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

It sounds like you were fortunate to have your passion and career be one and the same for 2 decades. Many people do not have this blessing, so ask yourself: what does everyone else do in this case? Personally, I think trying to find purpose/meaning/happiness in your life is the point of life.

This is to say, you'll probably need to hunt for hobbies and find something that gives you meaning, now that the IT-shine is gone.

Absolutely. In a similar place after 20 years of various roles in technology. So I built a lumber mill, a woodshop and I'm going to start making things. Much more fulfilling.

After a couple of decades, I went in a radically different direction for a few years. I've spent the past six months trying to reverse course. I won't say that it was a mistake or that I regret it, necessarily, but it is quite clear now that what I really needed was a sabbatical, and I should have taken that before making any decisions.

Seems like a timeline for a midlife crisis. Either way it might pay to talk to a good therapist about it. They’ll be able to help you work through whatever might be getting in the way of experiencing that passion, and help with concrete steps for what you do next.

Not personally but yes, there seem to be threads like this every week on HN.

> I could focus on my current hobbies and start a business based on those. Not because of money, but because I'm looking for that excitement again.

If you're comfortable enough financially I'd say to go for it.

I tried branching away from IT because I thought I was bored of it, and thought I would be happier not sitting at a desk.

I almost immediately started thinking about tech projects I wanted to do. I realized I had all this tech experience and everywhere I looked I found things that tech could improve.

For me, in my case, it turns out I was just tired of technology for technology's sake. And instead I needed a different cause, and different ways to apply it and solve things.

Fast forward to now, and I love my tech job, but now my passion and excitement is not for the tech itself, but instead it is in the way the problems it is being applied to are approached and solved with the tech.

I don't know if I would have re-found this passion without the couple years off outside of tech, so maybe it was a required part of my journey to get to this point.

Been going through something similar. I still enjoy technology, though my passions have cooled into what I think of as "useful technologies" as opposed to "toy technologies" (basically - is it useful, or is it just entertaining?). I, too, have been in tech for at least 20 years now. The funny thing is, I remember when I got into the career right out of college how resistant I was to the whole idea. I recall very clearly sitting in my college apartment the week of graduation cursing the fact that I was now facing down a couple of decades of sitting in a cubicle instead of actually living a life. Everyone told me to suck it up and get to work - parents, mentors, media, etc. - so that's what I did.

I think a big part of the reason so many people are miserable - not just in tech, but across every industry - is because we have all been convinced to sell the bulk of our lives to rich people for the sole purpose of making them richer. We spend on average 40 hours a week dedicated to jobs whose sole focus at the end of the day is to make the owners and investors richer. We get a piece of it - some more than others - and we're told to be happy with that as we spend the best parts of our lives not with the families we have built, the communities we have chosen, or in celebration of the life with which we have been granted, but dedicating ourselves to the betterment of a wealthy few. And it's only getting worse. Elon Musk's expectation of having a "hardcore" group of employees willing to work 80 hour weeks just so he can save his $44B mistake is peak malignant narcissism, and there are folks actively praising him for it. Fuck. That.

Find work that is meaningful to you. Not that bullshit "save the world" type of crap that hides exploitation of workers beneath a veil of toxic positivity (effective altruism is, at best, bullshit, at worst it allows these assholes to not only exploit the labor of others, but their sense of good will as well) - I mean true, meaningful work that you and the communities most important to you see direct benefit from. Rather than work for another bloated rich asshole, either work for yourself or find a group of local, like-minded folks and work cooperatively - sharing the duties and sharing the proceeds equally or equitably. If you can't find folks locally and want to stick to tech - the choice I'm currently making until I can be in a position to start something locally - then do the same thing, but with a group of like-minded techs. I am now a full time independent consultant, but I occasionally hop on to projects with friends in the industry in similar positions. We name our prices and often kick a little more to the person handling the coordination with the client, which grants us control of our time and a reasonably steady income. You may be surprised how easy it is to build such a group of people. You say you've been in the industry for ~20 years - my guess is you have developed a pretty strong network. Shake that tree and find your people.

If you've completely lost your passion for tech... well, first, I'm very sorry to hear that. I'm willing to bet if you can take a break from having to rely on it to make all of your income, you may find yourself drawn back into it. Until then, I'd suggest looking around your community and starting a small local business, run as a worker-owned and operated co-op. Get loans or fund it by providing the loans yourself, but no one should have an ownership stake unless they work directly for the company, and everyone working for the company should have an ownership stake and a say in how it's run. Spread the risk among everyone who joins, and also spread the reward when you succeed. Don't build a business, don't be a boss - build a community, become a leader. Unless you were born rich or are willing to commit the majority of your time and life to becoming rich by exploiting other people, you will never be rich yourself. Instead, shoot for thriving in a co...

> I could focus on my current hobbies and start a business based on those. Not because of money, but because I'm looking for that excitement again.

A life without money while slowly killing your hobbies is an interesting way to chase excitement I guess.

