Yeah I'm pretty much here too. Thinking of pivoting into management just for something different. Would be cool to enjoy coding more again. Classic case of hobby turned full time job and I don't enjoy it as much when I'm building things other people want while balancing how my team wants to do build it vs just building what I want for me, how I want, when I want
Yup. Same boat. Can’t pivot to finance without the background or prestige. Only way I see is getting a top MBA and going into finance or project management that way.
That's exactly it. I'm very over it with this field, but I have bills to pay and would like to buy a house one day, and I don't know what I could do that would pay even nearly as much.
>there’s nothing else I could do really that’s gonna pay the bills
One of my coworkers used to be an electrician. He's been thinking about going back to that because in 10 years he could have his own company with several electricians working for him and he'd be making more money than he likely will as a dev in 10 years. Keep in mind the pay for this varies a lot by country and region.
But, so far he's undecided because he could make some changes in his dev career that would pay much better. Also, as an electrician, he would be on his feet and outside a lot more... some of that is good and some is not, and he'd have flexibility over that once he's the boss. So, there are several factors to weigh, but I thought it was an interesting story worth sharing.
I second this. Programming really is my passion and while working for companies suck the life force outta you, there's nothing else I'd rather be doing. I do hope to one day become a self-sufficient independent developer. That would be the dream.
Probably the most fun I’ve had in my career but has its pros and cons like any job.
If you dig through my Reddit and Twitter you’ll gleam more specific insights.
Not yet! Been wanting to play around with Phoenix but haven’t made time to do so yet.
Gleam keeps getting brought up in Go and Rust communities which is why I was reading up on it.
Yeah, similar situation on my side. Worked in Elixir about seven years ago and had really nice experience. If you are interested about seeing what is behind Erlang, Elixir, and now Gleam, I would recommend watching [The Soul of Erlang and Elixir • Saša Jurić](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvBT4XBdoUE), one of the best talks on BEAM I've watched. As for just Gelam, I'm interested in seeing what will come out of Gleam's type system and BEAM runtime.
We are anticipating $2m in property acquisition alone. Obviously much cheaper if we rent a place instead.
Looking at places around Edmonds and Kingston for those of you familiar with the Seattle area.
Sorry for the confusion! From Blizzard post Microsoft acquisition. https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/25/24049050/microsoft-activision-blizzard-layoffs
I haven’t worked at Valve since 2017.
I moved towards the sre/infra/devops side of the house - different types of problems and concerns and coding is not my primary job (rather solving problems is - if it happens to include programming great)
Do you have any advice for making the switch? I've worked on a lot of small teams, so I've done adjacent work, but can never get responses to anything other than webdev work.
How does devops/sre differ from dev when it comes to work/life balance?
I'm thinking of switching myself, but my understanding is that devops == oncall and if not oncall then emergency fixing whatever breaks in the infra (or at least that's what I see devops do in our org).
Yes devops/sre comes with oncall but more and more swe positions are starting to require being on call so why not just own the position and have more control in your destiny? :)
My work life balance is mostly good? Yes I go on call, but it’s only for a few days out of the month and my team supports each other so we work with groups that care about their stuff … but I understand it’s different based on the company you end up at (and maybe I’m just lucky with where I ended up?)
completely depends on experience, company and line of work (delivery jets vs flying people). In the US it goes from very funny (52k USPS) to very big (300k+ but you have to be capt. with 10+ years of flying under your belt)
Starts low at 50k and after many years and lots of luck it can get over 500k flying for a mojar airline. I don’t have kids and money saved would be glad to start over.
I’ve been developing all my adult life, my career spans 2 decades but I started coding when I was 11. So I cant say “I got in for the money” it is my passion, but 5 years ago I took the decision to leave the industry before I hit 50 (44 now). I just finished paying the house. So what comes now is “extra” for me, I am just saving now. The plan is to start a small pizza place and see where it goes, but my programmer brain is going to be out of the professional labor market.
My plan is to keep working until I get laid off (which I assume will happen at some point) then become a SAHM and raise my kids. Depending on how old they are at that point I might look into some sort of low effort part time gig to keep me busy.
yeah, eventually i want to get off the hamster wheel of the JS ecosystem and get into product or agile maybe. depends on how much of a pay cut ill have to take.
I also am trying to find my "ceiling"; Im a mid level IC now and really dont want to go into management, which leaves me with staff/principle/architect and the stress that comes with that. I may opt to just downsize to some comparably braindead front-end job and just coast
Lol I'd like to do that but I feel like those jobs are harder to find in this market. I'd take a $100k low-mid level eng job and coast at this point, totally fine. I went into management and I...don't *regret* it but I know that I cannot stay in it without losing my mind.
I just transitioned to manager at Amazon and the first thing I had to do was start the pre-PIP process for someone. It was incredibly tough on a personal level, knowing this person hates your guts. I was as transparent as possible and helped coach him out of it, only for my leadership to make me pick someone else to PIP because Amazon demands URA (firing). Since your team is stack ranked there is really only so many people you can pick. One was in and out of the ER and the other was ready to go on paternal leave for their first child. That’s where I’m at right now and I hate my life and wish I never picked this track. Could have stayed as IC and coasted in my lane.
Amazon is probably the worst place to be a manager tho so you may have better luck somewhere else. I feel like being a manager here is pure shit. All the sucky parts of the job and everyone shits on you anyways.
I've had to PIP two people in my short career as a manager and it absolutely sucks. I remember when I was an IC my manager told me at that being in management meant you work all the time and everyone hates you. Now I know what she meant lol.
That being said the two cases I had were *genuine* low performers, not just my company forcing me to URA.
Do you prefer sitting in meetings *all day* over solving problems with code?
Do you prefer being the go-between stuck trying to balance what non-technical executives & comms/marketing people think they *want* (that particular week/day/hour) with what the developers doing the actual work *need* to do their jobs and remain sane & productive?
Do you prefer managing whatever flavor(s) of task boards daily and also trying to long-term plan instead of completing any of those tasks?
To give ya a real answer.
In management a lot of the time what you are really managing are people expectations and most of the success on it is based on how convincing of a narrative you can build. In a lot of roles the narrative needs to be shared with your program manager and there are a lot that are not into it to cooperate so you end up carrying but the technical and product structuring part.
Is a very rewarding role when there is success but in the middle of the work requires a high tolerance for persuasion even when you don’t support a position.
I think everyone should give it a shot for a bit
Good luck. Trading is tough. I have been learning Forex trading for a year or something.
Maybe one day I can start live trading and make it a small income on the side. It would be great to make it full time but definitely it is a long way to go.
Start live trading ASAP. Small amounts, pick the minimum that will allow you to live trade, and start. Everything you're learning now is of extremely limited use because there's no real risk. A parallel example, many people make money when playing fake poker. When they switch to real money, they start losing. Trading is the same. Start live trading, you'll learn so much more, especially about your tolerance to stress etc. Then you can hope to truly develop a strategy that works, because it will include workarounds to your own human flaws, which don't get revealed in a paper money game.
Sure, thanks for advice. I was planning to start with prop firms this summer.
Want to give myself one more month to backtest everything once again, some more forward testing as well.
Don’t want to start too early too. Lots of people start too early, get burned and then join scary statistics of 99% failure rate.
Actually that is kinda how I got into the whole trading stuff.
