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Comment by daGrevis | Hacker News Reader

Here's a theory — an ideal job is a job that fulfills your desire to code to a level in which you don't want to do any coding after work hours. There's so much challenging tasks and new things you learn right away by doing things you are paid for that you don't need to search for something new after work.

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I've found the contrary to be true lately. I was a serial burnout case. I'd crank hard for 3 or 4 months and it'd take me 6 months to recover. I've found more recently that it wasn't the projects at home or at work, it was a lack of diversity. Doing the same thing when I got home that I did all day burned me out because it wasn't any different. Coming home and working of stuff I can't work on at work be it new languages, games, new ideas, whatever, just so long as it's different than what I did for 8 hours then I don't get burnt. Now the problem is I don't have enough hours in the day to do it all and working until 4 am and being up at 7 isn't sustainable.

Quite true in terms of my work habits. At the end of the day, you want to learn something new, but you've given it 110% during the day that you can't get yourself to start a new hobby project.

In my case, I always seemed stuck back at the same mindset and mental "data structure" in my head, so it would be difficult to push it aside to make room for something new.

It might sound stupid, but it could also be the fear that I would lose said structure, and the next day would go entirely into rebuilding it.

You missed his point. His ideal job would give you enough diversity that you wouldn't feel you had to get that from outside work.

Right I get that, my job is diverse and it scratches that itch, but it does it for someone else's bottom line, I just collect a paycheck that doesn't reflect profits.

My point was even when you find that job, burnout is a thing and diversity between your work and personal projects seems to make pursuing your interests a sustainable process.

We work in an industry where we have the luxury of skinning cats in 1000s of ways, so get out of your comfort zone and sharpen your knife, it's quite enjoyable and rewarding.

Indeed, this is far more sustainable than burning the candle from both ends. It may seem like a bit of a unicorn job; but the current SV boom tends to overvalue inexperienced engineers so much that it can seem like there are no interesting jobs in tech left.

After ten years, you start wanting something different from work. Nothing wrong with that, you just need to find somewhere that will keep you intellectually fed.

I recently changed jobs from one where I felt underutilized and bored to one where I get to code more and I feel much more satisfied. I've found that my interest in coding after work and on weekends is actually gotten higher since the switch.

Maybe I'm just in a better mood now, or maybe it's some sort of "productivity momentum". It used to be that when I got home from work, the thought of looking at a computer screen made me feel sick. Now it's fine. It's not that I rush home and code every night (I still take the time to unwind and relax), but I actually feel like I can go home and code now whereas I just couldn't bring myself to do it before.

I somewhat agree.

I'm fortunate enough to work in such a job, but keep in mind that it's those "holy crap I didn't know you could do it that way" moments that get you excited and can't wait to tinker with in on your own.

There's a difference between being a bored conveyor belt developer who feels unfulfilled at the end of the day and someone whose been given a new set of "lego" and cannot contain their curiosity.

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