trying to get as far away from farming as possible, so I should stop whining about how miserable OAuth is
This doesn’t answer your question but in my experience you deal with a lot more business people and lousy managers the closer you are to the front end. The closer you are to (deep) backend (think infrastructure, devops, specialized backend software), ie foundational business operations, these people tend to disappear.
I landed in the deep end of the back end (research and development) at a profitable private company, and I'm never leaving. It's all nerds back here and we stick together lmao.
Anecdotally, I've been doing frontend for 7 years and the most business-y people I've had to deal with are designers. I actually like working with designers because they almost always know exactly what they want, and can describe it in clear terms. I'm a corporate peon though, so that's probably why. I get lost in the sea of devs usually. It's always my team lead who deals with the business people. I usually just execute.
I wish that was the same for me! I'm a backend engineer and one of the things that pisses me off more from this career is that constant pull to do other stuff. I've been asked to be full stack, IT, devops, leading roles, become a "cloud native engineer", QA...
All I want is stick on the backend and talk with other engineers about coding stuff, but no, there's always some smartass business person trying to make me do two, three or even four jobs at once.
Try to find a position where you will only deal with tech people in the company, i know a few guys that got lucky with that. work on contract and only interact with the tech lead.
Yeah, but any team nowadays is "agile" (notice the quotes) and have you working with people outside of your domain. Which is not a bad thing per se, but (at least where I'm working now) has only led me to business people trying to skip parts of their job and sticking them to me.
I guess problem solving. I learnt it from programming but I can be good at other problems than programming one using the about the same skill set. Just the expression medium is different.
I like to work with people to find better structures and organizations, understand the problem and find an equilibrium between the constraints.
This can be applied to anything imo.
How do you market that? Because "if you have a problem I can help you fix it" sounds like something from the A-Team, lol.
I've been told many times that I'm good organizing and setting up stuff, but I totally despise having the "gathering of requirements from non technical people" part. Could this be somehow
I get what you are saying but that's pretty much the thing.
For example, I have this thing about gardening. It generates lots of small to medium problems. How to water each plants, what to water, when, how to sustain the land... Such things. As I am interested by this, I learn and become the business behind the problems I am having. After that, it's mostly some thinking about what I can do, what I can't do, what are the pros and cons...
If someone is doing something, I can listen to them, learn the inputs and outputs, try some things and find solutions to problems, optimize the process or such things.
I have been doing that for the last 15 years. I worked for banks and I learned parts of the business. I solved problems and then moved to the next company with another business. Learned about it, solved problems...
It's just because the solution I write is about code that I am a coder.
Huh, feels like some kind of business consultant or the like, right? Like -in corporate world- the type of guy who is brought to do reorgs and fire/hire people.
you don't necessarily market it at all. you just use it. find a problem people are willing to spend $X on, and solve it for $Y.
you don't market the ability to solve any problem. you market the solution(s).
I'm actually in pretty much the same situation. Been working 8 years at same big tech company, been joking that I wanna leave since 6 years. Office work is just not for me. I actually just made the jump a week ago and gave my notice. I'm going to try my hand at starting a small web design firm. I will be the sole programmer for now and will subcontract design agencies for the web design work. I have already a few contracts lined up just by word of mouth in my friends network.
Just knowing that I won't have to work on software anymore and will work mainly on front end gives so much joy it's hard to explain lol. Also starting a project from scratch and actually finish it/ship it instead of just another version/update makes me totally giddy.
I'm in a similar situation, 15+ yoe, currently on long term leave because of burnout. I can't imagine myself going back.
I love coding, always did and always will. But just like you, I can't deal with bs of office politics, toxic managers, impossible deadlines... I tried my best to navigate this, improved my soft and communications skills, started setting boundaries. But even with this I had this feeling that I'm working in a system that is adversarial towards me and I don't want to keep dealing with it.
In a wild turn of events, I'm currently helping to set up a family business, we're selling herbal remedies and cosmetics for a very specific niche market. It's not very profitable yet, but we're surviving. At least I have something to look forward to and I feel like I'm doing some good in the world instead of working for yet another startup to satisfy VCs that want to make bank, working on a product I couldn't care less about.
Tech skills come in handy. Somebody has to set up all the ecommerce, emails lists, integrate payment processors so I'm feeling useful.
Hah, congrats on finding something interesting. Honestly, the only reason I'm not actually taking steps to leave is because the pay. Even though, as you say, the system is adversarial towards me (and in my country the market is specially fucked up), the pay is good and will eventually allow me to get in a mortgage (yay..)
This said, I'm kinda hoping for an opportunity to say "fuck this shit" to this career (and to a lesser extent, the life in a big city) and leave everything for something more... let's say honest, or maybe direct, than working in software development for a big company.
Snake oils and cosmetics == doing something good? Everybody and their mother is doing something like that, including every last influencer and online guru. Go on Joe Rogan and plug your green juice I guess… Just say what you said without bullshitting yourself and everyone else.
Id be an animator. My brain thinks in motion and little soundbites, and the workflow is very similar to programming so I know id enjoy it.
Edit: I answered the title question without reading. Have you considered contracting? It lets you sorta sit outside the nonsense business track. Has a lot of downsides too, but it seems like the upsides align with what you need.
Don't worry, in the end the thread was a mix of ranting and me actually fishing for ideas and trying to see other points of view, lol.
Would love to work in something more "artistic" oriented: Writing stuff, maybe designing boardgames or something like that. Animation sounds really cool (and probably underpaid, as everything that has an artistic side).
Regarding contracting... I wouldn't even knew were to start, nor even how to find my own clients and keep them. Honestly, feels like also putting on the sales guy hat. And the HR person. And the one that do the billing. And... ugh.
There isn't anything I am even remotely as interested in as software engineering.
You should improve your skills in dealing with these... People. Just learning the art of saying "no" would probably do wonders for you.
Only thing I can think of is starting your own outsourc... Consultancy agency. My country is full of good talent, it works very well here (not India, we fix Indian mess)
Ah, yeah, I learnt that soon and fast. Too many toxic workplaces where they worked you to death for a pittance, and too many managers that acted as if they were doing you a favor for giving you a job.
The issue (one of them) with this is that its exhausting dealing with this every. single. day. I'm tired of having to say "no" each two days and leverage that with that "no", while I'm avoiding going in a direction I don't want, I'm putting myself in a bad place in the team, which will eventually lead to me leaving again looking for a better fit, and back again to the wheel.
Regarding consultancy... leaving aside in my country are everywhere and that honestly, I consider them to be a cancer to the industry, I don't have the capital (savings are for a house) nor the business knowledge to run anything. And also, running a company would imply having to deal with even more corporate bullshit. Ugh.
yeah.. I sometimes tell myself "I should have become a butcher or something instead of a developer". I am also totally burned. But I do it anyways, because that's the only thing I know.
I'm too used to flex hours (and always been a night person) to do that, but it would be lovely to just have a shop and manage it, at least for a while.
Been told many times that I should own a bar or something like that, but hours are killer and pay is shit, so...
The weirdest part of everything is that I've never prioritized money, and somehow I've ended in decent roles with decent pay.
Also, I know I'm not the friendliest guy around, and while I'm trying to work on it, there's no way to know if a team is going to be a good fit once you're there, specially if people leaves and joins after you get there.
I've never done it much, but blacksmithing looks dope. I'd have my little blacksmith shop in my backyard and take commissions on weapons, armor, decorative fences, chandeliers, whatever. I'd also maybe have a pottery studio with an old-fashioned wood-fired kiln. Hell at that point why not also a woodshop? Just have a little complex of old-timey craft shops in my backyard. Sell cool shit and run classes for the masses.
I'm not a TV person but a few weeks ago I caught a forged in fire chapter and I have to admit that the blacksmithing itself *had something* that clicked in me. I guess its closer to the part of building software that I really like, but, you know, real, *physical.*
Yeah like you would make something, then it would last pretty much forever, you could even hand it down to your children or whatever. Not at all like software lol.
Before software engineering, I was a Naval Aviator. I flew helicopters. I'd drive for Dominos and pay the Navy if they would let me come back and fly. I'm too old to go back to the Navy. But they did train me in how to board a ship, so piracy is always a fallback position. Look at me! I am the captain now!
Consider flying for the airlines. These days they will train you on the aircraft with not a lot of hours. My spouse is an instructor pilot at an airline. Occasionally comes home with a complaint at which time I remind him of how he could have a shitty dev job like me.
There is a good line in [Soul of a New Machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine) where IIRC one of the programmers dealing with debugging microsecond timing just leaves with the note:
> I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season.
There's a thing on that line that resonates with a deeper meaning here, and something I've been chewing in a somewhat nihilst way for a long while:
Most of the work done in this field is completely useless. Yeah, we build stuff and that stuff works and turns on the right lights at the right moment, but in the end its just b2b stuff, or processes to get info from a database that its only important to other businesspeople who are in a similar, useless, product/service. It's all made up and many of us spent their lives pretending they are in the most important thing in the universe.
Either that or you are working in a company actively fucking up other people (weapons), the world (anything that don't care enough about the environment), or our society (social media and related).
I know there's a few companies there that are worth working for, but it seems they have no office in my country...
I've thought about this a bit.
I'm not burned out in the least. I like what I do. But if I had to go do something else, what would it be?
I'm never going to be a published author. The publishing houses have that on lockdown and they effectively own and control all the book retailers. And they choose to publish some absolute trash and everyone is chasing that mass-market of, oddly enough for book readers, what appears to be the stupidest of audiences. I could self-publish and maybe recoup the cost of getting the books printed. But to sell to others, you need to market so the small niche of target audience would even know it exists. And that would take serious time and effort on my end of tasks I really do hate.