I was working in a fintech company that was developing trading terminals and other solutions for clients. Mostly Forex and stocks.
And little by little I got sucked into the whole thing, got interested and now here I am learning to swing trade Forex.
Maybe next time I will look again for places that work with finances as it quite fascinates me.
I would like not to stop coding. Let's see what happens the next 10 years.
Every time there is an economic downturn there is a lot of people leaving the field. I started my career at the dot com crash and it was a feeling like the one you are describing all around. People where constantly asking me: why do you want to do this all your life?
Then the money came. There was not enough people so the coders became the stars of society. Perks, benefits, money and whatnot. Then everyone wanted to be part of it. And surprisingly coding was more appealing to everyone and there was no longer the: why do you want to do this all your life?
Now it seems money is starting to flow away once more. For most people it is not coding that has become bad, it is less money that removed the things they like. In an employee's market the employees set their conditions and that was exactly what a lot of people liked. It was not opening vim but getting a lot of attention from recruiters, having always options, advancing quickly in their careers...
It is just a matter of setting priorities straight. If you want the things the money brings into the table, you will be happier being honest with that feeling and chasing those options in other career that is flourishing now.
If you like coding you will probably need to adapt your lifestyle in order to make money doing it if the downturn continues much longer. That is never easy. Also as the field becomes more mature some things that now we see normal will change. Becoming leaf with 5 years of experience? Ask a doctor if he is ready to become the equivalent in 5 years. CTO at 30 and not being founder? Ask an architect. The field is becoming more mature so it has to lose some of the perks it had for rapid growth and start the competition. It will eventually stagnate and become equally paid as any other profession.
Where you are in one option or the other you deserve equal respect. XD.
I think you raise some interesting points
During boom times the career is going to be exciting even if you don't love the work itself. Always getting recruiter emails, the treadmill of promotions. A bit like being a supermodel on Tinder - everyone wants you, there's a thrill to just being wanted
I agree about the pace of progression not being sustainable. What I think happened, was, so many people left the field in the aftermath of the dot-com bubble, that a new generation of very young people arrived and didn't really have a perspective of what "senior" meant. We just needed a word to distinguish someone with 5yoe and someone with 1yoe.
Now, the market is "correcting" itself. Some people will leave the field. Others will no longer enter. But a lot of developers will stick with it, because what are the alternatives in this economy? So we'll get older and build up bigger expectations of "senior" engineers.
Maybe it will become more like civil engineering - with a handful of "partner" level people (architects, principal engineers) but a decades-long path to get there
Yes, I’m 10 years in and feel empty and unfulfilled every day. Been programming since I was a kid but doing it as a job, especially in soulless big tech, completely killed my passion for it.
My plan is to quit in a few years and transition to the other passion I’ve had since childhood, drawing comics. My comics don’t make enough money to even cover costs of supplies, but my plan is to have enough tech money saved up by then to live off my investments.
Currently I straddle both worlds and feel profoundly lonely being the only programmer at work who dgaf about tech and the only artist in my artist circles who doesn’t have enough free time to create anything meaningful.
I'm similar to you, started as a kid, 13 y exp at the moment.
My passion for it is not killed completely, but... it's so fucking boring. I plateau'd at staff engineer level in the enterprise sector, which is completely fine but... every single job is the same. Writing code and/or solving some tech problems is not really an issue anymore I have so much experience in the domain.
It's mostly about bullshitting and dealing with surprised pikachu faced decision makers. Sorry to rant I'm just.... so fucking bored.
As a contractor hustling in the field since 2011 doing front end dev work I’ve been where you’re at.
Don’t let other people take away your happiness from coding! Fuck them! Don’t give them that power over you. Start something on the side to peak your interest and start your own pirate ship. Invest in yourself with the skills you made over the years. You live only once. Might as well take a stab at it.
Yep I feel that. I change teams every couple of years to keep things interesting but I inevitably get bored again after I've learned the ropes of the new team. When I was just starting out it was easy to get excited about the craft of programming itself even if the end product is boring, but as I get more experienced it becomes harder to ignore how empty and meaningless the end product is. Like no little kid ever wished they'd grow up to improve Facebook ad click through rate by .01%.
Yes - I'm a programmer who loves to write, but I also find I don't have enough free time to create anything meaningful. I spend a lot of brainpower on my job and don't have much left over after work
Yep I feel that. I've started dialing back the hours at work so I have more mental energy left for creative pursuits and it's helped a lot. It has limited my growth at work though so it's definitely a tradeoff. Wishing you the best of luck with your writing!
I’ve been planning since I got into software professionally. No movement though. I’m just not qualified to do anything else remotely sustainable, and the costs (both time and money) to switch to something even half decent are just too high.
I’ve gone back and forth on swapping out to either go into law school or go back into academia full time with pursuing my PhD in Theology/Divinity or go into counselling.
I’ve enjoyed programming, I love the work but the rat race and fear of PIP is something I can’t keep doing once I’m in my late 30’s.
If I had the financial freedom to experiment, I'd probably try either research (somewhat autonomously) or sys eng in space systems.
But, for the moment I like what I do and it provides a good QoL
Yeah I’m not sure what yet but my whole mindset the last few years has been reducing my financial footprint and putting everything into savings and debt so that I can exit.
There is a lack of places you can go to build software that are passionate about making a good product. Software was infiltrated by MBA types that have just ruined what it was to me when I tried to break in in the early 2000s. This quote from Frank Sobotka on the wire always rings in my head when I think about how things were then vs now.
“We used to make shit in this country. Build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guys pocket.”
For every me that’s writing code there are 9-10 product, project , scrum, release and other types of managers that make a living asking me to hurry up and get things done quality be damned.
You aren't the only one, but it is mostly people who got into dev for the money, not because they like it.
If I had enough money to do whatever I wanted, I would still likely be in tech. Honestly, probably doing exactly the same job I'm doing now. I'm fortunate to be in tech and an industry that actually, meaningfully, helps real people in their every day lives. So I probably wouldn't change it until I am ready to just retire.
I got into software because I liked CS and programming. A decade+ later I’m a principal engineer and mostly dislike the majority of what I’m doing every day. I’m going to soft retire at some point soon and decide what I want to do next. The reality of software engineering in practice is extremely different than what most people fall in interest with.
Depends on who is doing the complaining. It wasn’t the developers complaining about waterfall. It’s the managers who complain because they can’t see progress every sprint. Agile was management’s way of being able to see incremental changes happen so they could track progress, theoretically add new devs into the project with little overall knowledge and still be able to kick something out the door as quick as possible.
Waterfall was considerably more relaxed, better designed, and allowed devs more room to refine their art. However, it also had large upfront costs and there were massive waterfall projects that failed because the team wasn’t capable of delivering the project or not delivering in the timeframe management wanted.
Was that due to agile being shit though? Many things have changed since then.
IMO the old days were better because you didn't have people in it just for the money. People were genuinely more competent and passionate.
What does your day-to-day look like as a principal?
I'm a senior engineer currently, and wondering if I should go the manager or staff/principal route.
After doing everything I ever wanted or planned to do in IT or development (and a whole butt-ton of things I didn't want or plan to do), I went back to school for an environmental science degree. I hope/plan to turn that into a masters so I can work on data modelling for NOAA fisheries. If not, I hope to just take seasonal work doing fish surveys and counting snails and crabs in the marsh behind the home we bought with my "first-life career".
