Ask HN: How do you fix the “no longer feel” anything in tech? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you fix the “no longer feel” anything in tech?

I've been in the software industry for ~10 years. I no longer feel exciting for anything including the latest ChatGPT. I've already been through these phases: engineering principle for all things -> okay, helping customers is the actual business value, so code is just a tool -> obsessed with [solution,problem] -> well, it's actually mostly about marketing and sale, problems don't actually discover good solutions, mediocre solutions find their way to the problems. Now I see tech is as useful as taking a shower every morning. I no longer feel anything in any role in tech industry.

No, I don't think I'm depressed. I eat healthy food, exercise and see mountain and river every morning. My mom loves me.

I'm figuring out what's the best mental model to survive (or feel) anything in tech. So you may suggest something outside of tech, I'm already pretty good at many things. But this profession just doesn't feel (or feel at all) right.

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Okay, thanks everyone, I try to reply to appreciate every comment, though it's plenty! Just so you know I already read every comment as of now.

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Imagine liking woodworking... would you still love it as much after 10 years of doing it 8h/day, 5 days a week?

Then imagine opening a woodworking magazine, and every page is a new ad-hidden-as-a-newsstory, showing some new magical tool that will do all the magical stuff you hate doing... trying to sad this complex shape? With our tool it takes just 5 seconds... then you get that tool, and it works only on small square shapes and 5 seconds is 'per side'. Another day, another magical tool, another disappoint. You'd slowly stop buying the bullshit and used the few tools you know work and try new ones only after they get an established presence in woodworking.

Then look at the customer... every customer has "special needs", but in the end, all you're making is a bunch of silimar wooden stools.

It's not something you have to get depressed about or even really care about... it's a job, you rise over the overinflated hype, you do your 8 hours, get paid, and then you can do other stuff that makes you excited... mostly because that stuff is not your 8h/day job. I mean... imagine having sex for 8h/day every workday... how long until even sex loses all the excitement? I'm guessing not very long.

Could it be that humans were simply not meant to be so hyper specialised? And that modern societies demand for everyone to do one task on repeat for decades is making us miserable?

Should we really ignore the fact that almost everyone comes to wish they were doing something else, regardless of what they are currently doing?

Two solutions:

1. Build something you really care about. Something that solves an actual issue that you have.

2. Learn a better programming language. This might sound strange, but I found that work gets super boring and repetitive quickly if the language can't keep up with my thoughts. Some languages do better than others here. Forget Python, JavaScript/Typescript, Java, C#, C++, Golang, Rust (even though Rust is cool). Do Clojure (or other Lisp), Haskell, Scala, Racket, F#, Prolog, Idris, Purescript. It makes a huge difference.

1. sounds about right.

2. I wrote c,c++ in the past life. I'm pretty good at vanilla js. And Elm, Elixir. So I get the taste of functional and those ML family static typed lang. But it's all meh .. maybe because I also know the lower levels stuff from assembly to flipflop and diode that logic gates are made of, and how electron flows (that's my uni background) Not really exciting.

Alan Perli: "LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of nothing." [1]

You seem to know the cost of everything.

Have you looked into "code is data" [2]? With the engineering or physics background, have you read about programming concepts like compiler, e.g. [3]? Programming languages are not only a tool to shift electrons around in a more convenient way. If you look the other way, languages are used to change the way you think. Have you tried creating an environment for you that suits you? ... that facilitates you to do whatever you want to do?

That said, maybe you have to do a Steve Jobs and stop showering every morning or try things outside of tech. Take time off so that it is a choice to continue when you return. After all, AI will be done in 10-20 years. There was and there never will be a more interesting time than being involved in tech right now.

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57427557/clarify-perlis-...

[2] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5833033/in-lisp-code-is-...

[3] https://mitp-content-server.mit.edu/books/content/sectbyfn/b...

I assure you most Haskell programmers have taken the mandatory computer organization/architecture courses in uni. That knowledge wouldn't (shouldn't?) influence your excitement about programming paradigms.