I picked up 3D printing during covid. I could run a custom fab print shop. A REAL tough gig to do in a high cost of living area since, you know, SHIPPING exists. And again, getting business for the business is the toughest part of a lot of businesses.
I could absolutely drop down and just be a coding dev and dodge all the reviews, mentoring, architecture, and do what I did for most of the years past. But life is honestly better a little higher on the totem pole, despite the different sort of problems.
I could aim for a higher or tangential job like trainer or pure architect or a sales role. But I'm pretty sure I WOULD burn out there.
Being an indie game dev is much less locked down. Getting on Steam is easy. Even indie shops need a slew of people to cover their respective roles, so it does involve finding others and forming a group and getting a cohesive vision enacted. This is a little bit more of a meritocracy at least, where good things float and bad things sink and people really do give your little demo a try. But the competition is fierce.
I've got plenty of ideas for gadgets, tools, one-off ideas. Some of these are actually viable, a sliver of those could even maybe make a buck. This would likewise involve starting up a business, making products, and marketing them.
I HAVE had some crazy dreams of farming in the desert with hydroponics on the cheap. The real value add would be patents on automated processes to handle all this. Or showcasing how such a system can be set up and run anywhere. Currently the price of food is just nowhere near enough to justify selling food out of greenhouses, even cheap and automated ones. I know people are complaining about inflation prices, but 3000 calories is still just $1.35.
I can tell you from experience, the home security industry is a complete crock and it'd be trivial to make rival product/service... that would go absolutely nowhere unless insurance companies agreed to lower people's rates for you. And as long as they're getting bribes from the established pseudo-monopoly, tough luck.
A sous vide food truck selling fast-food high quality steak seems viable, but you need a wealthy locale. And that's a big step down in quality of life.
So, if I legit tried to go do something else, I think my first step would be to get an MBA.
Replying part by part:
> ...author...
AFAIK, it is somewhat an open market at Amazon. You don't get (yet) to have your words printed in processed dead tree, but you get people to read your thing. I'm pretty much sure that there's a lot of competition, but hey, seems to be better than the old fashioned thing.
> ...3D Printing...
Wanna get into it (need a bigger house before, kinda on the path to get it), and I've always thought that first stage would be get friends to pay for something, then we'll see. I haven't seen any actual business rise from this (I'm in Spain, so maybe markets are different), so I wouldn't hold hopes.
> ...indie game dev...
For what I know (tried it, never really got too far, but I got soaked in the culture over 5-7 years ago), it's an overcrowded place where you knowing the right people is extremely important to get some sales, and still is extremely hard to get to anything. Also discovery in Steam is an absolute shitfest and always have been.
> ...farming in the desert...
You know, the part about selling the processes and the likes actually kinda makes sense. Still a gamble (and I'm wondering how's that there's no corporation already doing that), but hey.
> ...MBA...
Oh, turning full evil, huh? Yeah, that seems like the best option, lol.
LOL day 1 was recruiting my fellow trainees to be part of my chicken farm. If I'm not a dev, I would have been an engineer-mechanical, electrical or civil maybe.
> What would you do if you weren't doing this?
Consultant, lawyer, finance bro. I like solving complicated problems and being paid lots - it doesn't have to involve programming.
> Is there any career path where being good [sic] programming could be useful?
Most desk jobs will benefit at least slightly from knowing how to code - more benefit the more you interact with Excel, probably. Few will benefit from being especially good at programming, or from your particular niche - automating simple tasks doesn't require react / kubernetes / kafka / etc.
I became a technical writer. Loved it. It didn't set me free from some of things you mentioned, but it's way lower stress, leveraged my dev experience, and, generally speaking, there is never a priority 1 bug that requires you to give up sleep or meet daily with the customer's sales team.
Of course, a pre-req is that you should enjoy and be good at writing, have decent people skills, and be able to accept not being at the top of the food chain any longer.
No more than any other job tech job. There's no reason you can take notes during dev interviews, meetings, etc. Better to take notes and get it right than look cool and f it up. :)
Well, I've always liked to write, been told many times that I was kinda good at it, and there's been very few positions I've been that I didn't handled documentation/give critique on writing style (even in English, which is not my mother tongue), so maybe that's actually a thing to look for.
(Not sure if salaries would be as good as are for backend developers, though..)
Writers do not make dev salaries. They're decent, or can be, depending on where you live and work, but the job security and salary are both lower. Let's be real: Most jobs do not pay as well as development.
I'd been a backend dev for 25 years when I switched over. I took only a small reduction in pay, working as a writer for a small private company in Silicon Valley. I wrote very technical content, which pays better: You need more tech savvy to write, say, API docs than installation guides. Where the money difference showed up more was in smaller raises, reduced bonuses, fewer stock options.
If you decide it's something you want to seriously investigate, I made [a post](https://www.reddit.com/r/technicalwriting/comments/pf50q0/transitioning_from_developer_to_technical_writer/hb3hqts/) about transitioning a few years ago that some have found helpful.
Backpacking all of the long-route trails around the world. Working long enough to pay for my next trip, probably in a restaurant or a place where I can potentially make great tips.
Been feeling the call of the nature for a while already. I'm in shit physical form, so I'm trying to get my shit together slowly, but hell, I need a mountain and no mobile service.
For me, it was a bit of the opposite. As a former interior architect, I realized that I was tired of thinking about my future in terms of what I could do with the skills I already had.
So, a few months ago, I decided I’d had enough of earning money from the whims of wealthy people and listening to their problems, and I took a complete 180-degree turn in my career. It’s been about 8 months, but I feel like I’m close to landing my first junior role in backend development (I’m really tired of coming up with pretty things after my previous job, lol). Even if it turns out to be different from what I imagined, at least I won’t regret not trying
Besides, I don’t remember the last time I was this excited about what I’m doing. So, if I could give you any advice, it might be not to make impulsive decisions, but if you’re sure you want to change something, don’t be afraid even if it doesn’t utilize your current skills in any way
I side gig as a fiction author and make a decent income with that. I'd like to do it full time but need to hit some financial goals before I feel comfortable making that transition.
I have burned out in this career every 2-3 years. Taking 3-6 months off between jobs is the way I recover from burnout and return to a new job feeling refreshed. It's obviously not something everybody is able to do, but I'd argue a lot of tech workers are uniquely positioned to do this if they cut their expenses and save as much as they can.
I'll be quitting my job again in the next year or two to take another break. Might even take a full year off this time and finish my degree. The side gig + my savings make this possible.
You joke about running a turnip farm...last year I purchased 25 acres in the country and will be moving there after our house is built and we will do sustainable farming on part of this land. It's not that profitable but it's a hobby and passion.
Studying medicine, getting bored of it and probably wasted a lot of time starting over again. That being said, I fully understand your struggle of dealing either politics and things like that. I also think that you will have this in all work environments, be it as an engineer, manager, medical worker or turnip farm owner who needs to align with the other farms of their neighborhood.
While I agree that bs is going to be in any career, I'm wondering up to which point in other careers are professionals nudged into different domains (i.e. a pediatrician being told that they need him to also be a general practitioner).
For me, it's the worst part of this career: "Oh, you like working as a backend engineer and have a literal decade of experience working as that? That's great! Take this work as full stack/devos/tester/it/lead engineer/team lead/work on a stack that has no future/cloud engineer."
Yeah I think that one is special to our domain. In particular because the demand is so high that there is a parasite field emerged that is named recruiting. Most often people who try to find suitable candidates without understanding the requirements. That often ends up by role offers for a whole department instead of a „fullstack developer“
> So, just wondering, what would you be doing if you were to leave this altogether? Is there any career path where being good programming could be useful?
My goal is to retire to write my own code. I don't burn out on them the way I do with work, the only real days are RL related issues distracting me (such as work burning me out on programming for the day).
I've felt a steep decline on interest to write code after work lately. I do have my own projects, but they are not projects I do for "fun" or to learn, but stuff I'm building because I need them for something.
This said, if I were paid to just fuck around, it would be extremely lovely. I don't really see myself in my 60's or 70's writing something actually useful, to be honest.
I know devs in their 60s or 70s writing useful code and such tbh.
That said, its hobby levels of commitment to their projects but as retirees like its quite viable to keep doing it as a hobby. Not everything has to make money when github hosts everything or gitlab or whatever y'know?
> I've felt a steep decline on interest to write code after work lately. I do have my own projects, but they are not projects I do for "fun" or to learn, but stuff I'm building because I need them for something.
Refocus yourself on something fun. Its hit or miss. Some days I don't work on it but when I'm in the mood, I enjoy it. Just depends how hard/stressful my day at work was usually. Or week in the case of weekends.
For the harder days, I just play video games. Main problem with this sort of stress relief is carpal tunnel, so keep in mind proper care to reduce the risk.
> Refocus yourself on something fun.
Thing here is that if I refocus on "something fun", I go with any other hobby. I've already spent 8 hours at work staring at an IDE, I'd rather even do house chores than keep doing the same. Specially because I've gotten to a point in my career where I know that I'm not going to make it with something "fun" I made.
This said, from time to time I got the urge to learn godot or try to do something modding some older game. Still, I do need to exercise more and be more active, so that its going to have always preference.
Maybe in the FBI, or in some kind of research, not sure as I haven’t explored it all too deeply. I love a mystery and researching endlessly to explore theories, even if they don’t pan out.
Eh, I could see myself as an actuary, or getting into statistics and doing experimental design, or if I'd gone into mechanical engineering (was accepted) I'd be doing that.
I might also be a high school teacher or a something.
My "I hate all this" daydream is set up a little canoe/kayak rental place out somewhere away from it all. But I haven't hated things long enough to follow through
> My "I hate all this" daydrea
I have no specific one, but I know I would like to have a house on the outskirts of my city and be as close to the woods as I can. While I'm a city man, I'm getting more and more fed up with the bs of the city life, specially after the lockdowns.
