Comment by ThalesX | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ThalesX | Hacker News Reader

Disclaimer: nothing substantial, just a bit of trauma dump

I've been a developer for more than a decade. Body-shops. Founding engineer. Chief Technology Officer. After every job in my life I took 6 - 12 months off.

Usually my desire for programming comes back somewhere around the 5th month mark. I'm in such a 'holiday' now, and just passed the 12 month mark. I don't feel that desire coming back anymore.

I've been blessed to have a friend that had a gig where I can do some ETL and cover my monthly expenses, but whenever I start looking for new jobs, reading the ads, all those keywords, all those bullshit descriptions of what they expect, I'm starting to develop a physical repulsion.

I've done a couple of interviews, and the HR discussions and then the technical interviews have left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. I'm afraid I'll hiss in the next zoom call. And it's not even for not getting accepted, as I got an offer from all the talks. But the whole industry gives me a bad taste right now. Everything just feels futile and fluffed up. My last interview was for a hair & beauty appointment app start-up where they acted like they cure cancer.

I'd like to be my old self, but I'm afraid I might not get that part back. I took a look at 'regular' jobs and the idea of being a truck driver lit up something in me that programming hasn't in a very long time. Even being a shop clerk makes me dream more than wrangling code.

I realize this is childish, and that the grass is always greener on the other side. I know that there are challenges in every profession and that I have a comfortable home office and get paid a shit ton of money for what I do and this is better than 99% of the planet.

I just hope to be able to get back on track mentally and not feel like this.

I always suspected I had a doppelgänger but this proves it. Aside from the 6-12 breaks between each job I could have sworn this post was my own. I’m on the tail end of a sabbatical that is running far into overtime for the same reason - for the past year+ I’ve waited for the energy and desire to return as I expected it surely would.

But no. Nothing. Reading a job req still induces a wince. Reading the fluff from and about companies sends me recoiling. These things were never pleasant but they were tolerable. Now, the limbo bar has been set too low and it’s getting harder to compel my body to contort enough to slip under.

I’m pretty sure there is an eventual return somewhere ahead and the scariest thought is that I’ll get back and swirl back down to life as it was before. The past year+ becomes a puff of a memory. The good news (!) is that knowing you feel this way is critical knowledge. With that understanding we can rearrange our values and tackle the feeling constructively.

> But no. Nothing. Reading a job req still induces a wince. Reading the fluff from and about companies sends me recoiling. These things were never pleasant but they were tolerable. Now, the limbo bar has been set too low and it’s getting harder to compel my body to contort enough to slip under.

What infuriates me about this process is this experience.

For a time, I worked as a consultant doing cloud-related development, with many F500 companies (non-FAANG ones)

Generally, the staff on these projects were ok to mediocre in terms of skill. I KNOW I'm more competent than the median in those orgs at those companies, and yet if I apply for those exact jobs, my resume disappears into a black hole.

This isn't a testament to my skill, rather how poorly staffed major companies are. I don't mean "they don't know some nerd sniped trivia" either, I mean don't use version control, codebases full of dead commented code, hardcoded credentials, individuals with 0 troubleshooting ability or initiative, etc etc

This is spooky similar to how things have been for me. Also 6-12 month breaks, also the itch to start doing something at about 6 month mark. I’m about to take another one of my breaks and too think this time will be different. I get paid an eye watering amount of money, and I don’t want it anyway. Instead of taking up truck driving (which will get old in a week), I’m thinking of taking up sailing.

After working for basically 25 years straight since high school, I’m really wanting to take an extended sabbatical from the software industry to do my own thing. I’m scared that the longer I stay out though, the harder it will be to reenter, because I already have the disgust you describe. My hope is that since I still love the actual technical work that I can eventually turn some little side project into a real product and carry that through for a while.

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