I think the bigger problem is the way you describe the usefulness of the work you do, how it's about satisfying your customers needs. If you could somehow put yourself before your customers, how would you do things differently? I sometimes code in Ruby, even though writing it in Python would be better for my business. I'm pretty fluent in Python, but Python is a shitty programming language and working in it for too long makes me sad. I don't think this discussion should be focusing on programming languages, just switching programming languages is probably not going to make you happy.

If you think about a moment that made you happy in tech, even if it's long ago, what was it that you got enjoyment from? Maybe you could reproduce and amplify that. You seem to draw pride from knowing lower level stuff, did you know in the past 10 years hardware design went from something you need an expensive lab, loads of money and months of time for, to something you could do on the weekend using open source tools, order the PCB and you'll have it before the next weekend with the parts wave soldered on to it. Watch some Phil's Lab videos on Youtube and you'll have a working FPGA+DDR3 board in a couple of months and you can flow those electrons exactly like you want them to.

Sometimes diving deep is fun, you could utterly solve some super niche market by being a lone wolf programmer that's hyper focused. Sometimes there's some big ChatGPT style opportunity that you could use to tackle some big issue with a synergetic team.

> Python is a shitty programming language and working in it for too long makes me sad

Yea back in many years ago, my team was deciding what language to use for a monitoring system. I know c++, friend1 knows python, friend3 knows php. 2 hates Python, and we ended up with Perl! omg.. can't time travel back to stop the crime.

Well off-topic, but I share that python story.

Haha that's cool. I guess I should qualify with "comparatively shitty".

> I wrote c,c++ in the past life. I'm pretty good at vanilla js. And Elm, Elixir. So I get the taste of functional and those ML family static typed lang.

I don't think you do. Learn Haskell or Scala (doing only pure functional programming). The goal should be to express whatever problem you have at hand in the most natural and high-level way. That brings back good feelings when working because you are spending all or almost all of your brain-power to solve the business problem, without having to deal with low-level problems that no one except engineers understand.

Elm is a great and productive language - but it is not nearly as expressive. Exixir is not a great language at all but it's still great because it runs on the BEAM. That makes it very effective for big production projects. But you are not looking for effectiveness. You are looking to get your joy back in what you are doing.

You can also go the other way and don't solve high level problems but solve the most low level stuff - but from what you are saying, it doesn't look like that's what you want.

Haskell and Scala don't fit my ways of adopting things. A way is akin to "the best bang for the bucks", so both provide too much, especially Scala. If I have to choose between a gazillion abstraction/features that can do many things, and a simple language that can do many things. Definitely go for the letter.

If you don't like Haskell or Scala then pick another language. The point is not "best bang for the bucks". It's "what makes you happy".

A job is a job. If you have to set an alarm to wake up Monday morning, eventually it is going to grate on you regardless. I am sure there are some people who love it, but I suspect this is more likely akin to the social media effect (where you only see people sharing pictures of their amazing holiday/car/friends, and never the shit parts of their life, so that amplifies this feeling of "everyone's life is great but mine seems crap" because you only see/hear the edited best bits)

I personally find that "coding for fun" at home is the best solution to not caring about work. You don't need to code for any purpose apart from the sheer joy of it - don't worry about open sourcing or a business model or a side business or even if anyone in the world will ever even see the code. Just code for fun even if that particular idea only lasts a Sunday afternoon (I have loads of projects that I worked on for perhaps total of like less than 10 or even 5 hours before getting bored and moving on, but it was fun for those 5-10 hours - that is fine, I occasionally pick things back up, but often not).

You also don't need to care about every new tech that comes along.

Good luck.

This

I think your experience matches what 99.999% of engineers feel. Very, very few people get to ride a cool tech wave. John Carmack got to make a living making Doom and Quake. Good for him. For every John Carmack, there were tens of thousands who tried and failed at game dev, and ultimately went back to their day job making accounting software.

Because, as you say, most of the time business and marketing make things successful, not the actual tech. Only rarely does a hard-working programmer make something at the right moment that catapults them to success.

