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As a fellow human feeling quite stuck, what sticks out to me - as I too exhibit it - is the cognitive dissonance in your post. Money isn't a huge concern in th

As a fellow human feeling quite stuck, what sticks out to me - as I too exhibit it - is the cognitive dissonance in your post. Money isn't a huge concern in the long term, but time and opportunity costs are a bad thing? You like certain areas of software dev better, but you aren't bringing yourself to writing code? What's up with these contradictions?

bored_as_hell_ 5y ago
> Money isn't a huge concern in the long term, but time and opportunity costs are a bad thing? It's a balance, I'd say. At the moment, I'd willingly sacrifice some years of my life and potential earning power, but as time goes on, less so. If I were somewhat older, or even more older, I wouldn't do that at all. Don't want to be a junior for the majority of my career or risk not ever being able to retire. I'd think there's a difference between restarting at say 30 versus 40. > You like certain areas of software dev better, but you aren't bringing yourself to writing code? I wish I could explain this one, to be honest. As far as software development goes, my interests come and go very quickly, in a month, I may abandon what I'm interest in now. I'm actually recently off one of those cycles, during which I had intense interest, and many designs, but ultimately nothing to show for it.
- thenaturalist 5y ago
  So what I hear out of this is a conflict of priority of your values. I might suggest you are not really stuck, you just do not have your priorities straight and if priorities change momentarily, actions might cancel each other out. You might want to take responsibility for your hierarchy of values. You can still be strategic about it and try to map out how certain actions might build up over time. As another comment has mentioned, the demand for Software Eng - especially experienced professionals - still so much outpaces supply, you are actually in a pretty comfortable position to jump into different areas of the domain with only a minimal (short term) or even no pay cut at all. You gotta create your own opportunities here, though. With regards to interests, let's be real about the tradeoffs: Jumping into different areas can be super beneficial if those expeditions create a marketable skill set. That might mean that you have to bring yourself to focus on one area at a time, but once you are a Fullstack Dev for example, you can have a quite flexible job. Again, be honest with yourself about what you value more: stability and pay in the short term or short term increased effort for increased long term salary and satisfaction.

bored_as_hell_ 5y ago

> Money isn't a huge concern in the long term, but time and opportunity costs are a bad thing? It's a balance, I'd say. At the moment, I'd willingly sacrifice some years of my life and potential earning power, but as time goes on, less so. If I were somewhat older, or even more older, I wouldn't do that at all. Don't want to be a junior for the majority of my career or risk not ever being able to retire. I'd think there's a difference between restarting at say 30 versus 40. > You like certain areas of software dev better, but you aren't bringing yourself to writing code? I wish I could explain this one, to be honest. As far as software development goes, my interests come and go very quickly, in a month, I may abandon what I'm interest in now. I'm actually recently off one of those cycles, during which I had intense interest, and many designs, but ultimately nothing to show for it.

thenaturalist 5y ago
So what I hear out of this is a conflict of priority of your values. I might suggest you are not really stuck, you just do not have your priorities straight and if priorities change momentarily, actions might cancel each other out. You might want to take responsibility for your hierarchy of values. You can still be strategic about it and try to map out how certain actions might build up over time. As another comment has mentioned, the demand for Software Eng - especially experienced professionals - still so much outpaces supply, you are actually in a pretty comfortable position to jump into different areas of the domain with only a minimal (short term) or even no pay cut at all. You gotta create your own opportunities here, though. With regards to interests, let's be real about the tradeoffs: Jumping into different areas can be super beneficial if those expeditions create a marketable skill set. That might mean that you have to bring yourself to focus on one area at a time, but once you are a Fullstack Dev for example, you can have a quite flexible job. Again, be honest with yourself about what you value more: stability and pay in the short term or short term increased effort for increased long term salary and satisfaction.