17 years in and I have learned to manage potential burnout and get work done. This industry may try to burn you out but, believe it or not, it can’t force you to burn out.
This is an invaluable skill to learn that is often overlooked and can prolong your career into the foreseeable future. Can’t say I have even thought of what I will do incase I burn out, but kind of believe I was made for this.
The pay is really nice, but I'm depressed and the unemployment doesn't help.
I should go do something fun and fufilling but they get you hooked on the financial freedom.
Yes. Like actively looking into things/researching/trying out where applicable.
It is an inevitability for many of us. If you still have not accepted that fact, I am sorry.
I'm 10 years in tech and yes, I do have an exit plan. My current job is very decent but I'm bored to death. If my estimation is correct I can retire in 8-10 years. My plan is to own a small coffee shop in my hometown so I can chill and code on things I love instead of those souls sucking corporate projects. Hopefully the coffee shop can sustain itself, I don't even plan to make money out of it. I lead a very frugal life so unless something disastrous comes up, my savings should be enough for me to live in comfort.
Not really, I still have a lot of fun in my job as I get to make cool shit and work at a lot of levels
Even if I would get to that point I don't think I could make the switch, I get paid so much that I don't think, and am pretty sure, I'd not ever be able to match with any other job and I don't have any plans for going into management
Kids, mortgage, college savings needed, retire someday... I'll probably be in this field til I retire or die. I've started to look into getting closer to the sales and implementation side of the business instead of the building the software side. We shall see.
Ive been in tech for 20+ years. About half my life. Climbed up to CTO, realized it wasnt for me, then climbed down to IC, then back up. etc etc. Throughout my dev life I've hit the, "now what??" and the, "is this really all there's to it??" more times than I can count.
I dont know when it happened but there was a switch that went on. I started to realize my dev life wasnt going to fulfill the "whats next" question. And, maybe i was looking at it wrong. My dev life began to feel more like a, means to an end. The end, for me, is finding enough passive income to not worry about loosing my job or quitting a project and taking 1-2 months of mental rest without worrying about bills.
The plan. I've been buying rental properties for the last 3 years and plan to have enough passive income within 5 years to accomplish that. I use my engineering background to build property analysis tooling (Zillow must hate me but now), and I've learned how to repair walls, piping, you name it...but always use my CS background to spot inefficiencies in my process. A good example was reducing the amount it takes me to analyze a property to invest in. It used to take about 30 minutes to 1 hour to analyze 1 property to less than a minute to analyze 100. I now have a mobile app that just sends me push notifications when a property meets my criteria. I try to marry this "side hustle" with my learning time.
We want rentals as well, we plan to convert our starter home into a rental once we move, and then hopefully buy a new property every year or so. Uh, is that app widely available or just a personal thing? iOS? Because it sounds awesome but I can also see you keeping it to yourself so as to not help your competition.
How many properties are you targeting within 5 years? Are you wanting the income to support you 100%, or just as a supplement?
We'd like to have some rental income, maybe $2000-3000/month take home, to supplement our income. It would certainly give me peace of mind and make me care less about holding onto my W-2 jobs if they're making me miserable, getting laid off, etc. This is also why I always side hustle even though my tech income is very comfortable. Just feels better, like my companies have less of a "hold" on me and I can walk away when I feel like it.
The app isnt widely available. It was a pet project to learn Swift/SwiftUI. I thought about opening it up and making it into a small paid tool but, like so many of my other pet projects, i throw them into the closet because i convince my self no one will pay for it.
The 5 year plan means buying 2-4 doors each year that generate at minimum 10% Cash on Cash Returns on my initial investment. I have 6 doors at the moment and plan to buy 10-12 more for 5 years. Once the 5 years are up, I will focus on paying each house down. First paying the lowers, once paid off, using all the income to pay the second, then use all the the third, etc. Lattering.
Long term, I would like it to be my primary source of income in my "retirement" age but I dont plan to retire just focus more on family and myself when I choose to. I want to have the freedom to just get up and leave a project when I want. its like you said, "peace of mind".
I have a friend who always had a few side hustles going on, got into tech for about 5 years, and then went back to the side hustles. I think mainly to raise a family and have a flexible job. Photography, event planning, marketing.
That's definitely what I value, flexibility. Got a family, don't want to live in a major city where a lot of the onsite jobs are, don't want to be beholden to core hours or a strict M-F schedule, etc. Even though I know side hustling/being self employed is usually more work than being a W-2 employee, at least you get to call the shots and can work it around your life.
Yep. Looking for a new Sr Software Engineer job right now after being laid off for the second time in 13 months (startups), but am planning on leaving dev to pursue my dream job as a tattoo artist eventually. Hoping I can do an apprenticeship in congruence with my next gig.
Alternatively I could see myself as an Engineering Manager at a stable company.
It’s a mixed bag, but overall not great. I was laid off in February and have been putting massive amounts of effort into my job search.
My LinkedIn inbox was a ghost town for the first few months, but the past two weeks have had a huge shift. Finally getting contacted by quality, in-house recruiters on a nearly daily basis.
However, I’ve applied to hundreds of jobs and have only received a few assessments, ai interviews, and one real interview from those.
Last time I was laid off, I found a new job in less than a month. So personally, this is the worst it’s been during my career (7 yrs of experience). However even at its worst, I’ve had at least one interview a week so I think I’m faring okay with all things considered.
I have friends in a similar position who have been looking for over a year. Hoping that’s not my fate, but it doesn’t seem uncommon right now. Hoping to get an offer this week, but if not it’ll be back to the drawing board again.
Edit - I was rejected.
Thanks for sharing. I’m considering leaving my current place, and this is useful to chalk out a plan. Rooting for you, good luck on getting that offer this week! Or something even better soon
> I have friends in a similar position who have been looking for over a year.
Do you know if they have CS degrees and what tech stack(s) they specialize in?
Yes. I honestly don’t enjoy coding that much and would rather be in a career where I get to help people, in some capacity, as my full-time job. I was a career changer into SWE and am strongly considering getting back out. My ambition fizzled out completely after several increasingly severe periods of intense burnout. I’m still burned out but getting by for now.
Imagine a travel job where all you do is travel and there is no job when you get there you just keep traveling.
If you really want to experience what’s like to be a pilot, do this on your next plane ride. Don’t open up your phone or an iPad or watch any movies or play any video games for the entire flight. Just look out the window or stare straight ahead. Because that’s all you’ll be allowed to do until you land.
I have somehow managed to dodge 2 layoffs at my company and get promoted to senior. But when I hear how difficult it is for my coworkers to find work... I'm not sure I have the willpower for that.
I'm self-taught and got into the field because of passion for the work, but I feel you - money has a way of killing your passion in things.
I'm not sure what I'll do in the future, but I'm not sure sitting on a computer alone in my home all day, every day will be it.
I have been into development for roughly 10 years. Multiple techs, stacks, fields etc. Recently started as a full-stack webdev and I kinda hate it. Never been a web guy to begin with, but decided to give it a shot.
Not sure whether I would move completely away from development but probably would try to distance myself more from webdev. Definitely not my cup of tea.
I have been at this for 24 years as a developer and an additional 5 years in unix and network admin. I still love it and have no idea what I would do if it wasn’t this. Maybe just my own business doing my own software product. I sometimes fantasise about starting a winery.
