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Ask HN: Life as a developer gets boring real quick.remedy?

39 points by oggyhead ↗ HN
For the last 3 years I have been developing software of mainly the web kind. Did Clojure dev last year, some C projects before that and have a bunch of scala projects this year and hopefully a bunch of Haskell projects later this year. After failing culture fit tests at companies of interest after passing tehnical rounds, I've taken a step back to examine where things are going. The more I examine my life so far, though plastered with opportunities to work with functional Lang's that most people don't get, everything I've done so far seems meaningless. I excercise regularly, I don't like people that much though I do put up a front, I don't play video games not do I read literature or watch anime or any shows. I am relearning proof writing in math, but after a while it gets boring because there isn't any end goal in mind. Will take up some Bayesian based learning soon.. point is my life feels like it's the programming equivalent of a crack whore's life. Not sure what to do

30 comments

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Cozumel
This sounds a lot deeper than just being bored as a developer, maybe see a counsellor? They'll be in a better position to help you than any of us.
[dead] PythonDeveloper
Language name-drop much?

Yeah.. Maybe you don't really love what you do.

Perhaps, based on your comments and the high buzz-word ratio, you are caught up in staying hopelessly up to date with the useless tech of the week...

It's hard to fit into a team if you're always looking for something better while the rest of the team is looking to solve problems with the tech they chose last year.

At some point in your life, you realize that it's better to surround yourself with smart people who know what you don't and can teach you, than to be alone and try to learn everything on your own.

You might find familiarity in Brian Regan's "I Walked On The Moon." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBJ6yptGqm4

tehlike
Start your own company, or a side project. See how it goes.
rl3
The former isn't a decision to be taken lightly. It's also not a good idea if you're not in the right place mentally. Think of a company as an automobile that drains your emotional gas tank. If you start out with a low tank, you're going to have a bad time.

Side projects however are great provided you enjoy the experience and don't let it turn into a job.

tehlike
I think part of ops problem is having a purpose. There is nothing like having a company to force that.
cvaidya86
Agreed. Although side project which might turn into a company is a low friction way of getting into the startup world. Fix a personal irritant into an app. Or try to solve some big hairy problem like AGI and stumble upon something fun and valuable.
flaviusas
Try to attract interesting parties and make them approach you first by doing projects which are interesting to you. Keep those projects production-ready.

Then the parties who value your work will naturally approach you, and by default value your work and give you more decision power in whatever the two of you will want to pursue together.

Sounds twisted, but that's how life works.

Oh, and making the program is not a goal in itself, solving the problem is.

stepvhen
You sound like you need a hobby. Have you tried baking? Like, get a breadmaking book from a ised book sttore, read it carefully, and make bread. Its super rewarding, not that difficult, you end up with a finished product (that you can eat!) and its not math or programming.

Also, read literature anyway. Learn how to by doing it. If a novel is daunting read short stories (particularly Jorge Luis Borges or Cesar Aira). Reading wasn't important in my life until about 2 years ago, and since then books have improved my life dramatically. Its low cost, high yield, fully analog, ubiquitous, and enriching. Just learning new words makes it easier to form new concepts in your head and be better at stuff like math and programming. Seriously I cant suggest reading enough.

But really, this sounds more serious than just boredom or ennui. I side with Cozumel, and might suggest looking into a counsellor.

oggyhead
Thank you for the reply. I do appreciate the list of thoughts especially how learning new words to help in forming new concepts from math and the likes. I do cook and bake as a hobby though not as actively as I should. Will go down the short story route as you suggested
mattchamb
I love baking as a hobby. While programming used to be my hobby, I find it can't be both my hobby and career without driving me insane. Baking has the iterative trial and error improvement factor, while also producing a product that everyone enjoy without having it explained. As a bonus, women love a guy who can bake.
jwhitlark
Making chocolate is another one. Not as hard as I thought it would be, but lots of room for care and precision.
bluemix
Life is all about choices. You can choose what you do next. It seems your only choice is always programming, of course you get bored.

Try something new and exciting, maybe extreme sports?

smnplk
What about girlfriend/boyfriend ? How is your love life ?
sp527
This is going to sound odd but I'd recommend journaling. You need to spend some time free writing to access your subconscious and gain insight into how you really feel and especially what you value. You'll be amazed at how effective it is. I'm of the opinion that a substantial share of ennui arises from a failure to commit to routine and honest introspection.

