I have met soo many sysadmins and devs that absolutely hate computers, hate programming, hate everything about IT. They were in some career fair at some point in high school and simply picked that because it had high pay with out the 6 or 8 years being a Doctor or lawyer took, and it seemed easier than Electrical Engineering or something.
Me, I have always loved programming and computers. They are both my work and my hobby
> Me, I have always loved programming and computers. They are both my work and my hobby
I think you're being too harsh, and clearly, you've never experienced burnout, which will make you loathe programming as work and as a hobby. Unless you are self employed, it is possible to hate your programming job while enjoying coding at home, without being in it for the money.
"If you enjoy what you do you will never work" is such bs, and leads to exploitation (see AAA games' low pay and crunching, or underpaid airline pilots)
I like problems, but mostly the technical ones. Starting programming young, loved computers and networking. Became a sysadmin.
Turns out that at work, the problems are often different to what I want to be solving. Approvals and process can be a real downer. Some problems are people problems and not technical problems at all. Waiting on somebody else to complete their part while you wait sucks. These are the things that burn me out.
At home, I am the approval process. Maintenance is whenever I think is reasonable. Don't like a service/app, throw it away. Found a new project, tinker away. Something is down, I'll get around to it.
Completely different.
I enjoy gardening and cooking as hobbies, but I don't want to work a job as a landscaper or line chef. After 20+ years of coding, I absolutely hate it despite having started out loving it, but I recognize that my cushy job is less hours for more pay than I could get doing anything else.
This is very true. I've been fortunate enough to be able to take a break from working. For a while after quitting my 9-5, I didn't want to touch code at all (hooray burnout). But after a while I started working on my own projects, and have gotten involved in open source again. I'm not doing 40 hours of OSS work per week, but it's much more than I'd be able to do with a full time job.
It's very different to get to work on whatever I want, whenever I want, however I want. "Working" like this feels completely different from working for an employer, even an employer that gives a large amount of autonomy.
Over the Christmas holidays, I rooted the vacuum robot, built a workstation from parts, worked on a new compression algorithm, and enhanced my papwrcraft design software... Because that's what I enjoy doing in my free time.
> If you’re like me, work is the primary shaper of your life. Work gives your life rhythm. It is the gravitational center around which the other activities in your life revolve.
You start to see the patterns and futility and cycles and think 'maybe my career is not making things better, it's keeping the mortgage paid?'
That and while I'm I can get rehired past 50...do I really want to do that dance again?