Ask HN: Time for a Career Change?
I've also become painfully aware over the years how many aspects of development are tedious and uninteresting. Things like wrangling dev environments, writing tests, debugging issues in prod, hunting through docs, and chasing down teams to figure out how a large system fits together (especially if the system is boring). A lot of engineering work is plumbing together different systems, and having more experience doesn't make this work any easier or faster.
I used to really enjoy programming, but that's because I would choose to work on solving problems I found interesting. I've always appreciated elegant systems (ideas like lambda calculus, Unix's files, programs, and pipes, LISP, Haskell, etc.), but most of the systems I work on are the exact opposite: large and boring. I also really dislike corporate culture: trying to maneuver politically, show off in meetings, etc. I'm starting to wonder if being a software engineer is really the right choice for me. Any thoughts?
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 85.1 ms ] thread1. Tight boundaries around relational and physical circumstances taking up your time and space: Environments without so many meetings, but probably also low-dopamine work environments in general, i.e. build your ideal space starting from the typical closet-with-locking-door configuration
2. "My ideas, my goals, my ways of doing things." Environments where you are the sole keeper of the job's tech domain knowledge. Total permission to go not-invented-here. For example, say there's an IT team but you are the only software engineer and there's a solid boundary there.
3. Time not of the essence: Introversion is at its best when time is not an overriding concern. It could still be a very important job, but the work product value is measured in qualitative improvements that create and maintain a sustainable business environment over time, for example.
I've seen these conditions matched in a lot of different domains, but tech within tech is a difficult match. The most common one that comes to mind would be academia, for example there was a popular bay area performing arts department within an academic institution, which had a very complex and rare web application stack and a tech person looking to retire.
Good luck, I hope this can be somewhat helpful.
Extroversion doesn't mean being immune to people speaking about boring stuff all day. I love talking with people, but it has to first and foremost be fun. Meetings are the antithesis of fun. Especially listening to engineers bickering about some mundane issues, or managers talking about a pointless reorganization that will synergize the agile flow.
I'm afraid that when you discard the above, there's hardly anything left. You need to be very high status to work exclusively on such projects.
Head to South America or SE Asia - stay in hostels, travel on local buses, swim in waterfalls, hike some trails.
I've met a few hundred devs irl and only a handful of them are game devs.
If I ask google "How many software engineers are game developers", I get a 2% estimate from someone on Quora.
I have an ok job at a smaller company with less politics but I simultaneously feel that I need further career progression at a large company, but also I am getting anxious with interviews, my career, money (not that I’m struggling, I have overall done better than most of my peers).
I still love programming but I wish I could build something for myself and monetise it. I’d be happy at a smaller company where I can see my work directly benefit people. But I don’t know what that looks like long term.
How about making contribution to OSS?
This is most software development. Most of it is boring and kind of tedious and the same old stuff we’ve always done. The new stuff you’ve never done is interesting. You figure out, and now it’s something you know. Then it becomes uninteresting.
> I'm starting to wonder if being a software engineer is really the right choice for me.
I’d be willing to guess if you moved on to something else you’d feel the same kinds of things. The issues you’ve mentioned are a reality of modern businesses. Your may have to see what options are available from your employer in terms of expanding your role or exploring concepts that will help you find more fulfillment. As a for-instance, my job allows me to spend 10% of time doing a sort-of choose-your—own adventure learning development. I’m currently working in computer vision even though my other work is web-apps
"A man came across three stonecutters and asked them what they were doing. The first replied, “I am making a living.” The second kept on hammering while he said, “I am doing the best job of stonecutting in the entire county.” The third looked up with a visionary gleam in his eye and said, “I am building a cathedral.”" https://www.harvardmagazine.com/breaking-news/three-stonecut...
Of course, IT applications in larger corporations tend to be boring and uninspiring by themselves, but they are there for a reason and they probably make someone's life easier and help other people to their job. For example, I am working on an IT system that connects individual dealerships to the corporate IT databases. My company uses this system to sell its products and communicate with its customers, so this system is really helping people.