But that said, I don't think that fulfillment in tech is all or nothing. If you work very hard on a side project, you may be able to capture a tiny amount of success. Maybe your side project can generate enough money to pay for coffee every month? That would still feel pretty nice.

> John Carmack got to make a living making Doom and Quake. Good for him.

I think Carmack is a good example here in a discussion about chasing the feeling because I don't think he was in love with Doom as much as he was in love with tricking pixels into doing what he wanted (starting with the desktop Mario clone that evolved into Commander Keen). I base this assumption on the fact he's left the Doom franchise and is (or was last I checked) working in VR, figuring out how to trick pixels into doing what he wants again. I watched his Twitter account for a while, it was fun seeing what he was having fun with.

What worked for me, found a place that needs tech but isn’t a tech company. So it’s just make cool stuff to make the business more nimble, smooth. The application of tech as a business tool, it’s kept my interest for the past few years.

Some of it reduces required human resource, like I took a logistics department head count from 10 to 4 with scanning to automate record keeping and increase accuracy. So that kinda sucks deleting jobs, but from the perspective of building/scaling a business, it’s awesome.

Sounds good, but how do you find business that you can automate? If business knew they wanted to automate x/y/z they would have done it already.

Geo political events. Overall downturn in Tech and layoffs. Higher possibility that AI will invade lower end programmers job.

We are standing at the edge of some uncharted territory. No one is sure whether the future of software development as a profession will be better or worse than the past.

It's ok to feel numb standing here.

Yeah, I have been researching SaaS market, it seems like the era of innovation is gone in this space. Like people stop talking about issue tracker, headless cms, shiny alternatives to x b2b saas anymore.

Take a wider outlook on life.

You’ve been in this environment for 10 years, it is only healthy to be where you’re at right now in your mind.

With a high probability you enjoyed tech and valued your career highly and was rightfully proud of it.

To be happy with life in the next decades the key is probably not tech, or what does your heart and stomach tell you?

Are there goals that your inner you tells you to strive for?

Dare to look beyond tech and work. Travel, love, companionship, philosophy, listen to your 80-year old neighbor etc!

Whatever direction you choose it must be your active choice to give meaning.

In the past what has helped me is exploring the 'techy' area of something I see all the time but never stopped to consider how it works under the hood. A great example is music and music software. If you begin exploring sound, synthesis, filters, etc. there is a huge world just waiting to be discovered. Hours and hours of fun - very easy to find that "where did the last 3 hours just go?" feeling.

You could also look outside the tech industry and go into something else you care about as the person who is an exception for being technical. If you have 10 years experience you can do a lot of good and help many people for whom computers are still scary and mysterious black boxes (remember, this is the overwhelming majority of humans currently alive on Planet Earth).

Wish you good luck!

> you can do a lot of good and help many people

I'm thinking this is the direction I'm trying to figure out because I feel great when people say "thank you" to my effort-less help. (I don't love intentional activity like volunteer. I super love when it's accidental, less thinking, me suddenly happened to be helpful)

I sometimes answer people's questions on the support forum for an open source project i am involved with. It can feel really nice to help people solve whatever problem they are having. If there is a niche you are knowlegable about, i definitely reccomend it.

Big plus on this. Twenty years into a pure software career and feeling largely uninspired, generally trying to work as high in the stack as possible (first LAMP admin, then Mac/iOS software, then specifically in developer tools / graphics rendering) I got into hardware and how these amazing machines actually turn code & binary into action. Now I'm obsessed with it and working on a physical product where my software skills are a huge boost.

The idea that a person should be thrilled about their job is a rather luxurious position in the first place. Do you have a hobby? If not, find one.

If you don't hate your job, consider yourself very very lucky.

It’s not luxurious, it’s feudal, which is why you keep hearing about it.

Managers want people who are so inured that they overlook little things like mistreatment and low pay. They want you hooked. Hooked people are easier to control.

Yeah, there's that culture and then there's also "culture fit".

I would be astounded if a majority of people actually enjoyed their jobs. Feeling indifferent about your job is not a bad place to be.