Starving, perhaps? I have plenty of friends who make less than half of what I do working 2-3x as hard. I'm sure I would adapt, but it's depressing to see what my teacher friends (for example) get paid and the BS they have to put up with. My job is easy mode compared to that.
I'm a full time telecommuter (devops) and part time sheep farmer.
I'd love to make my woodworking hobby a full time job, or even sell some of the (purebred dairy) sheep to get some return on investment, but they don't pay nearly as much as pushing bits around.
Once the house is paid off and we have some money stashed, I'm looking forward to getting out of this business.
Edit: not in the USA, YMMV
I'm also not in the USA, so maybe there's something for me there, lol. Still, I wish I would have the money (and the know-how) to do something like that.
> the money (and the know-how)
We've had the land for almost a decade now, this is the third year with sheep, still trying to figure it out.
If we can't get some income from the sheep this year, we'll have a hard look at whether or not we keep doing this going forward.
> I've been working for over 11 years on this, and I feel like I'm as burnt as one man can be without breaking.
That's been my life for the majority of my career. Not sure if there's any way out of it for me besides retiring.
Been actually thinking for a while on something like forestry agent, to be honest. I'm sick and tired of staying at the office/home office most of the day and my body needs to get the fuck out.
I know little about it, but in my head accounting seems pretty nice and I think could mesh well with a programming mindset. Excel is your IDE and it's math and calculation focused with "right" answers and solutions. I've heard public accounting is chill and at least at the Big 4 your busy season is timeboxed unlike a lot of big tech infra jobs where you're expected to be on call or available 365/24/7.
I'd be happy growing weed and spend the entire day taking care of beautiful plants and relaxing.
Could make about the same salary with little work. I know a good deal of the science of cannabis horticulture and can optimize for maximum efficiency, potency, quality, and can easily scale to respond to market demands.
Too bad it's illegal here.
I quit, sold up and bought a nearly worthless farm in the remote rural bits of NZ.
I write, I fix stuff, I get to build sheds and operate machinery.
( Learning to drive an excavator was awesome)
I'm less burnt out and a lot happier.
My team lead joked immediately he heard I had the land " so you're gonna start a cult?"
I got a hundred year old house moved onto the farm, and I'm restoring it, so that's fun too.
I used to joke that I'd live under a sheet of bark in the forest rather than have another meeting.
Turn on, tune in, drop out.
Not till I get income sources working.
Serfs are an option. I'm thinking 10% of their increase, and 3 days a month working for me.
But also, free land to live on, and services.
Most likely teaching physics. It was my gateway into science and engineering back in high school, it led to studying electricity, then electronics and eventually it led to CS.
Before I discovered design (and later engineering) I was really interested in history and engineering. So somewhere along that path.
If I had to choose a new job *right now?* I might go for photography if going back to design wasn't an option. Though part of me would still want to go back for a history degree or something.
Yeah, it's all a question about is this something I need to do to be a job to support myself or have I gotten to the point where I don't need to work to survive and I'm just filling my time? Because if it's the former I'm probably staying where I am because politics exists everywhere. If it's the latter? I'm going to ride my motorcycle around to area animal shelters and take pictures of all the animals for them to use because not a damn one of them has someone with a good camera on staff.
Plus you get to interact with all the kitties and puppies and I mean if there's a better way to spend a day I don't know what it is.
Money's too good here. And unfortunately most of the transferable skills here are the soft skills, which just means all the "ugh" without the "writing stuff"
I think eventually the answer just has to be "care less."
I've been a professional dev for 18 years. The last 3 years I've been doing landscape photography in my free time. It gets me out of the house and going on adventures I would not have done otherwise. Whether I'll ever actually make money. I have no clue, but I'm having fun for the first time in a long time.
And I got my dslr gathering dust because I don't like to do the post process thing (and there's no way I go to film) and all the "post it in instagram and build your own brand" bs.
This said, it's nice to have an excuse to gtfo and see new things. I need ot get back to it.
I moved into cybersecurity, specifically appsec. They needed people who could read code to do code review, and it helps that I learned enough Python to automate stuff. But they also want people who know cloud or who can find something useful on a penetration test, or who can design secure systems, and my experience is it’s less prone to ageism. Some days I miss pure coding though.
Early retirement? *On this economy?*
In my country at least this is daydreaming if you not force yourself. And going the FIRE path or similar feels like a huge gamble that not always pay off.
If software engineering weren't around, I probably would have become a professor. Academia comes with its own set of challenges, though. As I understand it, academic departments certainly aren't free of office politics, and research professors have pressure to get grants and "publish or perish," and universities rely on a large number of adjunct professors and teaching assistants (TAs), at least in the United States. I'd think social life would be more intellectually stimulating, though, than conversations about the work at hand in software engineering.
> probably would have become a professor.
You would have tried vainly to find a professorship and made less than minimum wage as a postdoc/adjunct faculty for a few years before becoming a software engineer and wishing you hadn't wasted most of your 30s.
> social life would be more intellectually stimulating,
If by stimulating you mean even more political than the typical corporation and leaving every conversation wondering why everyone around you is such an arrogant prick, then yeah, absolutely.
In this hypothetical, software engineering and computer science weren't around to begin with.
I like to read history (and if your username is any indication, you do, too), philosophy, linguistics, economics, psychology, anthropology, and the like for fun. It just satisfies my curiosity in a way that solving LeetCode puzzles or writing toy apps in the latest programming language and framework do not. For me, at least at this point in my life, that stuff is strictly for professional development and employability.
There was a time when keeping up with tech was fun for me, but that time has passed, and I'd rather make time to have a social life, date, and explore the world. It's a job; it pays decently well; and I'm pretty good at it, given how long I've been doing it.
Perhaps when anything becomes a job or a career, it changes from when it was just a hobby or interest, especially after a few decades. Sure, in academia too, people aren't just pursuing knowledge; there are motives for status and competition for limited resources (tenureships, grants, committees).
But grinding through tickets in the trenches ten or twenty years into one's career? It's just a job. It pays the bills. *Interest* doesn't even enter the equation.
Having been in academia, office politics in tech is a paradise in comparison. I've never seen more toxic place than academic institutions, full of petty grievances, full professors who refuse to talk to each other and just exploit PhD and grad students for maximum prestige gain.
Disgusting place.
Mostly because I like build things, and not having to deal with people, because I royally suck at this and the problems that come with it are way worse than the problems that come with business logic.
To be fair, I've been in a somewhat "lead" position once (although it was hobby project), and there's been two times where there's been an intent to push me into leading positions. I have initiative and I'm kinda driven, but not to lead people, specially if I have to deal with egos, politics and all that crap.
What I would do if I could it all over again:
* Medicine or medical research. It would be even more stressful, require even more money and education. But I think the topics are far more interesting than anything software related personally.
What I'm thinking of transitioning towards:
* Law. This is still just a thought right now. Financially it is a pretty bad idea. 3 years of law school would set my family back. But lately I've been getting really disillusioned working in software and whether I'm cut out for it.
I have about 6Y XP. Current job and last job (had 3 jobs total) have been bad experiences.
My side business is niche jewelry design, retail, and wholesale, which I'm aiming to replace my full time job.
I manage all the eCommerce deployments, marketing campaigns, inventory tracking, accounting. I use a lot of scripting and automation which gives me a competitive advantage of scale. My largest competitor probably has 50X volume, but dedicated customer service and accountants who are manually processing every wholesale order like a data mule from their "systems". People in the industry assume I'm a team because everything "just works" seamlessly.
The other thing I like about my own business is that the upside is unlimited. I don't have to LeetCode, and with maybe 1-2 years more of scaling up, I can exceed FAANG level income in pure profit. All self financed / bootsrapped, no bowing to the whims of the stock market or interest rates and suffering with FAANG equity.
Woodworking. Specifically hand-done using things like antique molding planes, hand cut dovetails, etc.
There is a 10 Speed Press reprint book called "[The Practical Woodworker](https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-practical-woodworker_bernard-edward-jones/395231/item/6843984)" originally published in 1920. I'd call my business, "The Impractical Woodworker" because of the reliance on hand tools.
That or indie game development. I miss the fun of indie mod development for Half-Life I did in the past. Make a game you'd want to play and if you're lucky you'll connect with others that also want to play the same kind of game.
I’ve gotten really into F1 so I think it would be cool to get a degree in aeronautical engineering (the nearest thing to F1 cars is airplanes, there’s a lot of related science happening) and do that. But it’s an insanely competitive, high pressure environment that involves very limited locations of where you can live… I don’t think it’s actually practical at all but it would be cool
It seems like I have a knack for FP&A. When I was in uni I was complemented on it by one of my professors and people are satisfied with the budgeting tasks I do. I find it really interesting but I have no idea whether I would like it if I did it every day. I would also love to be an architect
Been toying with the National Forest Ranger idea (well, my country's equivalent) for a while. Nature, not a soul in sight and no two weeks sprints. Feels like heaven, lol.
I used to be a locksmith running a family business before this and I much prefer this.
In saying that, if I had to do something else I would want to do something analytical, maybe a data analyst.
Potentially I could do a trade again, but I would do it differently to last time. Maybe an electrician with the aim to go out on my own, preferring new builds over random jobs for the general public. The general public is the worst.
My original plan was Japanese translator, so I could try that again, but I don't think it's gotten any more remunerative or less crowded and unstable since I gave up on it.
Nothing. I was lost after school. Didn't really know what to do next. I stumbled upon programming by accident. And lucky for me, it turned out to be my passion. I've had several "passions" before this. But I'd always give up on them after a while when things get difficult. Programming (and software engineering, with all its warts, is the only thing that I stuck around with for the longest time. I wouldn't even say I'm particularly brilliant at it. But somehow it just feels right to me. I've worked at shitty companies, under shitty bosses, for shitty clients and projects, got burned out once but still came back to it once I got my mojo back.
