4 ms·
Honestly, I can understand OP's frustration. I would be lying if I said I didn't think similar thoughts. But the truth is, you don't get do to what you want unl
by 10098 13y ago
Honestly, I can understand OP's frustration. I would be lying if I said I didn't think similar thoughts. But the truth is, you don't get do to what you want unless you're running your on company. Even if you are running your own company, you have to make sure you're doing the right thing in order to not go bankrupt.
I think having hobby projects can help provide a nice balance between doing whatever the hell you want and doing what is needed right now. It also gives you the opportunity to learn new things which you can maybe apply later to your actual job. As long as I have my favorite forever project, I won't be bored.
- joshlegs 13y agoprotip: every job is like this. I went into journalism because i LOVED reading and writing. Making it a career sapped the fun out of it. Now i'm coding professionally. It's much more fun than the pressures of journalism, but I do find myself sometimes thinking "this was more fun when I did it just for the heck of it"
- xxbondsxx 13y agoYou mean a job is sometimes work? How weird.
- javert 13y agoDon't shoot the messenger.
- _delirium 13y agoMost jobs, yeah. I do know a few engineers (the non-software type) whose interests seem surprisingly closely aligned with their jobs. One is a chip-design/layout person, and another is a chemical process engineer.
- inafewwords 13y agoI think jobs can be more fulfilling give you value in pursuing your interest beyond what's possible outside of a job. Such as a lab with expensive or hard to acquire equipment for research or fabrication. In some cases, it can be an opportunity to solve a problem beyond normal bounds of home hobbies. But programming many jobs seem like the types of thing you can do even without the job.
- Swizec 13y agoprotip: Be a very picky freelancer and only work on projects that interest you.
- SomeCallMeTim 13y agoBingo! Been there for a few years now. It's awesome. :)
- mamcx 13y agoNot always possible. I have something like that, then 3 months in the road the company lost his biggest customer and chop down the project/team!
- SomeCallMeTim 13y agoI think you're not understanding the premise. I don't work for "a company". I work for one of several companies, depending on the week/month, and sometimes two or more at the same time. Personally I prefer shorter contracts, but I have constant offers of longer contracts, so I could go that route if I wanted. But I also want time to work on my own projects. Though, in the abstract, sure, it's not always possible. This is advice along the lines of "Be Really Awesome and Have an Excellent Business Network." Not everyone can really follow it. But there are a LOT of freelance jobs floating around right now, so it's a good time to give it a try if you can.
- tootie 13y agoI'm having a mid-career crisis much like OP and the notion of freelancing is enticing. Can you tell me more about how it is more fulfilling, lees frustrating and how you find quality gigs?
- aaronem 13y agoI'd like to hear some more on this topic as well; I've got a few freelance clients whom I inherited from the (literally) flaming hulk of the company where I used to work, and I need the money, but the work they need done is so delightful that I'm thinking hard about getting out of freelancing entirely in order to concentrate on doing things I actually enjoy, instead of working every hour God sends. If there's some way to reconcile these increasingly divergent considerations, I haven't been able to find it.
- SomeCallMeTim 13y agoYes, a day job will require of you things you wouldn't CHOOSE to do. Yes, doing something as a job is less fun than just doing something for fun in your spare time. BUT: Speaking only of programming, which is what I choose to do, that extra work can be extremely fulfilling. No, you can't just be working on what you want all the time, but honestly most projects that are driven entirely by people's spare time end up incomplete. The list of exceptions is long, but the list of projects that are incomplete, in features or documentation or in handling of corner cases, is far, far longer. I love open source, but there are some domains that all the open source options suck. I think a big part of that is the amount of real, un-fun work required to really finish a project. And yet, when creating a project for a job, you (sometimes, at least) need to really finish it: Add the features your users need, handle those corner cases, write up that documentation. And having really completed a project and seeing the feedback from hundreds of users that find it to be awesome? THAT is amazingly fulfilling. Even if it's not fun every step of the way. I assume journalism can have similar benefits, but I can't speak to that.
- kyllo 13y agoprotip: every job is like this. True, and most of them also pay a lot less.
- michaelrkn 13y agoProtip to employers: Make your jobs interesting and fun, and you'll find that your employees are way more productive than you ever thought they could be.
- webjprgm 13y agoI find that at work I get more disheartened when I know there's a fun hobby project waiting for me at home. Part of OP's problem is that he, like me, started with programming as a hobby and still wishes it was. Note that in hobby programming there are still boring parts to push through. Additionally I still have to do sys admin work so I have a server for my website. And other such things. But as a hobby I can choose to pause it whenever I want. I can stop and go read a book instead. I can switch to another project just to keep working on something fresh then switch back when I have the energy to push through the boring part. Also, real work often has policies, paper work (digital version of it), politics, and all kinds of other stuff that gets in the way of just writing code and making nice software.