The OP said nothing about mistreatment so I don't follow you.

> I would be astounded if a majority of people actually enjoyed their jobs.

This is what I try to remember when I'm bored at work. Programmers may be overworked and underpaid, but we still have the luxury to do whatever we want from time to time, and make our own training by reading APIs for new languages because we love that shit.

I have a lot of friends who work in various fields, and I'm pretty sure they don't "love" their jobs as much as I do (even when micro-managers are annoying me).

Recently, I quit my job because the managers became crazy and I told me friends "it's fine, I found a new job in less than 24 hours and it pays more and seems fun." I had to explain them how the programming world works since they didn't believe me at first.

Young people. Young people do, or think they will. In our industry something like half the people have less than 5 years of experience, so there are a lot of marks out there.

Fwiw, i think chatgpt is kind of boring too.

That said there is a difference between not feeling excited about latest fad and not feeling excited about anything.

My general advice would be to take a break. Quit for a month or two. Learn to paint, hike, whatever. Maybe the excitement comes back after a while, if not maybe you found something different to be excited about. Either way its a win.

> No, I don't think I'm depressed. I eat healthy food, exercise and see mountain and river every morning. My mom loves me.

What's your basis for thinking you are not depressed? Because depressed people can still eat good food, exercise, see nature, and have people who love them.

Which to be clear, i am not saying you are depressed, but if you are basing you thinking you are not depressed solely on that, maybe you should dig a little deeper, as you can be all of those things and still be depressed. Or maybe just suffering burn out.

In any case, consider talking it over with a therapist. If you are depressed they can get you help. If you are not depressed, they can help you figure out what actually is wrong and what your options are. Alternatively, if all you need is to change up your life a bit, they can help guide you through figuring out for yourself what parts to change. There really is no downside to talking to a mental health professional. They can help with things with depression, but they can also help with life just feeling boring.

You're probably right, it's possible that I may be depressed from different basis. Ah I hate therapy with passion because I know some people who successfully get out of bad mental health by just quitting therapy and done something else.

My understanding is that different therapists can be of really different quality - so you might need to hunt around for one that is good and works for your personality.

In the end though, worst case scenario is you maybe waste some time and maybe money (although hopefully not much money if you have insurance). An hour a week is not much time to spend if it works, and if it doesn't seem to be working you can always just quit or try a different therapist.

I agree, and would like to add that therapy isn't necessarily a constant thing. Short- and medium-term therapy focuses on a specific issue or life event, and when one feels like they've gotten a handle on it, they don't need to continue sessions. So the fact that people discontinue therapy is not, in and of itself, a bad thing.

I have felt exactly like that! I was a consultant for 12 years doing ecommerce. The last year was me trying to do things right but always got hammered with the "customers needs this so just do the easiest thing right get there". I hated it. I discovered that it has always been like this in that company so i decided to go look for something new: an internal IT department for a company that actually cared about its own products. My plan was simple: say yes to all offers i got through eg LinkedIn and see where it brought me. Most important thing: i minimized my efforts at my current job. I said to my self it was okay, because noe i wanted to that job that brought back: pride for doing software, had a real goal for doing quality, test and maintance and lets the devs redo parts of the system when we thought it needed it.

After one year i did find my current job. It came out of nowhere and because i just said yes to everything. Actually when i said yes to go for an interview for this company i work at now, i thought "this isn't going nowhere because this is an old company with legacy code and nothing new, but i have promised to say yes"

I landed the best job in the world. And i actually found out that the new teams they hired wasn't legacy teams but doing .NET core, k8s, docker, dapper etc. I can even install Linux on my laptop if i want to.

Good! I can't make myself say yes to everything. Do the best job really exist?

This is also very true for me. I've taken jobs from many unusual circumstances just by being 'open to discussion'--not even thinking of saying yes. I've started talks about work from a person that sold me their used car, companies on Who's hiring that used a tech stack I was uninterested in, hiring stunt programming contest, a 5 person local startup using PHP that had no tech lead, dev culture that was foreign to me (pair programming 8 hours a day), following everyone else in an aquihire of small startup to a large company. There's a lot of value in variety and dumb luck.

