Software engineer for 20 years what should I do next?

Teaching was mentioned and is always great.

Or: You could build an app which does something useful for small businesses who can't afford and need full ERP systems.

Small businesses don't have a good process automation and stuff like "Scanning an document into a directory which triggers a python script which sends an email to someone" is a quick win.

There was a HN post about someone who built a simple invoicing app that she hosted on her own server, in the cloud or "on premise" on a raspberry pi. IIRC it was all open source and she made good money off of it.

To answer your question about creative content, the creative business is tough. It's kind of a winner-takes-all market. I am fairly creative myself and play a music instrument on semi pro level, but the competition is massive and some people have just godlike talent + years of skill honing and outshine everyone else. No one is going to buy your art if they can buy the art of someone who is doing the same thing as you but with better skills. And there's all the stuff about being dependent feom platforms such as youtube or steam who can cancel you or change revenue models... I wish you success, but I won't bet on it. It's about finding a niche and an audience and that takes years of eating the sh*t sandwich.

Here is a list of things I have been doing from the time I left programming 2 years ago, roughly having worked for around 24 years. I was left with lots of time and didn't want to work only in one thing like programming before. So I got into small projects that meant something for me. Might be of help.

-- Learning music for last 4 years, mainly to get into a hobby. I put in about 1-2 hours of practice per day. Thinking of building a course for people with absolutely no prior knowledge of music, but I have not started yet. Have got a mindmap going here - https://www.viewpedia.org/musicCourse-map.png

-- Mentoring, at NYAS ((www.nyas.org) and invidiually. Perfect as it does not take too much time, but connects to lot of young minds. Hope to increase and maybe we should create a network of mentors as someone suggested being mentor in the comments. I have not found a mentor network yet.

-- Lokopakar (www.lokopakar.com) - for mentoring and another unique program called Strength Together, that is a peer-to-peer network to help adolescent girls in developing countries overcome their feeling of "I am not Enough"

-- Tinker Lab (www.tinker-lab.org) - I found a group of guys who were into breaking things apart and seeing what was inside and trying to put it back (never really making it). We are now working to make a lab for public schools in Nepal where young, eager, self learning students to do the same. The first lab is coming up within the month.

-- Farming, fruits for fun, vegetables commercially. Now thinking of adding bee keeping and a farm stay program. I spend only the weekends on it as others handle everyday work better than I.

-- Viewpedia (www.viewpedia.org) Still left with time as I gave up social media and most of TV. So learning about my own culture and building a website to provide collection of youtube videos of mostly unwritten Nepali culture. Currently focused on music and dance.

I am 32 and i feel like i will be in your position in a few years if not few months.

Because of this i started to develop some small mobile apps that is targeted to general public. These apps started to make some money. I Will develop a few more apps until i reach to a level that i can pay the bills. I also have some savings.

After that i plan to go on a sabbatical for at least a year. I plan to move to country side and only write code for the small updates i will make to these mobile apps.

I believe during this sabbatical i will find a lot of great business ideas.

I don't really have an answer but I am 40 and I feel the same. I am just senior dev in major tech giant, but work is boring and and unmotivating. I really enjoy programming and learning but I realized 10 years ago that working for someone else is not my thing. Here are few things I have tried but mostly failed at them or got bored:

1. Portrait Photography - lots of fun, you meet great people. Cons are that as an introvert, selling myself and then helping client pose during photoshoot was very draining. Then it was selling time for dollars, maybe one day you can charge $5000 per shoot but most likely you will not create decent wealth for your kids.

2. Real Estate Agent - again lots of fun exploring new places, and meeting great people. But unlikely photoshoots, buying home is very stressful, you will absorb client's stress, and of course so much paperwork and deadlines. I never got started properly. But helped a few friends and it was very stressful experience. Again introvert issues with selling myself to strangers.

Then I have had some ideas and tried/half-assed these:

1. Writing fiction - seems like a great idea but it is really hard to write.

2. Fitness blog/spam - I started with a blog sharing fitness tips and workout and motivational videos. Eventually, there was very little original content, it was just embedded YouTube/Instagram videos. It was generating lunch money with affiliate links and ads, but I felt sleazy, especially, when most of the content on the blog was girls in bikinis or yoga pants. (Men's videos were not that popular). As I got old, I didn't want to do this.

3. Tutoring for devs - Still working on this, started informally where I help my friends with the dev problems they are stuck at work. Working on getting paid clients. It is kind of hard because some people just want you to do their work and I don't want to do that. Then there is issue of security. I don't want to get in any trouble but looking at private code of some company.

4. Related to tutoring, I try to blog about every topic I help someone with. Not getting any traffic. Not sure how to compete with SO.

I am not really sure what my next steps should be, I have tried so many things, people don't really take me seriously anymore. I am really looking for something that I can do online without selling to friends and family. Makes me feel like the bad guy from the Founder.

It isn’t clear from this thread or your comment history on why you feel burnt out. All I can gather is:

* you don’t like your job

* you don’t want to be an employee

* you are a web developer technologist and open to continue working with those skills

Perhaps you could consider inventing a new technology/service for an existing business problem. This is the interest I am pursuing but I lack the business acumen to jump from software creation to market penetration.

I don’t have any suggestions on revenue streams, but reading your post, I can already feel how burnt out you are. You need a serious break away from your computer to clear your mind. I recently picked up biking and it has done wonders to my mental health. Try and recover first before pursuing anything else. I have been there before as well.

Definitely get some rest and therapy before moving to a new venture.

For the next step it might be worth doing contract web dev as well as turning some of your comics into a product which can be sold on places like gumroad.

You could also start a youtube channel focused on your experience and tackle different niches in web development.

Consider what I am considering: selling stuff on eBay / Amazon / shopify. If I am successful it’s bye bye to sprints, estimation and head scratching through legacy code and also needing to live in a city with the associated expense when there are cheap places to live with beaches!

Content creation is hard and most ppl who try it because they feel like they enjoy it burn out really fast.

Make sure you really like what you are doing. Also it will take time before you make any money from it.

> burned out

Therapy first, and not from amateurs on the intertubes.

Teach others everything you know. Mentor people.

I'd second teaching, potentially very rewarding and could make money if you do it right.

take a vacation, it may help you find a purpose

Woodwork

it's rough out there still for contractors. I quit my cush job at age 43, worked a few high paying short-term gigs. It was nice because I could make in 3 months what I normally would make in 6, but then the pandemic hit and it absolutely dried up. After a year of no offers, I finally got a fulltime offer for decent pay. I'm in the same boat. We're too old and too expensive now for web development.

I'm tired of being interviewed by kids who think React is how websites should be built and are half my age.

You were in leadership so I guess that took its toll on you. I'm a principal engineer now and so far I've just been improving the framework (vue) and optimizing performance.

I suspect that they will dump some huge feature on me soon and I'll be back to being a grunt.

I'm actually thinking of going back to school part time to become a financial advisor.