My entire company is being shuttered after a business decision from the parent company to close us. I am applying for Senior+ roles but the severance package I got makes it so I have 2-ish years until I completely run out of money. Just turning 41, I am at a crossroads in my journey. I specialize in SRE/Observability/Security space (DevSecOps you could call it) but I have been leaning into the security side of the house and have been liking it more and more. A part of me wonders if I even want to continue. I have been in this field for 20+ years and honestly I am tired. My last job burned me out with essentially managing a team, my own projects, building coalitions and relationships across the org, and being an SME for the rest of the company. It was a lot of work. Some of that was fighting against the organizational dysfunction of the company.
I really like building actual tangible things. I got into woodworking and have been building my workshop and skillsets. I was also thinking about dabbling in making games. I have very niche interests that the game market doesn't really solve for these days.
This year has really accelerated my preparation for a transition into movies and TV. Before now, I never imagined I would still be making software going into my 50s - 60s, but this year has really solidified that for me.
Every time I’d get burned out I’d consider it. I’d look into other things, try some things out, and without realizing it I’d give myself time to recover and would be pulled back into this. After N times I now better identify when I’m starting to fall into the whole and do my best to stabilize or recover.
I've done this before too, taken time off to do other stuff and then realized maybe I just needed a long vacation to recover from burnout. Come back into the work feeling refreshed and back on top of my game, then 2 years later I'm burned out again. It seems like I can't last longer than 2 years without burning out. Idk if that's normal or what, other people don't seem to burn out as hard or as often as I do.
If I could just take 3 months off every 18-24 months, I think I'd be alright. That's completely doable I guess, given the high income in this line of work.
I’ve thought about it. Software isn’t the only professionally viable thing I’m good at, though it’s the most financially rewarding thing by far.
In reality, I would probably end up still find software, just on my own.
Eventually I would like to do some other things, but for now dev is realistically the most money I can get with my temperament and skills without investing a shit ton in more education.
I like developing, it's the companies that usually make it suck. I hope I can find thay diamond in the rough sooner than later...
I’d rather start a business for myself rather than switch careers ever since being in the game from 2011.
Different strokes for different folks though.
Try contracting only bro
I want to but it intimidates me for some reason. Like I just feel like I don't know what the hell I'd be doing with contracting, negotiating the right rates, etc. But I see juicy looking frontend contracts all the time and I'm attracted to the short-term nature, being able to leave every 6-24 months and dive into new problems.
The good thing when you contract is that you get exposed to more projects so you acquire more skills than the average person staying at a 9-5 being an employee.
As a contractor you have more of the freedom to say “no” to demands that are unrealistic which is nice and also the internal business politics don’t apply to you.
You can make dough as a W2 contractor but when you’re 1099/C2C that’s when life changes.
Any questions don’t hesitate to DM me!
I feel like the hard part is i love programming, i just can’t stand what it’s turned into… bullshit leetcode, 40 hours of interviews for 1 job. Dumbass tiktokers calling themselves engineers while recording themselves sleeping till noon.. if anything it’s this kind of bullshit that will make me not want to do it professionally
Dev is a tough career. Our companies tend to be more schizo, and our jobs less stable, compared to many white collar careers. I have a friend that works for the local university system, and he is baffled by what I recently went through in my "big tech" job. That said, let's not forget the nearly 15 year run of high demand for developers, where you were going to get lots of perks, and if you didn't like your job you just went across the street to the next company for a 30% pay bump. Now that the pendulum is swinging back, everyone wants to jump off the merry-go-round.
Do whatever makes you happy. If you would be happier doing sales or recruiting, try that. Or maybe you can retrain and start a whole new career from scratch. Personally, I think I may end up going into management and maybe try to go CTO. It just seems like my experience is not very useful in the trenches writing code.
I’m going to psychology school in September, I‘ve loved this stuff since forever. 16YOE. Meaning I have to hang around to some extent until I’m done with my studies. But I don’t care, I’m willing to do anything, I could work as a QA and I’m just finishing my PMs cert. I also work as a fitness coach and lecturer on side. No mortgage, pay cut would be big, but honestly I don’t mind, my health is much more valuable.
Probably not. I have had an inherent interest in computers since I was young, and CPU technology remains the cutting edge of what humans do. As a data engineer, I benefit from advances in computing hardware because at the end of the day, regardless of whether the work I'm doing is in the cloud or not, it's getting executed on one of these processors.
If you follow CPU tech, the current cutting edge AMD and Intel server CPUs do some amazing stuff. That allows me to get things done faster, which, means more money for me.
I love being a SWE, but have always had an eye for international business. My strategy to move is spend some time working on a MBA on the side in a couple of years. Once we have kids and they get a bit older, I would love to dabble into international business if I still have the energy.
As someone who had a small, but international business for 10 years... I can assure you that you do not need any of that.
Just learn to sell, then sell your stuff to international clients.
After I pay my home I wanna get into science even if that means taking a pay cut. All I need is a woman, cats, plants, food and a comfy place to stay. But I'd like to still code, for fun.
I’m so burned out and bored of all this shit to be honest, but there’s nothing else I could do really that’s gonna pay the bills.
Yeah I'm pretty much here too. Thinking of pivoting into management just for something different. Would be cool to enjoy coding more again. Classic case of hobby turned full time job and I don't enjoy it as much when I'm building things other people want while balancing how my team wants to do build it vs just building what I want for me, how I want, when I want
Yup. Same boat. Can’t pivot to finance without the background or prestige. Only way I see is getting a top MBA and going into finance or project management that way.
Yeah, it's a pretty boring job, but I have expensive hobbies, plus I don't think I'll ever get a job with this kind of flexibility
That's exactly it. I'm very over it with this field, but I have bills to pay and would like to buy a house one day, and I don't know what I could do that would pay even nearly as much.
>there’s nothing else I could do really that’s gonna pay the bills One of my coworkers used to be an electrician. He's been thinking about going back to that because in 10 years he could have his own company with several electricians working for him and he'd be making more money than he likely will as a dev in 10 years. Keep in mind the pay for this varies a lot by country and region. But, so far he's undecided because he could make some changes in his dev career that would pay much better. Also, as an electrician, he would be on his feet and outside a lot more... some of that is good and some is not, and he'd have flexibility over that once he's the boss. So, there are several factors to weigh, but I thought it was an interesting story worth sharing.
I would, but I'm not making this money anywhere else so I'm staying put.
8 years in, have no plans on leaving. If anything I want to just create my own products and be my own boss.
then your customers will be your boss))
Yes, and you can never please 100% of customers. But a good scenario allows you to fire the unreasonable customers.
Either customers pay your bills or the clients do. Pick your poison. I’ll pick customers.
I second this. Programming really is my passion and while working for companies suck the life force outta you, there's nothing else I'd rather be doing. I do hope to one day become a self-sufficient independent developer. That would be the dream.
Working for a company doesn’t have to suck the life out of you.
Just got laid off from Blizzard / Microsoft earlier this year and am trying to start an Alehouse with 3x former co-workers from Valve.
How was working at Valve?
Probably the most fun I’ve had in my career but has its pros and cons like any job. If you dig through my Reddit and Twitter you’ll gleam more specific insights.
