Ask HN: What to do if you hate your coding job? (UK, 24yr old)

it just seems time is too valuable (after working 9 hours a day and feeling pretty tired) to work on some stupid idea just for fun when you know it will lead to nothing

I've had that before, with an idea that's fun, but not fun enough. I thought maybe I was getting sick of programming.

Now I work 9 hours a day, feeling pretty tired, and still go on to work on my idea until 1am or 2am. 3am if I can make it.

If you aren't energetic enough to work on an idea for fun after 9 hours of tiring work, the idea isn't fun enough, and not worth quitting full time employment.

But on the other hand if despite 9 hour of tiring work, you find yourself working till the wee hours every night working on your idea, perhaps consider maybe there's something interesting in your mind?

That's the situation I'm in. I'm planning a year or two without working in a year's time to work on this idea. Not because I have no energy to work on it after 9 hours of work everyday, but because the idea is so interesting to me even after 9 hours of work, I find myself working an additional 6 hours on it. It's on my mind in the shower, on the way to work, at lunch, in afternoon tea break, on the way home, eating dinner, when I am working on it, when I'm in bed, as soon as I wake up. (And I try to resist thinking about it when the director of the company is sitting next to me. I hope he didn't catch me writing this comment. ;)) My ideas were the same ones I've had for the past decade, except I've refined them as time gone by. An idea that was once stupid and won't lead to anywhere, is now an idea I can't take my mind off, an idea, for me, that will lead to everything.

Keep living. Look for a new job if you're sick of it. But I don't think you're tired because you don't have time to work on your ideas. I think you're tired because you haven't found or refined your existing ideas to a state where it will be so interesting to you you're working on it even as your eyelids struggle to keep opened. You don't have the time for ideas that aren't that interesting, but when you have an idea that's interesting enough to you, you will find you always manage to find some time for it.

> I don't know. I just posted this because I guessed many people here have been in my shoes. Have you? What did you do?

Not in this context but in a similar situation yes. Long time ago. What I did was introspection until finally I reached and embraced the cold, hard truth:

- I'm finding all kind of excuses not to do what I know I should be doing because I'm afraid.

- The fact that I am not happy has little to do with my job and everything to do with me.

- Why I feel unhappy? With whom am I really unhappy with and why?!

- If I can't find some quality time NOW (running, learning an instrument, having fun with my then gf - now wife, etc.) it will never happen. I have to make it happen.

- It's all about choices I do, some are intentional and others are unintentional

... and finally it hit me! I lacked two things: A very specific cause like a clear destination, where do I see myself in 10 years, in 5 years, in 1 year? How do I wanna look next year? How do I wanna my relationship to evolve? How good do I wanna become? etc.

Once you have this sorted out (where do you want to and why) everything else starts making sense. Good luck.

Hi dthrw, I'm from UK too. In my previous job, I was working on something very cool with the best colleagues that I got so far in my professional life but I wasn't feeling great by the new vision of the company. They weren't going in the wrong direction, just not the one that I was expecting. So I left. I didn't travel around the world like some people do but I searched for a remote job because I wanted to take a break from offices and work in my cozy room. UK and specifically London are looking for many developers so it should not be a problem to find a new job. Take your time to choose the right one. You may find it hard first (for me, it was remote or nothing) but you need to stand on your choice of life. You may have chosen the wrong job, don't do the mistake one more time. It's not selfish to privilege yourself. You worked and studied hard for your future so you should have the life that you want. Cheers and good luck bro ;)

I know exactly how you feel and I've felt the same way, except I'm 3 years older than you. Still haven't figured out the solution, but I'm hopeful. My biggest issue is that I'm a big picture guy.

I like thinking about AI at the high level, reading about the ultimate fate of the universe and studying macroeconomics. I don't like worrying about the details, Angular vs. React, writing unit tests, fixing bugs. I suppose I'm just lazy. But at my point in my career at least, I'm the one supposed to be doing the grunt coding work and I find it boring.

One day we'll figure it out, but it's not a problem you solve overnight I've learned. I've been dealing with this for half a decade now. Some days feel worse than others, but at the end of the day, we can pay our bills and live a pretty nice lifestyle to find consolation, so I guess it's all a first world problem.

I was in a similar spot almost two years ago. I actually didn't mind the work that I did, but it just became rather dull.

So I quit and traveled. It does seem like traveling is the "default" thing to do to cure one's ennui. What I can say is that being in a new locale doesn't magically give you newfound motivation/inspiration etc, and depending on your personality it can be quite isolating.

