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Comment by wizzard | Hacker News Reader

I am currently on an indefinite hiatus/sabbatical/vacation after quitting my job at the beginning of June. I had been working on a project I didn't enjoy for a year and a half, culminating in the most horrible failed iterations I've ever been a part of: a new feature we started last November -- that should have taken maybe two months -- didn't get finalized until May. I've never been so discouraged and burned out on programming in my life.

I knew I'd need time to "heal" after that experience. It took a month and a half but I'm finally starting to feel interested in coding again. I'm really glad I took that time (and that I was lucky enough to have the means and an understanding SO).

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If I didn't have bills I needed to pay, I would take a longer hiatus. Earlier this year, I was let go from my position as a senior software engineer. My review months before was like "you're a great dev, here's a 4% raise" and then a few months later "Your performance is horrible, you're fired."

Immediately, I began looking for work but I knew I needed to heal from the experience. I have a job now but there are times it crosses my mind that maybe I should have taken more of a hiatus. But I had enough money in my savings for only five months. I like my new job but there are times I get so tired, next year I might just take a month off and get some rest.

I'm sorry that happened to you. I think thoughtful feedback is so important (for any job!) but it never seems to happen. If you're doing well, you might get a generic pat on the back. If you go off the rails you don't hear about it until it's practically too late, if at all. It's one of those things where if everything's going OK, it's like your team doesn't even exist, but if something goes wrong suddenly upper management knows all your names.

Sorry you had a bad experience. Coding brings me joy now and I would never intentionally bring suffering to people helping me see a common goal brought to fruition. While I don't like ruling by democracy, ruling with EMPATHY is a requirement. What are you thinking about working on now?

The most frustrating thing about the slippage is that you couldn't really point to anything as the reason it happened. It wasn't just "poor management" or "poor effort" or "changing specs". I still can't satisfactorily answer WHY. Actually I wonder if the whole team wasn't burned out before we even started.

I haven't figured out what direction I want to go this time. If I want to be more contractor-ish I might go for mobile again, but if I'm honest with myself I prefer working on web apps. Just getting tired of the recruiters and company culture that seem inextricably connected with working on them.

Sometimes projects are just meh. Happens. And, just in case you get an itch for hacking on something cool again: http://github.com/stackmonkey/. :)

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