Questions from a young developer that "just" started working aka: how do you manage it? | Hacker News Reader

Questions from a young developer that "just" started working aka: how do you manage it?

52 pointskamme65 comments

I've just become 24 and I've been working with computers since I was 12, got my own when I was 14. I've been programming for more then 10 years now and I was capable of spending days behind my computer screen. But since I started working things have changed for me. I don't have any personal projects anymore, not because I don't have time, but just because I just don't _feel_ like it. I have idea's in my head but can't seem to think them out into a good project. I just got a new job (with a raise and a lot closer to where I live) and sometimes for some reason I can't get simple things to work, while I know I wouldn't have had any problem with them 3 years ago. Am I getting burned up? Too much stress? Do you have the same issues? Or did you have them and got rid of them? Feedback very much appreciated!

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Sounds like what used to be your hobby has become your job. If you spend your whole day sitting behind the computer and then go home and spend your off hours behind the computer, you run out of time to do anything fun (hang out with friends, read, etc.)

I am a big fan of golf, and when you look at the PGA Tour most of those players go on vacation and fish, or ski, or do some other activity - anything but golf. Golf becomes a job when you play at that level. I think a similar thing happens to good developers when they start developing full time for a company.

If you have a great project idea, try committing one hour a day to it when you have free time, and see if it really starts to turn out how you planned. If you still feel motivated to work on it, start working on it 2 hours a day - if you can make money from it, turn that into your full time job :)

I took up photography for the same reason -- keep as far away from the dreaded monitor while I was off work. If I step back and think about it, it's sort of surreal that all the hard work I do in my day job is just flip-flopping bits of data on magnetic storage in a very organized way. It's nice to do something tactile.

Agreed. I couldn't program as a hobby when I was a software engineer. So what I did was simply to change my job. I moved into more business-y consulting, and regained my interest in programming almost immediately!

Exactly; for me, there are periods where my work is challenging and interesting and I have no desire to code outside the office. Conversely there are lulls where I'm flooded with ideas for personal projects, and suddenly have energy and motivation to work these.

It comes and it goes.

"I don't have any personal projects anymore, not because I don't have time, but just because I just don't _feel_ like it."

This is very similar to my workforce blues that I got after I finished school. I became very apathetic; being at the bottom of the seniority roster and thinking to myself, "This is what I have to look forward to for the next 40 years." really did me in. That's why I've decided to do a startup -- perhaps I'm being idealistic, but I think I can enjoy what I would consider a better quality of life in that sort of environment.

"I have idea's in my head but can't seem to think them out into a good project."

Do you have anyone to bounce them off of? Say, an old friend from school? I'm in Minnesota and one of my project's co-founders is California, but we've kept in contact since school and tossed around a lot of interesting ideas in that time. It took us a couple years to land on one that we thought was valuable, but I don't think we would've gotten there if we hadn't played with all the mediocre ones first.

I have the same feeling. I sit at work and have lots of ideas for things I'd love to code, but at the end of the unproductive day in the office, I feel so burnt out that I don't have the energy anymore.

I still hope to eventually find the right mode that will work for me, though. Probably that will involve working on my own projects...

Also, I plan to take on a project I can work on from home as my next freelancing contract, where I have most of the responsibility for the design and architecture of the application. What is killing me among other things are many of the unfortunate design decisions in the corporate world.

your "burnt out at the office" speaks very closely to my experience - its my first serious job as a full-on C++ software developer, and frankly, it sucks the interest out of programming.

Do you like your job? Do you like the people you work with? Do you respect your boss? Do you feel like you're learning new things there on a regular basis?

The reason I ask is because some jobs -- ok, many jobs -- drain the energy out of you. It starts while you're at the job and then affects the rest of your evening once you leave the office. You get home and pretty much the only thing you can get up the energy to do is peel the wrapper off a takeout sandwich and turn on the television. It becomes a cycle, and the cycle becomes a habit, and pretty soon you're staying awake at night thinking existential thoughts.

The solution? Find a job that gives you energy -- one that gets your brain working again. Going home energized and focusing that energy on your own projects is just as much of a cycle and habit-forming as going home on watching TV until bedtime.

I know, it's easier said than done, but it can be done.

But how do you find that job?