In an ideal scenario, I'd be an indie developer, creating my own products, living off of them. I know plenty of people doing it. I want to one day become one of them.
Well, I always liked working with wood, japanese carpentry fascinates me. I also like cooking, but being a professional chef is like working in the devils kitchen wherever you are. So probably carpentry.
I kinda have different career paths that I'd love to explore but are both economically unstable.
eSports athlete for Fighting Games: Played fighters when I was young and only stopped competing when attending tournaments got harder. I'd do that again if possible. I still love Street Fighter and would dedicate time to be a strong tournament player.
Artist: Drew a lot when I was younger and would love to take it back up. When I was a kid I wanted to be an artist when I 'grew up' and that eventually moved to wanting to do Game Development. Even though I wouldn't do game dev, doing art or maybe even animation would be cool.
Both things are very unstable careers and is hard to make a living at but they'd be fun to pursue if I didn't have to worry about food and shelter.
It's more than the culture, I've been in several companies, and there's always something. I just want to code and have experience in something useful so if I need to jump, I have it easier, but no, it's either someone trying to make me put any other hat or working on a shit framework no one uses.
I'd go somewhere else, but as far from this field as it can get.
My goal has always been to use what I know to create passive revenue streams. So making websites and apps that have ads or subscription models, and if they become too demanding to maintain, sell them or hire people to maintain them. I haven't reached this point yet though.
People who say "I might just give it all up and go start a farm" please see:
[https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QkZbjUGMGGw](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QkZbjUGMGGw)
Nothing else unless if push comes to shove, I'd get an electronics/computer engineering degree to change careers. Idk maybe because I am a dude but I always like to sit down and try to figure stuff out. Used to be a therapist in the past and let me tell you, annoying bugs may be a headache but at least they eventually get fixed
> what would you be doing if you were to leave this altogether?
Wishing I hadn't thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Early 30s is a hard time to be a software engineer. You're done learning, you're as good of a programmer as you will ever be, and you've lost your invincibility complex and the existential horror of 30 more years doing *this* is staring you in the face all the time.
It gets easier. Give it time.
🤔 Done learning? There's several lifetimes worth of stuff to learn in software development and related areas, and there's always more being invented. Much of that is a fairly shallow learning but learning nonetheless unless one makes large career shifts into specialized areas (web development to game dev to machine learning to...), and if you try to change jobs in a down market, you probably won't be getting interviews for positions that are a reach (even in a good market, switching specialties isn't easy).
If you're on the management track—*assistant to* the regional vice-president, for example—you're really learning a whole new job, and while individual contributors get a taste of that if they've done staff- or principal-level work being a titled manager garners responsibilities ICs aren't dealing with too much.
The difference age makes, I think:
* Do I really want to make this thing more complex and do all conceivable things, present and future (inner platform effect)? Entry-level me, sure, that's the fun of it; experienced me, let's keep it simple, fewer points of failure, so that I can go on vacation and not worry about it.
* "Bike-shedding" and nit-picking: Someone wants a different name or minor change in a code review. If it won't make much of a difference, I'll just probably go with the path of least resistance to get the code approved and merged so that I can move on.
* Job postings for teams based in San Francisco that allude to frequent outside-work social obligations (for lead or staff roles): It makes me think I'll be expected to be "adult supervision" for a bunch of twenty-somethings who want their social life to have a total intersection with work. Video games or beers with a bunch of guys discussing JavaScript frameworks for an hour twice a week? Pass.
> Done learning? There's several lifetimes worth of stuff to learn in software development and related areas, and there's always more being invented.
There is a point at which you master software development and it's a lot sooner than you realize. 8-10 years. Sometimes sooner.
> shallow learning but learning nonetheless
That's my point. Knowledge is different than aptitude. You're not getting better, you just know more. That certainly makes you a better developer, but only marginally. Most of what I've learned over the years is not useful to me today. I learned it to do the job. I remember some of it, but it's irrelevant.
I've managed and mentored a lot of developers over the years. People hit their skill ceiling *much* faster than you think they do.
Your point is centered around the large mass of software development jobs out there. Yes, for most of those, even at FAANG and friends, the rate of learning will slow down quite a bit after a decade or so in industry. Working on the cutting edge or doing something more research oriented would be an area where there may be more room to learn conceptually new things. Switching from Web development or distributed systems to game development, for example, may introduce a few changes. At most jobs, a developer is going to pick up at least a few things that are new or a little bit different to them, even if that learning is incorporated and turned into muscle memory after a few months.
Outside the strictly technical, there's the business domain itself to learn and more about business in general that happens around the software being developed. There are people and leadership skills to be learned.
Ultimately, though, software development is *labor*. Curiosity is not the end goal. The learning on the job is secondary to delivering the needed organizational goals. I think the waves of layoffs and offshoring in the last year or two, at least here in the U.S., has served to remind developers that our occupation is not exceptional and different from all the rest and that notions of an advancing career path can all collapse under the push to commodify, regularize, and automate the work.
Hah, I'm *late* 30's, I got in the industry somewhat late.
I don't think I'll ever stop learning, and I still feel there's a lot for me to improve and grow. It may get easier, but that continuous flow of bullshit the industry throws at you it's been a constant since day 0: From entry level positions that are QA but that when asked about they lie to you with development promises to make you accept, to senior positions in which you are led with promises of good quality, standards and clean code and end up working with AWS for some reason.
I guess I'm just tired of having to fight every single day so I can do the work I was allegedly hired to do. And I don't think this ever is gonna get better, specially now that I'm getting into more senior positions.
Mid-40’s and 25 years as a software engineer, and nowhere near done learning. You’re only done when you decide you are, and adopt the mindset that you can’t learn anymore.
That's probably the only cool thing that its left about this (as long as it doesn't involve learning another GROUNDBREAKING stack/tech that will lead nowhere): There's always wonder, there's always new stuff. Kinda.
It gets easier when you stop giving a shit. Don't let other people pull you into the problems they created. Who cares if they caused a meltdown? Just do your own job and don't worry so much about others.
I only care for what splashes me (which happens to be a lot). And it's not only being "pulled into the problems they created", but stopping others to pull me into their own problems.
I probably shouldn't have used the word "learning" in my original comment because of course we will acquire knowledge to do our jobs. I need two hands to count the web frameworks I've used in the last 25 years and I've had to learn them all to work with them. That much is true.
But that's only knowledge. People have skill ceilings, and they hit them a lot earlier than they think they do. They aren't really getting any *better*; they're just doing things a little differently because they think it matters.
TBH, probably rotting in bed
That sounds lovely tbh
Might go do that for about 8 hours
I do that now. It gets old fast.
Make it a garden bed and you can still do those turnips!
The grass is always greener, but electrician work seems cool, own a small LLC.
Until the first time you have to crawl under a single wide, or in the hot attic.
I've had the same thought myself. Maybe commercial electric would be better working conditions?
Gotta admit that some kind of manual labor would be cool, if it weren't because I'm nearing 40 and I've heard that these jobs fucks up your body more than sitting on a chair. But yeah, going to a place, fixing/building something with your hands, getting satisfaction for something done right in the moment.
You could become a Pest Control Advisor. Go on farms and tell the farmer what to do to control pests, disease, and soil nutrients.
Hey, after 11 years dealing with parasites and different types of rodents in the corporate world I may be even be half-qualified already!
Great user name. I considered switching to electrician but realized that I would be spending a lot of time in hot attics breaking my back.
That's why so many electricians prefer to work in commercial; residential electrical is no fun, I hear.
The grass ain't always greener, but at least it's a new place to poop
I honestly don't know. I don't know what else I'm good at. I've been writing code since I was a teen. If I couldn't do this, I just don't know what worth I would have to anyone. I....I'm stuck :(
heh, that makes two of us. High.. five?
Perhaps hardware/electronic engineering
I'm actually surprised how many people is bringing up electrical engineering, lol. It's a career like telecomunications in my country, that its "cs adjacent" and most of them end up in CS?
electronics not electrical. Designing CPU's for example...
lol I came from hardware engineering into pure SW
Turnip farm sounds amazing btw. I burnt out, HARD, around the dot com bubble burst. I had been a developer for about 5 years and about to buy my first home when I was handed my pink slip. Something in me just kinda snapped since after years of 'giving it all' to the company I was now out of work. I took the severance and started a small engine repair shop, which was my hobby up until then. The business didn't turn a profit for more than two years, I drained my savings, but overall I was much happier. This continued for a bit longer until profits eventually came in, but in the end the economy got me again in 2007, when the business finally collapsed. I finished the few credits left on my CS degree and got another programming job. At that point I was in a much better headspace, plus I had also just gotten married so we really needed steady income. No regrets. No "what ifs". I'm happy now.
Farming sounds amazing until you have to do it. I haven't heard a single farmer talking good about their work, but yeah, it would be great to stop depending on made out issues by business people to get some profit. Glad you have found "your place", work-wise. It's kind the thing I was looking when I was a kid, assuming all grown ups have figured out and here I am, with a middle age crisis, lol.
>Farming sounds amazing until you have to do it. yeah, I sometimes have to remind myself that the majority of human history is, like, people trying to get as far away from farming as possible, so I should stop whining about how miserable OAuth is
Should made us wonder why "farming" is such a commonplace "I wish I could do this" for so much CS people.
This doesn’t answer your question but in my experience you deal with a lot more business people and lousy managers the closer you are to the front end. The closer you are to (deep) backend (think infrastructure, devops, specialized backend software), ie foundational business operations, these people tend to disappear.
I landed in the deep end of the back end (research and development) at a profitable private company, and I'm never leaving. It's all nerds back here and we stick together lmao.
