Ask HN: Bored, stuck in a rut. What to do?

Hey man - I totally got what you're experiencing right now.

I've been in your position before. What changed for me was when I stopped finding motivation and passion at work. I instead chose to spend time giving back to my community, taking up a sport (Jiu Jitsu) and really spending the time to create a life that I'm genuinely proud of.

I recommend trying a bunch of shit out of work and see what you enjoy and see what sticks! Find your source of fulfillment outside of your work and that will give you the energy to push through your work.

I'll try and give this a shot; I think I need a lot of time for some self discovery and find out what I actually want to do in life and what my hobbies are. All of my hobbies remind me of work so it might be good to have a change

Doing self discovery without action is going to yield zero results.

The way you deepen your self discovery is to try new things out and discover new interests that are beyond your work! To steer a ship, you first need to get it moving. So move, try shit out and then you can course correct accordingly.

I remember trying out a Salsa class one day. That was enough to get me hooked to dancing almost everyday and it being something I really look forward to after work. Who knows? maybe yours might be pottery, or board games, music, community work etc. Try. shit. out!

You have over $500K? Take $50K and setup a margin account.

Follow my trades for the next year while you work. Trade it while working if you can. When you turn the $50K into $250K you can quit your job and trade full time and work as a white-hat and control what you do.

Okay that was the easy way out. Now the hard way.

Get certifications. Security is hot right now. Everyone needs a security person. A cert or experience signal that right now.

Network. How many meetings have you scheduled with someone in security at your current company in the last month? What are you waiting for. Message everyone at your company and ask for 10 minutes to talk about how they got where they are. The more senior their role the better it is.

Also find another job for now that won't make you hate life. Start applying. Ever heard of informal interviews? Try it out.

> I want to work in security but I don't have the credentials.

Well, you got to start somewhere! I burnt out from front-end development last year and decided to pivot into security. There are plenty of entry-level certifications you can start looking at if you want to explore this area more:

- Security+ from CompTIA

- eJPT from eLearnSecurity

- OSCP from Offensive Security

> I reported it, they said it was not an issue but then fixed it a month later and I could only enter in three before getting locked out.

Don't let your past outcomes with vulnerability disclosure dissuade you from continuing if this field really interests you. Many people have received the short end of the stick through public disclosure programs. But it's a drop in the bucket compared to many of the other amazing things you can do here.

Thanks for those resources; I'll check them out.

I've been wary about going into security because I've heard that in order to be moderately successful you have to be naturally paranoid, disable telemetry on everything, lock down your computer and phone with super complicated passwords, never use your name on anything on the internet, etc. How true is that? I try to take precautions but I have a social media account with my real name so am I done for?

Half the people at my office in security are on LinkedIn FWIW

It depends on your threat model[0]. Keep in mind that InfoSec people that do the things you mentioned are doing it either out of necessity (see [0]), they see it as a fun hobby or are taking things to an unecessary extreme. There are plenty of nothworty contributors to InfoSec that have relevants things in public and don't go overboard locking down their devices.

[0] https://ssd.eff.org/en/module/your-security-plan

There's good advice elsewhere in this thread to put some energy into non-work activities, such as cultivating personal relationships and hobbies that are quite different from the day job.

One trap I've personally struggled with at times in the past is becoming over-invested in my job, and then getting frustrated with or depressed about work. Usually this has happened when I haven't had much else going on in my life outside work to focus on, leading me to focus on and then over emphasise work frustrations. As I've gotten a bit more perspective over time I've come to expect less from work, it's a way to pay the bills and that's why I'm there. Still worth looking for a better job every now and again, especially if you've ended up in a role where you have stopped learning.

There's a bit of research that backs this kind of pattern up: people who are younger, unmarried, don't have children are more likely to experience burnout:

> To me, the most beguiling data to emerge from burnout research are the profiles of the people who experience it most acutely. In her early work, for instance, Maslach found that younger people burn out more often than older people, a finding that turns up again and again both here and abroad. (In fact, that study from the University of Michigan explicitly said that younger surgeons burn out more quickly than older ones.) This conclusion may seem counterintuitive, because we associate burning out somehow with midlife disillusionment. But not if we think of burnout as the gap between expectations and rewards. Older workers, as it turns out, have more perspective and more experience; it’s the young idealists who go flying into a profession, plumped full of high hopes, and run full-speed into a wall. Maslach also found that married people burn out less often than single people, as long as their marriages are good, because they don’t depend as much on their jobs for fulfillment. And childless people, though unburdened by the daily strains of parenting, tend to burn out far more than people with kids. (This, too, has been found across cultures; in the Netherlands, a recent survey by the Bureau of Statistics showed that twice as many working women without children showed symptoms of burnout as did working women with underage children.) It’s much easier to disproportionately invest emotional and physical capital in the office if you have nowhere else to put it. And the office seldom loves you back.

- http://nymag.com/news/features/24757/

That's been my life more or less for the past 15 years. Now I'm a couple months from FIRE. So, my advice is to try to have rich life outside of work - friends, love if you can find it, interests, sport, contact with nature, deep books etc. This can all help make life meaningful in spite of having to sell most of your time in order to survive. At the same time, try to maximize income and watch your spending so that you're not a slave to jobs until you're old.

