Ask HN: How do you fix the “no longer feel” anything in tech?
I've been in the software industry for ~10 years. I no longer feel exciting for anything including the latest ChatGPT. I've already been through these phases: engineering principle for all things -> okay, helping customers is the actual business value, so code is just a tool -> obsessed with [solution,problem] -> well, it's actually mostly about marketing and sale, problems don't actually discover good solutions, mediocre solutions find their way to the problems. Now I see tech is as useful as taking a shower every morning. I no longer feel anything in any role in tech industry.
No, I don't think I'm depressed. I eat healthy food, exercise and see mountain and river every morning. My mom loves me.
I'm figuring out what's the best mental model to survive (or feel) anything in tech. So you may suggest something outside of tech, I'm already pretty good at many things. But this profession just doesn't feel (or feel at all) right.
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Okay, thanks everyone, I try to reply to appreciate every comment, though it's plenty! Just so you know I already read every comment as of now.
88 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 139 ms ] threadWe are standing at the edge of some uncharted territory. No one is sure whether the future of software development as a profession will be better or worse than the past.
It's ok to feel numb standing here.
> have positive social impact
I haven't seen developers' effort be appreciated in these projects (mostly it's appreciated in a sense that "oh nice stuff I can use for free")
However you do get some. its not solely demanding people wanting to freeload - some genuinely appreciation does happen. It comes and goes, and is usually for things you least expect. It is also often not porportional to effort. The most thanks i ever got in my life was fixing an i18n bug in bashkir (language spoken in russia by a minority group). It took probably half an hour. The things i spent weeks on, nobody gave a shit. Some random quick fix and it was the most appreciation i got in my life and made a local newspaper from half way across the world.
So it does happen, but not consistently.
You could also look outside the tech industry and go into something else you care about as the person who is an exception for being technical. If you have 10 years experience you can do a lot of good and help many people for whom computers are still scary and mysterious black boxes (remember, this is the overwhelming majority of humans currently alive on Planet Earth).
Wish you good luck!
I'm thinking this is the direction I'm trying to figure out because I feel great when people say "thank you" to my effort-less help. (I don't love intentional activity like volunteer. I super love when it's accidental, less thinking, me suddenly happened to be helpful)
Or you can just view it as a job. No one wakes up wanting to flip burgers all day, it's just a means to an end. Find something else in your life that makes you feel other than work.
If that doesn't sit right, maybe consider working with non-profits and charities. They will have their problems, but at least you're working towards something meaningful and bigger than yourself.
1. Build something you really care about. Something that solves an actual issue that you have.
2. Learn a better programming language. This might sound strange, but I found that work gets super boring and repetitive quickly if the language can't keep up with my thoughts. Some languages do better than others here. Forget Python, JavaScript/Typescript, Java, C#, C++, Golang, Rust (even though Rust is cool). Do Clojure (or other Lisp), Haskell, Scala, Racket, F#, Prolog, Idris, Purescript. It makes a huge difference.
2. I wrote c,c++ in the past life. I'm pretty good at vanilla js. And Elm, Elixir. So I get the taste of functional and those ML family static typed lang. But it's all meh .. maybe because I also know the lower levels stuff from assembly to flipflop and diode that logic gates are made of, and how electron flows (that's my uni background) Not really exciting.
You seem to know the cost of everything.
Have you looked into "code is data" [2]? With the engineering or physics background, have you read about programming concepts like compiler, e.g. [3]? Programming languages are not only a tool to shift electrons around in a more convenient way. If you look the other way, languages are used to change the way you think. Have you tried creating an environment for you that suits you? ... that facilitates you to do whatever you want to do?
That said, maybe you have to do a Steve Jobs and stop showering every morning or try things outside of tech. Take time off so that it is a choice to continue when you return. After all, AI will be done in 10-20 years. There was and there never will be a more interesting time than being involved in tech right now.
[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57427557/clarify-perlis-...
[2] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5833033/in-lisp-code-is-...
[3] https://mitp-content-server.mit.edu/books/content/sectbyfn/b...
