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Ask HN: Lost in My Career

33 pointswhitepirate2029 comments

I’m 27 years old and started hacking around when I was 13 with vb6.

I’m realizing all I build these days are more advanced CRUD apps with more advanced security, but I’m bored. It’s a sad cycle because cost of living to support my partner and I is high, so I cannot just quit (she’s in academia), however my love for tech is still strong, but I need harder and different problems. What can I do?

My buddies and I want to start a company as we are all in the same position, but we have no grand ideas. What have you all done to exit the endless loop of existentialism in the field?

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Be careful what you wish for. Solving harder problems for cash still comes with the expectation to solve those problems on a timeline, in a way that delivers value for the business writing your paycheck.

It sounds like you and your buddies may be experiencing nostalgia for the days when coding was a hobby and not a livelihood. The fun/hobby part is a fraction of the work of starting a new business—most of which is at least as boring as writing CRUD apps.

I switched to consulting/contract work and now have the freedom to work without supervision, no expectation of managing people, the ability to pick which projects I will tackle, and loads more free time (because of a higher hourly rate + nobody expecting me to keep a seat warm).

I'm in a similar (but different) position. I'll give you the advice my current boss gave me: keep your day job while you learn the skills needed to find another. Then keep your day job while you apply to jobs that are more aligned with your desired fulfillment. Once you are offered one of those jobs, quit your day job and transfer to the other.

In your case, where you want to start your own company, those are some grand ambitions. Be ready for disappointment, as that's not a path that works out for most people. But my boss's advice still applies to you: keep your day job and push through it while you work on building the infrastructure for your own company. Only once your company becomes profitable enough to pay the bills should you quit your day job. Because unfortunately, we live in a society that threatens everyone with homelessness, starvation, and death if the things that fulfill them are not producing something other people want enough of.

Beware of false idols, says the old book. Tech can be amazing, tech can be boring. At the end of the day, tech is but a tool. It will never satiate your soul. Find a target worthy for the love your heart yearns to offer, and aim at it steadfastly.

Understand that at the end of the day, it is a job. You will eventually get bored on some level of anything you do. It can be exciting to learn something new, but before you do, you should be okay with boredom, too.

Existentialism is heavy stuff for what is ultimately a job at the end of the day. You don't have to wrap your identity up in your job or whatever your current role or project is. If it pays the bills, great! It's a CRUD app? Fantastic!

If you want to start your own thing and your partner is on board, and y'all have the runway for it, great also! But since you said you have no great ideas, yet, you may want to hold off until you do. Starting a business is exciting at first but turns into a grind at some point, too. You'll have to go through lots of drudgery when you run your own company. Make sure you're okay with the boring stuff.

The way I put it is that it's a shame to ruin a perfectly good hobby with a job.

My background is all computer science and I work building those CRUD apps. However, my hobby is mobile dev, simulations, and hacking. I don't think I'd be happy doing those things with bosses and customers telling me what they need.

Quit job, moved country, got stuck in another cycle of dumb jobs. Quit those, bought a sailboat, moved on it, sailed the world for the last, uhm, 6 years now (time loses importance in this life).

Found a wife on the way, learnt a lot of new things, and even more about myself and the world.

Next I think we'll change the boat for a farmstead and grow some food.

Career? It can stay lost.

Oh, because you're gonna ask what I do for money: Not much really. Tiny bit of passive income, some savings. The key was to massively reduce the spending instead. It's enough.

If you have like-minded buddies, you are way ahead of the game (even if you don't have an idea). Choose something that seems fun - maybe something you would want to buy/use yourselves and start working on it. Borrow 8 hours a week from your current employer. They won't miss it, because you will probably gain that much in productivity as your skills and morale improve.

In the end, if you find success (which is rare) it probably won't be with your original idea. Once you have a body of work, keep an eye out for other applications of your core technologies. When your real idea comes along, be willing to pivot.

I transitioned to a domain that was outside my comfort zone. Specifically, I was just pure software dev, bored like you. Thought I’d dive into this new IaC thing my peers are working on, and down the rabbit hole I went all the way to the nitty gritty of Ops.

It was and continues to be fascinating even in my current mid-40s because there’s so much common-sense software development practices that are applicable but missing in Ops and I like the interaction between the two fields.

Try and contribute to open source projects if possible. There are a ton of good ones out there, pick one that interests you. I am trying to do the same.

Have you tried machine learning

I have a friend who felt similar about CRUD apps. He quit and got some freelance work while working on a couple of micro-SaaS products (check out microacquire for ideas). He then stumbled onto some web3 projects. Found one that got him super excited. Started working there part time. Brought some dev friends over. Then wrapped up all his freelance and other projects to go all in on web3 as a full-time employee. He gets to work on challenging tech with his friends

Not sure if this helps, but there are a few ideas to explore

I feel your pain. I was stick in the same boat as you a couple of years back. It’s hard as CRUD really is the bread and butter of the industry. I did two things..

