24 ms·

Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

• krageon 4y ago
  Constant work fatigue and an inability to perform intellectually (either in terms of study of producing code) is what a burnout looked like for most of my ex-colleagues. You're about the correct age for one too, according to my observations (which are anecdotal).
• t_mann 4y ago
  Sounds like a mild burnout. I don't know your personal situation, but if you've been earning tech salaries for 15 years, maybe you can afford to take a sabbatical? Six months to furbish a nice home, get some therapy, connect with family. Should at least help put things into perspective.
• jasfi 4y ago
  Try mental math, it gives your brain a good workout. There are apps available for iPhone and Android.
• thesz 4y ago
  Walk. And lift weights - all three basic exercises should be done. That's what saved me in my then mid 30s in a comparable circumstances.
  • readonthegoapp 4y ago
    deadlifting? no thanks.
    • harel 4y ago
      Lifting weights doesn't translate to deadlifting. That's just one exercise of many. Weights and other exercise helped me. I don't deadlift though.
      • rjh29 4y ago
        Deadlifting is fun and worth trying once. You don't have to do ridiculously heavy weights to get the lower body health benefits.
        • harel 4y ago
          I don't disagree - I do it, but rarely. I find it does seem to activate every single muscle in my body.
      • readonthegoapp 4y ago
        OC said 'the three basic exercises' Maybe he meant something else
        • thesz 4y ago
          I meant back squat, bench press and deadlift. Testosterone increases dopamine in a lockstep fashion - increase testosterone any way you want and you'll increase dopamine level too. Dopamine, on its own, increases the desire for exploration. Testosterone is also linked to improved logical thinking, you wouldn't believe. I also mentioned walking. Walking increases serum level of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, BDNF. Serum level of BDNF i positively associated with the volume and density of hippocampus, which is responsible for the ability and quality of learning. Basically, you need to walk (jog, run, bike, swim, row - whatever suits you) as much as you can to be able to learn as good as you can and you also need to lift heavy to increase testosterone. You need to lift heavy to balance catabolic processes induced by endurance exercise and to make yourself seek something new. As a nice side effect, you will look and feel great. ;)
• paktek123 4y ago
  Ive experienced this a few times over my career. Everyone has different reasons but try to find the root reason, is it because the work is not challenging enough? Maybe Project is something you've done many times before or maybe you are simply burnt out. Maybe it's time to try something new? There are always new things to learn and you've shown that over the years. Once you have the reason you can try to address. It might not be clear, the reason and everything might feel like a drag but try to narrow it down, sharing with a friend/relative/mentor helps.
• 5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
  Also 15 years as web/front-end, feel similar. Everything just feels tedious, get irritated by the smallest annoyances. Think it's time for a career change, no idea what to do. This field has become tediously complex and saturated, no longer have the desire to keep up.
• reikonomusha 4y ago
  Do you think this is about being unable to learn, or just that you lack incentive? 15 years ago, I presume you weren't getting "multiple 6 figures".
  • telman17 4y ago
    Correct re the pay. But it’s true when I was 25 I was far more motivated by a challenge. Everything about web development seemed more fun too.
• philgnou 4y ago
  this may be the first sign of a burn out or depression - stop for a while and dream, look at other languages
• reidrac 4y ago
  I haven't been on that exact situation, but close. It has happened to me when I was hired to do X (as an specialist) and that changed substantially when the project got binned after 4 months and was asked to change language and stack. I wasn't as proficient as I would have liked and wasn't really excited about it. I don't know if this applies to you, so please remember this is an stranger on the Internet sharing an experience and not advice. In my case if is just a project, I get on with it because when is done I can move to something more exciting or inspiring and that's my motivation to move forward. If it is just what I can expect of that role from that point on, I look for a change (move to a different team perhaps, or just change jobs). It also helps me if I can do something different at home, in my free time. It has to be challenging and exciting, because otherwise the negative mood from work can take over and nothing will happen (and may make things worse; e.g. guilt for not working on that personal project).
• pacifika 4y ago
  In my experience it’s that I tend to forget the first half of the learning curve and bring expectations and assumptions to the subject which I didn’t have when I first started my career. Just like when learning a new spoken language resulted in me having two worlds of understanding and only later built the mappings between the two, which is why jargon is such a challenge. So I try and learn without productivity and external expectations and by using curiousity.
• dm319 4y ago
  I find if my work doesnt fascinate me, it becomes hard to be good at it.
• kossTKR 4y ago
  This must be very common right now? I'm at the exact same point with Vue3. 10+ years of experience, created two fulls stacks sass'es as a Tech Lead but i feel so slow learning this new stuff. Just installed a starter kit and been endlessly fiddling with a simple test frontend and couldn't get basic reactivity to work. I feel the documentation is riddled with advanced concepts and everything is way, WAY more complex than it has to be and there's no diagrams of the lifecycles and dataflow or what actually happens from user interaction to screen print - it's like theres a million steps now in a black box both in the build and on the user end. So many concepts, tools and atomisations to do rather simple things. Hope its just lockdown-world fatigue that will heal or that these new conventions will "click" soon.
  • telman17 4y ago
    When I started learning React I felt the same frustration but then it just clicked one day after maybe 2 months of struggling. I’m still waiting for the Vue click but it doesn’t seem to be happening.
    • kossTKR 4y ago
      Interesting, how long have you been using Vue3? I'm only 3 weeks in and still waiting for that video or diagram or tutorial that really inform me on why all of this extreme overhead is needed to perform simple tasks. Does anyone have any good resources that made them enjoy the Composition api, Pinia etc?
      • telman17 4y ago
        Maybe 3 months - the first two months I learned Vue 2 and then we were asked to do everything in Vue 3. I don’t mind the composition API but overall the framework feels over complicated at best, and goes out of its way to show you how much it’s not like another framework while using similar concepts. The result is that I now have to learn the same thing but with magic words. That could be the frustration talking though.
  • risyachka 4y ago
• steve_adams_86 4y ago
  I experienced this in my early 30s. I really thought my career was over, I felt I was making such poor progress in various tasks and learning what I needed to finish a fairly large project. In retrospect I actually knocked that project out of the park, but I was miserable for a number of reasons, burned out, and siloed off on a project that the company was bizarrely apathetic about. I developed a bleak outlook on what I was doing, and as I hit obstacles I think the bleak outlook increasingly extended to myself. It was a great learning experience. These days I'm fairly sure I'll continue to learn because I love what I do, so long as my brain's still working at least. I might slow down here and there, but it's a mistake to think you've actually hit a hard limit or something. It's almost certainly external. When I feel down or like I can't do my job well enough, I just remind myself how far I've come despite how low I've felt before, and how things have continued to go well. Don't let yourself get overwhelmed. Do let yourself take a break, though. You might need one to get a fresh perspective on things. Good luck!
• lordnacho 4y ago
  Good comments here about the work itself, but I note you haven't mentioned anything about your personal life. Has anything changed? Just a thing to think about, it may well be that it's purely a work issue.
  • telman17 4y ago
    Last year was a pretty crazy year for my wife and me - said goodbye our two dogs of 16 years, I switched companies and got a huge pay raise, and we sold our first house. Both of us got CoVID at the beginning of the year but recovered fine. My wife suffered from depression as a teenager and suggests that I should consider seeing a therapist as it helped her but I don’t even know if what I’m feeling is depression.
    • omnicognate 4y ago
      Searched to see if anyone asked if you've had COVID and found you volunteering that you had. This is very likely to be the cause of your problem. You most probably haven't recovered fine, and I'd recommend discussing it with a doctor. I've been dealing with COVID aftereffects since early 2021. It's insidious and very, very real. Edit: Until you've verified that post viral syndrome is not the cause of your problems, please IGNORE all the advice people are giving you to exercise. If you have post viral syndrome, your return to exercise needs to be very slow. Graded over months, not weeks. Overdo it and you'll regret it. Further edit: In case it helps with googling, the symptom you may be experiencing is medically referred to as "brain fog" and the risk with over exercising is experiencing "post-exertional malaise".
    • tomgp 4y ago
      I think seeing a therapist sounds like a good idea. If you don't know what it is you're feeling a therapist can help with that. To you're original question I'm sure you can still learn, it's just that you can't, at the moment, learn what you think you should be learning. There's undoubtedly a complex mess of social and physical and psychological reasons behind this. Doing the work that's required to understand this mess and find a way through is hard but you can do it. Take care of yourself.
