Money is not a huge concern to me, but if I’m going to have to do something I hate 8+ hours a day, I would at least to prefer to be making enough money to distract me from it. I’m not anywhere near there at the moment. I’ve considered maybe just doing the leetcode circus and trying to land mind numbing FAANG job so I can at least have the luxury of otherwise unheard of money. But it’s not ideal and I’m not sure I’d be cut out for it. I’ve never been a particularly good software developer compared to many of the people I’ve interacted with.
I’d gladly accept less money (within reason) to work on something that excites me, but that’s about the least likely scenario, between the narrow and poorly definable category of what I would find enticing and the basically impossible to obtain requirements on the fee jobs I do see.
I’ve considered going back to school, to try something else, and was actually very close, in fact I nearly registered for classes. But I can’t afford it: not the monetary cost, not the time cost. If I could magically pull tens of thousands of dollars out of my ass tomorrow maybe, or if I wouldn’t be well into my 30s by the time I finished, it would be a different situation. Even then it’s unheard to go from software to anything I’d be interested in.
2. You're also trying to sabotage change within yourself by saying "oh, but it'll take so long/be so expensive". You were not done the moment you left school. That's a common belief that is imposed upon young people, but carried to its conclusion, it's rather ugly and implies that you're either a huge success or eternally damned at age 30, and all events after that point are handwaved away in a Logan's Run fashion. 30 is more commonly a point where people in our society start to get a sense of their actual career path and shift from "consumers" of the current culture to "architects" of the next culture; what preceded that was mostly performative in the average case, a demonstrative adulting to "make the grade", and employment as a footsoldier for this or that ideology. You are cynical about this behavior already(hence your low opinion of the FAANG stereotype). It is therefore time to let go of youthful impulses and seek reflection.
3. This is the point where you should go study the extracurriculars you bypassed the first time because they weren't "practical". You can limit it to one a semester, night classes, online classes. You don't have to rush into a new degree. Through works of art, studied or improvised performance, sporting achievements, philosophising and general appreciation of the human condition, you can loosen the grip on things you have come to hate and start taking some new ones. The arts never have to become your profession, but they will let you see yourself better.
I'm playing with the thought of opening a store in some small country town where I can cook food and sell basic necessities.
Is it a good plan, who knows but going on like I do now is also unsustainable.
So you're not alone and sometimes you just have to go for it.
A programming YouTuber "bisqwit" has quit his job as a programmer and now drives a bus. Judging by his content, which I highly recommend, he is still passionate about code, he just prefers a day job that requires less thinking.
Closer to me, a friend of mine was a project manager and in his 30s switched to photography (mostly wedding), and he is quite successful, his style is about capturing emotions. He found that the software industry, and office work in general was dehumanizing.
Another friend, again in his 30s took advantage of the fact his company does both software and mechanical engineering to switch from one to the other. Less pay, because of the relative lack of experience, but he is going back up. He preferred to work with tangible things. It is the opposite change from a lot of old devs who switched from traditional engineering to software.
There are thousands of stories like that.
I kind of solved it by building my own tech business and consulting if I need cash.
Building your own business can be draining if you're in startup mode - but if you're chill and not trying to risk half a million pursuing millions, you can do a nice small business that earn some money you can live on.
I needed to consult a few times because my side projects got destroyed by google (change in ad revenue) or stopped working for whatever reason. It's not ideal but you'd appreciate the shorter stints, compared to full time jobs. I can't stand most people in tech for more than 6 months, anyway.
I dipped my feet in in full time employment, but that was mainly to collect paternity benefits and because with small kids it's harder to do all the things you need to run a business.
I have more than a few friends who are equally tired of the environment. Maybe we should start a company for developers who hate the tech scene?
Best of luck!
I’ve encountered massively different cultures at different jobs, I don’t believe there is a single tech culture.
> I’ve considered maybe just doing the leetcode circus and trying to land mind numbing FAANG job.
Regarding FAANG my experience is entirely second hand and mostly from people at Google. I don’t know how you came to the belief that it’s “mind numbing”. The only conclusion I can draw from everything I’ve heard is that it’s not uniform. Some people have great assignments and great bosses, some crap and crap.
