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> As a parting thought, some of the happiest people I know work a 9-5 job that gives them a reasonable living standard, and have rich and vibrant personal and s
by wayoutthere 5y ago
> As a parting thought, some of the happiest people I know work a 9-5 job that gives them a reasonable living standard, and have rich and vibrant personal and social lives outside work.
This is the secret. Don’t work in your passion; find a specialization that you don’t hate but also don’t love and set reasonable boundaries on work. If it’s not something you’re passionate about, you will respect those boundaries and the drudgery becomes bearable.
I absolutely love tech and tinkering on code. So much so that I had to stop doing it and actually lean into the managerial battles described in the article. Turns out I’m pretty good at that job, and I like working with people all day, but it’s a career rather than a calling. I also don’t feel compelled to keep pushing to finish a problem and come up for air to see it’s 9pm.
- merrywhether 5y agoDo you find that you then have more time and energy to code on the side on your own things as a hobby? Or do you get enough of a “hit” from being code-adjacent and spend that mindspace elsewhere?
- wayoutthere 5y agoIt’s close enough to my day job that I don’t really do much coding anymore. I burned out pretty hard on it a decade ago so it just feels like work. I scratch that itch with other things now (music, competition shooting, community activism). There are plenty other ways to exercise an analytical mind.
- merrywhether 5y agoThanks for the reply, and what you say makes sense and is a familiar tale. Weirdly a lot of people describe their coding past with a burnout, reassessment, and subsequent pullback, almost like a drug relationship. Kudos on the community activism; talk about building something of meaning.
- wayoutthere 5y agoI really do think grinding code is a young person’s game. It takes the kind of mental stamina you can only sustain for so long before life gets in the way.