Ask HN: Ever felt burnt out from high level dev? What did you do to fix it?

My opinion is you wont avoid this. Its why tech pays well, the work is inevitably soul crushing. I am in the same dillema, and despite the high pay, am desperate to get out. Rather than search for a new job, I spend my nights and weekends on startup ideas.

> I spend my nights and weekends on startup ideas.

That way, you're not the one doing the soul-crushing development job, but the people who work beneath you.

Basically yes. The goal is to get people under you creating value for you as fast as possible, where you own the capital.

I learn a reasonable amount of time.

Last discovery i made was DDD/Microservices and it passed by now.. took a ~6 months making it my own ( even refactoring my e-commerce webapp in it, but in a monolith since i don't want the DevOps overhead associated with Microservices).

Next up, i'm a bit exploring ML in multiple languages. I'd prefer ML.net but there aren't a lot of challenges in it found online. Reomimplemented the model 'Samsung Lama' in pytorch and planning to do some iterations on that.

And next up probably using ML5.js

After that, I'll probably be bored again.

What i want to say is that the feeling of ( lack) challenges will always stay a bit.

I'm with a large company and will do some internal tech talks about what i learned and i hope to have some more challenges internally. Since I'm at a pretty good company at the moment and not really planning to change employer.

The feeling won't go away and luckily I occupy myself a lot with additional projects, perhaps too much sometimes.

> Have you moved internally to another team and felt reinvigorated?

Yup! better more interesting work really helped.

> Has anyone moved to lower level programming to face a different challenge (e.g. embedded, game engines, etc.)?

I haven't moved this low, but a good friend did. The procedure was:

1. Learn low level skills

2. Join a company with a low level team on an adjacent high level team (a slower approach would be to join any team then transfer to this adjacent team).

3. Befriend people on the low level team, fix a few small tickets for them unasked, pitch them on letting him join

He's working on a microkernel now.

I'm going to be brutally honest - yes, new environments will make you feel better. I moved around internally and externally and got another five years out of myself.

After that I had a mental breakdown, and left the work force for good.

There's quite a lot of these posts lately - I'm not sure that moving yourselves around the Titanic is going to do any lasting good, nor that in general, individuals can expect to escape systemic issues.

> I'm having an dilemma about my career. I'm very fortunate to be in the position I'm in, I have a very secure and well paying job ... And to be honest, I'm feeling burnt out and bored to death.

I know plenty of people who've been out of work and can't land interviews who'd gladly take the job off your hands.

What’s your point?

I think their point is "Appreciate what you have and get back to work!!"

Whether or not that is helpful is a different question!

Read my post again. This time slowly.

I am in the same boat. Seems like other's in the thread are too. I am closer to actually quitting and taking a sabbatical than I have ever been in my life. I am thinking of traveling a bit (in cheaper parts of the world), eventually experimenting with other tech & then building my own thing.

I'm literally doing exactly this for the past 6 months and couldn't be more happy. I'm studying blockchain development and traveling in Rio / Brazil.

Wow! I am thinking of starting in Mexico and then making my way further south. Web3 / Blockchain development is definitely on my list. Is there a way to follow what you've been working on? How/Why Brazil?

Check IoT companies as well - they often have web, firmware, hardware. I think it is also easier to move at a startup company, where it is usual to wear a few hats, and all the teams may still sit in the same room.