I've been in the software industry 40 years and have felt this way from time to time. Some of the suggested ideas have worked at different times, e.g. when I was doing not-so-interesting contract work, extracurriculars make a big difference. Other times, picking up other programming styles, frameworks, etc have reignited interest followed by disappointment from not being able to use it at my day job, but ultimately changing the way I think and work with mainstream languages. Management track definitely didn't work for me.

One thing I've always tried is to align the companies I work for with my values over pay raises (except for a contracting stint experiment). I don't know how much that matters but I've rarely had trouble getting up and doing a day's work.

I'm now at a large company continuing on an IC track. It's a bit tricky 'managing-up' etc, but I am finding a way to be effective by trying to get myself on projects I find interesting or challenging, as well as better ways to scale myself via writing high-level documentation, giving talks/demos, or lots of pair-programming to get aligned on tech culture. This probably only works because I don't think too much about how this or that is so ineffective/inefficient etc but rather frame it as a puzzle or technical problem to be solved within the arbitrary constraints of the organization. I don't do well with office politics which sometimes blow up in my face, but usually able to continue with the technical aspects of getting things done. Caring about and for your teammates and other people you work with (especially the non-technical ones) makes a big difference in how smoothly things go, or important things seem.

I don't follow ML/crypto/etc other than on HN with a sense of 'we can do that now!?" and smh wait and see attitudes, without thinking that these should have any impact on my work anytime soon. I wonder how much this kind of problem is more/less prevalent depending on whether you value internal or external validation?

All this is to say that this could be a long and recurring problem and you can look deep and wide to find different things that make it less important in your life or find a way of making it interesting again. One thing that's self-defeating is applying current apathy level to dismissing potential perks. Good luck!

> I no longer feel exciting for anything including the latest ChatGPT

If it helps, I'm don't share the hype for ChatGPT either...

> I'm figuring out what's the best mental model to survive (or feel) anything in tech.

I've personally been the most fulfilled, when I'm part of a team of people who listen, and are not afraid to share ideas and build things that solve problems. Connect with the people you're working with and I think you'll feel much more satisfied at work.

I kind of getting enough day-to-day vibe at companies. I think I've experienced almost all angles.

And yeah, "it helps"

Are you sure this needs to be fixed? Of course this is Hacker News, so our bias will be towards finding a way to stay in software (I hate calling it tech when it’s a small subset of technologies that exist) and be happy. But really, do you need to do that? This is just one profession of many (and this one is far from immune from automation, contrary to popular belief!). If this isn’t what you feel passionate about, cool. Start thinking about everything else that exists. Software isn’t the holy grail.

Good question. I may not need to make myself feel .. let's write software with a cold face!

I’m going to throw a bomb: There is no other job that pays that much money. Developers are paid more than managers, even in any other sector.

My uncle manages a refinery. He probably gets paid around 140k€, his house is fancy but normal. Most people who work like hell in France max out at 80k€. Meanwhile my devs start at 35k€ and get 65k€ after a fee years only (Note: French salaries are low, but employees prefer Ticket Restaurant and public healthcare to earning more, it’s a long debate - 70k€ is the top 8% of French people[1]). As a dev, you have extremely low risk and responsibilities, you need extremely little human talent which makes all the difference elsewhere, but if you study a popular framework hard enough, you can land a high paying job. So, a lot of devs are stuck because they need the money but can’t reconvert as an electrical engineer for the same money, even if they have the qualifications.

[1] https://www.inegalites.fr/Salaire-etes-vous-riche-ou-pauvre

I think that's pretty normal. Doing anything for a decade when all you can see is more of the same for the next decade can be dispiriting. It becomes just a way to earn money.

For me when I got sick of software development I moved to information security and cryptography. I now love writing software again, because I do it all on my own terms and I have fresh challenges at work.

Might not be the answer for you, but maybe do a masters degree or consider a change of career to something adjacent to software.

