Ask HN: Burned out 21 year old software developer, what's next?
I've been writing software for startups for the last three years. I'm self taught and started right after high school. I've worked for my current employer for about 18 months and our team and technology were recently acquired. As I've begun to assimilate into the new company, I'm realizing how burnt out I am and how little satisfaction I get from writing software for enterprise companies. My question is, what's next? I've looked at other tech jobs and few of them spark my interests.
I realize this is a very open ended question. Any advice is thoroughly appreciated.
117 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 34.8 ms ] threadThen you'll have another perspective to evaluate future opportunities and you'll have a much better chance of getting a job that also interests you. Getting paid to do something you enjoy and that interests you doesn't feel like a job, but it sure is.
The definition of burnout is when you force yourself to work on something that you don’t see the value in.
When you know what you really value then make steps toward experiencing those values in your every day life. This doesn’t just go for work but every part of your life.
Not really, that sounds more like the definition of being an employee (without equity etc). Although I guess many employees find reward in the job itself and in the "progression" up the career ladder that business owners put in place.
I don't think it's merely a case of work-life balance. It's possible to sustain a nominally very skewed work-life balance if you enjoy the work and the people you work with, and you have a real stake in it (either equity, really building your own skills, saving the world, whatever).
But if you lose joy in the day to day work itself, and especially start to see through the "career-ladder" or "office-perks" BS then you will feel burnt out, whether you've been putting in 12+ hour days or not.
I suppose my example mostly reinforces your point. To prevent burnout you really need to derive joy in the day to day rather than some external situation you can’t control.
There's a shit ton to learn at college and a lot of interesting people to meet. You'll have a better broader handle on things than knowing everything there is about Python.
Dunno where you live but go to JC. Consider moving to where there's a good JC. Kill it. Start slow, take a couple of classes and slaughter them. You need a minimum number of credits to transfer and there's a maximum as well.
Berkeley has one application per year, in the Fall. So if you start in January, you could almost be transfer read by application time. You really have to learn about requirements and articulation agreements and deadlines.
Transferring into Berkeley. You apply to the UC, 4 campuses. You apply to a school (Engineering or L+S or ...) and a major. You need to be a competitive applicant in that major. In EECS you need to kill it. Not impossible, not easy.
All of the UCs are awesome. Berkeley is incredibly tough, Marine Corps tough. Not a happy place at all, but worth it. The workload in EECS is harder than the Valley.
You could take Trevor Murphy for Classics 10B, Intro to Roman Civ. You could learn to sail or windsurf down at Cal Sailing.
BTW, applying to Berkeley from out of state is more dicey. And expensive (Tuition and Fees: $13,509 (in-state); $40,191 (out-of-state)). Again, moving here and going to a CA JC will dramatically improve your chances.
Big point: you really need to learn a LOT about the application process and requirements. Not a little, a shit ton. This is not for the faint of heart. It isn't an easy path. You have to take it very seriously. You're probably two years away.
The gruesome workload and collective depression is perhaps only topped by Waterloo.
Yeah, you get a top notch engineering education. But, I'd wager the trauma isn't worth it when you realize the workforce standards are well below what's requires of you in the "dojo".
Stanford kids seem much happier.
Also read some non-fiction and unplug from tech. Your a human, not an algorithm.
The Bay Area is the place to be, if you're not there.
In college, you are in a cohort of peers who are prioritizing growing/learning over most other things. In the workforce, that is not a guarantee.
Sure you may be lucky enough to join an organization that is willing to take risks for the sake of learning, but I would argue that this is incredibly rare as companies are motivated to make profits and the ROI is not always clear.
This doesn't mean that college will automatically make you adaptable and intellectually curious. You will only get back what you put into it.
I'm not hiring, but I'd personally rather see someone who self taught themselves some specific discipline, and then used the money they would have spent on college to apply their knowledge to build something for themselves (whether that's taking knowledge of math and building an investment portfolio, or taking knowledge of software and building a business/app, etc.)
If I were you I'd just ask "am I getting what I want out of college?" and if not, change that. If you don't know what else it's about, observe, ask, research, ask people on HN, whatever.
Disclaimer: never went.
Now in terms of math I can only speak for myself but it would probably take me 10x longer to learn what I have learnt, if it wasn't for being surrounded by professionals and a peer group where I can have my assumptions tested against.
Now I'm not saying it's impossible to self teach yourself advanced mathematics, but without tutorials, office hours, students to talk to, professors to talk to, it's going to be a very difficult road and one I'm not sure I could do the self-taught method.
Heh. I got a specially tough mathematical logic professor and failed multiple times. It literally took me years until I finally passed the class. And several textbooks and nights with little to no sleep. I had to rinse my brain and put it back a few times until I finally got it.
Sure, go with a textbook if you are ok with some superficial knowledge. But it's nonsense to compare that with spending months studying a single subject under a tough teacher.
