Ugh. I struggle with this every day. I can still tolerate doing it, but I’m pretty sure that one day I’m going to reach the point where I can’t. I’m not cut out to sit at a desk all day. I often think about going back to school for something else, but paying more money to earn less money doesn’t seem like a real winner of an idea. I also really like to buy shit, so that’s even more of a problem. So, my current plan is to just keep whining about it.
I empathize with you. While I haven’t run across anything that I couldn’t figure out and master, I got really, really tired of having to change on a dime all the time- it’s a sort of rat-race to try and keep ahead of the young guys or be put out to pasture on legacy systems.
I realized it about 10 years ago and got into more business analysis and management. If you like talking to customers and translating their wants and needs into a coherent high-level design for the solution that gets what they actually need done, business analysis may be your thing.
If your job is to take the specs from the customer to the engineers, it helps to be good at dealing with people.
Hello OP!
I just found this post and was wondering what did you do? I know this is an old thread but this has been very enlightening and helpful discussion because I’m going through the exact same thing right now. It’s been 9 year of just “working” to get “things done” and I came to a point where I had to just quit because it was driving me crazy and extremely anxious. Although I do like software and development I find myself overwhelmed with all the new stuff that has come up and at an extreme disadvantage compared to “young developers”. I have decided to pursue other roles within technology inspired by this post and what’s slowly starting to make sense for me: I have to change, reinvent myself.
Hope this post finds you well and that you have also found what works for you.
The OP hasn’t been to the site since June 23, 2011.
My goodness, I know this is a zombie but what timing! I have just been thinking – 22 years as a software engineer and I feel totally, totally burned out. I’m thinking about making a major change soon, but I haven’t quite decided what kind.
There’s something particularly unsatisfying about this field. I’ve taken a few turns in my career to break up the monotony but I return to software because it pays so well for me. But after 40 years at this the next time I’m fed up with it will be my last. It’s been 20 years since it’s been any fun anyway.
You could get into the wonderful subfield of software development: game programming. Half the pay for twice the work!
These are one of those threads where I composed an answer only to find I posted the same thing 4 years ago.
I’m about to retire, but not from being burned out but because I have other fun stuff to do. Including some programming on my own. Plus I just had the amusing experience of management deciding that it will take from 2 - 8 people to take over my system.
I’ve even learned and used lots of fun new stuff in the past five years. But it is a lot more fun to be the only guy who knows the secrets of coding rather than one of the programming army.
Just want to sympathize with the OP.
For me, the burnout thing was fixing the build. I enjoy coding, but in a professional environment you’re working with lots of people and lots of libraries and easily 80% of my total time was “Why doesn’t this work on this machine, when it works on that machine?” or “What steps do I need to perform (including banging head on table) to get this old library to work?”
It doesn’t help that many developers really hate documenting their work, so they don’t bother to write down some crucial information that could have saved me hours.
Anyway, I tried for a long time to get out, even got a Master’s and still could only find work doing software development. Now, pretty much by accident, I’m moving into a management role and I’m really enjoying it.
You said it. It used to be fun – about fifteen years ago, when I was actually developing my own stuff most of the time and it was all new and interesting. Now it’s just fixing fires and moving from one platform to another. No joy at all.
My old post gave the view from the sunny side of the street. It’s not that bad now either, but it’s been a long time and I already did all the things I wanted to do. Half or more of the problem for me now is not having those dreams of what I’ll do when I get the chance someday. Now I dream of doing nothing some day when I get the chance.