Never too late to go back to school? I think it's too late for me, plus had a look at syllabus of those .. it's urggg let me buy books instead. It's just for sake of degree (and connection) .. well that's the whole point I guess.

FWIW after 10 years working on one project (out there on the market), I am starting a PhD next month. I am in my 50s.

I'm not that smart or have discipline to do PhD .. tbh. Good for you! I like seeing things get applied very soon, see feedback and usefulness in short time range. PhD is good, though it takes too long to see impact .. and maybe my papers are probably just pieces of paper!

I am doing this work to try to get impact, quickly, and will stage the work to make that happen! Apparently I'm not that smart either, but "1% inspiration, 99% perspiration" applies, I am told...

If you're only doing it to get a bit of paper and connections then I certainly wouldn't recommend it. I was genuinely fascinated by the subject matter, and I did it in my late 30s. It was a bit of a slog at points but very rewarding.

I'd start with asking yourself what does feel right and going from there.

Or you can just view it as a job. No one wakes up wanting to flip burgers all day, it's just a means to an end. Find something else in your life that makes you feel other than work.

If that doesn't sit right, maybe consider working with non-profits and charities. They will have their problems, but at least you're working towards something meaningful and bigger than yourself.

Admittedly, I don't love non-profits, charities or volunteer. And admittedly, I am not rich, so myself and family comes first. Can't effort to help the world.

Useful? I think you should stop trying to derive meaning for yourself out of a job and not be bothered by the hype-train.

Be into stuff you enjoy only for the sake of enjoyment.

I’m in the same boat. A suggestion would be try to switch up the markets you’re involved in. I used to be based in SF Bay Area but moving to the MENA region has renewed my love for tech by giving me a chance to be somewhere that’s relatively early in its industry cycle and finding different business cases than what you’re taught in MBA classes.

May I ask which industry you have renewed the love for tech? I may have a little bit more love of software that involves a lot more of real world stuff.

My vertical is tech enabled feedback solutions and large scale sentiment analysis for enterprise but tbh that’s irrelevant. Finding niche problems where your product could make the difference is quite rewarding and helps in making friends with clients who see the rewards of its implementation.

I'm a normal unbranded person, I don't think I can talk to enterprise people! But I got your point.

There's a lot of negative things that could be said about the "tech" industry right now, but let's not dwell on that.

Find more things you do care about in life/world, and then maybe see how tech can intersect with any of those in a good way? Or does it even have to.

Also, you didn't mention raising a family. Maybe try hanging out with a nice 5yo, and teaching them something, and see whether parenting instinct you didn't know you have suddenly activates. That might change how you look at other things, whether it's making a family and providing for them (perhaps with a tech job), or suddenly on a mission to make the future better for kids like that (perhaps with tech).

Try to build something that makes the world a better place. This is extremely difficult, so joining others with the same aim can work better. At that point tech is no longer an aim in itself but just a means to accomplish something important. And the it becomes interesting, because you no longer focus on just the tech aspect but how it can be useful to your projects and hence other people, and it becomes doubly interesting (if it's actually useful - many modern trends are just distractions). It really works and I'm happy I took this path.

"No, I don't think I'm depressed. I eat healthy food, exercise and see mountain and river every morning. My mom loves me."

My question would still be, do you "feel" anything about other things? The way you describe it, does not really sound exited. More like, yeah mountains, healthy food, exercise, same shit every day.

In other words, you do sound disillusioned, to the point of burned out/depressed.

"But this profession just doesn't feel (or feel at all) right."

So what profession would feel right to you?

I don't think you can "fix" feeling right about anything.

Yep, good physical and mental health is just my priority to keep it working because experience tells me if one of these went down, it's half way fucked. If both went down, it's totally fucked, and life stop functioning really.

It's time to stop working in tech for tech's sake and actually solve problems in other domains using computers as a tool-for-thought not as a business process support system.

That's the bearable direction. It may keep me feel at least useful.

There are all kinds of different jobs in tech, all kinds of technologies you could be working on, and all kinds of companies you could be working at. There are lots of companies that do really important work, and not just shoveling bullshit around.