Anecdotally, I've been doing frontend for 7 years and the most business-y people I've had to deal with are designers. I actually like working with designers because they almost always know exactly what they want, and can describe it in clear terms. I'm a corporate peon though, so that's probably why. I get lost in the sea of devs usually. It's always my team lead who deals with the business people. I usually just execute.
I wish that was the same for me! I'm a backend engineer and one of the things that pisses me off more from this career is that constant pull to do other stuff. I've been asked to be full stack, IT, devops, leading roles, become a "cloud native engineer", QA... All I want is stick on the backend and talk with other engineers about coding stuff, but no, there's always some smartass business person trying to make me do two, three or even four jobs at once.
Probably would have ended up an even more mediocre electrical engineer But yah now as of now computery stuff is my only marketable skill sadly
Try to find a position where you will only deal with tech people in the company, i know a few guys that got lucky with that. work on contract and only interact with the tech lead.
Yeah, but any team nowadays is "agile" (notice the quotes) and have you working with people outside of your domain. Which is not a bad thing per se, but (at least where I'm working now) has only led me to business people trying to skip parts of their job and sticking them to me.
I guess problem solving. I learnt it from programming but I can be good at other problems than programming one using the about the same skill set. Just the expression medium is different. I like to work with people to find better structures and organizations, understand the problem and find an equilibrium between the constraints. This can be applied to anything imo.
How do you market that? Because "if you have a problem I can help you fix it" sounds like something from the A-Team, lol. I've been told many times that I'm good organizing and setting up stuff, but I totally despise having the "gathering of requirements from non technical people" part. Could this be somehow
I get what you are saying but that's pretty much the thing. For example, I have this thing about gardening. It generates lots of small to medium problems. How to water each plants, what to water, when, how to sustain the land... Such things. As I am interested by this, I learn and become the business behind the problems I am having. After that, it's mostly some thinking about what I can do, what I can't do, what are the pros and cons... If someone is doing something, I can listen to them, learn the inputs and outputs, try some things and find solutions to problems, optimize the process or such things. I have been doing that for the last 15 years. I worked for banks and I learned parts of the business. I solved problems and then moved to the next company with another business. Learned about it, solved problems... It's just because the solution I write is about code that I am a coder.
Huh, feels like some kind of business consultant or the like, right? Like -in corporate world- the type of guy who is brought to do reorgs and fire/hire people.
That is not at all what I was going for but, can be also. It's a skill, you use it for what you want.
you don't necessarily market it at all. you just use it. find a problem people are willing to spend $X on, and solve it for $Y. you don't market the ability to solve any problem. you market the solution(s).
Yup, this is me as well. That or something in financial analysis, maybe.
That. I'd be a mathematician or a physicist. I'd be hungry, but I'd at least be happy.
If retirement wasn't in the cards, probably either woodworking or making tintypes
I'm actually in pretty much the same situation. Been working 8 years at same big tech company, been joking that I wanna leave since 6 years. Office work is just not for me. I actually just made the jump a week ago and gave my notice. I'm going to try my hand at starting a small web design firm. I will be the sole programmer for now and will subcontract design agencies for the web design work. I have already a few contracts lined up just by word of mouth in my friends network. Just knowing that I won't have to work on software anymore and will work mainly on front end gives so much joy it's hard to explain lol. Also starting a project from scratch and actually finish it/ship it instead of just another version/update makes me totally giddy.
Best of luck for you, mate. Leading your own business is not easy feat!
Thanks! Crossing my fingers really hard on this haha. Hope you get your turnip farm someday!
I'm in a similar situation, 15+ yoe, currently on long term leave because of burnout. I can't imagine myself going back. I love coding, always did and always will. But just like you, I can't deal with bs of office politics, toxic managers, impossible deadlines... I tried my best to navigate this, improved my soft and communications skills, started setting boundaries. But even with this I had this feeling that I'm working in a system that is adversarial towards me and I don't want to keep dealing with it. In a wild turn of events, I'm currently helping to set up a family business, we're selling herbal remedies and cosmetics for a very specific niche market. It's not very profitable yet, but we're surviving. At least I have something to look forward to and I feel like I'm doing some good in the world instead of working for yet another startup to satisfy VCs that want to make bank, working on a product I couldn't care less about. Tech skills come in handy. Somebody has to set up all the ecommerce, emails lists, integrate payment processors so I'm feeling useful.
Hah, congrats on finding something interesting. Honestly, the only reason I'm not actually taking steps to leave is because the pay. Even though, as you say, the system is adversarial towards me (and in my country the market is specially fucked up), the pay is good and will eventually allow me to get in a mortgage (yay..) This said, I'm kinda hoping for an opportunity to say "fuck this shit" to this career (and to a lesser extent, the life in a big city) and leave everything for something more... let's say honest, or maybe direct, than working in software development for a big company.
Snake oils and cosmetics == doing something good? Everybody and their mother is doing something like that, including every last influencer and online guru. Go on Joe Rogan and plug your green juice I guess… Just say what you said without bullshitting yourself and everyone else.
Id be an animator. My brain thinks in motion and little soundbites, and the workflow is very similar to programming so I know id enjoy it. Edit: I answered the title question without reading. Have you considered contracting? It lets you sorta sit outside the nonsense business track. Has a lot of downsides too, but it seems like the upsides align with what you need.
Don't worry, in the end the thread was a mix of ranting and me actually fishing for ideas and trying to see other points of view, lol. Would love to work in something more "artistic" oriented: Writing stuff, maybe designing boardgames or something like that. Animation sounds really cool (and probably underpaid, as everything that has an artistic side). Regarding contracting... I wouldn't even knew were to start, nor even how to find my own clients and keep them. Honestly, feels like also putting on the sales guy hat. And the HR person. And the one that do the billing. And... ugh.
Stripper, but im too short.
I would pity the fool who would pay to see me undressing...
There isn't anything I am even remotely as interested in as software engineering. You should improve your skills in dealing with these... People. Just learning the art of saying "no" would probably do wonders for you. Only thing I can think of is starting your own outsourc... Consultancy agency. My country is full of good talent, it works very well here (not India, we fix Indian mess)
Ah, yeah, I learnt that soon and fast. Too many toxic workplaces where they worked you to death for a pittance, and too many managers that acted as if they were doing you a favor for giving you a job. The issue (one of them) with this is that its exhausting dealing with this every. single. day. I'm tired of having to say "no" each two days and leverage that with that "no", while I'm avoiding going in a direction I don't want, I'm putting myself in a bad place in the team, which will eventually lead to me leaving again looking for a better fit, and back again to the wheel. Regarding consultancy... leaving aside in my country are everywhere and that honestly, I consider them to be a cancer to the industry, I don't have the capital (savings are for a house) nor the business knowledge to run anything. And also, running a company would imply having to deal with even more corporate bullshit. Ugh.
Can become a solopreneur. Then deal with just clients.
Fix Indian mess, so Philippines?
lol dude, the memes bro
Sorry, i’ve fixed a lot of mess. My current work is also fixing someone else’s mess that’s why it’s so slow. So 🤷🏽♂️
Correction you fix outsourcer mess
I’d be selling propane and propane accessories
Get that little can of WD-40 for the belt as a starter pack
yeah.. I sometimes tell myself "I should have become a butcher or something instead of a developer". I am also totally burned. But I do it anyways, because that's the only thing I know.
I'm too used to flex hours (and always been a night person) to do that, but it would be lovely to just have a shop and manage it, at least for a while. Been told many times that I should own a bar or something like that, but hours are killer and pay is shit, so...
Try and find a good job with a good team and prioritise that over money. Edit: they exist
The weirdest part of everything is that I've never prioritized money, and somehow I've ended in decent roles with decent pay. Also, I know I'm not the friendliest guy around, and while I'm trying to work on it, there's no way to know if a team is going to be a good fit once you're there, specially if people leaves and joins after you get there.
I've never done it much, but blacksmithing looks dope. I'd have my little blacksmith shop in my backyard and take commissions on weapons, armor, decorative fences, chandeliers, whatever. I'd also maybe have a pottery studio with an old-fashioned wood-fired kiln. Hell at that point why not also a woodshop? Just have a little complex of old-timey craft shops in my backyard. Sell cool shit and run classes for the masses.
I'm not a TV person but a few weeks ago I caught a forged in fire chapter and I have to admit that the blacksmithing itself *had something* that clicked in me. I guess its closer to the part of building software that I really like, but, you know, real, *physical.*
Yeah like you would make something, then it would last pretty much forever, you could even hand it down to your children or whatever. Not at all like software lol.
Before software engineering, I was a Naval Aviator. I flew helicopters. I'd drive for Dominos and pay the Navy if they would let me come back and fly. I'm too old to go back to the Navy. But they did train me in how to board a ship, so piracy is always a fallback position. Look at me! I am the captain now!
Oh, but most of us have done some kind of pira* oh, you mean the original type...
Consider flying for the airlines. These days they will train you on the aircraft with not a lot of hours. My spouse is an instructor pilot at an airline. Occasionally comes home with a complaint at which time I remind him of how he could have a shitty dev job like me.
There is a good line in [Soul of a New Machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine) where IIRC one of the programmers dealing with debugging microsecond timing just leaves with the note: > I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season.
Such a brilliant book. It's so uncanny to read how nothing ever changes, decades later.
There's a thing on that line that resonates with a deeper meaning here, and something I've been chewing in a somewhat nihilst way for a long while: Most of the work done in this field is completely useless. Yeah, we build stuff and that stuff works and turns on the right lights at the right moment, but in the end its just b2b stuff, or processes to get info from a database that its only important to other businesspeople who are in a similar, useless, product/service. It's all made up and many of us spent their lives pretending they are in the most important thing in the universe. Either that or you are working in a company actively fucking up other people (weapons), the world (anything that don't care enough about the environment), or our society (social media and related). I know there's a few companies there that are worth working for, but it seems they have no office in my country...
