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Comment by runninganyways | Hacker News Reader

This is one of the reasons I quit programming. I could be spending time improving as a developer but instead they've got me doing some totally inconsequential "bug" fix (spend the next two hours updating this translation for the third time). I just got sick of someone rationalizing me doing non work by saying it's better for the business as though I have no broader perspective of what might be better for the business. It was just bullshit.

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Can I ask what you do now? I'm programming for one and half decade and wonder about moving to something else. But it's bit scary as software is only thing I know.

Great question, this is what I was wondering as well.

Well I dropped the golden handcuffs. So right now I'm flipping cars (replace a clutch, head gasket, etc.) driving for Lyft, and I might get a part-time job. I'm definitely not making as much money as I used to. But for me the traditional strategy of working for a company and saving up for retirement wasn't working anyhow. it was like well I'm either going to have to deal with this now when I can do something about it or when I'm older and I won't be able to do anything about it.

So I'm kind of where I was when I was 20 except now I have a whole lot more skills and experiences. I'm not actually sure what I'm going to do long term. All I really know is I was headed down the wrong path and I've been lying to myself for far too long.

But actually I do kind of know. The only thing that really makes sense is some kind of tech entrepreneurship. I mean I know success isn't guaranteed but it comes down to kind of a deep question which is what do you want to do with your life. Sitting behind a desk coding what someone else tells me to all day long is simply not going to get me where I want to be in life. So I kind of jumped off the cliff hoping I can learn to fly on the way down.

I totally might fail so don't follow my lead too much.

I will tell you that since I've been working on cars all day I'm so much physically stronger than I was as a coder and it feels fantastic. It isn't really long-term because technically you're not allowed to buy a car with the intention of fixing and reselling it unless you're a dealer but succeeding and failing based on my own decisions feels so much better then being cemented underneath someone else in a corporate hierarchy.

I was a developer for about 10 years and even though I could get another development job I'd rather crawl through the mud and find a new way forward before I get too old and it's too late.

That's awesome you took the plunge; jumping off the cliff is probably the hardest part. It's not easy but people who are smart and motivated are really good at figuring things out when they need to, it's just that so many take safe but unfulfilling path.

I went the opposite direction, leaving a comfortable but soul-sucking job in a totally different industry to transition into programming. It was rough for a few years as I was struggling to build up my experience and make enough money to get by on, but now I have a great job that I actually enjoy going to.

That takes a lot of courage, kudos. I've been in tech since 2006. I started out as a min wage tech support agent and worked my way up to a lead software dev position now. I do both back-end (C#) and front-end (Vue, Angular, React) development. In the last 3 months, I've switched jobs twice in a fruitless effort chasing that sense of passion and excitement I had a decade ago.

I have it great; I make a 6-fig salary, I work remote full time, and never more than 40 hours. I feel guilty for complaining, but the work is just damn boring. I would rather be a janitor than code anymore. Some days I sit and just stare at my screen for an hour depressed as hell wondering how I'm going to get out of this and still provide for my family. We have chronic medical issues, so the insurance alone makes it hard to escape. The great recession also left me with severe anxiety about being broke and unemployed.

I recently rebuilt a manual transmission with minimal prior experience working on cars and it made me feel so damn good afterwards, so I really respect your decision to work on cars. I agree, it feels great to do manual labor! I spend my free time doing manual work around the house like yard work or building things like a green-house. I'm learning a lot and having a great time, but when I sit down at the desk it makes me even more depressed about coding.

I hope it all works out for you.

> I have it great; I make a 6-fig salary, I work remote full time, and never more than 40 hours. I feel guilty for complaining, but the work is just damn boring. I would rather be a janitor than code anymore. Some days I sit and just stare at my screen for an hour depressed as hell wondering how I'm going to get out of this and still provide for my family. We have chronic medical issues, so the insurance alone makes it hard to escape. The great recession also left me with severe anxiety about being broke and unemployed.

Jesus. Yeah, this entire thing hits home. I think a lot of mid- to late-career software folks are in this position of hating the work, feeling super guilty for hating the work, and not seeing a way out that won't risk their family's financial security.

My best job ever was a Summer job helping manage a campground. Outdoors, some social interaction, enough down time to read a few pages of a novel or do some pushups here and there, a bit of moving heavy things around, nothing whatsoever to think about when you leave for the day. If something like that paid 75% as much comp + bennies as my WFH software job and had similar future job prospects, I'd quit effective today and go do that. And probably cancel my home Internet service, sell my computers, and downgrade to a dumbphone. It's all just so incredibly low-value, once the shininess wears off.

Managing a campground sounds amazing. I worked at a gas station/food mart for 4 years before getting into tech. To this day I still have dreams where I'm doing that job and having a great time interacting with my coworkers and people while performing mildly physically demanding work. One of my buddies still begs me to come back and work with him. Just like you - if they paid me 75% as much comp/benefits - I would go back in a heartbeat. Ideally I would be a forest ranger; I live in the Pacific NW and I love the outdoors, so it's only fitting.

