So I enrolled in App Academy. I got a job at Apple and four months later he's killed in a motorcycle accident.
I quit my job, floundered a bit, found sporadic success in startups, had a few breakdowns, spent some time in the hospital, but always went back to work, back to grinding out Python and SQL and other nonsense.
I hate it, to be quite honest. I want off this damn ride. It would probably help if I had family, friends, or mentors to fall back on, but I don't.
So I keep pushing, keep committing, cursing myself out for introducing more bugs, failing to find the spirit to go on fixing things for big mega-corpo customers. And if I stop, I don't have an alternative means of survival.
So it goes.
Coding is a terrible job. Yes it pays well, but its tedious, frustrating, and mostly just a grind. Often it's meaningless, and can have a short life-span (if it ships at all.)
On the other hand, if it's your passion, it's fantastic. People paying you to do it is a bonus. It's not a job, it becomes a form of artistic expression. It's an act of creation, and that is the whole reward.
Most people don't get paid to persue their passion. Writing, art, music - they become hobbies indulged in free time. But programs offer value, lots of value, so there's gold in dem hills.
For most people mining that gold is a hard slog if digging holes in the ground. For a tiny fraction it's a creative movement of earth which is a special delight.
I am fortunately in that camp. I don't burn out coding, it's the fun part I get up early for. I don't think I'll ever stop.
BUT if it's not you, and you're only doing it for the money, then making peace with that is helpful. I'm not saying quit (you still need a job, and programming pays well) but find your identity, your passion, your significance elsewhere, elsewhere.
Trying to find significance in hole-digging is hard. Using the income from hole digging to fund your purpose gives meaning to both your work and yourself.
May you be blessed enough to find your passion.
But I'm also about to be made redundant. So I've been job searching. I thought I had an "impressive" CV for 3 YoE - I mean I've built solo stuff with XXX,XXX+ users (and others with XX,XXX and 2 with XXXX users and one with XXX users!!)! But because I don't have C# commercial experience (in NZ) I can't get any jobs. I also had an abusive interview today which pushed me over the edge.
I felt like meeting "god" after that traumatic interview experience and the state of things (like the indigenous people having their treaty destroyed by a fucking racist right leaning bastard government). I'm sorry if thats not okay to say on HN, I'm just incredibly sad at the state of the world and it seems my career is about to evaporate and my life with it. I'm partially disabled so that doesn't help, I can't just go out and become a forest ranger or something cool.
I'm probably on several lists now for my comments on the state of the world. Fuck it. All privacy has been destroyed anyway.
You can lean into the business and people side of wherever you work, help people out, mentor the new joiners, try to become a manager if you want. Try to connect with the purpose of the organization. If there's some urgent bug or temporary project, by all means jump in and roll up your sleeves with the coding, but you don't need to be doing it all day, every day, to the exclusion of anything else.
Ultimately, coding is just like accounting, plumbing, sewers, etc., yes, it's "important" and you couldn't have, say, a hotel, restaurant, or city without them, but they're in the background, enabling the _whole thing_ to function. No amount of overachievement by a plumber is going to make for a better restaurant experience.
Perhaps you don't have to "step away" and start from scratch with something new, but you can try to do it less, and do other things more.
I am not quite as far along my career as you but after three failed startup ideas I decided to do freelancing for now. This gives me the opportunity to work on problems that companies really have and while I still code a lot of this is now more focused on the architecture not so much on boring tasks.
Besides that, I also get to see new companies and new projects every couple of months and I am working for myself and not for the secnd vacation home of some boss.
It sounds like consulting could be something you'd enjoy, too.
Also, quitting and finding a new job is really underrated for mental health
The things you learn in a startup are mostly applicable to freelancing, too.
I hope you can find your way. If you want to talk just tell me :)
This is burnout and psychological support might help.
Maybe focusing on building skills for a career change (or just a career detour or pivot) would help reignite passion?
I am trying to build my own products, trying to build a business around so that money gets taken care of. Then I will code for fun, not for paying bills :)
Developers are going to be in threat short term because the market is very competitive right now, but unless there's some brand new kind of AI that isn't an LLM, I think we've probably seen all they can do