Craigslist -- ok, just kidding.

My advice on how to find a job that energizes you rather than saps your energy? It's similar to advice you've heard before, though in a different context: Keep iterating. Try something new or someplace new, if it turns out that it's not what you thought it would be, move on. At least, that's what has worked for me.

I think all too often we create our own limitations and believe that there's a "career path" that would be dangerous to jump off. Or we worry that we're not qualified to do something different. Or else, we worry that we'll have too many jobs on our resume and no one will want to hire us.

But the truth is, the odds are against you finding a meaningful, energizing job on your first or second try. The system is set up against you, if you will. You do maybe one or two interviews at a place and get a quick look at the office and based on that you're supposed to pick the place where you're going to go spend a huge part of your waking hours -- and somehow it's going to be wonderful? Good luck.

So, to sum up, I'd say you find that job by treating the whole process more like the dating process. You'll date a handful and they won't work out, and eventually, hopefully, you'll find one that does work.

You're situation is almost exactly like mine. Same age, same recent job change etc. While reading your question, I really questioned whether I had wrote it myself 3 or 4 times. The one exception being that I'm starting to get my personal work done, slowly but surely.

My biggest issue was a dead-end job, now that I've got a much more fulfilling job, things have improved drastically. Currently, the hardest part for me is balancing personal time (time with wife and dog) and professional development time (anything with computers, coding, reading development books etc). What has been working well is just to set aside time. To make that extra time that seems to never come after work, I wake up early and read/program.

This niche of just-out-of-school/barely-in-the-workforce programmers could use some kind of online social group.

Does anyone know of an existing site or group that is fills this void?

No, but I second this feeling. A year ago I was hacking away, loving every minute of it. Now I'm in a managerial position at a non-technical company so that I can pay the bills and wow, does it sting.

I'm in a similar situation as you. Recently, however, it's a little worse because I actually do have less time to work on my own projects than I did before. So most of the time I can't work on my own projects, even if I wanted to, because I have other priorities and responsibilities.

So at times I feel frustrated when I wish I was hacking and learning but I can't. And it's not that I'm unhappy when I'm not hacking (I am very happy), it's just that I never get a chance to do what I _really_ want to be doing.

And the root of the problem is not that there isn't enough time or lack of energy. The problem is that most of my time is spent at a job where I'm not doing what I like to do, and it is draining. I'm a software tester, and I test other people's buggy software without even having the chance to fix it myself because there's a hard line between Engineering/QA (coders/testers) in this company.

However, even if I was working as a full-time programmer I would probably not be doing what I like doing anyway. I'd still be a monkey (or robot, however you look at it) coding what other people (i.e. PM) have badly designed.

So after reading some of PG's essays, I came to the realization that the solution to my problem is to start a startup. I'm young enough to take the risk, and the worse thing that could happen if it fails would be to look for another, better job possibly in a startup where corporate culture is frowned upon. And then maybe correct the mistakes I (or my team) made the first time around and try again.

I'm kind of rambling here now, so I'll just end it now by saying that if you don't think you'll ever find a job where you will do what you love to do, you should start a startup instead of keeping that day job. If that's too far-fetched of an idea you would pursue, well then others here have posted some good suggestions.

Are you saving money to start a company?

I'm not sure whether saving money for a startup is a good idea. It might just be a copout, a reason why you can't yet start your own company. But you can. You don't need that much money to incorporate, and you don't need to quit your day job - you may be able to move to a cheaper flat, keep working something like 50% at your day job, and spend the rest of your time on your startup while still making enough money for a reasonably decent living.

That, or look for seed funding.

It's tough to start working on something after you just got home from an 8 hour stretch of work. Some of the things I've done are:

- In the beginning, start projects on weekends or holidays. If you're not already burned out, you can get a solid start on something that will carry you through the work week. It's tough to start something at 9 PM, but if you've got a foundation, you can come up with 1-2 hours of work and not feel disappointed that you didn't do more.

- Pick a project that will allow you to accomplish things in 1-2 hour work sessions. If you try to build the next Google, you probably will never have a working result. If you try to build a simple app, you can take it in small pieces, adding functionality in short work sessions.