It seems as if your current job isn't working for you. If I was you, I'd think about what does excite me and then see if I could pursue it. Find a new job, change careers. Obviously not gonna happen in an instance.

Not relevant but thanks for the line

"No, I don't think I'm depressed. I eat healthy food, exercise and see mountain and river every morning. My mom loves me."

made my day

Stay for the joy of the craft, not the excitement. Excitement is temporary and it is lost when the thing that's exciting goes away or is replaced.

I think the large part of the joy of the craft is feedback .. so on, up to the other things and here we go again.

Development has become less of an artform and more a slog to see how fast you can Google solutions or find whatever library of the week to use.

I feel the same and I only have a few years. It’s just a job. Nothing more, nothing less.

I find having a non tech hobby really helps me come to terms with this.

It comes in any profession. Switch to soemjting that you would like doing, pretty much.

And I don't mean another language. You may need something completely different. Metalworking, chemistry, robotics, whatever you can find that you would like to do and learn.

Oh but that's super hard and income will drop? Do it on the side or keep your current job.

Work on something challenging. Imagine how the future could be made better through technology and help make it so.

Maybe you'd like to work on free software projects. Those that try to tackle real problems, dedicated to offering real solutions, have positive social impact. And think about how to be involved with this in a way that is sustainable (the hard part of working in FOSS).

Unfortunately, I don't work for free (I have fixed a few issues in OSS projects, but that's kind of part of my job)

> have positive social impact

I haven't seen developers' effort be appreciated in these projects (mostly it's appreciated in a sense that "oh nice stuff I can use for free")

So as someone who contributes to an open source project i definitely don't reccomend doing it solely for the appreciation. You won't get enough to make it worth it. You should really only contribute as an end in itself, otherwise it wont be worth the frustration.

However you do get some. its not solely demanding people wanting to freeload - some genuinely appreciation does happen. It comes and goes, and is usually for things you least expect. It is also often not porportional to effort. The most thanks i ever got in my life was fixing an i18n bug in bashkir (language spoken in russia by a minority group). It took probably half an hour. The things i spent weeks on, nobody gave a shit. Some random quick fix and it was the most appreciation i got in my life and made a local newspaper from half way across the world.

So it does happen, but not consistently.

Well, that is what I meant with "sustainable". Working on free software doesn't necessarily mean working for free. Though in practice most free software is unsustainable when it comes to earning people a living. There are exceptions, e.g. companies like Plausible, some worker cooperatives that develop services around a FOSS project, or innovative projects that receive R&D grants. There's sustainable business models to explore.

You might see if my story about quitting tech to become a therapist resonates at all: http://glench.com/WhyIQuitTechAndBecameATherapist/

If you want to feel, pursue art, not soulless tech.

Wait, tech has got that covered too...

At least we can still ride our bikes.

Not gonna lie, I only got A and A+ in primary school for all art homework. But when I grow up I think my art skill was just mediocre.

That's reversible with due determination!

Now, me personally, I seek determination as hard as I can, but keep finding only useless crumbles of it, seeing the way things evolve around me. It takes an enormous inner stoic to become e.g. a painter these days when AI imagery is all the rage. Or maybe an inner visionary, for this AI fad might be destined to be blown away as dust by a fresh breeze of spring...

I may not like this but I think these art AI works the same way as artists work in brainstorming process. They stare at a shit tons of some one else's arts all day, and let that sink in brain, let brains do the training process.

I code mostly because I enjoy it. The fact that it's useful to someone is just a nice extra which means I can easily make a living out of it.

I'm not sure who said "code is just a tool" but it's a depressing way to see things.

"It is just a job."

Forget about feeling it, it pays the rent and allows you to of what you love / like. This is actually the way 80% of the employees make it through the day.

Maybe it’s not for you.

Try a new career, you may be happier.

>No, I don't think I'm depressed. I eat healthy food, exercise and see mountain and river every morning. My mom loves me.

Those things are not evidence that you aren't depressed.

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