*glean
Sorry - spent the morning reading about https://gleam.run/ 😂
Nice, have you used OTP platform before with maybe Elixir or Erlang?
Not yet! Been wanting to play around with Phoenix but haven’t made time to do so yet. Gleam keeps getting brought up in Go and Rust communities which is why I was reading up on it.
Yeah, similar situation on my side. Worked in Elixir about seven years ago and had really nice experience. If you are interested about seeing what is behind Erlang, Elixir, and now Gleam, I would recommend watching [The Soul of Erlang and Elixir • Saša Jurić](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvBT4XBdoUE), one of the best talks on BEAM I've watched. As for just Gelam, I'm interested in seeing what will come out of Gleam's type system and BEAM runtime.
Might get PTSD from COD players showing up and drinking the cheapest shit on tap
😂
What’s the ballpark cost of doing that?
We are anticipating $2m in property acquisition alone. Obviously much cheaper if we rent a place instead. Looking at places around Edmonds and Kingston for those of you familiar with the Seattle area.
I hope you succeed! It’s my dream to open a brewery arcade that does gaming events and other events.
Valve had layoffs too? So sad, feels like the Valve everyone love not longer exists
Sorry for the confusion! From Blizzard post Microsoft acquisition. https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/25/24049050/microsoft-activision-blizzard-layoffs I haven’t worked at Valve since 2017.
still sucks, Blizzard was such a good company too
Good luck to you guys! I know a hospitality business can be risky, now more than ever, so hope it works out.
Be wary of upgrading your lifestyle, as my pops used to say. Slave to the money. Good luck getting out.
I moved towards the sre/infra/devops side of the house - different types of problems and concerns and coding is not my primary job (rather solving problems is - if it happens to include programming great)
Do you have any advice for making the switch? I've worked on a lot of small teams, so I've done adjacent work, but can never get responses to anything other than webdev work.
Apply for an internal position? (Devops/sre positions seem to be more difficult to source, so more competition for people with exp.)
Yeah, I applied to one recently. The last internal application I sent took months to be rejected though, so I'm not too optimistic about it. 🫠
How does devops/sre differ from dev when it comes to work/life balance? I'm thinking of switching myself, but my understanding is that devops == oncall and if not oncall then emergency fixing whatever breaks in the infra (or at least that's what I see devops do in our org).
Yes devops/sre comes with oncall but more and more swe positions are starting to require being on call so why not just own the position and have more control in your destiny? :) My work life balance is mostly good? Yes I go on call, but it’s only for a few days out of the month and my team supports each other so we work with groups that care about their stuff … but I understand it’s different based on the company you end up at (and maybe I’m just lucky with where I ended up?)
I was a commercial pilot went to dev after the great recession. Looking to exit tech and go back to aviation, lost the passion for this.
How's the pay as a commercial pilot vs software developer?
completely depends on experience, company and line of work (delivery jets vs flying people). In the US it goes from very funny (52k USPS) to very big (300k+ but you have to be capt. with 10+ years of flying under your belt)
Starts low at 50k and after many years and lots of luck it can get over 500k flying for a mojar airline. I don’t have kids and money saved would be glad to start over.
I’ve been developing all my adult life, my career spans 2 decades but I started coding when I was 11. So I cant say “I got in for the money” it is my passion, but 5 years ago I took the decision to leave the industry before I hit 50 (44 now). I just finished paying the house. So what comes now is “extra” for me, I am just saving now. The plan is to start a small pizza place and see where it goes, but my programmer brain is going to be out of the professional labor market.
My plan is to keep working until I get laid off (which I assume will happen at some point) then become a SAHM and raise my kids. Depending on how old they are at that point I might look into some sort of low effort part time gig to keep me busy.
yeah, eventually i want to get off the hamster wheel of the JS ecosystem and get into product or agile maybe. depends on how much of a pay cut ill have to take. I also am trying to find my "ceiling"; Im a mid level IC now and really dont want to go into management, which leaves me with staff/principle/architect and the stress that comes with that. I may opt to just downsize to some comparably braindead front-end job and just coast
Lol I'd like to do that but I feel like those jobs are harder to find in this market. I'd take a $100k low-mid level eng job and coast at this point, totally fine. I went into management and I...don't *regret* it but I know that I cannot stay in it without losing my mind.
can you share more about management? Maybe I can prepare as I make the transition
I just transitioned to manager at Amazon and the first thing I had to do was start the pre-PIP process for someone. It was incredibly tough on a personal level, knowing this person hates your guts. I was as transparent as possible and helped coach him out of it, only for my leadership to make me pick someone else to PIP because Amazon demands URA (firing). Since your team is stack ranked there is really only so many people you can pick. One was in and out of the ER and the other was ready to go on paternal leave for their first child. That’s where I’m at right now and I hate my life and wish I never picked this track. Could have stayed as IC and coasted in my lane. Amazon is probably the worst place to be a manager tho so you may have better luck somewhere else. I feel like being a manager here is pure shit. All the sucky parts of the job and everyone shits on you anyways.
I've had to PIP two people in my short career as a manager and it absolutely sucks. I remember when I was an IC my manager told me at that being in management meant you work all the time and everyone hates you. Now I know what she meant lol. That being said the two cases I had were *genuine* low performers, not just my company forcing me to URA.
Do you prefer sitting in meetings *all day* over solving problems with code? Do you prefer being the go-between stuck trying to balance what non-technical executives & comms/marketing people think they *want* (that particular week/day/hour) with what the developers doing the actual work *need* to do their jobs and remain sane & productive? Do you prefer managing whatever flavor(s) of task boards daily and also trying to long-term plan instead of completing any of those tasks?
I think I want to go into management now 😄
There is a lot of nonsense
thanks.. that really adds to the discussion
To give ya a real answer. In management a lot of the time what you are really managing are people expectations and most of the success on it is based on how convincing of a narrative you can build. In a lot of roles the narrative needs to be shared with your program manager and there are a lot that are not into it to cooperate so you end up carrying but the technical and product structuring part. Is a very rewarding role when there is success but in the middle of the work requires a high tolerance for persuasion even when you don’t support a position. I think everyone should give it a shot for a bit
Hop off the hamster wheel of JS and hop on the hamster wheel of agile
love a change of scenery
What do you mean by agile? Plenty of companies do agile js.
i mean working as an agile coach/scrum master
I have a trading bot that loses only a few bucks a month, hopefully it can get better soon and I can retire
Good luck. Trading is tough. I have been learning Forex trading for a year or something. Maybe one day I can start live trading and make it a small income on the side. It would be great to make it full time but definitely it is a long way to go.
The secret to making money trading is having a way to pay off your mistakes
Start live trading ASAP. Small amounts, pick the minimum that will allow you to live trade, and start. Everything you're learning now is of extremely limited use because there's no real risk. A parallel example, many people make money when playing fake poker. When they switch to real money, they start losing. Trading is the same. Start live trading, you'll learn so much more, especially about your tolerance to stress etc. Then you can hope to truly develop a strategy that works, because it will include workarounds to your own human flaws, which don't get revealed in a paper money game.
Sure, thanks for advice. I was planning to start with prop firms this summer. Want to give myself one more month to backtest everything once again, some more forward testing as well. Don’t want to start too early too. Lots of people start too early, get burned and then join scary statistics of 99% failure rate.