Based on these two things, I’m wondering if you really have the breadth of experience to make these generalizations and conclusions, but on the other hand...
> I’ve never been a particularly good software developer compared to many of the people I’ve interacted with.
That’s not a great sign, you’re reporting not to like dev work and additionally not being particularly great at it. I’m not convinced you have a lack of aptitude, this may very well be a result of lack of interest, regardless that’s a large red flag in my book.
The most persuasive bit you’ve said for leaving the industry was disliking the people. For me, one of the best parts about being an engineer is being around people I get along with. In very general terms I believe there is a typical engineer personality; it comes down to the way we think about the world around us, and how we approach problems. If you have some other way to earn a living doing work you like around people you like I’d probably just do that instead; a few years lost to school and some debt seem like a relatively small price to pay.
If you are set on leaving software dev, you could side step into something like computer/network security... which requires many of the skills you already have.
Additional stop comparing yourself to others, in my case I was doing it and getting incredibly depressed when my peers were getting promotions when I've not moved in 7 years. The way I deal with it is to realise that those people getting promotions are having to do the kind of work I'd personally hate (people management, etc). I'm more happy staying down in the technical weeds. It's not about money - as you've said it's more about happiness.
Good luck
Similarly, hard to comment on options to jump elsewhere without details. I'd generally argue that there are likely adjacent alternatives, but of course you might find those equally unacceptable.
Nothing good comes from forcing yourself to do something you hate. Even if you're succesful it probably won't be worth it in the end, and given how much you hate it you're probably not going to be succesful at it (its basically impossible to succed at something you hate).
It sounds like you feel trapped. Consider talking to a therapist. They can help you come up with a plan to slowly make changes in your life to make it more into whatever it is you want it to be.
With respect, you’re making contradictory statements. If you’re actually teetering on the edge of suicide, it’s time to quit. During hard times in my life when I’ve had to make these decisions, I have literally regarded them as a matter of survival. I am in one of those inflection points myself, as a matter fact. Right now my health is so bad that I’ve told my wife that to get my blood sugar and weight to a healthy level may require that we sell the house because I may not be able to keep my easy-to-run business running. That’s how astoundingly difficult it is for me to lose weight. (Admittedly we have a farm right nearby we can move into, but it will be, well, a bit rustic and very unfinished.) So I get it.
It might be time for you to go back to living with a few roommates and returning to some mindnumbing low pressure job or even moving back in with family members, if that is at all feasible. These are unpleasant solutions, but they are probably better than dying of a heart attack or killing yourself. This will give you time to design a new approach to your life.
1. Reflect on what you actually have enjoyed out of the job, if anything. What have been any bright spots? If there's nothing at the job, what outside of work motivates you to do more of it? 2. What jobs have more of those things you like? These aren't always huge, deep things. Like writing? Take a look at marketing, journalism, technical sales support, etc. Like working with customers? Look at sales, customer support, etc. 3. As other people have said, look to see if it's really the whole industry, or just the current situation you're in. I've found a lot of differences in culture/people/day-to-day work just by moving teams, let alone companies. Talk to friends and see if things are different for them at other companies. Talk to friends in different jobs completely. See what resonates with you.
Hope that helps and again, don't worry about age! Pivoting at 30 will feel like the very start of your career when you think back at 60 or 70.
Even people who enjoy coding don't necessarily want to do it as a job, and they find themselves happier in roles where their software skills are a bonus to whatever they do for their job.
I think an an easy analogy is being a doctor. Just because you went to medical school and enjoy helping people feel better, doesn't mean you enjoy the day-to-day of being a doctor. Lots of people would say a doctor is crazy for not being a practitioner anymore because becoming a doctor means having a well paid and highly coveted job in lots of places. But people do give up practicing as a doctor and do other things.
There's a pretty big world outside of software development. If you don't want to do it, then don't do it.
"Well into your 30s" isn't particularly old, and definitely not compared to how long you're probably going to live. If going back to school will help you to be happy, then do it.
In the same town you might find two people doing similar work and getting paid differently by a factor of 1.5 if not 2.