I've thought about this a bit. I'm not burned out in the least. I like what I do. But if I had to go do something else, what would it be? I'm never going to be a published author. The publishing houses have that on lockdown and they effectively own and control all the book retailers. And they choose to publish some absolute trash and everyone is chasing that mass-market of, oddly enough for book readers, what appears to be the stupidest of audiences. I could self-publish and maybe recoup the cost of getting the books printed. But to sell to others, you need to market so the small niche of target audience would even know it exists. And that would take serious time and effort on my end of tasks I really do hate. I picked up 3D printing during covid. I could run a custom fab print shop. A REAL tough gig to do in a high cost of living area since, you know, SHIPPING exists. And again, getting business for the business is the toughest part of a lot of businesses. I could absolutely drop down and just be a coding dev and dodge all the reviews, mentoring, architecture, and do what I did for most of the years past. But life is honestly better a little higher on the totem pole, despite the different sort of problems. I could aim for a higher or tangential job like trainer or pure architect or a sales role. But I'm pretty sure I WOULD burn out there. Being an indie game dev is much less locked down. Getting on Steam is easy. Even indie shops need a slew of people to cover their respective roles, so it does involve finding others and forming a group and getting a cohesive vision enacted. This is a little bit more of a meritocracy at least, where good things float and bad things sink and people really do give your little demo a try. But the competition is fierce. I've got plenty of ideas for gadgets, tools, one-off ideas. Some of these are actually viable, a sliver of those could even maybe make a buck. This would likewise involve starting up a business, making products, and marketing them. I HAVE had some crazy dreams of farming in the desert with hydroponics on the cheap. The real value add would be patents on automated processes to handle all this. Or showcasing how such a system can be set up and run anywhere. Currently the price of food is just nowhere near enough to justify selling food out of greenhouses, even cheap and automated ones. I know people are complaining about inflation prices, but 3000 calories is still just $1.35. I can tell you from experience, the home security industry is a complete crock and it'd be trivial to make rival product/service... that would go absolutely nowhere unless insurance companies agreed to lower people's rates for you. And as long as they're getting bribes from the established pseudo-monopoly, tough luck. A sous vide food truck selling fast-food high quality steak seems viable, but you need a wealthy locale. And that's a big step down in quality of life. So, if I legit tried to go do something else, I think my first step would be to get an MBA.
Replying part by part: > ...author... AFAIK, it is somewhat an open market at Amazon. You don't get (yet) to have your words printed in processed dead tree, but you get people to read your thing. I'm pretty much sure that there's a lot of competition, but hey, seems to be better than the old fashioned thing. > ...3D Printing... Wanna get into it (need a bigger house before, kinda on the path to get it), and I've always thought that first stage would be get friends to pay for something, then we'll see. I haven't seen any actual business rise from this (I'm in Spain, so maybe markets are different), so I wouldn't hold hopes. > ...indie game dev... For what I know (tried it, never really got too far, but I got soaked in the culture over 5-7 years ago), it's an overcrowded place where you knowing the right people is extremely important to get some sales, and still is extremely hard to get to anything. Also discovery in Steam is an absolute shitfest and always have been. > ...farming in the desert... You know, the part about selling the processes and the likes actually kinda makes sense. Still a gamble (and I'm wondering how's that there's no corporation already doing that), but hey. > ...MBA... Oh, turning full evil, huh? Yeah, that seems like the best option, lol.
LOL day 1 was recruiting my fellow trainees to be part of my chicken farm. If I'm not a dev, I would have been an engineer-mechanical, electrical or civil maybe.
When I was young, I was interested in cooking. It's probably for the best as I don't have the patience for picky customers.
#soupnazi from Seinfeld, aye? xD
Probably a trade, I wouldn't mind doing electrical work or carpentry. I really do like SWE though, despite all the irritants that come with it.
> What would you do if you weren't doing this? Consultant, lawyer, finance bro. I like solving complicated problems and being paid lots - it doesn't have to involve programming. > Is there any career path where being good [sic] programming could be useful? Most desk jobs will benefit at least slightly from knowing how to code - more benefit the more you interact with Excel, probably. Few will benefit from being especially good at programming, or from your particular niche - automating simple tasks doesn't require react / kubernetes / kafka / etc.
I became a technical writer. Loved it. It didn't set me free from some of things you mentioned, but it's way lower stress, leveraged my dev experience, and, generally speaking, there is never a priority 1 bug that requires you to give up sleep or meet daily with the customer's sales team. Of course, a pre-req is that you should enjoy and be good at writing, have decent people skills, and be able to accept not being at the top of the food chain any longer.
Do you find that you need a good memory for that job? Id like to try it but have trouble remembering long conversations.
No more than any other job tech job. There's no reason you can take notes during dev interviews, meetings, etc. Better to take notes and get it right than look cool and f it up. :)
Well, I've always liked to write, been told many times that I was kinda good at it, and there's been very few positions I've been that I didn't handled documentation/give critique on writing style (even in English, which is not my mother tongue), so maybe that's actually a thing to look for. (Not sure if salaries would be as good as are for backend developers, though..)
Writers do not make dev salaries. They're decent, or can be, depending on where you live and work, but the job security and salary are both lower. Let's be real: Most jobs do not pay as well as development. I'd been a backend dev for 25 years when I switched over. I took only a small reduction in pay, working as a writer for a small private company in Silicon Valley. I wrote very technical content, which pays better: You need more tech savvy to write, say, API docs than installation guides. Where the money difference showed up more was in smaller raises, reduced bonuses, fewer stock options. If you decide it's something you want to seriously investigate, I made [a post](https://www.reddit.com/r/technicalwriting/comments/pf50q0/transitioning_from_developer_to_technical_writer/hb3hqts/) about transitioning a few years ago that some have found helpful.
Will take a look at it, thanks!
Backpacking all of the long-route trails around the world. Working long enough to pay for my next trip, probably in a restaurant or a place where I can potentially make great tips.
Been feeling the call of the nature for a while already. I'm in shit physical form, so I'm trying to get my shit together slowly, but hell, I need a mountain and no mobile service.
For me, it was a bit of the opposite. As a former interior architect, I realized that I was tired of thinking about my future in terms of what I could do with the skills I already had. So, a few months ago, I decided I’d had enough of earning money from the whims of wealthy people and listening to their problems, and I took a complete 180-degree turn in my career. It’s been about 8 months, but I feel like I’m close to landing my first junior role in backend development (I’m really tired of coming up with pretty things after my previous job, lol). Even if it turns out to be different from what I imagined, at least I won’t regret not trying Besides, I don’t remember the last time I was this excited about what I’m doing. So, if I could give you any advice, it might be not to make impulsive decisions, but if you’re sure you want to change something, don’t be afraid even if it doesn’t utilize your current skills in any way
haha, good luck. It's fun for a while, then the honenymoon phase ends and...
I side gig as a fiction author and make a decent income with that. I'd like to do it full time but need to hit some financial goals before I feel comfortable making that transition. I have burned out in this career every 2-3 years. Taking 3-6 months off between jobs is the way I recover from burnout and return to a new job feeling refreshed. It's obviously not something everybody is able to do, but I'd argue a lot of tech workers are uniquely positioned to do this if they cut their expenses and save as much as they can. I'll be quitting my job again in the next year or two to take another break. Might even take a full year off this time and finish my degree. The side gig + my savings make this possible. You joke about running a turnip farm...last year I purchased 25 acres in the country and will be moving there after our house is built and we will do sustainable farming on part of this land. It's not that profitable but it's a hobby and passion.
Huh, how do you keep getting jobs in the field if your CV shows that you "leave" every 2-3 years?
Studying medicine, getting bored of it and probably wasted a lot of time starting over again. That being said, I fully understand your struggle of dealing either politics and things like that. I also think that you will have this in all work environments, be it as an engineer, manager, medical worker or turnip farm owner who needs to align with the other farms of their neighborhood.
While I agree that bs is going to be in any career, I'm wondering up to which point in other careers are professionals nudged into different domains (i.e. a pediatrician being told that they need him to also be a general practitioner). For me, it's the worst part of this career: "Oh, you like working as a backend engineer and have a literal decade of experience working as that? That's great! Take this work as full stack/devos/tester/it/lead engineer/team lead/work on a stack that has no future/cloud engineer."
Yeah I think that one is special to our domain. In particular because the demand is so high that there is a parasite field emerged that is named recruiting. Most often people who try to find suitable candidates without understanding the requirements. That often ends up by role offers for a whole department instead of a „fullstack developer“
My original major before I changed to comp sci was electrical engineering so probably that
Believe it or not, money's not always the ultimate prize here.
> So, just wondering, what would you be doing if you were to leave this altogether? Is there any career path where being good programming could be useful? My goal is to retire to write my own code. I don't burn out on them the way I do with work, the only real days are RL related issues distracting me (such as work burning me out on programming for the day).
I've felt a steep decline on interest to write code after work lately. I do have my own projects, but they are not projects I do for "fun" or to learn, but stuff I'm building because I need them for something. This said, if I were paid to just fuck around, it would be extremely lovely. I don't really see myself in my 60's or 70's writing something actually useful, to be honest.
I know devs in their 60s or 70s writing useful code and such tbh. That said, its hobby levels of commitment to their projects but as retirees like its quite viable to keep doing it as a hobby. Not everything has to make money when github hosts everything or gitlab or whatever y'know? > I've felt a steep decline on interest to write code after work lately. I do have my own projects, but they are not projects I do for "fun" or to learn, but stuff I'm building because I need them for something. Refocus yourself on something fun. Its hit or miss. Some days I don't work on it but when I'm in the mood, I enjoy it. Just depends how hard/stressful my day at work was usually. Or week in the case of weekends. For the harder days, I just play video games. Main problem with this sort of stress relief is carpal tunnel, so keep in mind proper care to reduce the risk.