It is not something required to be successful, but I'm getting tired of hearing stuff like "just buy a book, it's the same thing". No, it's not.
It is, however, a good idea to do so, and use that to figure out if going deeper in those subjects would be worthwhile.
Disclaimer: never learned calculus properly. Teacher wasn't strict enough, and I didn't care at the time. Big mistake.
You're at your peak in terms of learning new subjects, so if you get a chance, learn a few random ones! It's said that apple's focus on design and typography wouldn't have happened if Steve Jobs hadn't dropped in on some calligraphy classes during college.
For example, let's say one isn't sure about going to college. Instead of spending 4 years and a bajillion dollars to find out if college is right for you, and it might not be, how about washing dishes for a few months at a local restaurant? For one, you might love washing dishes. Two, a lot of stuff can come into focus when you spend doing something you don't really want to do. Just a thought.
This has never been a problem in terms of skills or employment and advancement. The only part I feel I missed out on is the networking aspect, and perhaps doing a minor subject, some language, literature or general studies unit or two would make one a more well-rounded person.
It's hard to justify the time and expense just for these benefits though.
And, as a bonus, in non-english speaking countries foreigners will have often a easier time getting admitted in an exclusive university than locals because universities want to be more international and increase diversity.
It's not worth getting into debts for an education you could have for free somewhere else.
My loans won't be paid off until I'm in my mid 40s. I feel like a sucker who fell for a scam. It's objectively the biggest mistake I ever made.
I'm sure my perspective will be soundly dismissed on HN. I'm sure I must have done college "wrong" or something. Whatever. I'm not trying to blame anyone else. My choices seemed like good ones at the time; these things are only clear in retrospect.
Felt like I did college wrong too, and it cost 4 years and ~22k USD, in return for .. nothing much really.
Unless, you're going to be a doctor/lawyer/engineer/$FIELD_THAT_REQUIRES_LICENSING... then college is a scam, and a waste of time and money.
Don't be fooled, education != college. You CAN get educated for much less, in MANY other ways, for much less money (if not free).
Burn out is not really something physical. You probably need some rest, but it is less than what you think (measured in days). Your own mind is dissatisfied with some of what you are doing and it is raising red flags. You need to figure out what is it.
Do you like writing software? This is the first question. If you do, keep going, but you need to focus on something else. Maybe a slightly different industry, or smaller companies, or even something on your own.
I agree with the comments about college. You don't know what you are missing out until you do. It's great that you are self taught, which is an important skill for college.
There are a few reasons to enroll. You are unlikely to be implementing data structures in your day job. However, some algorithms are very hard to understand, and it forces your brain to work really hard to crack them. Then algorithmic problems at work become rather trivial. And the remaining non-trivial can be reduced to one of the problems you already know.
Second, there's the exchange of ideas. You'll notice that many billionaires are college dropouts. Meaning that they did enroll and took classes, and decided to quit because they found a big opportunity. Odds are you are going to leave college in debt instead of a billionaire, but you'll leave with knowledge and connections, which are worth more.
And of course, your CV will be better for it.
Adrenal gland.. Mostly relies on good neurochemistry, which relies on 2 things: good diet, and good gut health. Meaning: eat your yogurt (and bio flora for your tummy) and get all your amino acids! Good gut health = great digestion -> what you eat becomes good neurochem -> happiness and clarity.
Can you provide the source for this? I would like to read up.
Any other sources of knowledge to learn about neurosciences you would like to recommend would also be helpful.
There being no concise source on the matter of general health, diet, good neurochemistry, and mood, I can but offer a collection of disparate books:
Principles of Neuroscience (Kandel, Schwartz, Jessell) is a great textbook.
Emotional Intelligence (Bradberry)
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (Suzuki Roshi)
I also read a lot of personal experience vault essays on erowid.org (regarding "experimental medicine," for lack of better terminology)
In fact, avoid any situation which pushes you to give up a healthy sleep schedule.
This is ridiculous advice for someone who is in U.S. So you want him to get into a huge debt w/o even knowing what he wants to do?
OP, if you want to find what you want to do or just "find yourself" don't bother wasting money and time at college and just travel for 6 months to some remote place and live there with locals.
Second, you mention traveling and living in a remote area with locals. This is definitely a good thing to do. But it can also drop you into debt just as quickly as college in the US if you don’t research first. And you may or may not learn anything if you are not careful. In other words it’s still a risk.
I think most people underestimate the value of doing nothing. Seriously do nothing for sometime. It maybe a week or a month. Just travel, eat, drink, sleep, etc., You will start feeling yourself back in no time. Once you feel normal, realize that you need frequent breaks to maintain that state of mind. Now that you have an experience of burnout, you have an opportunity to not repeat that again.
Is it the work?
Is it the people?
Is it the office?
Is it the commute?
Is it the structure of the day?
Find out exactly what it is that's actually burning you out.