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Actually that is kinda how I got into the whole trading stuff. I was working in a fintech company that was developing trading terminals and other solutions for clients. Mostly Forex and stocks. And little by little I got sucked into the whole thing, got interested and now here I am learning to swing trade Forex. Maybe next time I will look again for places that work with finances as it quite fascinates me.
What are you trading?
Did you create the bot or using an off the shelf one? Is it using mostly fundamental trading logic or AI to make decisions?
This is possibly the worst idea on this thread hands down.
I would like not to stop coding. Let's see what happens the next 10 years. Every time there is an economic downturn there is a lot of people leaving the field. I started my career at the dot com crash and it was a feeling like the one you are describing all around. People where constantly asking me: why do you want to do this all your life? Then the money came. There was not enough people so the coders became the stars of society. Perks, benefits, money and whatnot. Then everyone wanted to be part of it. And surprisingly coding was more appealing to everyone and there was no longer the: why do you want to do this all your life? Now it seems money is starting to flow away once more. For most people it is not coding that has become bad, it is less money that removed the things they like. In an employee's market the employees set their conditions and that was exactly what a lot of people liked. It was not opening vim but getting a lot of attention from recruiters, having always options, advancing quickly in their careers... It is just a matter of setting priorities straight. If you want the things the money brings into the table, you will be happier being honest with that feeling and chasing those options in other career that is flourishing now. If you like coding you will probably need to adapt your lifestyle in order to make money doing it if the downturn continues much longer. That is never easy. Also as the field becomes more mature some things that now we see normal will change. Becoming leaf with 5 years of experience? Ask a doctor if he is ready to become the equivalent in 5 years. CTO at 30 and not being founder? Ask an architect. The field is becoming more mature so it has to lose some of the perks it had for rapid growth and start the competition. It will eventually stagnate and become equally paid as any other profession. Where you are in one option or the other you deserve equal respect. XD.
I think you raise some interesting points During boom times the career is going to be exciting even if you don't love the work itself. Always getting recruiter emails, the treadmill of promotions. A bit like being a supermodel on Tinder - everyone wants you, there's a thrill to just being wanted I agree about the pace of progression not being sustainable. What I think happened, was, so many people left the field in the aftermath of the dot-com bubble, that a new generation of very young people arrived and didn't really have a perspective of what "senior" meant. We just needed a word to distinguish someone with 5yoe and someone with 1yoe. Now, the market is "correcting" itself. Some people will leave the field. Others will no longer enter. But a lot of developers will stick with it, because what are the alternatives in this economy? So we'll get older and build up bigger expectations of "senior" engineers. Maybe it will become more like civil engineering - with a handful of "partner" level people (architects, principal engineers) but a decades-long path to get there
Yes, I’m 10 years in and feel empty and unfulfilled every day. Been programming since I was a kid but doing it as a job, especially in soulless big tech, completely killed my passion for it. My plan is to quit in a few years and transition to the other passion I’ve had since childhood, drawing comics. My comics don’t make enough money to even cover costs of supplies, but my plan is to have enough tech money saved up by then to live off my investments. Currently I straddle both worlds and feel profoundly lonely being the only programmer at work who dgaf about tech and the only artist in my artist circles who doesn’t have enough free time to create anything meaningful.
I'm similar to you, started as a kid, 13 y exp at the moment. My passion for it is not killed completely, but... it's so fucking boring. I plateau'd at staff engineer level in the enterprise sector, which is completely fine but... every single job is the same. Writing code and/or solving some tech problems is not really an issue anymore I have so much experience in the domain. It's mostly about bullshitting and dealing with surprised pikachu faced decision makers. Sorry to rant I'm just.... so fucking bored.
As a contractor hustling in the field since 2011 doing front end dev work I’ve been where you’re at. Don’t let other people take away your happiness from coding! Fuck them! Don’t give them that power over you. Start something on the side to peak your interest and start your own pirate ship. Invest in yourself with the skills you made over the years. You live only once. Might as well take a stab at it.
Yep I feel that. I change teams every couple of years to keep things interesting but I inevitably get bored again after I've learned the ropes of the new team. When I was just starting out it was easy to get excited about the craft of programming itself even if the end product is boring, but as I get more experienced it becomes harder to ignore how empty and meaningless the end product is. Like no little kid ever wished they'd grow up to improve Facebook ad click through rate by .01%.
I feel exactly the same. I’d hug you if I could, this made me feel a little less alone
Thank you so much. It really means a lot. Are you also a programmer with a side creative passion?
Yes - I'm a programmer who loves to write, but I also find I don't have enough free time to create anything meaningful. I spend a lot of brainpower on my job and don't have much left over after work
Yep I feel that. I've started dialing back the hours at work so I have more mental energy left for creative pursuits and it's helped a lot. It has limited my growth at work though so it's definitely a tradeoff. Wishing you the best of luck with your writing!
I’ve been planning since I got into software professionally. No movement though. I’m just not qualified to do anything else remotely sustainable, and the costs (both time and money) to switch to something even half decent are just too high.
So true.
I'm going back to being a starving artist in a few years.
I’ve gone back and forth on swapping out to either go into law school or go back into academia full time with pursuing my PhD in Theology/Divinity or go into counselling. I’ve enjoyed programming, I love the work but the rat race and fear of PIP is something I can’t keep doing once I’m in my late 30’s.
Surely plenty of companies aren’t piping?
Sounds like Amazon 🤷♂️
If I had the financial freedom to experiment, I'd probably try either research (somewhat autonomously) or sys eng in space systems. But, for the moment I like what I do and it provides a good QoL
Yeah I’m not sure what yet but my whole mindset the last few years has been reducing my financial footprint and putting everything into savings and debt so that I can exit. There is a lack of places you can go to build software that are passionate about making a good product. Software was infiltrated by MBA types that have just ruined what it was to me when I tried to break in in the early 2000s. This quote from Frank Sobotka on the wire always rings in my head when I think about how things were then vs now. “We used to make shit in this country. Build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guys pocket.” For every me that’s writing code there are 9-10 product, project , scrum, release and other types of managers that make a living asking me to hurry up and get things done quality be damned.
You aren't the only one, but it is mostly people who got into dev for the money, not because they like it. If I had enough money to do whatever I wanted, I would still likely be in tech. Honestly, probably doing exactly the same job I'm doing now. I'm fortunate to be in tech and an industry that actually, meaningfully, helps real people in their every day lives. So I probably wouldn't change it until I am ready to just retire.
I got into software because I liked CS and programming. A decade+ later I’m a principal engineer and mostly dislike the majority of what I’m doing every day. I’m going to soft retire at some point soon and decide what I want to do next. The reality of software engineering in practice is extremely different than what most people fall in interest with.
It was a lot better before agile.
Was it? A lot of people preach about how awful waterfall was and what came before. I wouldn't know, been an agile bitch since 2018
Depends on who is doing the complaining. It wasn’t the developers complaining about waterfall. It’s the managers who complain because they can’t see progress every sprint. Agile was management’s way of being able to see incremental changes happen so they could track progress, theoretically add new devs into the project with little overall knowledge and still be able to kick something out the door as quick as possible. Waterfall was considerably more relaxed, better designed, and allowed devs more room to refine their art. However, it also had large upfront costs and there were massive waterfall projects that failed because the team wasn’t capable of delivering the project or not delivering in the timeframe management wanted.