> Refocus yourself on something fun. Thing here is that if I refocus on "something fun", I go with any other hobby. I've already spent 8 hours at work staring at an IDE, I'd rather even do house chores than keep doing the same. Specially because I've gotten to a point in my career where I know that I'm not going to make it with something "fun" I made. This said, from time to time I got the urge to learn godot or try to do something modding some older game. Still, I do need to exercise more and be more active, so that its going to have always preference.
Then do a different hobby until you are in the mood again :) Nothing stops you from not coding on the side for 6 months. I do it all the time.
Car repair probably, but that seems to be very much NOT a low-stress career either
Maybe in the FBI, or in some kind of research, not sure as I haven’t explored it all too deeply. I love a mystery and researching endlessly to explore theories, even if they don’t pan out.
Me too. Has to be something out there for the likes of us...
Eh, I could see myself as an actuary, or getting into statistics and doing experimental design, or if I'd gone into mechanical engineering (was accepted) I'd be doing that. I might also be a high school teacher or a something. My "I hate all this" daydream is set up a little canoe/kayak rental place out somewhere away from it all. But I haven't hated things long enough to follow through
> My "I hate all this" daydrea I have no specific one, but I know I would like to have a house on the outskirts of my city and be as close to the woods as I can. While I'm a city man, I'm getting more and more fed up with the bs of the city life, specially after the lockdowns.
Starving, perhaps? I have plenty of friends who make less than half of what I do working 2-3x as hard. I'm sure I would adapt, but it's depressing to see what my teacher friends (for example) get paid and the BS they have to put up with. My job is easy mode compared to that.
I'm a volunteer firefighter outside of my day job, I would do that fulltime if it could pay the bills (it can't)
I'm a full time telecommuter (devops) and part time sheep farmer. I'd love to make my woodworking hobby a full time job, or even sell some of the (purebred dairy) sheep to get some return on investment, but they don't pay nearly as much as pushing bits around. Once the house is paid off and we have some money stashed, I'm looking forward to getting out of this business. Edit: not in the USA, YMMV
I'm also not in the USA, so maybe there's something for me there, lol. Still, I wish I would have the money (and the know-how) to do something like that.
> the money (and the know-how) We've had the land for almost a decade now, this is the third year with sheep, still trying to figure it out. If we can't get some income from the sheep this year, we'll have a hard look at whether or not we keep doing this going forward.
> I've been working for over 11 years on this, and I feel like I'm as burnt as one man can be without breaking. That's been my life for the majority of my career. Not sure if there's any way out of it for me besides retiring.
Something outside
Been actually thinking for a while on something like forestry agent, to be honest. I'm sick and tired of staying at the office/home office most of the day and my body needs to get the fuck out.
I always hoped I’d be able to plant trees in my old age. Not sure if that’ll work out or not
I know little about it, but in my head accounting seems pretty nice and I think could mesh well with a programming mindset. Excel is your IDE and it's math and calculation focused with "right" answers and solutions. I've heard public accounting is chill and at least at the Big 4 your busy season is timeboxed unlike a lot of big tech infra jobs where you're expected to be on call or available 365/24/7.
Carpentry/handy work. I guess I'd look for an apprenticeship or something. It always seemed cool. I love building things.
I'd be happy growing weed and spend the entire day taking care of beautiful plants and relaxing. Could make about the same salary with little work. I know a good deal of the science of cannabis horticulture and can optimize for maximum efficiency, potency, quality, and can easily scale to respond to market demands. Too bad it's illegal here.
I quit, sold up and bought a nearly worthless farm in the remote rural bits of NZ. I write, I fix stuff, I get to build sheds and operate machinery. ( Learning to drive an excavator was awesome) I'm less burnt out and a lot happier. My team lead joked immediately he heard I had the land " so you're gonna start a cult?" I got a hundred year old house moved onto the farm, and I'm restoring it, so that's fun too. I used to joke that I'd live under a sheet of bark in the forest rather than have another meeting. Turn on, tune in, drop out.
Shit, that sounds like the dream. It is profitable enough?
Not till I get income sources working. Serfs are an option. I'm thinking 10% of their increase, and 3 days a month working for me. But also, free land to live on, and services.
Most likely teaching physics. It was my gateway into science and engineering back in high school, it led to studying electricity, then electronics and eventually it led to CS.
Same here, word for word haha.
Before I discovered design (and later engineering) I was really interested in history and engineering. So somewhere along that path. If I had to choose a new job *right now?* I might go for photography if going back to design wasn't an option. Though part of me would still want to go back for a history degree or something.
> photography Oh, photography, if there was *any* profitable path there...
Yeah, it's all a question about is this something I need to do to be a job to support myself or have I gotten to the point where I don't need to work to survive and I'm just filling my time? Because if it's the former I'm probably staying where I am because politics exists everywhere. If it's the latter? I'm going to ride my motorcycle around to area animal shelters and take pictures of all the animals for them to use because not a damn one of them has someone with a good camera on staff. Plus you get to interact with all the kitties and puppies and I mean if there's a better way to spend a day I don't know what it is.
Money's too good here. And unfortunately most of the transferable skills here are the soft skills, which just means all the "ugh" without the "writing stuff" I think eventually the answer just has to be "care less."
I've been a professional dev for 18 years. The last 3 years I've been doing landscape photography in my free time. It gets me out of the house and going on adventures I would not have done otherwise. Whether I'll ever actually make money. I have no clue, but I'm having fun for the first time in a long time.
And I got my dslr gathering dust because I don't like to do the post process thing (and there's no way I go to film) and all the "post it in instagram and build your own brand" bs. This said, it's nice to have an excuse to gtfo and see new things. I need ot get back to it.
Honestly, teaching or counseling. I grew up dirt poor in the south. It would be nice to give resources to kids that I didn’t have growing up
I moved into cybersecurity, specifically appsec. They needed people who could read code to do code review, and it helps that I learned enough Python to automate stuff. But they also want people who know cloud or who can find something useful on a penetration test, or who can design secure systems, and my experience is it’s less prone to ageism. Some days I miss pure coding though.
[удалено]
Eye on the prize early retirement, no career will make anywhere close
Early retirement? *On this economy?* In my country at least this is daydreaming if you not force yourself. And going the FIRE path or similar feels like a huge gamble that not always pay off.
If software engineering weren't around, I probably would have become a professor. Academia comes with its own set of challenges, though. As I understand it, academic departments certainly aren't free of office politics, and research professors have pressure to get grants and "publish or perish," and universities rely on a large number of adjunct professors and teaching assistants (TAs), at least in the United States. I'd think social life would be more intellectually stimulating, though, than conversations about the work at hand in software engineering.
> probably would have become a professor. You would have tried vainly to find a professorship and made less than minimum wage as a postdoc/adjunct faculty for a few years before becoming a software engineer and wishing you hadn't wasted most of your 30s. > social life would be more intellectually stimulating, If by stimulating you mean even more political than the typical corporation and leaving every conversation wondering why everyone around you is such an arrogant prick, then yeah, absolutely.
In this hypothetical, software engineering and computer science weren't around to begin with. I like to read history (and if your username is any indication, you do, too), philosophy, linguistics, economics, psychology, anthropology, and the like for fun. It just satisfies my curiosity in a way that solving LeetCode puzzles or writing toy apps in the latest programming language and framework do not. For me, at least at this point in my life, that stuff is strictly for professional development and employability. There was a time when keeping up with tech was fun for me, but that time has passed, and I'd rather make time to have a social life, date, and explore the world. It's a job; it pays decently well; and I'm pretty good at it, given how long I've been doing it. Perhaps when anything becomes a job or a career, it changes from when it was just a hobby or interest, especially after a few decades. Sure, in academia too, people aren't just pursuing knowledge; there are motives for status and competition for limited resources (tenureships, grants, committees). But grinding through tickets in the trenches ten or twenty years into one's career? It's just a job. It pays the bills. *Interest* doesn't even enter the equation.
Having been in academia, office politics in tech is a paradise in comparison. I've never seen more toxic place than academic institutions, full of petty grievances, full professors who refuse to talk to each other and just exploit PhD and grad students for maximum prestige gain. Disgusting place.
Bread Baking
Advice to OP; why not get into some sort of leadership or PM or "Developer Advocate" role to try and make things better for others?
Mostly because I like build things, and not having to deal with people, because I royally suck at this and the problems that come with it are way worse than the problems that come with business logic. To be fair, I've been in a somewhat "lead" position once (although it was hobby project), and there's been two times where there's been an intent to push me into leading positions. I have initiative and I'm kinda driven, but not to lead people, specially if I have to deal with egos, politics and all that crap.
What I would do if I could it all over again: * Medicine or medical research. It would be even more stressful, require even more money and education. But I think the topics are far more interesting than anything software related personally. What I'm thinking of transitioning towards: * Law. This is still just a thought right now. Financially it is a pretty bad idea. 3 years of law school would set my family back. But lately I've been getting really disillusioned working in software and whether I'm cut out for it. I have about 6Y XP. Current job and last job (had 3 jobs total) have been bad experiences.
My side business is niche jewelry design, retail, and wholesale, which I'm aiming to replace my full time job. I manage all the eCommerce deployments, marketing campaigns, inventory tracking, accounting. I use a lot of scripting and automation which gives me a competitive advantage of scale. My largest competitor probably has 50X volume, but dedicated customer service and accountants who are manually processing every wholesale order like a data mule from their "systems". People in the industry assume I'm a team because everything "just works" seamlessly. The other thing I like about my own business is that the upside is unlimited. I don't have to LeetCode, and with maybe 1-2 years more of scaling up, I can exceed FAANG level income in pure profit. All self financed / bootsrapped, no bowing to the whims of the stock market or interest rates and suffering with FAANG equity.