I am stuck too in my work. I can't quit because of my commitments (also i am too scared to quit and be on my own). Any way. One thing I know is that I do well when I am learning new stuff. So my goal for next 5 years: learn Quantum Computing inside out. This means Physics/Math/Programming in new paradigm. So I have my hands full. So find what makes you feel better and do it. In the meantime, I have found mindless activity like cleaning home boosts mood too.

You can't just build something and hope it catches on, if you want to build a product/company.

A successful company requires execution on sales, marketing, market research, messaging, positioning and product, among others.

You're taking a standard "engineer" approach to the problem, which is to build stuff, but you need to focus on other things as well. They're just as interesting as engineering if you give it a chance.

It's a bit difficult now with COVID, but have you considered traveling, especially to somewhere with a low cost of living? I'm not sure how much you have saved, but it's possible to live on $1,000 in many smaller cities in eastern and central Europe, the Caucasus, Morocco, etc. You could build your startup for 6/12 months without eating much into your investment.

Ah, I've always wanted to travel. Covid is a bit scary though so I don't want to be somewhere unfamiliar and get sick. I've wanted to go to Europe, even the US (but the politics are a bit up in the air right now.) I was thinking about getting a remote gig and then going somewhere with a super low cost of living, save up a bunch and see what happens but I haven't done a lot of research on the pros and cons of that though.

Take it from someone that got horribly sick while alone in North Africa: it's a character-building experience ;)

I recommend the remote job route, at least for a year or two. The 'digital nomad' thing gets old after awhile, but it's definitely worth doing for a few years. If you stick to Central and Eastern Europe, there is nothing to worry about re: politics, illness, food quality, etc.

Move to a new city or probably a new country. That will pull you out of boredom. I am also stuck in a rut right now but I did these about 3 times in my career till now. I remember I felt the most excitement at work and in life when I am in a new city and new environment.

I could try it again; I moved to the place that I am now about a year ago as I was stuck in a rut but I can do it again and change things up.

Have you considered looking for another job that you don't hate quite as much?

I have but if I'd much rather have a job that's not so much fun than to have no job at all. I'm worried that I will quit and not find another one or my employer will find out that I'm job searching and fire me. This is my first "real" job so I don't know if all jobs are the same in this regard. I sort of want to change but if I change after a year I'm not sure that other employers will get the impression that I'm job hopping.

I guess it's mostly a salary thing; if I wasn't paid on the very low end I wouldn't care as much about it being not a good fit as long as I'm doing ok.

I have a non-traditional, non-CS background as a software engineer.

I worked for a number of years in my first tech job that made me increasingly anxious. At the same time, I believed that I was completely uncompetitive as a candidate, and that leaving was professional suicide.

Last year, the situation came to a climax and I left the company without any plans for the future. After decompressing for a few months, I started looking for work again, and was very surprised that only a bit of study and preparation (as a non-CS grad, mind you) got me a number of offers from a range of software companies. Every offer I got was better than what I was getting at the company I had left.

Just an anecdote, but I don't think it's that unusual, especially for people early on in their software careers.

GET OUTSIDE.

Get a hobby that involves the real world, preferably around trees, animals, or other people.

Exercise. Anything, walks, runs, jogs, swimming, hikes, biking. Anything that gets you OUTSIDE.

You mention you are tired. Have you had your thyroid checked? That turned out to be the problem for me and a couple of friends with similar issues.

I haven't although I do have several matching symptoms for about 10 years. I had a blood test done but nothing was out of the ordinary; I'll have to ask for it specifically perhaps.

Did they do a TSH test or Thyroid panel? There are 100's of different blood tests...

They said they did a check for "everything" but I didn't ask what "everything" meant. From my extremely limited research, "everything" isn't everything, though and thyroid is skipped a lot. I had some tests in the past from a family doctor but nothing came up for thyroid. I'm worried about giving out my symptoms because they align very strongly with depression; apparently a lot of people get diagnosed with anti depressants instead of thyroid conditions.

Sometimes it feels like someone is holding down the brakes; I want to start my own company, I want to make friends, I want to get outside and explore, I want to read, maybe I could find a date or something but I don't have the energy. I don't know if it's a health thing or if I just need to watch more motivational videos.

If you're a Canadian citizen I recommend moving to the United States to maximize your earnings for retirement.

Write down your ideas and idle thoughts and practice some thing deliberately and get good at it.

Yeah I've been doing that a bit; I could try posting them on GitHub and see what other people think of them. Thanks for the idea!

if you want to work in security, keep doing stuff on that front! it's a field that keeps growing. don't lose hope. you're quite young.

you can also go for a new hobby.

finally, I could be wrong, but maybe work on personal relationships? family and friends.

Thanks for the encouragement; I'll keep going along and see where things take me. I have zero personal relationships (I hardly talk to my family) and have zero friends so I could start working on those and see if I can get some more networking.

Try picking up a hobby that has a local presence in your area. Go to meetups etc., and that should help you meet people.

Martial arts is one that I like, but whatever interests you.