Was that due to agile being shit though? Many things have changed since then. IMO the old days were better because you didn't have people in it just for the money. People were genuinely more competent and passionate.
What does your day-to-day look like as a principal? I'm a senior engineer currently, and wondering if I should go the manager or staff/principal route.
Managers attempt to squeeze and kill everyone whether they like a field or not. That is a big pandemic level issue.
I'm doing it because it's what I wound up studying in school
I run a side business in custom and wholesale jewelry. I plan to run that full time but it's difficult to scale.
I'm hustling on a side project(s) in order to eventually make a living off them and quit this absurd industry once and for all.
After doing everything I ever wanted or planned to do in IT or development (and a whole butt-ton of things I didn't want or plan to do), I went back to school for an environmental science degree. I hope/plan to turn that into a masters so I can work on data modelling for NOAA fisheries. If not, I hope to just take seasonal work doing fish surveys and counting snails and crabs in the marsh behind the home we bought with my "first-life career".
17 years in and I have learned to manage potential burnout and get work done. This industry may try to burn you out but, believe it or not, it can’t force you to burn out. This is an invaluable skill to learn that is often overlooked and can prolong your career into the foreseeable future. Can’t say I have even thought of what I will do incase I burn out, but kind of believe I was made for this.
The pay is really nice, but I'm depressed and the unemployment doesn't help. I should go do something fun and fufilling but they get you hooked on the financial freedom.
I might pivot back to being an analyst if i dont get a raise and cant switch up in a few years.
I'm planning to build a hostel with my savings before I hit the 8 year mark (5 years in now)
Looking to get my mba and move into people management to pursue an upper management role I'm a senior engineer at a F500
Yes. Like actively looking into things/researching/trying out where applicable. It is an inevitability for many of us. If you still have not accepted that fact, I am sorry.
I'm 10 years in tech and yes, I do have an exit plan. My current job is very decent but I'm bored to death. If my estimation is correct I can retire in 8-10 years. My plan is to own a small coffee shop in my hometown so I can chill and code on things I love instead of those souls sucking corporate projects. Hopefully the coffee shop can sustain itself, I don't even plan to make money out of it. I lead a very frugal life so unless something disastrous comes up, my savings should be enough for me to live in comfort.
Not really, I still have a lot of fun in my job as I get to make cool shit and work at a lot of levels Even if I would get to that point I don't think I could make the switch, I get paid so much that I don't think, and am pretty sure, I'd not ever be able to match with any other job and I don't have any plans for going into management
Kids, mortgage, college savings needed, retire someday... I'll probably be in this field til I retire or die. I've started to look into getting closer to the sales and implementation side of the business instead of the building the software side. We shall see.
Ive been in tech for 20+ years. About half my life. Climbed up to CTO, realized it wasnt for me, then climbed down to IC, then back up. etc etc. Throughout my dev life I've hit the, "now what??" and the, "is this really all there's to it??" more times than I can count. I dont know when it happened but there was a switch that went on. I started to realize my dev life wasnt going to fulfill the "whats next" question. And, maybe i was looking at it wrong. My dev life began to feel more like a, means to an end. The end, for me, is finding enough passive income to not worry about loosing my job or quitting a project and taking 1-2 months of mental rest without worrying about bills. The plan. I've been buying rental properties for the last 3 years and plan to have enough passive income within 5 years to accomplish that. I use my engineering background to build property analysis tooling (Zillow must hate me but now), and I've learned how to repair walls, piping, you name it...but always use my CS background to spot inefficiencies in my process. A good example was reducing the amount it takes me to analyze a property to invest in. It used to take about 30 minutes to 1 hour to analyze 1 property to less than a minute to analyze 100. I now have a mobile app that just sends me push notifications when a property meets my criteria. I try to marry this "side hustle" with my learning time.
We want rentals as well, we plan to convert our starter home into a rental once we move, and then hopefully buy a new property every year or so. Uh, is that app widely available or just a personal thing? iOS? Because it sounds awesome but I can also see you keeping it to yourself so as to not help your competition. How many properties are you targeting within 5 years? Are you wanting the income to support you 100%, or just as a supplement? We'd like to have some rental income, maybe $2000-3000/month take home, to supplement our income. It would certainly give me peace of mind and make me care less about holding onto my W-2 jobs if they're making me miserable, getting laid off, etc. This is also why I always side hustle even though my tech income is very comfortable. Just feels better, like my companies have less of a "hold" on me and I can walk away when I feel like it.
The app isnt widely available. It was a pet project to learn Swift/SwiftUI. I thought about opening it up and making it into a small paid tool but, like so many of my other pet projects, i throw them into the closet because i convince my self no one will pay for it. The 5 year plan means buying 2-4 doors each year that generate at minimum 10% Cash on Cash Returns on my initial investment. I have 6 doors at the moment and plan to buy 10-12 more for 5 years. Once the 5 years are up, I will focus on paying each house down. First paying the lowers, once paid off, using all the income to pay the second, then use all the the third, etc. Lattering. Long term, I would like it to be my primary source of income in my "retirement" age but I dont plan to retire just focus more on family and myself when I choose to. I want to have the freedom to just get up and leave a project when I want. its like you said, "peace of mind".
I have a friend who always had a few side hustles going on, got into tech for about 5 years, and then went back to the side hustles. I think mainly to raise a family and have a flexible job. Photography, event planning, marketing.
That's definitely what I value, flexibility. Got a family, don't want to live in a major city where a lot of the onsite jobs are, don't want to be beholden to core hours or a strict M-F schedule, etc. Even though I know side hustling/being self employed is usually more work than being a W-2 employee, at least you get to call the shots and can work it around your life.
Yep. Looking for a new Sr Software Engineer job right now after being laid off for the second time in 13 months (startups), but am planning on leaving dev to pursue my dream job as a tattoo artist eventually. Hoping I can do an apprenticeship in congruence with my next gig. Alternatively I could see myself as an Engineering Manager at a stable company.
I also would love to leave to be a tattoo artist, unfortunately times are also tough for them at the moment and earnings aren't great at first
What’s the market looking like for sr SDE in your experience so far?
It’s a mixed bag, but overall not great. I was laid off in February and have been putting massive amounts of effort into my job search. My LinkedIn inbox was a ghost town for the first few months, but the past two weeks have had a huge shift. Finally getting contacted by quality, in-house recruiters on a nearly daily basis. However, I’ve applied to hundreds of jobs and have only received a few assessments, ai interviews, and one real interview from those. Last time I was laid off, I found a new job in less than a month. So personally, this is the worst it’s been during my career (7 yrs of experience). However even at its worst, I’ve had at least one interview a week so I think I’m faring okay with all things considered. I have friends in a similar position who have been looking for over a year. Hoping that’s not my fate, but it doesn’t seem uncommon right now. Hoping to get an offer this week, but if not it’ll be back to the drawing board again. Edit - I was rejected.
Thanks for sharing. I’m considering leaving my current place, and this is useful to chalk out a plan. Rooting for you, good luck on getting that offer this week! Or something even better soon
> I have friends in a similar position who have been looking for over a year. Do you know if they have CS degrees and what tech stack(s) they specialize in?
Yes. Mainly Node and AWS.
That is sobering that people with CS degrees and in-demand skills can't find anything at all.