The only thing I’d caution you is that, in my opinion, starting a successful company is 90% about relationships, and you mention feeling “cemented” in your past work relationships. And there might be something there you need to practice, and improve on, before you start your company.

(I say, as someone who is currently staying full-time employed, paused on entrepreneurship, and trying, and often failing, to be better in my work relationships)

That said, best of luck to you. You’re clearly self aware, which will see you through a lot.

Good stuff and good luck. I totally identify with how you feel. I have to take the more measured route, try things after work. You are right about physical work, it is rewarding. Hydroponics is where I spend my spare time.

>All I really know is I was headed down the wrong path and I've been lying to myself for far too long.

Good for you in a manner speaking. Most people keep 'lying' to themselves their whole lives, not just about their sorry corporate jobs but life in general ( things like marriage, children etc.)

I really hope you succeed in the long run. I'm cheering for you.

That sounds really cool. Have you thought about potentially going down the path of becoming a dealer? The auto space continues to be hot as it's highly lucrative (see Vroom for example), and you've found a niche that seems to work on a unit economics basis. Why not strap on some automation bit by bit and make your flipping process more efficient? By the time you get even 25% of the way through, you'll probably have stumbled on to a multimillion if not multibillion dollar company.

Not OP, but I feel the same way as them. I'm taking an EMT class and planning on applying to PA programs. It's scary doing something totally different but it feels so much better.

Ha I’m in the same boat at my finance job. Looking to move into software dev and go back to school, but scared because I’m paid well and I have to start over again.

Same here. I moved into Agile/DevOps coaching, where it's expected you learn in order to help your teams grow and improve their practices and products. Haven't looked back. I now spend a lot of time advocating on behalf of my teams to get them in-sprint time to learn and mature what they're interested in.

How did you make that transition? I've been interested in making a similar one but have been frequently advised to stay in engineering and work my way into management instead.

The thing making me want out is having to change jobs every few years not to fall way behind on current pay, and having, for interviews, to prep for a series of goddamn pop-quizzes in a high-pressure environment, which could cover material from any or all parts of your education or career, plus a bunch of stuff you may well never have encountered in either, at practically any difficulty or granularity level, with, usually, no way to narrow the field you need to prep for down meaningfully even if the roles you're applying for are pretty specific, and usually with no clear understanding of how your performance will be judged. It's the only thing I've encountered in adult life that gives me stress-dreams like school did. "Normal" job stress, even when shit's on fire, is about 10% as stessful, at worst. I hate, hate, hate it.

Sorry for being too direct, but for the sake of clarity, and coming from my experience communicating with agile coaches - I think it is bullshit. I wonder if others have a similar experience/opinion...

Personally—I think because I've seen so little of the code I've written actually live long enough to seem worth the time it took to make it, including a bunch of small-potatoes projects for huge companies that took months of my work-life and then were simply binned because they changed direction or acquired some company with another solution or the project was doomed from the start because they'd very obviously allocated far too small a budget—I'm no longer turned off by the idea of having a job that's more-or-less understood to be entirely bullshit, the way I might once have been.

Who is "they"? Did you not have product teams writing clear business cases for everything you work on? Like if a developer doesn't understand why something is important it isn't going to get done right.

I think I'm not understanding something.

Is it usually the case to have product teams documenting clear business cases to explain why something is important?

At my first programming job, my performance suffered when management ran out of things for me to do because I was running the mobile department successfully while the web side of things was constantly on fire. When confronted about the lack of progress on my side, I explained that my sprint tickets were mostly pointless, with no business value. My manager said it's my job to do it anyway. Unfortunately I stuck around for a little while longer after that. I really shouldn't have.

You do not understand what it is to be a programmer. Programmers fix bugs. It might be boring but it's required. Programmers document. It also might be boring but it's required. Programmers write unit tests. We've hired people that don't want to do the non-fun stuff. They don't last long, they generally come in, cause problems for the team and then leave. The people that are willing to do what's needed even if it isn't fun are much better to have on a team.

You do not understand what the parent comment meant. It's not bug fixing he's opposed to. It's busywork and the idea that a programmer themselves have no idea how their time might be well spent. So much human potential wasted by corporate efficiency tyrants that do nothing other than burn out their employees.

I think you mean accountant.

While I’m fortunate to work for an org that pushes training, my generation was not given much feature work at the start. We were expected to take over support and learn the systems and graduate into development/architecture some day. That’s how monoliths swung.

Today, that’s clearly out of fashion. Nobody seems to maintain anything and the next group wants to reimplement much of the same function in the new flavor of the month. Anecdotally, it does not all look more stable, bug free and performant but it does seem more fun.

/okboomer

I think you're confusing me with somebody else.

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