1. Took a few weeks of holiday and didn’t TOUCH a computer during that time, did a hard reset.

2. Longer term, I looked into stuff I had never programmed (during my spare time) to rekindle my love for it. Stuff that was (objectively) useless for my career but that I did anyway for the sheer love of it. In my case it was messing around with 3d games libraries and building a basic gaming server.

Hope this helps.

I was in a similar position, ended up transitioning to machine learning. Very happy with it, but I also echo the sentimemt expressed in other comments that work is work and ultimately fulfillment is better sought outside of the workplace.

If you still want more challenging technical work (as opposed to e.g. enterpreneurship challenges) maybe you can play with more niche topics (3d / scientific / DSP / whatever) and seek employment there, though that may come with other compromises.

Hope you work it out, and enjoy the journey!

>but I also echo the sentimemt expressed in other comments that work is work and ultimately fulfillment is better sought outside of the workplace.

I disagree. People live in and conduct business inside of my work product. I get great satisfaction and fulfillment from my work.

I was a software engineer for 13 years. Now i own a construction business.

Congrats, that sounds awesome (not cynically)!

But I think there's a big difference between owning your own business (where you make all the big decisions, you dictate the business values, and are directly responsible for the value you add to the world) and doing CRUD for some company whose values you're not necessarily aligned with.

Also, I'm not saying one can't or absolutely shouldn't seek fulfillment in their daily job, I do too; but only to some degree. In my experience It's far too easy (and common) to overly tie one's identity with the job, forfeiting other important sources of fulfillment.

And of course, different people find meaning in different things; what works for me may not work for OP, what works for you may not work for me.

>But I think there's a big difference between owning your own business (where you make all the big decisions, you dictate the business values, and are directly responsible for the value you add to the world) and doing CRUD for some company whose values you're not necessarily aligned with.

Indeed there is a big difference.

>Also, I'm not saying one can't or absolutely shouldn't seek fulfillment in their daily job, I do too; but only to some degree. In my experience It's far too easy (and common) to overly tie one's identity with the job, forfeiting other important sources of fulfillment.

I agree, it is an easy trap to fall in, tying your identity to a job. I dont advocate for that. Nor do I practice that. I have a rather varied set of interests and hobbies. And i would like to start a family some day soon, if i can find a suitable wife. I would take great meaning and fulfillment from being a father.

>And of course, different people find meaning in different things; what works for me may not work for OP, what works for you may not work for me.

I wouldn't exactly recommend anyone to go out and do what i did. But rather, I would state that it is possible to find fulfillment in work. Certainly that would be different things to different people. But it is worth seeking out IMO.

Personally, I have nothing against a CRUD app, you just have to avoid ones of so little or such generic significance that they will be replaced endlessly with commodity churn (a logical thing for a business if they want to avoid lock-in and bidding to be part of that churn is an illogical choice of roles as a techie) and look for ones valuable enough to someone to sometimes need interesting depth bolted on somewhere, buying you lock-in and something interesting to work on.

I would look for a job at an early-stage startup to get a feel for it. If you don't like working for an early-stage startup, you probably won't like running one. I would also figure out how to lower your cost of living since starting a company will almost definitely mean making less money.

I believe there are loads of things that can make you highly uncomfortable, without having to quit your job, or use money to invest.

You need to go through a bunch of them to shake things up and exit this endless loop as you called it. I believe during such phases we discover the deeper levels of ourselves if we listened to our deep need to evolve, expand and explore.

I've only been programming in CRUD and APIs using js, python and go building web applications, but am currently excited to change domain to computer graphics developing c++ desktop applications. Maybe a different domain of programming could be interesting?

What I did was realized that my job is just a means to an end. I do my work and promptly leave at 5 PM to play with my kids, family, and enjoy life. I pursue challenges in areas outside my job, including being more fit.

I acknowledge this perspective isn't for everyone though.

This. What helps me was that the company provided a work laptop (I have nothing in there apart from a few files. I don't even play music from it). At the end of days, I power everything down (and I don't have company emails and slack on my devices) and enjoy the rest of the time doing my own stuff, reading books, drawing, spending time with my girlfriend,...)

This is me, but I watch a couple of episodes of Deadliest Catch, and then plopping down on the Aeron with a good cup of coffee whenever to write code takes on a different perspective. Good luck!

> My buddies and I want to start a company as we are all in the same position, but we have no grand ideas...

Just improve something that already exists then.

Don't fall into the trap of working on an interesting idea. My advice would be to look to solve a problem that interests you.

Try teaching others to really prove your mastery on exercism or something

I was in your shoes ten years ago. Since then, I’ve increased my income over 10x, and wake up every day ready to tackle interesting problems.

If you’d like to chat, reach out.

I am not sure you realize but tbe way you’ve written your comment reads like a scam.

That’s fine. My blog and Twitter account are easily discoverable. Anyone who takes 30 seconds to look would see that that isn’t the case. Anyone who doesn’t take the 30 seconds… probably isn’t someone who wants to chat with me anyhow.

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