- Pick tools/projects different from what you do at work. Tired of lousy source control systems at work? Use Git for your next project. Tired of J2EE/Spring/Struts? Use Ruby on Rails or Python. The goal here is to make your project different from your work activities, so it doesn't seem like an extension of your work day. This also lets you pick up other technologies you might not have a chance to learn through work.

- Find somebody else to work with. If you have a friend to encourage you, you'll be more motivated and can split the work, getting more done.

Here's what worked for me when I was working for the man:

Pick an evening sometime this week. Tell people you're not going to be available. Ask your SO to go out with friends or something. I'd grab a quick bite after work, go home to an empty apartment. Close the blinds, dim the lights. Turn off my cell phone, turn off the wifi on my laptop. Put on a playlist of music that puts me in a good, happy, mellow mood. Poor myself a glass of wine, and settle down in front of the computer.

And just program. Don't worry about getting the code just right. Don't worry about business logic, unit tests, or what might happen if the user clicks the wrong thing at the wrong time. Just program. Make the computer do something cool, just because you can.

Who cares if it won't scale? Who cares if there's no business use case? Who cares if people won't pay for it?

Forget all that. That's work. You won't be able to program after work if you make it work. It has to be different. It has to be fun.

My god.

Are you making love to your computer or what?

Hey, it sounds like the OP has lost the passion. If all the fire has gone out of his relationship with programming, how should he get it back?

>> Master! That's the longest "for" loop I have ever seen!

>> printf("Run it all, machine!");

I thought I was the only one who felt this way. I'm in exactly the same boat.

I always mean to start a neat little project but it's been about a year and a half now and I haven't done anything substantial.

How many hours a day do you work? What are you actually doing?

I've been working as a programmer for about 6 years, and most of my time now is not spent coding but answering email, on the phone, debugging, etc. When I actually get to do some programming, I still enjoy it.

It happens with all people who are working for big companies i.e. more no of employees. Key to get out of this is to get selfish.

Work on the things you want even when you are in office. :) Compress regular work in smaller chunks and keep promise to you that I would write atleast 50 lines of good code everyday. Am sure you do this for 7 days and you know what to do next to reach there.

Getting started is the important thing. Get away from HN/programming.redddit; work on small snippet; be happy and then search anybody has done similar thing. Discovering similar/better/quicker approach to your code i.e. whatever would boost your confidance especially when you can write code without google search.

So that helps to get back to books/api documentation. And suddenly you become a programmer you want to be.

I know this sounds pretty simple but that is the key.

google appengine + small JQuery/Prototype project can help anyone to get started

I have to ask, has there been much change in your personal life? Since meeting my soon to be wife I know that I have found it much more of a draw to spend time with her than to be coding all evening.

Also, I have found that it helps to be directed with your personal projects. Over the years (I've been working as a coder since 2000) I've started many things and not finished any. But now, as jnovek suggested, I am working with some friends and we are about to launch our commercial web project. All from a few months of evening work.

Like you, I lost some of the joy of personal coding and even though this recent project is not exactly something I have my heart in, my heart is in producing something I am proud of. That is spurring me on to finish so that I can get on with other personal projects on my own again.

Good luck.

First things first: A vacation will almost certainly help.

After that, try learning something outside your normal programming repertoire, ideally very different from what you do at work. A new language (I suggest OCaml or Smalltalk, either should have plenty of new ideas to get you inspired), or program category (OpenGL graphics? Interpreters for tiny languages? Games?), etc. Do something new and fun.

I've been in the same situation, but a lot of people here have given good advice on the general aspects of it already. I have only one specific thing to add..

Build things that you NEED.

There is a natural drive (survival?) that kicks in when you start creating things you need or that will make your life a lot easier in the short term. These things do not need to be for resolving basal needs like food, shelter, or even money, but for resolving problems you have regarding technology, the Internet, or programming, say.

A few years ago I started to use del.icio.us, and decided I wanted my del.icio.us postings to appear at the header of my blog. I developed an RSS to JavaScript service to do this. To cut a very long story short, it turned into a very big deal quite quickly, got funding, tens of thousands of users, made a profit, and I sold it a year ago for a reasonable sum.

Ditto for a "tagged source code repository" (like a del.icio.us for code) I developed a couple of years ago. I needed to store bits of code I used regularly in a tagged fashion, so I built it (in a day or two). Natural forces took over, it became popular, and I sold it.