• kstenerud 4y ago
  Don't discount the pandemic fatigue. Creativity and drive in general has suffered immensely over the past couple of years. I notice it in artists I follow. I notice it in co-workers. I notice it in myself. As of four months ago it's been almost impossible to build up any enthusiasm for my open source projects, even when someone is handing me a PR on a silver platter. I've been coding professionally for 25 years now. I've made many transitions to new languages, technologies and platforms. This is only the second time in my life that my enthusiasm suffered (the last time was due to a bout of acute depression a decade ago). Don't give up. Things will get better. And remember to get regular exercise; it helps a lot!
  • a3w 4y ago
    I also had the feeling that there just were one or two years where I got nothing done at a normal speed. Thinking about a pandemic or a third world war really bugs people out, taking them out of a creative mind mode, I guess.
• sli 4y ago
  I left the industry and just can't make myself look back. Shooting my shot at solo gamedev, because at least I can be happy and hungry instead of miserable and hungry. Never could quite keep my footing in the industry, anyway, despite my experience, because of multiple contributing factors leaving resources I need out of reach (no degree, lifelong mental health issues = jobs with the benefits and pay I need just aren't there). Late 30s. I have no advice to give, because none of it seems to really work for me. Just letting you know you aren't alone in your feelings, because they mirror mine.
• fleb 4y ago
  This sounds like burnout to me. I am in my mid-40s and used to have spells like this, but no more. I needed some kind of large change, back then, to get myself sorted out, but this could be pretty destructive because if I waited too long, the change I'd need wouldn't really be conducive to staying on whatever project I was on. The key to not having to deal with this problem anymore, for me, was starting to proactively switch things around to break the routine of consecutive work-weeks. One of my tricks was to do some kind of mini-vacation every 6-8 weeks, go somewhere new, leave work behind for 3-4 days. Even smaller things like regular social events can work wonders - anything that breaks the weekly routine. Back when I'd get myself into burnout periods the most effective way to recover enthusiasm was to pick up a new skill, work-related or not. I was in my mid-30s in the late aughts and not entirely sure I wanted to keep coding - so I signed myself up for an 18 month "executive MBA" program to find out if I might want to do something else, and instead came out of that with a whole new outlook on how and why to write code. Then around 5 years later I started writing code on the side, for myself, to gradually improve over the long term, and this can be absolutely therapeutic. Try to switch things around a little bit, do something new, see if that helps?
  • sinenomine 4y ago
    Burnout has become such a catch-all term as to be effectively meaningless by now. In our professional lives, we are used to set quantified KPIs in a SMART way, and I wonder, why is it that our expectations are so comparatively low in our personal lives?
    • ttoinou 4y ago
      Any example of a smart KPI ?
      • groffee 4y ago
        "Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely" Basically just one of those meaningless buzz words that gets thrown around. https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/other/smart-goal/ https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/ot...
• urbandw311er 4y ago
  Don’t underestimate the friction required to step into a new paradigm or framework. In my experience, 90% of the effort is expended before most of the actual code is written. Keep on truckin’ and before you know it you’ll be productive again. (Caveat: this is all subject to the warnings others have commented on re burnout etc, if these apply to you then my advice is redundant)
• sillysaurusx 4y ago
  For what it's worth, as a 34yo who has also been doing this for ~15 years professionally, are you me? Because I probably could've written this post. Don't feel alone. Just remember to take advantage of your strengths. You may not be able to keep up with the 24yo's, but the 24yo's really suck at "choosing the right problems to work on." You know, the most important thing. It's very natural to feel overwhelmed, even 5 months into a project. I'm also at the 5 month mark, and it surprises me how much other people around me know. One important point -- I have a lot of experienced people to lean on. Do you? It sounds like they may have yeeted you into the deep end alone and said "go write Vue." If you have no colleagues, and (most importantly) no intellectual curiosity about Vue (which is a totally valid way to feel!), then that sounds miserable. So my point is, the difference in our situation is that even though I feel overwhelmed, I don't feel demotivated (yet), because whenever I'm stuck on something, I have a colleague who loves to pair program and is happy to hop on Google Meet at 10pm, and a different colleague who basically designed and wrote most of the entire infrastructure that we use day-to-day. Coworkers like that make it super easy to look forward to the next day, because their enthusiasm is so infectious. If you don't have anyone like that, don't worry -- it just means you're in the wrong gig. It happens. The solution is to remember that you are not your job. Downshift mentally. Treat your professional requirements as exactly that: a 9-to-5, and be sure to have side hobbies and a life outside work. During work, force yourself to focus on the simplest possible next step, and do that (and only that) until it's done. Repeat. Best of luck friendo. Feel free to DM me on twitter (https://twitter.com/theshawwn https://twitter.com/theshawwn) if you ever want to vent. Happy to listen.
  • telman17 4y ago
    Thank you. Your comment (among many here) is incredibly kind and I will take it to heart.
    • sillysaurusx 4y ago
      Some of the worst periods in my life were due to jobs that, in hindsight, I just wasn't suited for. I felt like I had to stay at them, because reasons. But the truth was, I probably could've found something else, if I'd decided to look. So just remember -- "deciding to look" is often the hardest step, and the easiest to forget. After all, the default is to just keep working at the same job, and to feel bad about yourself. But that's no way to live life. Seek out happiness, and follow it wherever it leads. I'm rooting for you.
• watwut 4y ago
  So, I had experienced something similar and fix was two fold - first, it turned out I had anemia and needed to fix health stuff. So, that would be first round, take a look at own health in general. Second, lifestyle. Oddly enough, keeping super strict schedule (only for a while unless you are naturally routine person) separating work and other time helped. Make sure other time involves sport and activities nor related to coding at all. Learning counts as work time, but also make sure work is work (and not HN or reddit). The second thing helped to restore motivation. After a while, I started to look forward coding again, started to want to do it.
• sam_lowry_ 4y ago
  I've been in this situation for a few years. Tried changing jobs, took on new responsibilities, just to conclude that I am dead tired of the SpringBoot/Angular mononculture and teams devoid of the sense of ownership. Around me, SpringBoot and Angular are the default choice, accompanied with Spring Cloud (or AWS for hipster companies). This means that you tend to work with people who do not care what they do and how. Finally, I just quit and started building a sauna in the basement, doing some long due repairs in the house, learning a language and happily coding in Go at night. Life is good, again. I am now applying to new gigs, trying to steer away from the kind of projects I used to do before. P.S. Vue is actually great, I used Angular and React but could only grasp Vue at the end. That's one only humanly sized framework out of the three, IMO.
• nbzso 4y ago
  Im my limited experience of 20+ years in the industry: This is a sign for incoming burnout. You need a long vacation away from tech work. As you mentioned, you are successful, invest in your mental and physical health. When you recover your inner strength, you will be able to easily update the tech skills needed for any position. Wish you luck and stay safe.
• INTPenis 4y ago
  I'm also in my mid 30s and I recently had a spell where I just couldn't work on a specific project. I'd take any task to distract me from what I was supposed to be doing. It was a total mental block. I had designed and built the entire thing myself and just had one more detail to put in place and just couldn't do it. I think you should listen to the user fleb, it might be burn out. It's very important to break the monotony of work. But also it's very important to stay healthy and exercise.
• trophycase 4y ago
  I have no advice but just can say that I'm there right now. I have no motivation to code and no motivation to learn new languages. Maybe you're just tired of it and tired of starting at a screen.
  • mrwnmonm 4y ago
    Same here, I have no advice, I am stuck.
  • sinenomine 4y ago
    I'm in this state for the larger part of my life, and I have somewhat succeeded. I can give you advice, but it goes tangential to accepted normie HN happy-go-lucky wisdom.
• spotlesstofu 4y ago
  Slow down. Dedicate less time to work and more time to leisure and relaxing. Go on holiday. Don't think about work for some time. You have to do this until you feel recharged. The first time it will take longer because you amassed lots of stress. Once you learn how to do it, you'll incorporate slowdown days in your routine and feel energized
• stuporglue 4y ago
  A few years ago I just felt tired at the thought of learning another fad language. I ended up getting an MBA and switching into procurement. Now I just code on personal projects and it's fun again.
  • solenoidalslide 4y ago
    The MBA route not a fad language in itself?
    • stuporglue 4y ago
      Maybe. With programming though, the amount of actually new stuff I woukd learn with a new language is relatively small. With an MBA at least I'm learning every day because I'm newer to the topics.
• plaguepilled 4y ago
  It is normal and healthy to take breaks. You do not have to be working on professional skills constantly, and there is some research evidence (citation needed) that taking regular breaks helps you learn more efficiently and enjoy the whole process more. If you can't take a full on break from work right now (be it for financial or deadline reasons) then please try to find more time to do 'useless' stuff like read novels and get around nature. Or, whatever makes you feel calm and cheery. All the best in your next move.
• hitovst 4y ago
  Participate in any RNA experiments lately by any chance?