I've worked at places that vary dramatically in how toxic they are from
* I left in a huff and 6 months later they called and said they hadn't hired a replacement
and wanted advice, I told them that there was no possibility of retaining people
if they didn't fire my old boss. They fired my old boss
* People who are really nice
This is a fallacy. If you hate it, you will still hate it no matter how much you make. The motivation gained by the larger salary will wear off in about a month or two.
These days, the tradesmen are the invisible millionaires. In the time it takes to get another degree you would be fully qualified and on the way to being an independent contractor.
I've been in the industry for 20 years and certainly, I feel developers have lost autonomy and things are much more more costly and slower to build than before.
Ironically, pay has gone up.
I don't do much coding now, but I would hate doing it because of lack of autonomy, unnecessary complexity, and culture of well intended, but over-collaborating.
This shouldn’t be a factor in my opinion.
In fact, consider 40 year old you - they would appreciate that 30’s you set you on a new track.
I'll add that you are not even middle-aged, and people do all kinds of crazy things even after they are middle-aged. They move to Mexico and run surfboard shops. They go to Antarctica and drive trucks around a frozen camp. You can start a new career! "Well into your 30s" isn't all that old, speaking as someone who definitely is.
If you could find the resources, and at the risk of sounding cliche, it may be worth talking to someone. It can really help to have a trained therapist in your corner. You're facing real challenges, and you sound like you're also feeling a lot of despair and trapped feelings. Processing those feelings well is perhaps the most important part of navigating your sticky situation.
This part really resonates.
"if I’m going to have to do something I hate 8+ hours a day, I would at least to prefer to be making enough money to distract me from it. I’m not anywhere near there at the moment."
There is a mythical imagery about working with food, setting your own shop, owning your hours. Clearly diametrically opposed to the 9-to-5 grid, the open-space and the weekly 1:1s with a manager.
Similar to that, there is also a recurrent opposition of urban-life vs. rural-life; painting the countryside as more fulfilling.
It appears to me that you're dissatisfied and disillusioned with the grind, (and so am I). But, I honestly don't think that a drastic change of scenery will magically make things better.
For me, the eye-opening moment was when I realized its not the "software-development industry" that I have issues with, it was the entire modern capitalistic "grind".
I don't have solutions for you, but I think a starting point is to realize that your problems are not individual, but collective and your experience is shared. However, I can suggest reading "The Coming Insurrection" by The Invisible Committee.
[0] Biased sample, and maybe slightly exaggerated number.
> or if I wouldn’t be well into my 30s by the time I finished
I did my MBA in my 40's. There is no big red line that says "you cannot change the course of your life past this point". I know people who have changed their entire lives in their 40's. They tend to be interesting people :)
> Even then it’s unheard to go from software to anything I’d be interested in
I promise you it's not. I worked as a warehouse picker in my early 20's, met a guy there in his mid-30's who had quit the software industry (IBM burned him out apparently). He was happily working at a no-brain job while he sorted his life out post-burnout. I don't know where he ended up, but it could have been anywhere, doing anything.
I'll bet half the problem is that you're comparing yourself to others. The people who have their shit all together and are ticking off career goals and life stages in a neat, orderly fashion. Doing it as you're "supposed" to do it.
Just wait. Half those people will be utter wrecks by 45. A lot of them are basically lying to themselves and everyone around them, scared of being who they actually are and trying to be what is expected of them. When that unravels it happens fast and hard. You don't want that. You're already ahead of them by questioning everything, especially yourself.
You have lots of time. Don't waste it doing something you hate. Go get some different experiences and see what does work for you.
You could also try different areas technical writing, teaching etc
You can do it in this thread.
Just my opinion, I was on a career track I didnt like in my late 20s, went back to school, then a comparatively junior job, and was "well into my 30s", like 38, by the time things stabilized. When you're that age, it won't feel that old, unless maybe you spend another decade doing something you hate
If I could go back in time I might be a teacher or hospital worker, but actually if I'd done that I would have missed out on a lot of cool stuff. If you're earning a lot as you suggest you should easily be able to earn enough to take some reasonable time off and still be employable when you return which is one of the big benefits of software engineering.