Over the years I've kept a list of things I'd like to build if I ever found the time. Now I'm just going down the list and seeing what sticks.

The way I see it, if you really do hate your job then quitting is simply a matter of time - better sooner rather than later, for both you and your employer.

> So I quit and traveled. It does seem like traveling is the "default" thing to do to cure one's ennui. What I can say is that being in a new locale doesn't magically give you newfound motivation/inspiration etc, and depending on your personality it can be quite isolating.

This. I never understood how being thousands of kilometers from anyone you know or care about is supposed to be good for you.

I am in your exact situation right now and I also am 24year old.

Quit and let someone else have it.

Hi OP, I'm in much the same position. Perhaps with a few differences - I was more interested in computer hardware and setup, but got into coding because I was told that is where I would make money. These people were not wrong; hardware monkey jobs pay considerably less than developers, but I hate my job. I've stuck with it for 2.5 years now (age 25) for the money and convenient location (not in London) but I've been desperate to move on for over 12 months.

The problem with working in IT, I find, is that it saps the fun out of your hobby. The best place to work if you actually want to code and enjoy it would be a start-up, but those are uncommon in the UK and come with their own drawbacks - unusual/long working hours, impossible deadlines, holding the future of the company quite literally in your hands. Big corporations give you more stability there and reduce the pressure, but at the cost of your input having little to no direct impact on the company. You also have to fight corporate bureaucracy which seems to be inevitable once a company reaches a certain size. The company I work at has recently crossed that tipping point, so I'm watching everyone's work ethic come crashing down.

The other option is to go freelance. If you can do web development, there will always be people wanting websites built, maintained or enhanced. Obviously you would become self-employed but you would have ultimate freedom over your work life. You could also start a local computer maintenance business for companies to outsource their IT work to; not all companies will hire someone in-house for small projects. It's difficult but not impossible to do at our age.

I've considered a lot of options in the time since I've graduated university. Computing was always my hobby: working in the same field seemed natural, but I'm finding the drawbacks are numerous. I'm moving teams within my company into more of a DevOps role - it means I will be doing less hands-on coding, and no client interaction, so my immediate contribution to the company's product will be essentially zero. However, I'll be working on systems that support other developers which sounds like a better option for me. It will also give me a break from coding professionally, which might leave me some energy to code in my spare time. Ultimately though, I've decided to get out of IT completely and do something else, because it just doesn't fit in my long-term plans.

The problem with IT in the UK is that everything is based in London, and we do not foster as much of a startup culture here as other countries, so most work is with big, historic companies where it's easy to become a small cog in a very big machine. You'll need to do some soul searching to decide if you can keep going with that.

I have also thought long and hard about complaining about my situation; correct, all our basic needs are addressed by having a job - food, shelter, even transport - but being in a bad job is equally bad for your mental health. I know it takes less effort to complain about it than do something about it - believe me, I've done enough of that! - but that's what you'll need to do. See if you can move sideways in your company into another job, or look into other options.

Hope this helps.

I am 26. Quit my job almost 1 year ago after 2 years of soul-crushing, passionless web development.

After 6 months off the job, now I'm trying to figure it out as a web freelancer. Not making anywhere near my old salary but I'm optimistic.

I'm enjoying it more for now, but it's tough. I'm broke. Blew through my meager savings in the first 6 months of unemployment, and I'm now dealing with back-to-back underestimated contracts. But I'm taking out a small loan and gonna be optimistic about it. I mean, worst case scenario I end up back in another soul-crushing job making mad stacks.

In the meanwhile, since starting the freelancing journey, a couple other promising opportunities have come up. A couple friends of mine started a company selling a plugin for a popular online platform and are looking for someone to handle their support line part-time (help people when they can't install his software, fix bugs that they uncover, and help building small features that customers request).

Programming just full time might actually be a good solution. I can handle a 3 day/week commitment, it'll pay enough for now and give me opportunities to do something outside of programming for a change.

My other option right now centers around a couple friends who are similarly dissatisfied with the life of a corporate programmer and who are seriously considering "doing a startup".

We're not American, but flights are cheap. The money seems so loose over there, and if we can manage to convince some investors to give us an even half-decent salary (hell, I'll happily work for half of what an engineer gets in Silicon Valley) it could be a great time.

I'm fortunate to have some amazing friends who are willing to go on this journey as a team. No way I'd ever have the stamina to do it alone.

All this to say is that there are a handful of ways to make a living as a programmer without losing your sanity, but you'll have to really keep your eyes open and ears to the ground to find them.