Hello, throwthrowaway I can relate to what you're saying as I started at age 21 and after 6 years, was pretty much disillusioned with the industry. To be hones

Hello, throwthrowaway I can relate to what you're saying as I started at age 21 and after 6 years, was pretty much disillusioned with the industry. To be honest however, I never really bought in the whole "IT/software is eating the world" mantra and was tirelessly looking for an exit plan throughout my whole time working in corporate IT. However what fixed me wasn't the glory of moving to an exciting project or getting more pay, but taking time off and finding joy in what I'm working on in the moment. I know it sounds dense but I was getting depressed because I was getting older and didn't see myself progressing along like the dreams that people advertise here, like becoming a financially independent entrepreneur who influences the blogosphere or an influential programmer who has famous open-source project who is revered here. I equated professional success in the form of my salary, prestige associated with the project that I'm working on, the intellectual rigor associated with the tech stack that I'm working with - with my self-esteem. And I realized that life is too short to chase after these things instead of choosing to work what you want to work on but not being so hard on yourself to stop you from enjoying the process. I know that every time I switched jobs, I was angry and frustrated with my current one and aimed for higher salary and title to compensate for what perceived slights I've experienced. But ultimately it was self-sabotaging as I was responding to what others deemed to be successful instead of what I wanted to do. And beforehand, I was too scared to do what I wanted to do because I always thought I needed more money, more time and have other parts of my life ready to tackle the problem; but really, I was just scared of failure. But I think failure is the common lot of most folks, despite of what the VC promotion is; but if you can accept that and be happy with you just having the opportunity to work on your own thing and follow through, I personally found that more rewarding over money and arbitrary prestige.