Some of these can be solved by becoming a remote worker (which comes with its own cast of problems). If you can snag a remote job you can do things like remote year (remoteyear.com (I think)), which sounds like something perfect for a 21 year old interested in experiencing new things (while making money instead of taking loans!).
On the other hand if it's the work in general then college may be a good step. That being said, I'm not as certain how to combat long term dissatisfaction with work. At the end of the day a lot of our job is doing the same sort of shit of over and over again. Wire this up here, move this button there, get this data heah, color this that there ova hea.
It's kind of a grind for a lot of us I think but it's still pretty interesting stuff to be doing with decent amounts of satisfaction to be found through out our projects.
Finally, if you're filled with emotions you'd like to get out, don't be afraid to go see a therapist. Having someone to talk to, who can get to know you, and work with you overtime isn't necessarily always just for the depressed.
Burnout sucks, it's real, there's no pill for it. Use all the tools available to you to combat it. Don't make rash decisions. Do write in a notebook and sit quietly for introspection. Do spend time figuring out the what, where, why, when, and how. Do consider all available options.
- do not analyze why you burned out, as it is because you feel ontologically 'incomplete', or insecure. you can't make meaning of a lack of meaning from the same position of a lack of meaning. so, you will need to bounce this off of/through others acting as nonjudgmental conversationalists
- if you do feel incomplete in this way, seeking internal answers/finding your "real self"/learning who you "really are" will only become a Sisyphean task/disaster
- don't wait for your desire to come back, it's an unobtainable, by design - see Lacan, or if that's unreasonable, just listen to the rolling stones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrIPxlFzDi0
- don't care too much about others over yourself: this is what leads to burnout
- if you get rid of your phantasies, you won't get reality: you'll get something worse than reality. so retain your dreams, and keep looking for new ones, as dreams and fantasies are really the only way to get into reality..
You're still young, so you can try something else (eg. product development) and easily go back to software development if you end up missing it. Or maybe there's another are within tech that'll interest you (eg. blockchain, AI/ML, game dev).
I will say one thing though - software development is probably the best job for money, work life balance, and ease of finding employment
1 - Just work your way through it, it will pass.
2 - Switch to another project in the company.
3 - Switch to another company.
4 - Take time off.
#2: But you don't have to solve it now. Go travelling while you're young, healthy, and presumably have few significant commitments. It's not guaranteed, but you'll likely get more insight into what you want to do next while travelling as well.
The rest will come to you.
Starting your own company is not necessarily a path to success, and you may not be an entrepreneur. What it will do though, is provide a.) an understanding of what it's like to work for yourself b.) provide you with some insight about what you like to work on (as opposed to being told what to work on), and c.) you might even discover a new pathway. Start with an idea you care about, research its market, try to discover a niche. If it looks promising and you're excited by the idea, try it out.
Also consider that enterprise isn't the only option for work. There are startups, non-profits, and even small businesses. Small businesses can be really interesting because of the value you can provide through simple automation. If you're like me, the more you can see your personal impact on the business and the people it serves, the more you'll enjoy your work. This type of work is basically on the opposite end of the spectrum from Silicon Valley programming work, but it can be just as fulfilling.
The other possibility is maybe you're not enjoying programming as much as you thought you would, and you're thinking about a career change. My recommendation would be to try and find a reputable trade school and check out some options that relate to your current area of expertise. Please think long and hard about attending college, though. There's a lot of things in college that aren't specifically focused on helping YOU succeed, as much as they are about helping you learn stuff that may not be relevant to you. I'm biased though, I didn't go.
What's next for you is not something you're going to find the answer to from any of us on HN. You need to discover more about what interests you. Have you considered travel or taking up more hobbies? Might help guide you.
If in addition to being burned out you don't like what you are working towards, just choose a different goal. I found that working toward Artificial General Intelligence is a very motivating goal. I have been pursuing it for the past few years and I am yet to grow bored with it. The only tricky thing is there's a lot of bs surrounding the subject, so you need to learn to navigate it.
Email Derek Sivers. He's helped me in the past, though I didn't listen, deep down in my heart of hearts I know he is right.
If it is just a lack of motivation then things are a bit easier and I think you have at least two choices, maybe more:
1. (I've done this when I was just a few years older than you.) Accept that your current work is boring but otherwise OK. Do side projects. Build a portfolio.
2. (I've done this as well.) Or you can start applying for every job that looks interesting. Since you already have a job you have a great starting point.
3. (Not always an option.) Go back to school as others have mentioned.
Nowadays just condense your life to a backpack and travel while you can. Making money or going into debt for school is great and all but your true wealth is your time and your's alone. Sure you can hawk it out to the highest bidder but you can never buy it back no matter what you do. You code so go experience the world and find over looked problem facing real people and solve them. By not having a schedule and being self reliant you'll be forcibly giving yourself the time to do so.