• zivkovicp 4y ago
  > Anyone ever experience this? I'm in my mid 30s. 100% identical to my own experience, except I'm in my 40s. I've decided to just relax and go with the flow because I figured it's just burnout and unless I take a year off I probably won't get a chance to really recharge. The fact is that you probably already know enough to be really good at your job, but you can't focus enough, or are doubting your ability/knowledge. Don't worry about learning too many new things, only learn something new when you need to, it's impossible to know everything and our industry moves too fast to keep on top of all the trends. You have a project/job in front of you, just focus on that, don't worry about what might come next. If you let yourself relax a little, you'll find it becomes easier to remain flexible and learn what you need to tackle your next problem when it comes. You might want to consider a good long vacation, or maybe a few shorter ones. Getting away from work will help.
• rawoke083600 4y ago
  I know exactly what you mean. As a counter point to the many "burnout answers" here which I completely agree with by the way. It could also be an example of "neuroplasticity" (hear me out). I'm 40 and been coding like it feels forever, I find it "relatively easy" to learn new frameworks or languages. What is much harder are new paradigms; example OOP vs functional. The last few months I've started to learn Clojure. Man what a frustrating journey it has been ! I keep telling myself I'm a seasoned senior dev, worked on all sorts of systems Web/Non-Web/hardware/software you named it ! Why is it so damn hard for me to "get it" or "become comfortable" with Clojure. Only answer I can come up with, is that I have become too comfortable or "set in my ways" as a dev over the years (decades). I've been thinking and coding and "aligning-my-neurons" in a OOP and Imperative for decades. I don't really have a solution yet except for "don't give up" and keep learning "new" (unorthodox) things more regularly. Oh and definitely take a vacation and be happy with smaller wins more frequently !
  • incrudible 4y ago
    Having gone all the way and back, I will say this: Undogmatic imperative programming (with objects) is superior to pure functional programming. You can still use functional constructs and immutable data where it makes sense. You never want to shoehorn a problem into a niche programming paradigm.
    • leetrout 4y ago
      I have come to realize this is why I love Go. Lots of the big libraries over complicate things at times but for my own simple toys I love writing down my types and planning my data containers and then just writing small functions to interact with them. I have started writing (type annotated) python this way and it has made it a joy to work with again. I watch coworkers add so much state and complexity turning every small problem in to a bigger problem with object oriented patterns.
    • jwr 4y ago
      Setting aside why I disagree with this superiority claim, since this is posted under a "Clojure" comment, I just wanted to point out that Clojure is not a pure functional language and you can still use imperative programming. In fact, most Clojure programs are a mix of imperative and functional constructs.
• adave 4y ago
  Actually you answered your own question. You dont care enough hence find it really hard to push yourself. Do it long enough and it will lead to all sorts of problems. I am in the same age group and can tell you from experience that doing what you care about and what your team cares about is the most important thing otherwise it gives one a cog in the wheel type of worthless feeling. Drop the project and find something you do care about, even if its harder. And yes do take a long vacation > 2 weeks to reset.
• readonthegoapp 4y ago
  i'd guess: - burnout - world stress - aging (you getting dumber) the burnout happens to everyone. whether you end up killing yourself, or taking a few months off, or switching careers completely or just internally like going to product, or getting fired/pushed out just depends on all the usual stuff - how stubborn are you? do you listen to friends? do you have friends? do you have any sane friends? and/or family? do you have any money saved? did you find a good therapist who told you the truth (you're burned out and you need to change careers or stop for at least six months)? etc. the world stress is caused because we're all more likely to die more horrible deaths every day that goes by but no mainstream news is talking about our imminent deaths by nuke or gw, and we stay distracted with nba or serials or crypto or drugs or metaverse. you have to find indie news that hasn't been canceled yet to hear anything that is compatible with what you're seeing with your own eyes every day. aging makes you dumber in the computing sense at least, and also because brain fog creeps in more quickly on a standard garbage western diet. saying this true thing got zuck some pushback ten years ago precisely because it was true, and it's more true today.
  • sinenomine 4y ago
    > aging makes you dumber in the computing sense at least, and also because brain fog creeps in more quickly on a standard garbage western diet. saying this true thing got zuck some pushback ten years ago precisely because it was true, and it's more true today. As a big tech worker I find it insane that so much focused intellectual effort of my colleagues is poured into creating "metoo" competitor products and optimizing ad revenue. We finally live in an age where we have the necessary scientific tools to tackle the hardest problems, such as aging, and yet we mostly waste our efforts on rewriting a product that will be forgotten in a few years. What saddens me most is pretty smart people who prefer to ignore the reality of aging and disease and feed themselves and others with various life-affirming copes.
    • lazarus101 4y ago
      Is aging really a problem? On the individual level it is but as a whole the world population has exploded in the past century. Would we have enough resources for everybody if the life expectancy will increase to say 100 years?
• bbarn 4y ago
  I'll pile on to the burnout suggestion with my own personal solution to how I fixed that problem. I'm early 40s, started coding around 13 or so, so it's been 30 years of software for me. About ten years ago after living in the web programming world for a few years I got kind of the same feeling you have. I missed my forms and windows app development, so I went to another company doing what I remembered enjoying. You can guess what happened next. I hated it. I remembered all the things that annoyed me about windows app development, and realized I was just tired of coding every day. Coding has never been what I like about coding, it's building things that do things. I started focusing more on the building side, this time with the team around me, and also just some non coding fun projects like learning auto mechanics, etc. I drifted into a management role by accident and found a ton of fulfillment in coaching and mentoring. After a while I started to miss the coding side, so I went into an architecture role where I still got to do coding but it was mostly exploratory POC stuff to decide on new technologies or not. I took a role after that as a principal engineer, and while these are all mostly just title changes, it gave me enough variety to be exciting again. Today I tell prospective employers that I am someone that drifts between IC and leadership roles. I believe experience in both helps both. My drive waxes and wanes but I think that's totally normal for humans. I just came to terms with it and stopped worrying about it, and now I'm very satisfied in my career.
  • bigredhdl 4y ago
    Thanks for sharing. I've been in the "wane" stage recently and your story gave me some things to consider.
    • bbarn 4y ago
      Just remember the golden rule about advice (this advice included) is that it's all relative to one's own personal circumstance. What may work for me may not for you and that doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong or there's anything wrong with you or your approach. If we could solve problems like motivation, drive, and perspective with a wiki or a readme.md file, we'd all have it bookmarked. Life's a learning experience, and unfortunately we all need different curriculum.
• omnicognate 4y ago
  Down in the commments [1], OP has said they had COVID earlier this year. There's a strong possibility that the symptom OP is experiencing is "brain fog" due to post-viral syndrome. As a PSA: People are recommending exercise in the comments. If you are experiencing symptoms like OP's, do not start vigorous exercise unless you're sure that post-viral syndrome is not the cause. If you have post-viral syndrome, return to exercise needs to be slow (months) and graded. If you overdo it you are at risk of "post-exertional malaise". I've been dealing with these problems since early last year and it has had a profound impact on my life and work. If you're experiencing symptoms like OP describes after COVID, talk to a doctor. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31282305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31282305
  • kossTKR 4y ago
    I suffer from Post Exertional Malaise but from before Covid. Though Covid has made it worse. Really a horrible predicament because the more you try, the more you get punished. Currently thinking about taking a break from running and lifting which is incredibly hard because well, i'm a white collar worker that's already too sedentary. If you or others have tips to get out of the cycle of crashes please share your tips or sources!
    • albinowax_ 4y ago
      This might not be relevant to you, but a lot of runners/cyclists exercise at 'tempo' - an intensity higher than necessary which mostly generates more fatigue without much benefit. So, if you need to drop the pace/intensity of your running to recover better, it's probably still worthwhile. More info here: https://www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/zone-2-training-for-endurance-athletes/ https://www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/zone-2-training-for-endur...
      • kossTKR 4y ago
        Thanks for the input, intersting article! This might actually be a worthwhile first step in recovery as i run at quite a fast pace naturally and after covid i often hit a hr of 180bpm as a 30 something year old - maybe i should only walk jog for now.
• gabrieledarrigo 4y ago
  I'm 40, I'm a skilled software engineer and, here in Italy, I'm really far from making any 6 figures. I guess that's something wrong with my careers.
  • achenet 4y ago
    it's just that the market is different in different countries. I'm in France, making 32,000Eur/year with 1 YoE. I had a friend in America making 130,000$ with roughly the same amount of experience. Americans pay much more for the same work. That said, you can probably find some remote jobs that pay US salaries in Italy if you look around a bit.