I think the bigger problem is the way you describe the usefulness of the work you do, how it's about satisfying your customers needs. If you could somehow put yourself before your customers, how would you do things differently? I sometimes code in Ruby, even though writing it in Python would be better for my business. I'm pretty fluent in Python, but Python is a shitty programming language and working in it for too long makes me sad. I don't think this discussion should be focusing on programming languages, just switching programming languages is probably not going to make you happy.
If you think about a moment that made you happy in tech, even if it's long ago, what was it that you got enjoyment from? Maybe you could reproduce and amplify that. You seem to draw pride from knowing lower level stuff, did you know in the past 10 years hardware design went from something you need an expensive lab, loads of money and months of time for, to something you could do on the weekend using open source tools, order the PCB and you'll have it before the next weekend with the parts wave soldered on to it. Watch some Phil's Lab videos on Youtube and you'll have a working FPGA+DDR3 board in a couple of months and you can flow those electrons exactly like you want them to.
Sometimes diving deep is fun, you could utterly solve some super niche market by being a lone wolf programmer that's hyper focused. Sometimes there's some big ChatGPT style opportunity that you could use to tackle some big issue with a synergetic team.
Yea back in many years ago, my team was deciding what language to use for a monitoring system. I know c++, friend1 knows python, friend3 knows php. 2 hates Python, and we ended up with Perl! omg.. can't time travel back to stop the crime.
Well off-topic, but I share that python story.
I don't think you do. Learn Haskell or Scala (doing only pure functional programming). The goal should be to express whatever problem you have at hand in the most natural and high-level way. That brings back good feelings when working because you are spending all or almost all of your brain-power to solve the business problem, without having to deal with low-level problems that no one except engineers understand.
Elm is a great and productive language - but it is not nearly as expressive. Exixir is not a great language at all but it's still great because it runs on the BEAM. That makes it very effective for big production projects. But you are not looking for effectiveness. You are looking to get your joy back in what you are doing.
You can also go the other way and don't solve high level problems but solve the most low level stuff - but from what you are saying, it doesn't look like that's what you want.
That said there is a difference between not feeling excited about latest fad and not feeling excited about anything.
My general advice would be to take a break. Quit for a month or two. Learn to paint, hike, whatever. Maybe the excitement comes back after a while, if not maybe you found something different to be excited about. Either way its a win.
> No, I don't think I'm depressed. I eat healthy food, exercise and see mountain and river every morning. My mom loves me.
What's your basis for thinking you are not depressed? Because depressed people can still eat good food, exercise, see nature, and have people who love them.
Which to be clear, i am not saying you are depressed, but if you are basing you thinking you are not depressed solely on that, maybe you should dig a little deeper, as you can be all of those things and still be depressed. Or maybe just suffering burn out.
In any case, consider talking it over with a therapist. If you are depressed they can get you help. If you are not depressed, they can help you figure out what actually is wrong and what your options are. Alternatively, if all you need is to change up your life a bit, they can help guide you through figuring out for yourself what parts to change. There really is no downside to talking to a mental health professional. They can help with things with depression, but they can also help with life just feeling boring.
In the end though, worst case scenario is you maybe waste some time and maybe money (although hopefully not much money if you have insurance). An hour a week is not much time to spend if it works, and if it doesn't seem to be working you can always just quit or try a different therapist.
My uncle manages a refinery. He probably gets paid around 140k€, his house is fancy but normal. Most people who work like hell in France max out at 80k€. Meanwhile my devs start at 35k€ and get 65k€ after a fee years only (Note: French salaries are low, but employees prefer Ticket Restaurant and public healthcare to earning more, it’s a long debate - 70k€ is the top 8% of French people[1]). As a dev, you have extremely low risk and responsibilities, you need extremely little human talent which makes all the difference elsewhere, but if you study a popular framework hard enough, you can land a high paying job. So, a lot of devs are stuck because they need the money but can’t reconvert as an electrical engineer for the same money, even if they have the qualifications.
[1] https://www.inegalites.fr/Salaire-etes-vous-riche-ou-pauvre
After one year i did find my current job. It came out of nowhere and because i just said yes to everything. Actually when i said yes to go for an interview for this company i work at now, i thought "this isn't going nowhere because this is an old company with legacy code and nothing new, but i have promised to say yes"
I landed the best job in the world. And i actually found out that the new teams they hired wasn't legacy teams but doing .NET core, k8s, docker, dapper etc. I can even install Linux on my laptop if i want to.