I'm in a similar, but slightly different place. I've been in technology roles for 28 years. I've been at my current company for the large majority of those years. For me it's not the technology that I've lost interest in, but all the other parts. The political squabbles, the red tape, the broken processes, and the lack of competency in general. If I could just concentrate on the technology, and deliver great products, I'd be in a much happier place.

I believe a significant part of my problem is that all those things I'm not a fan of come with the seniority I have. I'd be happier, work-wise, as a junior dev without those responsibilities. My lifestyle, unfortunately, doesn't support such a move.

IT is such a big domain. Can you be more specific? I've been coding for 35+ years across an extremely broad range of topics and can't get enough of it. I do it on my free time. I've worked for a dozen companies and at least as many managers and countless projects. I'll probably quit when I can no longer type.

I think if I had stayed at one place, it would have soured. So to risk being obvious, try a new company?

EDIT: maybe a bit of hyperbole on the # of jobs. but it's been a lot.

I've found that the further away I get from "hacky, simple, works" scripts that wow the uninformed the less I enjoy my work.

I wrote a Greenhouse bookmarklet for our Head of People a while back. All it did was click buttons, poll the page for content, and copy/paste some text. It took me two hours. It was such a magical experience hopping on a call, demoing the bookmarklet, and being told I'd saved someone tens of hours.

In contrast, I spent the last few months building out a greenfield, microservice architecture that product wanted in anticipation of a new feature that was going to need to scale to the moon. It was a real technical challenge but, in the end, business needs changed and it never saw the light of day.

I know that when I first got into programming - I didn't know all the complex stuff. I just saw things in the world I wanted to affect with programming - and then did. Over time, I learned to tolerate all the BS that gets in the way of making magic happen in exchange for an ever-growing paycheck. Each step along the way made sense, but, upon reflection, the magic has been incrementally bled out from my passion all in an attempt to best utilize my abilities.

Consider building something simple for a non-techy friend who needs some help. You might be able to catch sight of the magic you feel you've lost by looking into their eyes as you deliver what you've made.

I realized I didn't hate the industry or the work, I hated the people. So I got out of "real tech" and got into the tech side of the kind of industry that tech industry people seem to think is quite evil, Wall Street. And sure, I'm probably not making the world a better place but at least theres plausible deniability. When I worked in real tech it was pretty obvious that unless I adopted a very specific set of beliefs (loosely summarized as "naive tech optimism") I was making the world a worse place. I'm happy mostly not having to deal with the kind of people I had to deal with in tech.

May I ask:

- How is your happiness and your energy levels outside of work?

- How is your cognitive performance at work? (Can you focus, are your thoughts 'foggy', do you have any issues working out complex tasks/solutions that you used to solve without issue etc....)

- Are you empowered in your job/role/team to make changes / improvements as you see fit, without being significantly limited or blocked by others?

--

I'm someone whose always gained a large portion of their energy from their work. When work wasn't going well it massively impacted my personal space / energy.

When my cognitive ability was impaired I found that all the rewards that technical work used to afford me disappeared, I was considering looking for options outside of engineering - or at least pivoting to less hands-on work, however I managed to completely fix my cognition and as soon as I did so - work was enjoyable again, and as such - my personal time as well.

Yes, I have pretty similar history to yours (30+ years in my case) and pretty much feel exactly as you do.

yup. imho, the high salaries we receive is a combination of both talent and willingness to do this rather unsatisfying work for long periods of time.

If this paid as much as say, brick layer, I would rather have been the brick layer.

Yes. It lost its luster. I think it came from being disillusioned by the realities of working for my "dream" job and what once seemed like a challenge technically no longer seeming difficult.

Maybe you'd enjoy reading the story of why I quit tech to become a therapist: http://glench.com/WhyIQuitTechAndBecameATherapist/

I’ve worked 13 years, looking forward to retirement.

Yes, i have been there. I worked for 10 years as a developer when a pretty bad bore out hit me. I quit and started a business which failed but allowed me to reboot myself working in graphics and design. I profit from the technical background today but as developer but beeing a dev made me very, very unhappy.

Yes I have. Coming from an entrepreneurial family, I always had that itch to become part of something bigger than yourself.. But in IT you're expected to stay in your cubicle and enjoy the ping pong table. After 11+ years professionally in IT, i've already seen it all.

So here I am; Ive been working for several companies, the last two being a "flat hierarchy" / Holacracy. Sound great right? Well no.. not if you want to grow to management to give that entrepreneurial mind a go again. Im stuck and it has been weighing me down for a while now. Ive applied for several CTO positions but because I've had "roles" instead of actual "job titles" companies wont take everything seiously. Im in a perdicament; On one side I'm tired of being rejected for work Im certainly qualified for, on the other side I dont want to be the loner freelancer (been there already) and on even another side I don't want to stay in that cubicle anymore. Im tired.. And im only 33.

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

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

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

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

Yes, about once a week.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edit: fixed a typo.