• zippercreatemy 4y ago
  I think it is more to do with your maturity allowing you to see more of your weaknesses. When you are young, myopia makes you think you know it all and can solve everything. Young devs run gun ho into things and they focus on happy paths and ignore a lot of the complexity that you learn from experience, noting there is some exceptions. The second problem is scope, when you are a junior you normally have a single project and a lot of guardrails to support your learning, and typically just need to think about a small bit of code. As you become more senior you are suddenly responsible for a P&L, other people, lifecycle management, stability and scalability. Last year I was feeling overwhelmed and couldn't learn Quarkus and Java. Turns out I just needed a week of focus. I was able to take my years of .Net, PHP and JavaScript experience and produce amazing code in Java. My biggest blocker to learning was managing other people, projects, scope, budgets, requirements, approving leave requests, preparing status reports, managing vendors, interviewing candidates, dealing with shareholders, backlog grooming, workshops, committee meetings, CAB preparation, ARB negotiations, and the desire to be instantly good.
  • sumtechguy 4y ago
    This is also something many forget. Learning takes time. I learn one simple concept in a day or so. A framework? That is going to take a couple of weeks at a minimum. Staying motivated during that time can be difficult if you have nothing to directly apply what you just learned on. The old 'teacher when will I ever use this' question. For many if it is not right away it feels silly to do it.
• bennyp101 4y ago
  I'm pretty much in the same boat. Mid to late 30s, professional for 15+ years. I've noticed recently that I just don't care about work and technology anymore. I have things that I need to get done, but I'm pulling on that starter cord and the engine is just not firing - no motivation to really do it. I've been chatting to some friends about this, and I've come to the conclusion that I need to make a Dr's appointment - just to see if there is something glaringly obvious (either physical or mental) that can be treated. I've also taken up building a model railway - my son loves trains - and I actually enjoy doing the building, I think because it is away from a computer and screens. I've also pretty much cut out all TV time, cut all ties to social media (that's helped), and only check the news in the morning to make sure we haven't slipped into a new WW.
  • lmarcos 4y ago
    Not caring about work and just getting things done is what 90% of the population does. Do you really think they all need to check it with the doctor?
    • bennyp101 4y ago
      No? But I think I do. I loved coding, I loved my job, I loved technology. Now I don't. I did care about my job, and I wanted to get the projects done, Im just saying that now I find it hard to care about it and actually get those things done. I was just relaying my experience to OP - I think you might have taken that part of my comment the wrong way.
      • burntoutfire 4y ago
        I think it's absolutely normal. There are few people who can retain spark about their field for longer than a couple of years (let alone decades). The rest of us is just trying to do a good enough job to make the boss and team happy, and go home.
    • mikeruiz 4y ago
      I’ve had useful conversations with my doctor about similar topics. I’ve been perhaps lucky to have exceptional care, but in my case my doctor was able to identify (and help treat) clinical depression. Misery may be common, but seeking help shouldn’t be discouraged.
• lmarcos 4y ago
  I think you are getting wiser. You start to realize that all of this JS circus leads to unmaintainable code, so your subconscious is telling you "don't do it".
• karxxm 4y ago
  For me, it's not "how" you do it (e.g. which framework). Important is "what" you are doing. If your new gig is e.g. a random e-commerce software that contributes to the laziness of people or their consumerism, maybe you are the type of person that just don't care for the product, therefore won't put any effort in learning things for that?
• a_c 4y ago
  It seems to me your career had been focusing on how to get things build. Would you entertain the idea of becoming the guy to come up with ideas "what" to build? Put it other way, to identify "problem" in a more general sense
• ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  As noted, sounds like burnout. BTDT, got the T-shirt. I’m 60, and still learning new stuff, every day; but I’m highly motivated.
• fifticon 4y ago
  I agree with what others say - it sounds like you are running a burn-out schedule, and your body has just informed you it is not designed to function that way. You must get more physical exercise, more rest, and more switching between 'running and not running'. You cannot persist only on 'running/sprinting' activity, it is like teaching a horse not to eat. It will work for a week, then the horse dies of hunger. The rest periods is the 'price' for it being possible to do the sprints. This is why europeans do things like 37h working weeks. It is because if you want to work a human body for 40-50 years (ie 20 to 70), you cannot operate it in a way that ruins it in one or two decades. Companies like amazon might find it amazing to run people like F1 race cars, where the body stops working after 15 years, but you are not amazon, you a a human ape with needs.
• bruteForeBilly 4y ago
  I would advise telman17 to immediately go on vacation, at least for three weeks. Don't play a hero, the quicker you address this issue, the less damage you will do to yourself. Don't wait until it's too late. The brain is very fragile, and your livelihood. Burnout is an awful thing. If your whole life is built around intellectual work, becoming something that has a cognitive ability south of a vegetable is a terrible thing. You lose your identity. The way back from there is long, my friend.
• bigDinosaur 4y ago
  This really does sound like burnout. One of the most helpful explanations I found was that burnout isn't just (or even in an individual case, at all) caused by 'working too much'. Instead, it's a mismatch between your values and your work. A classic example is wanting to make a positive change in the world but instead having to wrangle JavaScript frameworks for some incredibly dull (although potentially still valuable to others) business application. Or, alternatively, you know your intelligence could simply be put to better use, or you're simply intensely curious about truly different things for which there is no real current market. You must take an extended break to reflect on what exactly you want to be doing, where your career needs to go, and so on. I say must because the only alternative is extended burnout and very possibly health and psychological issues. Don't ignore the signs! Doing so always ends badly. If you can't yet due to financial reasons, you simply have to start devising a strategy to do so. Otherwise you're making the best of a bad situation and you'll have to move to coping strategies instead which others have explained in this thread. Such coping strategies can mostly only attenuate the burnout, they probably can't solve it on their own. Personally I got burnt out from caring too much about something which ultimately was literally the opposite of all my values. I didn't become burned out from working too many hours. The crucial thing with the 'burnout isn't exclusively from hours worked' realisation is that you can burn out working only 10 hours a week on something if you've come to truly despise it and all it represents.
• bennysomething 4y ago
  Yes went through this. Early 30s my dad died, completely changed my view on what I was doing. He was self employed and successful. I started to hate working for someone else. I really started to dislike being a developer. Kept trying to find a way out. Was depressed that being a Dev eats my life, all free time I felt I should be learning technologies Anyway fast forward nearly a decade and I'm really happy in my job. I really appreciate being a developer. It's interesting work. No clock watching waiting to go home etc. Not sure what changed, maybe I just got older. Maybe I just had a kid. Maybe seeing how crap so many people in the world have it while I sit here and earn good money and have nice co workers. It felt like I went through a mid life crisis in my 30s. Sorry this isn't an answer, just what I experienced.
  • pyentropy 4y ago
    You had a depressive episode, and you recovered. It's not getting older, but the fact that time heals most brains just like exercise and antidepressants do. About 70% recover within 12 months [1] [1] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12204924/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12204924/ Edit: OP said "Was depressed that [...]" and also mentions death of a loved one. Even if I'm wrong, personally I really wish someone mentioned MDD as a possibility to me earlier. I felt similarly, and I thought all my focus and motivation problems were because I was lazy; but it was quite the opposite, I was fighting depression very hard. I lost so many years of my life reading about death coping skills, optimizing diet and exercise, learning how to be less lazy (?) when it had absolutely nothing to do with any of those.
    • huijzer 4y ago
      > You had a depressive episode, and you recovered. You’re quick in jumping to conclusions.
      • giantg2 4y ago
        Agree. I hate my job and clock watch. But I enjoy other things in life. When I get screened for depression it never comes up as a problem. So it seems you can be fine and still watch the clock.
• akomtu 4y ago
  Peehaps you've just grown some wisdom and realised how meaningless it all is: where kids are excited to build a sandcastle, you see the rise and fall of that sandcastle before it's even built and see no reason to feel any excitment. Most software out there, especially the web part of it, is such sandcastles.
• interactivecode 4y ago
  I think sometimes people forget how hard learning is. It's painful, frustrating and difficult. Plus it takes a while (long while) to work through the first steps of learning something new. It seems people think learning something completely new is the same as extending the knowledge or skills they already have developed. It's not the same at all.
• jmcgough 4y ago
  If you don't have a therapist, it's worth looking for one. Honestly, everyone should have a good therapist, especially these days. I had a similar experience and for me it was burnout compounded by years of ignoring mental health problems. I took a break for most of the pandemic, got a good therapist and psychiatrist and I'm so much more functional than I was at any other point in my adult life. But I really needed the time and space to focus on fixing myself, something that can be impossible when working long hours at a startup.