I'm not a procrastinator, but I'm an incredibly lazy person. I don't "feel" like doing lots of things, but if I know I have a "need" (or there's no way I can get out of doing something) I jump into it out of necessity. Perhaps you are the same.

How well are you sleeping?

In my experience, when I get sleep-deprived, one of the first things I lose is insight; if I'm not repeating procedures I've pretty much learned by rote, I'm staring at the screen going "uuuuhhhh..."

Have you taken a vacation lately?

Get away from your current location. Experience something new.

Guard your time away and don't let the work intrude.

You'll be surprised how much easier problems like this become with a little time to recharge your battery.

And if you find the job puts you right back in this blue space after a few days back... then look for another job.

Hi kamme, I'm in the same position, 24 y/o, hacking around since 12, and at some moment, about 2 years ago, I got tired of programming the same foo, bar classes over and over. I founded a little software company, and now I've 12 full time employees, and we offer a lot of services, web paage design, multimedia cd-roms (a.k.a flash movies), and consulting for companies for erp implementation (opentaps, mostly), by the end of this year i'm opening a repressentetation office in Monterrey... I know it's a little company, but it allows me to play around (evaluating new technologies) when i'm not dealing with people...

follow your dreams !

Well, do you like writing code? It's a simple question but one that isn't easily answered.

Take a vacation, and think it over, if you were able to do any 'job' in the world, would you still pick writing code?

Does making things still appeal to you or would you rather be out doing event production or be a talk show host of some sort?

If the answer is still yes, you just need to get back into the groove and unplugging for a while on that vacation will help.

Other than that, I agree with @bkbleikamp up there -- start slow, don't force yourself to complete that cool idea you have in a day. Write it up and break it down into tasks, do 1 task a day and then go get drunk. Rinse and repeat. :-)

I had the same feeling after 2 years of regular job. My solution was: I've chosen some serious project in the area of my interest and worked hard to complete it. It helped me to survive in this daily routine.

I would agree with most people here that you should take a vacation of some sort, and make sure it's something that's going to really take you out of your element. Anything that keeps you away from the internet is a good idea; going sailing with my family for a three-day weekend in October felt really refereshing and gave my brain something to think about (navigation and sailing technique) that didn't have anything to do with my usual interests, but that I could still get interested in. It just felt like a great way of removing myself from my routine and being refreshed... sort of the objective of a vacation, right?

Also, I've noticed my level of energy has a lot to do with inspiration, and to a lesser extent how heavy my workload is. I started working for a video game company in a non-development position (I develop web-based tools, actually, but nothing directly related to the game) and it's given me a whole lot more motivation to follow through with one of my myriad video game projects, which I've never before managed to get to this level of completion. Being around them and around lots of people obsessed with them simply just helps me from getting too distracted or thinking that my projects aren't going to amount to anything and that it's no big deal if I abandon them.

I am where you were 3 years ago in age.

But I work full time...

I still have enough energy to do freelance for other people and still work on the stuff that really interests me.

I usually take a break after work and let my brain rest while I watch some comedy, exercise(running or skateboard), take a nap (for 1 - 2 hrs) or spend time with loved ones.

Then I am usually ready to rock until around 2 - 3 A.M.

I think it's really about how excited you are to work on something, or how bad you really want something.

same here. fulltime and i still do freelance. i have friends who are doing fulltime on freelance projects. we rent a room and hack everynight... this guy should get more people around him. talking and laughing helps a lot. :)

Programming for a living may take some energy on that level right out of you. I am in a similar situation and currenty trying to find an interesting project for myself. I think it is just natural that you lose interest if all of a sudden you spend the whole day programming. Especially if you have to do bigger portions of trivial work..

We don't know what your issue is, so we can't give you useful advice that applies to your situation. For me, I'm finding that I don't want to work 100% anymore, and I won't work overtime anymore, and I don't want to live in a city anymore. I can afford to stop doing all of these things, so I will, and I'll do it before I burn out.

I've worked years for other people, and in those years, I have created nearly nothing that I own. Like you, I've had ideas, and technically I would even have had some time to work on them, but after a day of sitting in front of a PC, more sitting in front of a PC at home just didn't seem very pleasant.