Try a new career, you may be happier.
Some of it reduces required human resource, like I took a logistics department head count from 10 to 4 with scanning to automate record keeping and increase accuracy. So that kinda sucks deleting jobs, but from the perspective of building/scaling a business, it’s awesome.
My question would still be, do you "feel" anything about other things? The way you describe it, does not really sound exited. More like, yeah mountains, healthy food, exercise, same shit every day.
In other words, you do sound disillusioned, to the point of burned out/depressed.
"But this profession just doesn't feel (or feel at all) right."
So what profession would feel right to you?
I don't think you can "fix" feeling right about anything.
And I don't mean another language. You may need something completely different. Metalworking, chemistry, robotics, whatever you can find that you would like to do and learn.
Oh but that's super hard and income will drop? Do it on the side or keep your current job.
You’ve been in this environment for 10 years, it is only healthy to be where you’re at right now in your mind.
With a high probability you enjoyed tech and valued your career highly and was rightfully proud of it.
To be happy with life in the next decades the key is probably not tech, or what does your heart and stomach tell you?
Are there goals that your inner you tells you to strive for?
Dare to look beyond tech and work. Travel, love, companionship, philosophy, listen to your 80-year old neighbor etc!
Whatever direction you choose it must be your active choice to give meaning.
If you don't hate your job, consider yourself very very lucky.
Managers want people who are so inured that they overlook little things like mistreatment and low pay. They want you hooked. Hooked people are easier to control.
The OP said nothing about mistreatment so I don't follow you.
This is what I try to remember when I'm bored at work. Programmers may be overworked and underpaid, but we still have the luxury to do whatever we want from time to time, and make our own training by reading APIs for new languages because we love that shit.
I have a lot of friends who work in various fields, and I'm pretty sure they don't "love" their jobs as much as I do (even when micro-managers are annoying me).
Recently, I quit my job because the managers became crazy and I told me friends "it's fine, I found a new job in less than 24 hours and it pays more and seems fun." I had to explain them how the programming world works since they didn't believe me at first.
I'm not sure who said "code is just a tool" but it's a depressing way to see things.
Because, as you say, most of the time business and marketing make things successful, not the actual tech. Only rarely does a hard-working programmer make something at the right moment that catapults them to success.
But that said, I don't think that fulfillment in tech is all or nothing. If you work very hard on a side project, you may be able to capture a tiny amount of success. Maybe your side project can generate enough money to pay for coffee every month? That would still feel pretty nice.
I think Carmack is a good example here in a discussion about chasing the feeling because I don't think he was in love with Doom as much as he was in love with tricking pixels into doing what he wanted (starting with the desktop Mario clone that evolved into Commander Keen). I base this assumption on the fact he's left the Doom franchise and is (or was last I checked) working in VR, figuring out how to trick pixels into doing what he wants again. I watched his Twitter account for a while, it was fun seeing what he was having fun with.
I find having a non tech hobby really helps me come to terms with this.
If it helps, I'm don't share the hype for ChatGPT either...
> I'm figuring out what's the best mental model to survive (or feel) anything in tech.
I've personally been the most fulfilled, when I'm part of a team of people who listen, and are not afraid to share ideas and build things that solve problems. Connect with the people you're working with and I think you'll feel much more satisfied at work.
And yeah, "it helps"
Wait, tech has got that covered too...
At least we can still ride our bikes.
Now, me personally, I seek determination as hard as I can, but keep finding only useless crumbles of it, seeing the way things evolve around me. It takes an enormous inner stoic to become e.g. a painter these days when AI imagery is all the rage. Or maybe an inner visionary, for this AI fad might be destined to be blown away as dust by a fresh breeze of spring...
Find more things you do care about in life/world, and then maybe see how tech can intersect with any of those in a good way? Or does it even have to.
Also, you didn't mention raising a family. Maybe try hanging out with a nice 5yo, and teaching them something, and see whether parenting instinct you didn't know you have suddenly activates. That might change how you look at other things, whether it's making a family and providing for them (perhaps with a tech job), or suddenly on a mission to make the future better for kids like that (perhaps with tech).