  • bowsamic 4y ago
    Easier said than done. The waiting list for therapy here in Hamburg is more than a year
• aosmith 4y ago
  You're burnt out bud, same thing happened to me... If you're mid six figures you have the money to take a couple months off. It might feel lazy or wrong initially but just do it.
• HPsquared 4y ago
  Maybe you just know subconsciously you would be working more efficiently with the frameworks you do already know, so you have no incentive to learn a third (other than unwillingness to change jobs).
• he_is_legend 4y ago
  It's not you - it's node.js (I'm thinking of getting tee's printed with that slogan).
• 123pie123 4y ago
  TL;DR - your expections are too high!! You have picked up a hell of a lot of knowledge over a long period of time, your expection or wish is to get to the same level of expertise in this new framework. So you're pushing yourself and become disillusioned with the speed of progress.
• reacweb 4y ago
  Have you been tested for sleep apnea ?
• gitfan86 4y ago
  I had a very similar problem 2 years ago. I was 38 at the time. For me it was burnout. I had been at a failing startup for 6 years. I took about a year off and removed a lot of stress from my life and took a part time React/NodeJS job, and got really good at react over the past year. I have realized that a TON of the dev working being done on JS frameworks is by people that have no idea what is going on under the covers, they are just following examples and best practices and making applications work. I'm not saying that is wrong, but for people our age we are more used to understanding things at a lower level and that is becoming almost impossible with the current JS framework situation.
• mikeruiz 4y ago
  I still ‘suffer’ from similar mid-career burnout that culminated 10 years ago. I’ve been successful since, but to I’ve had to move to roles where my work product was much more transactional, visible, and delivered in smaller chunks in order to remain productive. I’ve spent a great deal of time analyzing this — and I still don’t have great answers — but here’s an internet-friendly numbered list of random strategies and perspectives I’ve had success with: 1/ be open with your boss. They may be able to offer strategies to help. 2/ set short-term goals and force accountability. For me, that was making promises to my manager and asking them to hold me accountable at regular intervals (micro-management as a service). 3/ if it works, it’s fine. I had a lot of my self worth bound up in my ability to deliver clever hacks. I’ve come to the realization that most of my useful output has been simple, obvious, and quite ugly. 4/ the only people who care about your code are you and the peers who have to engage with it. I want to write clever code, but (at work) I want to read really, really dumb code. 5/ I’ve moved from caring about tech to caring about business impact to caring about what that impact has on humans. This helps make decisions about code easy, since in my work humans never care about the framework or elegant code unless that framework or code causes them to have a bad time.
• sinenomine 4y ago
  Yes, it's a well-established scientific fact that the age-related cognitive decline begins as early as one's twenties: [1][2][3][4]. As of now there really is no cure for this, except for trying various lifestyle interventions in hopes of modifying the slope of the curve in desired direction (standardized cognitive tests help one select the most favorable interventions). The obvious stuff - exercising twice weekly, cardio, sleeping well & enough, being less stressed help noticeably. Beyond this there is a trove of supplements and drugs that may, though likely not, help. Naturally, highly intelligent people understand this unfortunate truth of nature pretty well, and plan their lives so as to decouple their living standard from their peak intellectual performance. Thus we see smart people becoming managers and investors/rentiers over time. Once your money works for you by virtue of compounding interest, not much intelligence is needed. If we are bold enough to envision long-term solutions to this daunting problem, there really is no alternative to accelerating longevity R&D. If you are interested, feel free to read the FAQ: https://www.fightaging.org/faq https://www.fightaging.org/faq 1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2683339/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2683339/ 2. https://sci-hub.se/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19231030/ https://sci-hub.se/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19231030/ 3. (excerpt) https://de.catbox.moe/fk9ltz.jpg https://de.catbox.moe/fk9ltz.jpg 4. (excerpt) https://files.catbox.moe/krktzk.jpg https://files.catbox.moe/krktzk.jpg
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• Findecanor 4y ago
  It could be mental burnout. But you could also get your blood levels checked! Once in my mid-30's, I found that my mind wasn't as able as it used to be. I could write code fine, but as you, I struggled with learning new things. It turned out that the hemoglobin level in my blood was low, so my head wasn't getting enough oxygen. The cause was colon cancer. The tumour had been bleeding into my colon for months. Other causes for losing blood could be ulcer (caused by certain bacteria, stress, too much coffee, fatty food, other stomach irritants), or gluten intolerance (unlikely, but does happen).
• calculated 4y ago
  Try meditation, Yoga Nidra, NSDR, whatever works for you. You'll really be amazed by the effects it has on your mind. Especially NSDR/Yoga Nidra. It has been life changing career wise and just in regards to how I view the world, how I think about code and just everything in general. It'll help you clear your mind which is one of the most underrated things in life but at the same time crucial to performance. That's the only advice I feel is suitable except the for the common sense (switch jobs, projects, take a break, etc.).
• jmartin2683 4y ago
  You probably just need to find something you’re actually interested in to work on.
• koonsolo 4y ago
  Early 40's here. I'm not going to diagnose the problem, but what usually works for me is the following, from high to low priority. But remark that they all interact with each other. - get pleny of sleep. - exercise. - eath healthy and have a healthy bodyweight. - have social, in-person interactions with friends. Have a laugh, etc.
• jseban 4y ago
  Before you delve into the complex issues of burnout and depression, you can first try the assumption that you are a bit exhausted and give yourself some rest, this can not hurt, and potentially help a lot.
• agumonkey 4y ago
  Very subjective view: I stopped caring emotionally. Age made me want family / emotional stimulus infinitely more than technical one. Especially in mainstream dev where things are not new or high level enough (I'm way more tickled when I dabble in combinatorics or graph theory books, I can sense the blood and motivation rushing more).
• giantg2 4y ago
  Similar here. In my case I learned stuff like Neoxam and FileNet that I will never use again. It feels like all my knowledge has been throwaway work. I'm 10 years in, a midlevel with no career path, have an MS, and make under $100k. The company has also screwed me over a few times. I feel like why bother trying if it's not rewarded, and why bother learning if I'll never use the knowledge again? Just go back to the other frameworks that you already know. Either talk to your boss about switching projects or look for another job. At least you have that option and are making excellent money.
• lewdev 4y ago
  Create something and publish it. For some reason, it helped me a lot. Also in my mid-30s. You're probably pretty good at the things you know, just whip something you could easily do but useful and you'll get a lot of satisfaction. I also think it's burn out. I personally struggled to learn React and perhaps had some burn out but persevered because I was building things on the side. It was fun and great distraction and motivator while struggling to learn React. I think I'm pretty good at it now but I felt like I was in a rut for a long time.
• mpermar 4y ago
  Ecosystem-fatigue maybe? I don't know if there is an existing term for this but it's got more and more common and it's going to get a hell lot of more. As a junior engineer (20+ years ago, for me), anything new is enjoyable. Damn we even enjoyed .NET, J2EE, Perl.. whatever crap. You name it. But today there are so many frameworks, paradigms, tools, services... and sad thing is in many cases the differences are nuance-grade which for senior engineers might become incredibly exhausting, at least in my opinion. "Why would I want to spend 6 months learning Vue if I can do this in React in 6 weeks?", "Why should I learn Rust if I just can do this in C++?"... I think there are big differences in how industry evolved in the early twenties to today. I think today's evolution can feel rather disappointing.
  • giantg2 4y ago
    "Ecosystem-fatigue" Nice. I'm going use this in my next 1-on-1.
• onion2k 4y ago
  like I just don't care enough to work on this project That's why. Motivation comes from a sense of purpose.
• beaconstudios 4y ago
  sounds like you just don't like the project - I wouldn't read too much into it. If it becomes a trend of "new ecosystem = burnout" then I'd start to consider a specific cause.
• dgb23 4y ago
  Shooting into the dark here. Maybe you’re demotivated because this isn’t really learning, not in the real sense. The difference between Vue and React are almost arbitrary. It’s like Python vs Ruby or C# vs Java. There’s details that are interesting and useful sure, but most of it is boring. It’s entirely horizontal. What I suggest, because it works for me, is to focus on the layers above and below. Above you find high level decision making, design, information architecture, visualization and so on. Below you find protocols, runtimes, browser/os internals and interfaces, distributed systems and much more. All of the mentioned things are vast and interesting. And there’s much more. You work primarily on frontend, how solid is your math? Graphics programming? There’s so much stuff that is genuinely useful, interesting and has a much higher impact that keeping up with library ecosystems.
  • knob 4y ago
    Those are good observations. I'm going to apply these in my work. I like the above/below concept a lot.
