Ask HN: I burnt out from software development. What now?

When I start to program as a teenager, and it became my job in my early twenties, I was happy over the moon. I never made it my career because of money or prestige, teenagers rarely care about how much things pay in real life.

Over the years, I've learned that coding is not the ultimate goal. People who get rewarded the most are not doing coding at all but doing aRcHiTecTure and DeSigN dOcuMents. Or better, manage the ones who write code. Purely writing code is seen as an intermediary step into something "real" - the true profession of being a good ~bullshitter~ communicator in a corporate environment.

But I kept going. I could be the corporate worm at my day-to-day job - it pays well in the end - while messing with writing my own stuff and trying to build a business in my free time. But then, the final nail on the coffin came in - LLMs.

I thought I could avoid it, but it seems like every company just mandates It's because pRodUctiVity!!!!111 So at first I resisted, then I was hinted that if I won't catch up, my job could be at risk. The market is shit, I am an adult now so I have adult responsibilities, and changing jobs is no longer that easy. Plus, nobody guarantees that the next job won't jump on the AI bandwagon. So I swallowed the pill, and started to use, and embrace, AI, hoping, once again, to reuse my old pattern - be who they want me to be at work, and enjoy the "craft" in my free time.

But AI has sucked the joy of the craft even in my free time. If I don't use AI to build my own SaaS / business - then others will "get to market" faster. If I do, then I will create a slopware for which I don't care.

I started to imagine dropping it all and doing woodworking or something, while trying to slowly grind through my day-to-day job until AI will inevitably replace me (either by itself, or because of an influx of young people who are born into that world, will just become more capable than me).

And I no longer know what to do. My day-to-day job has an expiration date. It could be 5 years, it could be 15. I was hoping to build a tech business and escape the "rat race", but I am no longer able to find any motivation or desire to do so, as AI basically remove any barrier to entry. My decades of experience vanished basically overnight, and I am competing with everyone who has access to a Claude account. Or maybe I'm just a bad businessman. Anyway, I feel trapped. I no longer get enjoyment from a thing that was, and is, my identity that I have crafted almost 20 years.

So dear HN, what's next?