I want to have more time and energy to work on stuff I actually own. And that's what I'll do.

But perhaps that's not what you want. We don't know what you want and why what you're currently doing isn't working for you. I guess the first step should be for you to find out what you actually want.

Serious fitness, binge drinking, and periodic vacations. Make time to work out four or five days a week. Get absolutely plastered on Friday or Saturday -- at the very least hit up a bar and talk to some people. And make sure to get the fuck out of wherever you are every month or two, even if it's only for a weekend.

The "cutting edge" is getting rather dull. -- Andy Purshottam

I suspect you may have gotten to the point where you're able to quickly recognize fundamental issues. Problems which may have once seemed to be interesting and challenging because they were new to you are now familiar and boring.

This happened to me a while ago and I decided doing the same kind of thing for work and play was too much so I decided to take up the piano in my spare time. I rented an old upright and bought a lot of beginner books and just started to try and learn to play. I'm not very good but I find even a few minutes of practice now and then helps me clear my mind when I'm stuck on something.

Perhaps there is some similar creative outlet you could explore?

What matters is what does your inner self want. If you want to be secure and have fun with your friends and need weekends off, You should stick to your job and keep cursing your boss or company. If you want to build something neat and want to be free, you should quit your job and concentrate 110% on your vision. We humans were not born to work in cubicles for 40-50 years of our lives doing something lame. Never, Never, Never ...Give Up - Winston Churchill.

Take a break from your personal projects for a few months. Read physics or something or maths or just go and watch a few movies or play video games or go running or join karate. Basically anything but programming for a few months in your non-work time. Take a vacation if feasible.

Then come back after a few months with a fresh mind and evaluate your options and situation then.

um, shouldn't you just look for your passion and work on it? you could either quit your job or do your stuff in your spare time.

if not, perhaps a girlfriend / wife would work for you ^__^

dont quit your job. immerse yourself around creative people. you need money to live, unless you live with your parents.

Dude, quit your job, work at a coffee shop, and build things because you want to build them. Your skill will return, the light will return to your eyes, and your career will improve.

I'm not even kidding. Take a few years away. You'll build something so much cooler than you would at these apparently soul-destroying jobs you've got.

I did it, and I'm now showing off what I've built at damn near every Ruby conference in the United States, plus ones in Scotland and Canada. I just recently had to very reluctantly cancel on speaking at a Smalltalk conference in Amsterdam too.

Nobody gave a crap what I was building back when I was building what the suit monkeys told me to. Now people are interested, and of course the job offers these days are much more interesting as well.

Ironically nothing makes a suit monkey drool more than meeting a programmer who several years previously told some other suit monkey to go fuck itself.

Might seem like a paradox but your best career move is to stop working for a living.

(I should also mention there are employers with 0% suit-monkey DNA, and building cool things for their own sake draws out these employers as well.)

Also, stressing about money for a few years will keep you happier with whatever job you have next, if it has a steady paycheck. :D I'm working at a job with a steady paycheck for the first time since early 2001, and it's awesome.

Dude, quit your job, work at a coffee shop

This is bad advice.

Disagreement is not refutation.

Sure. But

Dude, quit your job, work at a coffee shop, and build things because you want to build them.

is stellar advice. Seriously. The sabbatical is the instrument of champions.

No, it's bad advice. Without knowing a lot more about this guy, you can't just say, "quit your job" just because it sounds romantic. It's cheap advice. I notice that every time someone complains about his job the advice coming from the internet is always the same, "Quit". The world doesn't work that way for 99 percent of the population. Decent jobs are no one's birthright, and the poster may be an ordinary, mediocre person who will never make a marketable app. If he's capable of great things, he's not going to need prodding from Mr. Anonymous.

In the meantime, keep your job and do what you can after hours. If you get a good idea and a year's worth of savings, then maybe think of quitting...

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39174

Great link. Should be required reading for everyone on HN.

The purpose of a sabbatical need not be to create a marketable app, nor perform any great deed. In the corporate world it is literally a career break.

Forcing someone to do a job he hates is no-one's birthright either. We see "quit" everywhere we look because too many people are afraid to rock the boat, but wish they had the courage to do so.

Quitting means nothing in itself.