• syntheweave 4y ago
  It's almost certainly not because you're actually getting dumber...and it could be burnout...but, what you are probably facing is probably something more on the axis of philosophical-existential questioning, which tends to rear its head periodically with age. A line of work can be logically good to pursue but eventually your body and emotions will fight you on it if they aren't feeling nourished. Like, you've had it good in terms of career, from a simple percentiles-income standpoint. And most likely you have had a lot of moments of satisfying problem solving. But the learning of the job is basically done now, and it's just reframing of the same ideas as new technologies. It's like being told that the words in English are going to be renamed tomorrow so you had better get started on learning them. For right now, punch the clock, and take up an immensely challenging and deep hobby like music or painting if you haven't done so already. If you find that the hobby pulls you forward where the job doesn't, then the path forks: "work to live"(keep punching the clock and moonlight a little) or "live to work"(either turn the hobby into the new career, or turn this into a reason to challenge yourself with tougher coding problems that go beyond learning another framework)
• daneel_w 4y ago
  Smells like burnout. I'm guessing you need more and more time to get less and less done, and an increasing amount of time being spent on distractions instead of trying to focus to push through.
• m3kw9 4y ago
  Could be a formed habit to not trust anything else so you question all new paradigms. I’d fix that by asking why you are so ingrained with your current approaches
• kokizzu2 4y ago
  that's why I use Svelte '__')
  • SwanandK 4y ago
    +1 for Svelte/SvelteKit
• blakewatters 4y ago
  Your problem is very simple: you are working on bullshit. Across your entire description of your situation you never once mentioned what it is you are actually working on but called out the income you hit and frameworks you are playing with. I humbly submit that your problem is that you have lost the plot. Hate to break it to you chief but the libraries and frameworks and techniques you use to work are not the point. Creating stuff that people want to use is all that matters. Doing it with finesse and craftsmanship is how you go from good to great but if nobody gives a shit you will always feel empty. Switching projects and doing something "harder" isn't going to fill that void. Build something people want. I promise your drive and all the rest will follow behind once you are making them happy and get hooked on solving their problems and improving their lives. That is what this game is all about.
  • lupire 4y ago
    That doesn't explain why OP was able to learn and do bullshit before.
    • JimtheCoder 4y ago
      Bullshit is much easier to learn and do when you are young. I am not sure why this is, but a shift does seem to be common once you start to hit your 30's. This is why it is much easier to recruit people in their 20's to work super hard on problems that don't really matter in the grand scheme of things. Once people get older, they don't really want to spend all week optimizing a tiny button on an Android app that no one will ever see or use, no matter how much you get paid...
      • hsn915 4y ago
        When I was young I didn't realize what I'm working is bullshit. I thought it's the coolest shit in the world. I used to be excited about new technologies. Now when I hear about "new technology" I just roll my eyes, because in %99.99 of the cases, this "new technology" is anything but. It's just a permutation of an existing tech with trivial differences that I'm interested in learning.
    • 4y ago
• lupire 4y ago
  Do you have a lot of savings? If so, maybe your brain is telling you that your work is worthless to you because the imaginary number in your bank account is as big as needs to bem
• miiiiiike 4y ago
  It’s weird I’ve probably been “burned out” for 10 years but I’ve never had the option to not to put in 100%, if not every day, by the end of every week. When I get up and don’t feel like working I just start working until I’m having fun and the hours start flying by. I hate what I’m doing most days, but, it has to be done. Just last month I had to, finally, really learn regular expressions, read the Scrapy docs start to finish, figure out how to scrape/merge a 1M+ document site where none the metadata for the docs live in the docs themselves, learn to use Falcon to fix a project only to find out that Falcon has some issues that make fix the project impossible, requiring me to figure out how to make a raw ASGI app. That was just April. On top of my other work! Over the past two years I’ve learned, in depth, Bash, Make, Helm, Kustomize, CSS, Sass, HTML, JaveScript/TypeScript, Angular, RxJS, half a dozen testing platforms, Kafka, Cassandra, color theory, Style Dictionary (design systems), and a few dozen other little things. I’ve read tens of thousands of pages of books and documentation, taken extensive notes, and written demo code as I’ve worked my way through them. It’s been like this since 2002 and I think it’s going to continue until 2042. There’s no reward, it’s what’s expected. It doesn’t matter how senior I am, how many people I manage, or what my title is. I’m 38 and I feel like a junior dev with 22 years of experience. I don’t know if this level of flexibility is required to be a good developer, but, I’ve never worked on a successful project where it wasn’t. At night I watch videos on CSS to keep up, read books about tech we may need to adopt in the future, read about changes to Kubernetes/TypeScript/Angular/Django, do UX+product design for the next version for our app, and read resumes. For me learning new things is something that I have to do to move forward and get paid. It’s an investment that has a huge opportunity cost associated with it. You’re getting paid multiple six-figures to learn new stuff? Sounds great. If you don’t like what you’re doing, why not quit and take a few weeks or months off to figure out what you want.
• saalweachter 4y ago
  So this may not apply to your case in specific, but hey, lots of people read these posts. There's probably at least a handful of people helped by each of the responses in this thread, so maybe mine will help too. So my first major period of work-malaise was ended by switching jobs. I decided if I didn't find my job fulfilling and interesting enough to work on, I would go out and find a job that I could be excited about. It helped; everything felt new, and if I wasn't super productive right off the jump, well, I was learning a lot of new things and no one expected me to be productive. The next time I got into a work-funk, where it felt like I wasn't getting anything done and I had trouble being excited about the work, I thought about changing jobs again. But my job was objectively good, I liked my coworkers, there were plenty of opportunities for exciting work, and there was nothing about it I particularly disliked. I just felt like I wasn't particularly happy, like I was spinning my wheels and not really getting anywhere in life. So I left work well enough alone, and took a step back to look at my life and think about my identity and figure out what made me happy. I decided I needed three things: home, community, and quests. I am, deep down, a nester, a home-body. I need a space I feel like I belong in, that's mine and no one else's. Archimedes' "a place to stand". So I bought a home, committed to it, and started changing it to suit me better. Set up a private home office, a workshop, started reshaping the yard and planting an orchard. I hope to be there the rest of my life. The very idea of a place to be, forever, gives me a sort of stable comfort and happiness. But while a part of me would love to be a hermit, I do want a sense of community, like I am connected to the people around me. So in addition to starting a family, I also do what I can to get involved. I started volunteering at a local food pantry and with the town's Rec board to put on local events; I ran for local office once. Even if I like to spend a lot of time by myself doing my own thing, it's nice to meet people, to feel like I know the people around me and they know me, at least a little. Deep down, though, I do want a quest. I want to work on something meaningful. Something that it's worth working towards even if I never achieve it. Something that, if I gasped out "finish my work" on my deathbed, someone else would reasonably consider devoting their own life to the project as well. I haven't figured out that last part yet. Maybe it will end up being something I quit my job to do, either a job itself or a pursuit in retirement. But in the meanwhile, formalizing my life in this way helps me take the pressure off at work. I enjoy my job, I think it's useful, and I take pride in my work from time to time, but it's ultimately just a job. I still fall into a work-funk from time to time -- these last two years especially -- but when it happens it is no longer the existential crisis it was the first couple of times. I have other parts of my life I can work on and take pride in instead, it's not me failing at my one big thing. It makes it easier to just focus on making a little bit of incremental progress on my job every day until the malaise passes and work become fun again.
• alexashka 4y ago
  I work with people like you everywhere I go. They're not smart enough to understand and therefore affect their circumstance. Their greatest accomplishment is that they still have a job, lol. You are the Peter principle. You are fatigued from being asked to use a brain that isn't capable of solving corporate web dev and relaxing. It is instead tired of trying to solve what it considers 'complex stuff'. If something is still complex about placing buttons and text on a screen after 15 years - you're not smart enough to do it! Try switching into management, testing, anything else where brain use is severely limited and largely not needed. You'll feel a great sense of relief.
• pkilgore 4y ago
  Learning is really hard and I think we forget that. But all the old tips still work: regularly, grit, mentorship, and practice.
• deberon 4y ago
  You didn’t mention much about your personal life. Your professional life sounds successful, maybe you’re looking for fulfillment somewhere else?
• locallost 4y ago
  I have the same problem and my take on the learning problem is: caring about something is an important part of learning. I remember also that I had a lot if patience for things years ago, but somehow I don't really have that any more. Partly because I think / feel some things are more complicated than they should be. I don't care about all the tiny caveats anymore. But also because of what I think is the burnout part, which is the feeling that it's never going to stop, there will always be something else to start over from scratch. Is there a solution? Maybe focusing on acquiring knowledge that has a more lasting value. There was a post recently about finding work as a more niche developer. Maybe a break to refocus which is what I am doing, and maybe starting something completely new. Good luck.