Maybe try to look beyond the daily and mundane tasks of your job and see the purpose of your role.
1) Your work is always helping _someone_. Find out who and connect with them.
2) The cathedral anecdote sounds pithy, until you hear “sorry, no raise for you. But do you really need it? After all - you’re building a cathedral!”
Well then find something you're really passionate about but convey the impression to your boss that you're mainly doing it for the money;)
It may the right choice in the sense that alternatives are even worse.
Souns like you want your days to be filled with relatively free exploration of things that interest you at a given time. Sorry, but you need to be a genius in a given field to even have a shot at getting such position. [1] For the rest of us, the two realistic ways of achieving this is to either grind in high-paying job and retire early or compromise on standard of living (essentially become a ramen-eating hippy, so that you hardly need paid work) and then fill your days with whatever is interesting to you. Both of these tracks have huge holes and I suspect people choosing them may end up as depressed as regular "lifers" at big companies.
On the introvert thing - personality is malleable and plenty of stereotypical tech introvers (starting with Elon Musk) have grown into high managers position where they comfortably spend their days in meetings. It's just a skill like anything else, it just takes at least a couple of years to develop.
[1] One exception might be getting into PhD program in a field of your interest where you'll be paid pittance, but, if you're lucky, you might have a couple years of freedom to explore your interests.
Anecdotally i have enough money that i dont really _have_ to work. i "retired" and bought a farm. got a job learning to frame houses (to learn to build my own house), and a year later i own a business framing houses. I run the farm, and build houses, and do whatever i feel like doing. i cant imagine getting depressed. there are always new challenges, and things to learn. I was horribly depressed and unfulfilled in corporate america writing software.
now i do what i want, there isnt an HR department, and the business politics are fairly down to earth.
Maybe identify existing problems at work which impacts you.
Tried to do this myself but interest or suggestion soon becomes obligation and responsibility, I wised up to it. Good deed always go unpunished and so on...
You can cherry pick projects that are interesting to you, and you can jump to another company every few months.
Just try to avoid long commitment projects.
For example: A few quick jobs I did in the past:
- Jump into a startup sourcecode and find out why the whole microservice ecosystem would fall like a house of cards after some time. Didn't have to fix it myself, just provide evidences.
- Create a brand new embedable front-end library for a marketing startup. The old one was a pile of crap.
- Setup a design system foundation for a big company.
- Integrate an existing chatbot on google home.
- Code review an entire project made by a solo dev.
- Improve performance of messy backend-frontend architecture.
Isn't consultancy an extremely saturated and competitive field? I've considered this to be a realistic option.
The way I've come to solve this for my self is separating programming into professional programming and hobby programing.
For professional programming, I do it to make a living, to earn a salary, and that is it, nothing more and nothing less. If I wasn't being paid for what I do at work I wouldn't do it. I aim to be a good team member, skillful, helpful, add value to the company, but that's all. I don't expect to find enjoyment in it. When the boring part of programming comes along, I'm not surprised, it's just work. There will be times in which I happen to enjoy what I'm working on and I also actively try to find ways to make my workplace a place that I'm happy, or at the very least not miserable, but doing boring things is just part of the deal. And looking around at other careers, is not a terrible deal ($$$).
But I also happen to program as a hobby, not for professional growth, or to hustle, no, I program because it is something I enjoy. When I'm programming as a hobby I'm very intentional to not mix work with my hobby, since the purpose of the hobby is to enjoy the hobby!! I will use 7 programming languages, start 12 projects and finish none, and you know what? I can! and I love it!
It comes down to the source of motivation. Notice how you can start a project and be super excited about it, but the moment you bring money into the mix, i.e. you wanna monetize the project or get a tons of stars on github, the initial energy seems to dissipate... that's because at the beginning of the project the motivation was internal, curiosity, discovery, the joy of learning, or whatever. But the moment that the motivation becomes external, say, money, open source fame, professional advancement, the internal motivations tends to disappear.
Anyways, I hope this makes sense and you can find some balance.