It is a vice when you back out of reaching good things because you lack the courage to do what is necessary.

It is a virtue when used to eject soul-destroying things from your life.

There is no virtue in voluntary suffering. There is no virtue in staying in a horrible job (I'm ignoring the complexities of having dependents).

I would say that:

Dude, quit your job, work at a coffee shop, and build things because you want to build them.

is good advice only in response to

I'm bored with my job AND I have an idea I really really want to work on. Here's the idea: [insert non-bad idea here]

but it's not very good advice in response to

I'm bored with my job and I'd kinda like to work on something different, dunno what though

It worked for me. I kinda wanted to work on something different, didn't know what though, and found out what when I stopped working on the stuff I didn't want to work on.

I believe you've got it exactly backwards. The advice comes from exactly the experience this person describes, and the conditions which you think would make my advice better may actually worsen it.

If you know exactly what you want to build, you don't need the open schedule factor, as you can scope it and schedule it around what you're already doing, or timebox the project between school years or between jobs.

It's when you don't know what to do next that exploring different options pays off.

Why? I regret never having worked at a coffee shop. Now I am over 30 it doesn't feel so appropriate anymore, and I am spoiled by the IT money. But sometimes I still feel like just working in a coffee shop. Only for a while of course, the money just isn't good enough. But if it leaves you with enough energy to code on the side, it might be OK.

Also, the experience might come in handy if you ever want to open your own cafe later in life...

Why? If kamme heeds the advice without thinking, it would be bad. But not because working in a coffee shop is bad.

A mini breakdown caused by soul-grating work convinced me to stop wasting my life. Not everyone needs the same amount of money and security to be happy.

What have you built? And what conference are you attending in Canada?

yes. I will tell you, because my existing response is not yet enough of a threadjack.

This advice reads like utter insanity, but the even more shocking thing is that there are at least 14 people here who thought positively of it, and a magnitude more that nod in assent but didn't click the up arrow.

I have come to believe this kind of spirit is part of the core of true innovation. If this was posted in another community, I'm fairly sure you would've been treated like a lunatic. How amazing is that!

I told him that if he wants to love what he does, he should do what he loves. And you call that utter insanity.

That is, in fact, not what you told him to do. Your advice is a risky proposition, and for people who aren't used to it, it is fair to point out how crazy it seems.

I was not trying to criticize what you said, but I still think it sounds insane. It might truly be the core of innovation, just as how some artists create groundbreaking work when they go nuts. But if I repeated this to some people around me I'd expect loud disagreement.

It certainly does read like utter insanity to a mind indoctrinated to the 9 to 5 and the traditional concept of getting and sticking to a "career."

It doesn't read like utter insanity, however, to those who are independent, free thinking, and willing to do things a bit differently in order to have the life they want.

Become a morning person (oddly enough, I'm typing this at 12:45 am... but I'm also unemployed right now). Use brainwave entrainment technologies and meditation to get yourself to sleep in the evening, because you probably haven't had a habit of going to bed before midnight since grade school. Most people need less sleep if they go to bed and rise early, so if you're asleep by 10, you can get up around 4:30 easily.

Why are traditional jobs scheduled between 9 and 5? Because despite claims to the contrary, the majority of people are naturally "morning people" and most productive early in the day. The boss wants the workers' best hours, and most people get up around 8. If you get up much earlier, though, you can use your early morning hours for exercise and side projects. This will be a lot more effective than trying to use your burned-out evening hours, and unlike quitting your job, it won't hurt your career. You'll be pretty tired by 5pm, but the effect that this will have on your performance or career is negligible.

The only downside of this is the effect it will have on your social life, but that's a lot smaller than you think. You'll still be able to manage the occasional late-night party or code-fest, but you'll find your 2am IM chats no longer occur. Socially, you'll be focusing on quality rather than quantity, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

I had a similar experience to yours in previous jobs. I wish I had taken the advice I'm giving you now, and as soon as I'm in a structured work environment again, I'm going to switch to the early-morning rhythm.

This is my advice too: work on your own stuff in the early morning.

I'm in a similar situation, in that I'm working a 9-5 job, but with me the "other programming" is a freelance gig. I found I never had time to do the freelance work, so I started getting up earlier to work on it before going to the 9-5. It's been a big improvement.

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