• nunez 4y ago
  What else is going on in your life? Perhaps keeping up took a backseat to other stuff in your life?
• fassssst 4y ago
  Read this, it will help: https://www.amazon.com/Laws-Brainjo-Science-Molding-Musical-ebook/dp/B085GBG23P/ref=nodl_ https://www.amazon.com/Laws-Brainjo-Science-Molding-Musical-... It’s ostensibly about learning a musical instrument but it’s really about how to learn anything.
• wonderwonder 4y ago
  It's likely burnout. I have experienced this for a solid year now. Just sit at my desk for 8 hours a day unable to get any real work done. Have probably 30 minutes of real productivity a day. Started after working insane hours for months and months on end. I refuse to work more than 40 now. Funny thing is I get great reviews because I just decided to hijack a team lead role that was missing and just run the team. No one knows how absolutely fried I am. My opinion is that humans are not meant to just sit in front of a desk producing useless widgets that do no real societal good besides making money for our employers. We have no sense of purpose. We just make dumb shiny things. I am still struggling with it. Starting a new job soon in an official management position, optimally I am happier there.
• junon 4y ago
  Sounds like early stages of Burnout as others have said. Nip this in the bud, OP. I'm recovering years later still because I let it go unchecked.
• gilbetron 4y ago
  The others are focusing on some things that it could be including demotivation, burnout, disinterest in learning something that is just a different version of what you already know, etc. Those are all definite possibilities. However, another thing that could be happening is that as you become more senior, you start being used to knowing things really deeply, and so when you learn something new two things happen. First, you are comparing your knowledge of the new thing to your knowledge of the old thing. When starting out, you don't know anything, so when you learn a bit of React, for instance, it seems like you are learning a lot. But if you know React deeply and learn a bit of Vue, it feels like you have a long way to go. Secondly, you want to know things deeply, and so you question and analyze all the knowledge that is going into your brain. When starting out, you are happy to just repeat knowledge without understanding it deeply. An example I use is when I started at my current company, there was an intern that started at the same time. We both would be told, "here is a script to put things into the staging environment". She would take it and use it and move on with life. I would question what it exactly did, why it did it that way, what were the failure modes, and the history of how it go there rather than other options. She was much more productive to start, but fast forward 18 months, and I have a much deeper understanding about our technology and codebase and approaches, and am able to drive long term decisions and fix deeper issues. Learning as a senior is exhausting :)
  • lostcolony 4y ago
    I can echo this, and am of a similar age as the OP. Even things I feel excited about learning are chores now, simply because my expectations are grok it quickly and be productive. The act of being bad at it, not understanding something, having to look things up, not having the full shape of everything in my head and so sometimes having to cargo cult it until some later date when it'll make sense, etc, are alien and exhausting now. It's hard to pour myself into something I'm "bad" at, when there are other things I know I'm "good" at.
• seydor 4y ago
  I 'm not sure why people call it burnout. People adapt and get bored, learning new languages is exciting the first 3 times, a horrible chore at 11. Any intellectually demanding job will lead to mental fatigue, but it s not like people are burnt, we do our best when we do exciting stuff.
• throw1234651234 4y ago
  I am your age and don't make nearly as much money as you do, but I am in a senior role. I find the reasons for the seeming inability to learn to be these: 1. I have no time. I am completely capped out with meetings, certification expectations, etc. 2. I am expected to perform at a high level immediately, which takes away from the ability to learn. 3. I take on stories the rest of the team doesn't want. Like right now I am digging through Auth0's library code because they don't support a feature we need. All in all, I think the solution is to back off and start with easier task. Oh, and sleep enough and make sure your diet is fine.
• rufus_foreman 4y ago
  You're getting old. It happens. What percentage of your salary are you saving?
• Dave3of5 4y ago
  I'd ape the burnout diagnosis. You have classic syndromes.
• unoti 4y ago
  You can still learn. I've experienced what you describe many times. Two suggestions for you. First, what you describe sounds like burnout. Do some research about it for yourself, both what it's like and how to fix it. You're not lazy and you're not dumb. You have more capability and potential today due to your experience than you ever did any time in your past. But you do need to take care of yourself, and as you research burnout you will get ideas of how. Second, when learning new things, you must give yourself the space to learn. For example, when I went to go learn Angular 2, I was already expert in older ways of doing web development and other technologies such as games and mobile, so I figured I'd give myself a week to learn angular, and in the final days of that week also begin the prototype of the project I was getting into Angular for in the first place. Also, I'd go ahead and start using the basic ideas of Redux. While learning, I was stressing out the entire time about how these trivial examples I was working on were probably not going to add up to the project prototype I needed to create by next week. The stress of the time crunch, combined with the fact that I was punishing myself for being too dumb to learn this in a few days inhibited my ability to learn. When you're learning something new, give yourself the space and time you need to learn it, and do not pressure yourself by trying to conflate project deadlines into the learning. The learning is the project for now; the business project must become a secondary concern to be worried about later, until you have the skills and experience with the technology you need to complete the project. Also it's probably best to try to learn only one new technology at a time; don't switch to a new database and a new visual framework and a new web framework and also start using Typescript for the first time, all on the same project. Not unless you've got a year or something just to learn and nothing is going to be due on a specific date. Be kind to yourself. When you're talking to yourself, talk to yourself about this the way you would with someone that you love. p.s. Feeling like you're inadequate is a common side effect of learning. I've come to recognize it as a sign that I've got this. It's darkest before the dawn. 'Learning is not child's play; we cannot learn without pain.' - Aristotle
• kharak 4y ago
  Disclaimer: This isn't going to help you, just a self-meta comment about most of the other comments here. I'm wondering if someone else feels like this. --- It's funny to read all of this, because it always felt like this for me. I think I skipped the "this is fun and easy" part and went straight to the "what is all of this? Why are there so many frameworks? What are all those annotations? How are they all mixed together and somehow this works but only if written in arcane ways? Why is everything so overengineered and complicated?" I also never thought the problems I'm solving are significant in any way. So doing it for the paycheck alone is my default mode of operation. I never stopped feeling confused by the tech I'm using. There is just too much tech. Each new project another round of more tech to learn. As consequence, I now focus on understanding a base layer of project related tech in order to get things done. Most of it is going to be irrelevant with the next project anyway.
• brimble 4y ago
  Yeah, it's normal. When you do the same damn thing for the tenth time (or more) and you've watched all the previous ones be discarded one way or another, usually without ever doing anywhere near enough good to justify making them in the first place, you start to get the sense that you're basically just one of the pegs up near the top of the Plinko board that is modern business—not even one of the players, or the puck, but a peg—and it fucking sucks. I think some dude named Marx wrote about this a bunch. Anywho, I've solved this by having fewer opinions about technology and generally giving fewer shits. Doomed project? Yeah, they almost all are, so, fine. Bad tech? Most of it's terrible, that's normal. Some moron having way too big a say in the project and making it worse while creating unnecessary work? Yeah, that's normal. We must imagine Sisyphus happy. I suppose. I've kinda thought about starting an agency or trying to launch a product, but between not being able to stand looking at a computer screen after my day job, and my guess that that'd end up sucking just as much, but in different ways, I've not done it yet. Honestly, probably never will. Coming to terms with what I, realistically, won't ever do has helped some, too. Kill any dreams you don't care enough about to work toward today. Just let 'em go.
• adventured 4y ago
  As others have mentioned, it's some variation of burnout most likely. It's not that you can't learn anymore. You don't want to learn right now (specifically you don't want to learn what you're trying to learn). You're not enjoying what you're doing and your tired brain is starting to protest. Here's what your brain (you) is saying: I don't want to do this. With logical results (I don't want to do this, so I'm not doing this). Some people in this thread have pointed to age as a major factor. It's a minor factor in your 30s as it pertains to learning and it's very unlikely to be significant to what you're describing (Vue and React are not that difficult to learn). Age becomes a major factor for burnout in your 30s though; you've done it for quite a while, so it starts to feel very repetitive, drone-like factory work, and the work hours wear on you differently for all those reasons combined with naturally having a bit less energy at eg 37 vs 22 years of age.
• orangepurple 4y ago
  I hate engaging in surrogate activities which are only abstractly related to the things I need to survive. Even though I understand it's necessary due to the sophistication of manufacturing and the economies of scale of it all, it's mentally destructive. The worst part of software development for me is knowing that all of my work will eventually be thrown away or useless soon. I stopped caring about my work completely. I force myself to continue because only because it pays well for the amount of time I spend on it. I make much less than SV types on here. But it's much more efficient than any alternatives I have identified so far, even though I accomplish nearly nothing essential. My current job only exists because a bureaucrat decided their government needs to invasively monitor my company's financial activity. How useful! I only care about my family, especially my children, and the time I spend together with them chilling, cooking, playing, and learning.