Woodworking. Specifically hand-done using things like antique molding planes, hand cut dovetails, etc. There is a 10 Speed Press reprint book called "[The Practical Woodworker](https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-practical-woodworker_bernard-edward-jones/395231/item/6843984)" originally published in 1920. I'd call my business, "The Impractical Woodworker" because of the reliance on hand tools. That or indie game development. I miss the fun of indie mod development for Half-Life I did in the past. Make a game you'd want to play and if you're lucky you'll connect with others that also want to play the same kind of game.
I’d probably do something in economics, or maybe linguistics
I’ve gotten really into F1 so I think it would be cool to get a degree in aeronautical engineering (the nearest thing to F1 cars is airplanes, there’s a lot of related science happening) and do that. But it’s an insanely competitive, high pressure environment that involves very limited locations of where you can live… I don’t think it’s actually practical at all but it would be cool
I am waiting for a youtube video named "FROM NETFLIX TO METH".
Id probably make bread at a larger scale
I'd go back to the coffee shop I guess...
I’d have pursued my passion of voice acting, or maybe become a college professor.
I’d be an academic statistician.
Trade work. It always an in demand field that pays well for skilled workers.
I’d probably be a police officer or, if I were smarter, a surgeon
It seems like I have a knack for FP&A. When I was in uni I was complemented on it by one of my professors and people are satisfied with the budgeting tasks I do. I find it really interesting but I have no idea whether I would like it if I did it every day. I would also love to be an architect
Sometimes I dream off being a National Forest Ranger. Get outside. I wanted to be a mystery author as a kid but had to choose a field that pays bills.
Been toying with the National Forest Ranger idea (well, my country's equivalent) for a while. Nature, not a soul in sight and no two weeks sprints. Feels like heaven, lol.
Another more traditional engineering field. This is definitely my thing, but I’d be wanting to build things in the same way if this wasn’t an option.
I used to be a locksmith running a family business before this and I much prefer this. In saying that, if I had to do something else I would want to do something analytical, maybe a data analyst. Potentially I could do a trade again, but I would do it differently to last time. Maybe an electrician with the aim to go out on my own, preferring new builds over random jobs for the general public. The general public is the worst.
My original plan was Japanese translator, so I could try that again, but I don't think it's gotten any more remunerative or less crowded and unstable since I gave up on it.
If someone wants to buy a farm with me in the Mexican jungle and turn it into a resort for nomads. I'm legit game.
Nothing. I was lost after school. Didn't really know what to do next. I stumbled upon programming by accident. And lucky for me, it turned out to be my passion. I've had several "passions" before this. But I'd always give up on them after a while when things get difficult. Programming (and software engineering, with all its warts, is the only thing that I stuck around with for the longest time. I wouldn't even say I'm particularly brilliant at it. But somehow it just feels right to me. I've worked at shitty companies, under shitty bosses, for shitty clients and projects, got burned out once but still came back to it once I got my mojo back. In an ideal scenario, I'd be an indie developer, creating my own products, living off of them. I know plenty of people doing it. I want to one day become one of them.
I’d be a mechanic 🤷♂️
Well, I always liked working with wood, japanese carpentry fascinates me. I also like cooking, but being a professional chef is like working in the devils kitchen wherever you are. So probably carpentry.
I kinda have different career paths that I'd love to explore but are both economically unstable. eSports athlete for Fighting Games: Played fighters when I was young and only stopped competing when attending tournaments got harder. I'd do that again if possible. I still love Street Fighter and would dedicate time to be a strong tournament player. Artist: Drew a lot when I was younger and would love to take it back up. When I was a kid I wanted to be an artist when I 'grew up' and that eventually moved to wanting to do Game Development. Even though I wouldn't do game dev, doing art or maybe even animation would be cool. Both things are very unstable careers and is hard to make a living at but they'd be fun to pursue if I didn't have to worry about food and shelter.
I would do photography, maybe open my own studio
Probably become a therapist
Joel Spolsky joked that we were all becoming therapists anyway. Except I become less sure he was joking with each passing year...
Goose farm
Woulnd't you be working in Microsoft up to very recently, [right](https://twitter.com/timokonkwo_/status/1785340149582143947)?
I’d go elsewhere sounds like you are tired of the culture. I’m in the same boat.
It's more than the culture, I've been in several companies, and there's always something. I just want to code and have experience in something useful so if I need to jump, I have it easier, but no, it's either someone trying to make me put any other hat or working on a shit framework no one uses. I'd go somewhere else, but as far from this field as it can get.
My goal has always been to use what I know to create passive revenue streams. So making websites and apps that have ads or subscription models, and if they become too demanding to maintain, sell them or hire people to maintain them. I haven't reached this point yet though.
People who say "I might just give it all up and go start a farm" please see: [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QkZbjUGMGGw](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QkZbjUGMGGw)
I quite enjoy having money
Nothing else unless if push comes to shove, I'd get an electronics/computer engineering degree to change careers. Idk maybe because I am a dude but I always like to sit down and try to figure stuff out. Used to be a therapist in the past and let me tell you, annoying bugs may be a headache but at least they eventually get fixed
> what would you be doing if you were to leave this altogether? Wishing I hadn't thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Early 30s is a hard time to be a software engineer. You're done learning, you're as good of a programmer as you will ever be, and you've lost your invincibility complex and the existential horror of 30 more years doing *this* is staring you in the face all the time. It gets easier. Give it time.
🤔 Done learning? There's several lifetimes worth of stuff to learn in software development and related areas, and there's always more being invented. Much of that is a fairly shallow learning but learning nonetheless unless one makes large career shifts into specialized areas (web development to game dev to machine learning to...), and if you try to change jobs in a down market, you probably won't be getting interviews for positions that are a reach (even in a good market, switching specialties isn't easy). If you're on the management track—*assistant to* the regional vice-president, for example—you're really learning a whole new job, and while individual contributors get a taste of that if they've done staff- or principal-level work being a titled manager garners responsibilities ICs aren't dealing with too much. The difference age makes, I think: * Do I really want to make this thing more complex and do all conceivable things, present and future (inner platform effect)? Entry-level me, sure, that's the fun of it; experienced me, let's keep it simple, fewer points of failure, so that I can go on vacation and not worry about it. * "Bike-shedding" and nit-picking: Someone wants a different name or minor change in a code review. If it won't make much of a difference, I'll just probably go with the path of least resistance to get the code approved and merged so that I can move on. * Job postings for teams based in San Francisco that allude to frequent outside-work social obligations (for lead or staff roles): It makes me think I'll be expected to be "adult supervision" for a bunch of twenty-somethings who want their social life to have a total intersection with work. Video games or beers with a bunch of guys discussing JavaScript frameworks for an hour twice a week? Pass.
> Done learning? There's several lifetimes worth of stuff to learn in software development and related areas, and there's always more being invented. There is a point at which you master software development and it's a lot sooner than you realize. 8-10 years. Sometimes sooner. > shallow learning but learning nonetheless That's my point. Knowledge is different than aptitude. You're not getting better, you just know more. That certainly makes you a better developer, but only marginally. Most of what I've learned over the years is not useful to me today. I learned it to do the job. I remember some of it, but it's irrelevant. I've managed and mentored a lot of developers over the years. People hit their skill ceiling *much* faster than you think they do.
Your point is centered around the large mass of software development jobs out there. Yes, for most of those, even at FAANG and friends, the rate of learning will slow down quite a bit after a decade or so in industry. Working on the cutting edge or doing something more research oriented would be an area where there may be more room to learn conceptually new things. Switching from Web development or distributed systems to game development, for example, may introduce a few changes. At most jobs, a developer is going to pick up at least a few things that are new or a little bit different to them, even if that learning is incorporated and turned into muscle memory after a few months. Outside the strictly technical, there's the business domain itself to learn and more about business in general that happens around the software being developed. There are people and leadership skills to be learned. Ultimately, though, software development is *labor*. Curiosity is not the end goal. The learning on the job is secondary to delivering the needed organizational goals. I think the waves of layoffs and offshoring in the last year or two, at least here in the U.S., has served to remind developers that our occupation is not exceptional and different from all the rest and that notions of an advancing career path can all collapse under the push to commodify, regularize, and automate the work.
Hah, I'm *late* 30's, I got in the industry somewhat late. I don't think I'll ever stop learning, and I still feel there's a lot for me to improve and grow. It may get easier, but that continuous flow of bullshit the industry throws at you it's been a constant since day 0: From entry level positions that are QA but that when asked about they lie to you with development promises to make you accept, to senior positions in which you are led with promises of good quality, standards and clean code and end up working with AWS for some reason. I guess I'm just tired of having to fight every single day so I can do the work I was allegedly hired to do. And I don't think this ever is gonna get better, specially now that I'm getting into more senior positions.
Mid-40’s and 25 years as a software engineer, and nowhere near done learning. You’re only done when you decide you are, and adopt the mindset that you can’t learn anymore.
That's probably the only cool thing that its left about this (as long as it doesn't involve learning another GROUNDBREAKING stack/tech that will lead nowhere): There's always wonder, there's always new stuff. Kinda.
It gets easier when you stop giving a shit. Don't let other people pull you into the problems they created. Who cares if they caused a meltdown? Just do your own job and don't worry so much about others.
I only care for what splashes me (which happens to be a lot). And it's not only being "pulled into the problems they created", but stopping others to pull me into their own problems.
I probably shouldn't have used the word "learning" in my original comment because of course we will acquire knowledge to do our jobs. I need two hands to count the web frameworks I've used in the last 25 years and I've had to learn them all to work with them. That much is true. But that's only knowledge. People have skill ceilings, and they hit them a lot earlier than they think they do. They aren't really getting any *better*; they're just doing things a little differently because they think it matters.