With respect to software, your feelings may stem from a perceived deficit in value creation. No matter what we do, we all want to feel like we're contributing in some way and we all try to find ways to achieve that. Could be blogging, OSS dev, teaching classes, turning an app into a business (or just putting it out there for people to use freely!), etc. If you're just hacking on things to learn, that's great and necessary. But you might be better served taking it a step further.

oggyhead
Thank you for the reply. The journaling part sounds very logical for anybody of any situation :) your words do ring a clarion Bell. Thank you so much
marktangotango
I'll piggyback on this and note it seems like you're self worth is tied up in some sort of uber coder thing. I can relate to a point. After I'd read Fred brooks and some other literature (specifically Weinberg) that talked about 10 or 100x programmers, and tied that with Paul Graham's beating the averages, I had this idea that a true uber programmer could reimplement some significant thing with enough cleverness, and suitably powerful language. A concrete example would be some 100x-er recreating Google in 6 months or something (this specific example is a bit flawed due to hardware and storage requirements but meh).

There are a lot of flaws with this line of reasoning, but mainly the activity of writing code becomes secondary to defining the problem domain and solution.

mythrwy
Programming is a lot of fun, but at the end of the day it's a tool rather than life itself. If you lose track of this (which is easy to do), it's a slide down a dark hole.

I'd recommend putting down the electronics for a bit as much as possible. You might wish to learn to enjoy people and look for opportunities to do so. Spend more time observing yourself and your world without tinker toy distractions. Spend some time alone (leave the smartphone out). In nature maybe. Think about life. And death. What life means, what you would regret if you died tomorrow. What you really want. Who you really are. It's uncomfortable sometimes, being around people and being around ourselves. We look for distraction. And that's what you have to overcome.

I'd venture a lot of us on this site have the same symptoms to various degrees. I know I do from time to time. It's a job hazard I think kind of like skin cancer or a bad back. The above paragraph is my way out of the hole and back to a grip on what's important.

i456
Spend some time not doing anything: sit on a chair, close your eyes, and let your brain do its thing. Try not to focus on any thought. Some people would call it meditating, I call it letting go. In this world where we're always distracted, it forces onto me some boredom, during which my brain very often comes with unexpected answers to problems I've been working on lately.

In my case, I also often get hindsight into what I should be doing, and often end up doing things good for me, instead of things I've been asked to do (makes me do for me, instead of doing what others want me to do).

muzani
I had the same issue around the middle of my job. I took a break, started a cafe, thought F&B would be something better. It immediately shocked me back into programming. That's one approach - just do something else (preferably low cost) and see what you like more. Some people did up liking F&B more than tech.
le-mark
"Food and Beverage" should be obvious from the context, but I had to look it up. On r/entrepreneur they talk a lot about starting cleaning companies, as another example.
uptownfunk
I notice you talk about what you have been doing (programming, proof writing) and what you haven't been doing (watching tv, reading), but not at all about what you'd like to be doing.

Find something you'd like to do, and the only way to do that is to explore other things than what you are currently doing (since you are obviously not finding real satisfaction in it).

Might I suggest volunteering your time or a charitable activity? That can be a very fulfilling activity for some.

nonplus
It sounds like you expect a lot out of your job. I think the 'as a developer' part is going fine. Not liking people is fine. I don't have any good advice on the picking a hobby part. Most of mine are not things I picked up because I enjoy them. They are things I started doing because I wanted to build something. You sound like you might have that in common. You could try woodworking; it provides you many opportunities to take shortcuts, which would show in the final product. That won't really help with the meaningless part, but it passes the time.
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[dead] pompous__p
Find a woman. First, she will make your life amazing. Then, she will destroy it. But it's just something to do, you know? You won't so bored anymore; kills time.
[dead] pompous__p
Find a woman. First, she will make your life amazing. Then, she will destroy it. But it's just something to do, you know? You won't be so bored anymore; kills time.
apohn
>> After failing culture fit tests at companies

>> I don't like people that much though I do put up a front

Question: Do you not like people or do you not like the people you have to interact with on a regular basis? If you have to eat lunch with the people you work with, can you enjoy it or do you tolerate it/hate it?

I used to work in the consulting arm of a software company and got to interact with a lot of different teams. After the novelty of having a new challenge (new language, new algorithms, new project, etc) every few months wore off, I started to realize work was more enjoyable when I didn't mind spending time with the people I worked with. When I felt forced to work with people I didn't click with the work itself didn't matter - I felt either bored or frustrated. I asked about lunch because sometimes I'd rather have done anything else than try to force a conversation with some of the teams I used to work with.

"Enjoying" spending time with the people you work with is also not about after-hours or having a lively conversation. I used to work with a machine learning algorithm team that was filled with brilliant people, but they had zero interest in the typical office banter, small-talk, ping-pong, etc. Put them at a lunch table together and there conversations were not very animated. But after a while, an observer would realize these folks enjoyed spending time together, and there was a reason they had been together for 10+ years despite getting offers from big name companies who paid a lot more.

In my view it's easier to find a job with the a particular technology than it is to find a place where you can tolerate the people you work with for 40+ hours a week. I love to code and I'm introverted, but I struggled to fit in with the typical "developer" office environment and found myself happier in teams were I get to code but my role is more business facing.

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