  • iwre0 4y ago
    I agree about stop caring about my current work. I'm in my 50's and I was working for 30 years as CIO and programming in MUMPS, taking care about systems and networking. Now, my employers put me in SAP support without any formation. So hard and bored. I feel so difficult to learn this ..when in the past learning new things was easy for me if they were interesting.
• scarface74 4y ago
  I moved away from the clusterf^%% of the front end for that reason. The backend is much more stable.
• deleted 4y ago
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• pid-1 4y ago
  This is 100% burnout You need to spend a few months playing beach volleyball, barely touching any technology.
• groenendael 4y ago
  Don't forget that hormones change starting mid-30s. Fatigue and energy levels can be affected due to lower testosterone, or from just years of sitting in chairs. Also, don't forget we're coming out a pandemic that really put us into isolation... maybe not as noticeable for those of us that tend to work in isolation anyhow, but it can have an unrealized toll. I'm 41 and going through a divorce, so I have a distraction that carries over into everything else. But, I'm now also freed up to go do the things that I haven't been able to enjoy in years because of obligations or trying to make someone else happy. I've been able to go out on weekends exploring or camping, joining up with friends and reestablishing connections, and now have a puppy that is forcing a little more structure into areas of my life that I became overly relaxed in (plus his unconditional love is soothing). Another thing to consider is just the amount of tangential stress in our lives from seemingly one bad thing to another: politics, the economy, foreign affairs, social media, etc. Really, I don't think there's one single thing to point to but a conglomeration of many things. I try to focus on what can be controlled and let go of the things that I can't. Things that have helped me in the past when I'm in a rut include: taking up a new hobby (I find woodworking enjoyable because it's more physical; cooking is another great choice too), learning a new programming language (I learn ideas that can be fun to experiment with or incorporate into my daily work), traveling nearby (get a Hipcamp glamping spot with a minimal of fuss; get away from things for a bit; clear the head, feel your body), explore a new book genre (I've been slowly getting into audio books), volunteer work (I joined my neighborhood HOA and try to bring my experience into solving little problems that others don't have the experience with; though there is the occasional neighbor drama, I'm on good terms with everyone and have regular and good conversations with neighbors while out walking or working in my yard). Anyhow, this is all to say that I think that as we age and mature in our careers, these ruts we find ourselves in require a more "holistic" approach to finding a way out.
• kraig911 4y ago
  I'm in the same boat. I don't have an answer I just think it's the state of the web industry. I feel like every project on the outset we're going to build a rocker to mars when we really just need to make a car to get around town. Worked at a startup with the most complicated possible software architecture just for an extremely simple product. There's a lot of mentality of just because it's possible we should plan for it. I want to work for a place where simple and less cheeseburger is preferred over an everything burger.
• dimgl 4y ago
  I definitely feel this a bit. I had to onboard onto Ruby and Rails recently and I truly hate it. That being said, the reason why it wasn't an absolute nightmare for me is because I have good foundational skills and I genuinely enjoy software development. These two things have made it very easy for me to onboard. I also strive to understand how the internals works, and that speeds me up tremendously. I'd encourage you to understand how the internals of Vue work. That way when you're working, you don't have to think about Vue itself, and just about what you're working on. If you really do feel like you're getting "dumber", start writing stuff down! The only way to truly never forget something is to understand it deeply, as if you can explain it to a 5 year old. Anyways, this is my advice. I'd be happy to chat offline if you want some more advice (in my early 30s).
• josefrichter 4y ago
  It might be that you're bored. A senior developer of 15 years making multiple 6 figures shouldn't be doing Vue/React/Angular. Someone like that should be tackling much more complex computer science topics. Of course there are people who are perfectly happy doing something like React their whole career. But if you're not happy, this could also be one of the causes.
• zdiscov 4y ago
  Something about these modern UI frameworks, like Vue, perhaps. The fact that one has to learn mind numbing levels of abstractions, contortions, domain specific knowledge, virtual DOM's and all this with the hindsight that this could soon be out the door just like any number of mootools, extJS's before it. All this effort to get a SPA or a smoother UX interaction doesn't seem to be as appealing. Given that the basic UX functionality can be achieved with plain html and js in a fraction of the time and effort (minus the smoothness) since the ~2010's.
• darepublic 4y ago
  I went through a similar spell recently. Went from being super motivated at one job, dragging my dubious co-workers kicking and screaming across the finish line, to playing video games most of the day and doing just enough to not completely give it away. Ironically the company where I didn't give a duck liked me quite a bit. I took a few months off work and it did wonders for me. YMMV but good luck to you
• deleted 4y ago
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• svilen_dobrev 4y ago
  sounds you're bored on that level (be it frontend or what, just coding). Change the level (does not mean going management ; things like say, language design, or, team/culture-leading/building, or mentorship are another levels/dimensions). Or switch into completely another job/geo/culture/.. for a while.. or find a hobby that can use your thinking skills, but in another way.. But yeah,.. change. While still in control.
• thedracle 4y ago
  I'm similar in that I've jumped between embedded, web dev, etc etc.. through my career, and it was always easy to learn new things. I think it was actually the newness of the things that made me interested and kept me focussed on them enough to break through and make changes. The JS world has left me feeling similarly fatigued when every couple of years there is a new variation on what seems to be the same old concepts, with very little conceptually different enough to make it feel like I'm learning something of value. Maybe deep inside your brain it knows this latest thing you're going to learn is likely to be quickly deprecated, and it just can't bring the dopamine levels in your brain up high enough to keep you focussed and interested. Definitely it can be burnout, but I wonder also if it could be ADHD linked? Inability to focus on something you have to focus on for your livelihood will absolutely lead to anxiety and depression. Switching to a different field (Cybersecurity) and writing EBPF tracing stuff really helped restore my confidence that I really enjoy writing software. A change of scenery can really help, and there are so many interesting new things to choose from out there.
• veidelis 4y ago
  "to the point where I question the most basic things in coding" What are those things? I maybe have a similar experience. I question every little detail that may add unnecessary complexity and I see those things as potentially limiting to overall outcome. Controversially those can be things like overuse of React's hooks leading to unwanted patterns, or Vue's special string syntax or Redux's issue with thunks, or MobX's OOP god like objects. I work on a large TS codebase. I have a strong opinion about how the code should look like, but it's discouraging to see how others don't pay enough attention to understand the long term effects of some unwanted patterns that lead to technical debt. Sometimes I think that my colleagues confuse simple vs easy. Also, I wouldn't rush to diagnose burnout or anything like that. It might be as simple as accumulation of experience leading to higher expectations. Nothing wrong about that.
• smilebot 4y ago
  Like others I also believe this sounds like burnout. From what you wrote, it looks like the work you’re having to do doesn’t align with your “passion” or what you care about. This is the usually the main cause of burnout. Few things that helped me: 1: Don’t try to cope with this by telling yourself that you’re “successful” in the eyes of the world and you should suck it up and keep going. 2: Keep figuring out what you enjoy and try to align work with it. Ofc it depends and there are trade offs. That being said, in your case can you ask your boss if you can try the other project to see if you like it? Some resources: youtube: healthygamergg “you are burned out and don’t even know it”
• enf 4y ago
  In my case it was hypothyroidism. See a doctor.
• bacan 4y ago
  For me it was pack of sleep. Sleep debt accumulates just like financial debt. Slept like crazy for 2-3 months. 12-14hrs daily. Much better now.
• mbrodersen 4y ago
  Burnout. Take a loooong break and stay away from anything code related.
• techsin101 4y ago
  It's true aging is real, but lot of people who are comparing themselves to interns forget that interns are starting from zero. It's harder to forget than it's to learn something new. My mom learned to record a video through an app, newer android version has even better screen recording software built-in but she couldn't get used to it and now is back onto the previous app. I tried working in a different language/framework, it killed me everyday having to do things differently. However, I taught myself Adobe After Effects, in 3 weeks I was doing very shopisticated animations that I didn't even know could be done by one human. If I had known some other animation program than my prev knowledge would have been working against me and frustration of relearning things.
• zfrank 4y ago
  Maybe you're not living according to your own definition of "success". You may have been motivated over the years to fit in to what you thought you were supposed to be doing, climbing a ladder, mastering the field, making more money, etc. And now you've reached a high wrung on that ladder and you're realizing it doesn't feel like what you thought "success" would feel like. You don't feel fulfilled, you don't feel genuinely interested. Maybe take a look inside and see if there's something else you'd rather be doing with your one wild and precious life.