Software is often short lived and thrown away after some time, and it often justifies buying hardware.
In my view, software is unregulated in both quality and security, which makes programming quite messy.
I'm generally against the writing of software unless there is no other way. I would rather have people learn scripting and use normal tools like email etc rather than hear them "we should create an app to share information".
What are you interested in?
As a JavaScript developer here are the things I most encounter:
1. Invented Here Syndrome. Nothing is more despised or feared than writing original code. Code written by a coworker isn’t trusted but code downloaded from the internet isn’t questioned and so everything becomes an untested dependency. The ability to write original code is somehow seen as an amazing marvel with an astonishing curiosity and simultaneously feared as an unknown demon.
2. Automation is not trusted. I find this surprisingly odd because for me the very purpose of software is automation, so automate all aspects of your job as well. Many developers like to do a lot of manual things they don’t realize they are doing which can be easily automated. Challenging those behaviors is like challenging OCD insanity of somebody who isn’t aware they are OCD. You would think test automation would solve for some of this, but there is so much manual effort curating things the user never sees while so much end to end testing is ignored because that requires a higher level of effort. Despite all of this external tools seem to always be trusted and if they can provide metrics or configurations to suck up more of your time they are valued for their automation.
3. Writing is frequently a lost and not valued skill. In the past at previous employers if I wanted any sort of clarity on technical or business requirements I completely ignore other developers and go straight to QA, because QA people are experts on communicating with specificity. Developers, on the other hand, are frequently incapable of writing anything down and expect everything to be a circular conversation that sucks up your time and theirs. The busier the developer is the worse this paradoxically becomes.
4. Everything must be a tool or a search. I often feel there is a lot of insecurity in writing software. I get the feeling as junior developers many people never form a proper mental model for how to write code and then spend the rest of their careers as expert beginners cornered with how other people should write code. It seems this often comes down to ignoring thinking about logic if a tool can do it for you and ignoring data structures if you can just run a search. I imagine it must be like becoming a lawyer and everything there after is a plea bargain to avoid reading law or forming an argument.
5. There is no formal training in the corporate world or required continuing education and so developers are expected to train themselves. This is problematic only because it is both somehow expected and simultaneously ignored. The only place I have interviewed at, seriously the only one, that figured this out is a design agency. They were more interested in my personal training/education than my day to day responsibilities at prior employers because they wanted to know about my capabilities.
6. Everybody in software seems to believe they are some level of a security expert. Whenever I see security and software combined into a single context I immediately think Dunning-Kruger. The security industry has remedies for such stupidity that software ignores (often deliberately). If you point this out the result is hostility, about what you might expect from pointing out over confidence. I have always found that fascinating since there is so much missing confidence in just writing any code.
If it weren’t for the pay and the massive free time to just stare lost into space I would given up on software long ago.
I guess this is a personal / personality / enjoyment match. Become a teacher, work for a nonprofit, or help government improve.
https://www.codeforamerica.org
> hate the people
TBH, I hate arrogant, know-it-all--know-nothing, filter-bubble screen addicts, narcissistic, spineless, socially-transactional "networking" and "hooking-up," smarmy or boring, psychopathic, self-promoting, other-sabotaging, horrid yuppies who tend to grow out of corporations like weeds. Cool people or GTFO.
> the culture
I'm curious. What is it that you hate? Is it a belief system, attitude, or way of doing things?
> etc.
What does this comprise?
> But I can’t afford it: not the monetary cost, not the time cost. If I could magically pull tens of thousands of dollars out of my ass tomorrow maybe,
I would cut back on discretionary expenses and prioritize education/career development.
> or if I wouldn’t be well into my 30s by the time I finished, it would be a different situation.
Might be some covert age shame / ageism going on. You know your life isn't over until you actually die, right? There are people in their 60's, 70's, and 80's who finish college degrees.
> Even then it’s unheard to go from software to anything I’d be interested in.
Why? You can do whatever you want. DLR became an EMT for a while (might've been a stunt, but who knows or cares?).