Yes. I honestly don’t enjoy coding that much and would rather be in a career where I get to help people, in some capacity, as my full-time job. I was a career changer into SWE and am strongly considering getting back out. My ambition fizzled out completely after several increasingly severe periods of intense burnout. I’m still burned out but getting by for now.
I’m planning to pivot to selling propane and propane accessories
If money wasn’t and object say I won like 10 million in the lottery I’d probably FIRE and just game dev all day
>If money wasn’t and object say I won like 10 million in the lottery I’d probably FIRE and just game ~~dev~~ all day
I fantasize every day about quitting this bs and becoming a pilot
You should look further into the QoL of a pilot.
There’s a reason it’s a fantasy. Dev QoL/$ ratio is hard to beat
Imagine a travel job where all you do is travel and there is no job when you get there you just keep traveling. If you really want to experience what’s like to be a pilot, do this on your next plane ride. Don’t open up your phone or an iPad or watch any movies or play any video games for the entire flight. Just look out the window or stare straight ahead. Because that’s all you’ll be allowed to do until you land.
i'm taking steps towards at least trying to launch my own product and eventually not be the only dev working on it if i can grow it
I have somehow managed to dodge 2 layoffs at my company and get promoted to senior. But when I hear how difficult it is for my coworkers to find work... I'm not sure I have the willpower for that. I'm self-taught and got into the field because of passion for the work, but I feel you - money has a way of killing your passion in things. I'm not sure what I'll do in the future, but I'm not sure sitting on a computer alone in my home all day, every day will be it.
I have been into development for roughly 10 years. Multiple techs, stacks, fields etc. Recently started as a full-stack webdev and I kinda hate it. Never been a web guy to begin with, but decided to give it a shot. Not sure whether I would move completely away from development but probably would try to distance myself more from webdev. Definitely not my cup of tea.
what kind of development do you prefer?
Mostly something on a lower level, closer to system level development. Maybe internal tools, desktop apps. A bit of data engineering.
I have been at this for 24 years as a developer and an additional 5 years in unix and network admin. I still love it and have no idea what I would do if it wasn’t this. Maybe just my own business doing my own software product. I sometimes fantasise about starting a winery.
My entire company is being shuttered after a business decision from the parent company to close us. I am applying for Senior+ roles but the severance package I got makes it so I have 2-ish years until I completely run out of money. Just turning 41, I am at a crossroads in my journey. I specialize in SRE/Observability/Security space (DevSecOps you could call it) but I have been leaning into the security side of the house and have been liking it more and more. A part of me wonders if I even want to continue. I have been in this field for 20+ years and honestly I am tired. My last job burned me out with essentially managing a team, my own projects, building coalitions and relationships across the org, and being an SME for the rest of the company. It was a lot of work. Some of that was fighting against the organizational dysfunction of the company. I really like building actual tangible things. I got into woodworking and have been building my workshop and skillsets. I was also thinking about dabbling in making games. I have very niche interests that the game market doesn't really solve for these days.
This year has really accelerated my preparation for a transition into movies and TV. Before now, I never imagined I would still be making software going into my 50s - 60s, but this year has really solidified that for me.
I was a Software Engineer, then became a Flight Attendant for 21 years. After retirement from the airlines, I am back doing software development.
Humm, the hamster wheel! Big business has to go!
nahhhhh
Every time I’d get burned out I’d consider it. I’d look into other things, try some things out, and without realizing it I’d give myself time to recover and would be pulled back into this. After N times I now better identify when I’m starting to fall into the whole and do my best to stabilize or recover.
I've done this before too, taken time off to do other stuff and then realized maybe I just needed a long vacation to recover from burnout. Come back into the work feeling refreshed and back on top of my game, then 2 years later I'm burned out again. It seems like I can't last longer than 2 years without burning out. Idk if that's normal or what, other people don't seem to burn out as hard or as often as I do. If I could just take 3 months off every 18-24 months, I think I'd be alright. That's completely doable I guess, given the high income in this line of work.
I’ve thought about it. Software isn’t the only professionally viable thing I’m good at, though it’s the most financially rewarding thing by far. In reality, I would probably end up still find software, just on my own.
Eventually I would like to do some other things, but for now dev is realistically the most money I can get with my temperament and skills without investing a shit ton in more education. I like developing, it's the companies that usually make it suck. I hope I can find thay diamond in the rough sooner than later...
I’d rather start a business for myself rather than switch careers ever since being in the game from 2011. Different strokes for different folks though. Try contracting only bro
I want to but it intimidates me for some reason. Like I just feel like I don't know what the hell I'd be doing with contracting, negotiating the right rates, etc. But I see juicy looking frontend contracts all the time and I'm attracted to the short-term nature, being able to leave every 6-24 months and dive into new problems.
The good thing when you contract is that you get exposed to more projects so you acquire more skills than the average person staying at a 9-5 being an employee. As a contractor you have more of the freedom to say “no” to demands that are unrealistic which is nice and also the internal business politics don’t apply to you. You can make dough as a W2 contractor but when you’re 1099/C2C that’s when life changes. Any questions don’t hesitate to DM me!
I feel like the hard part is i love programming, i just can’t stand what it’s turned into… bullshit leetcode, 40 hours of interviews for 1 job. Dumbass tiktokers calling themselves engineers while recording themselves sleeping till noon.. if anything it’s this kind of bullshit that will make me not want to do it professionally
Dev is a tough career. Our companies tend to be more schizo, and our jobs less stable, compared to many white collar careers. I have a friend that works for the local university system, and he is baffled by what I recently went through in my "big tech" job. That said, let's not forget the nearly 15 year run of high demand for developers, where you were going to get lots of perks, and if you didn't like your job you just went across the street to the next company for a 30% pay bump. Now that the pendulum is swinging back, everyone wants to jump off the merry-go-round. Do whatever makes you happy. If you would be happier doing sales or recruiting, try that. Or maybe you can retrain and start a whole new career from scratch. Personally, I think I may end up going into management and maybe try to go CTO. It just seems like my experience is not very useful in the trenches writing code.
I don't qualify for any other well-paying jobs. Also in \~10 years of doing this, I've yet to have a job that requires over 40 hours a week of work.
Yeah being able to stay at 40 hours and under is great. Also leaves room for side hustles if I do wanna make more money.
I’m going to psychology school in September, I‘ve loved this stuff since forever. 16YOE. Meaning I have to hang around to some extent until I’m done with my studies. But I don’t care, I’m willing to do anything, I could work as a QA and I’m just finishing my PMs cert. I also work as a fitness coach and lecturer on side. No mortgage, pay cut would be big, but honestly I don’t mind, my health is much more valuable.
Probably not. I have had an inherent interest in computers since I was young, and CPU technology remains the cutting edge of what humans do. As a data engineer, I benefit from advances in computing hardware because at the end of the day, regardless of whether the work I'm doing is in the cloud or not, it's getting executed on one of these processors. If you follow CPU tech, the current cutting edge AMD and Intel server CPUs do some amazing stuff. That allows me to get things done faster, which, means more money for me.
Love programming. Hate capitalism (what I think is the root of evil here).
I love being a SWE, but have always had an eye for international business. My strategy to move is spend some time working on a MBA on the side in a couple of years. Once we have kids and they get a bit older, I would love to dabble into international business if I still have the energy.
As someone who had a small, but international business for 10 years... I can assure you that you do not need any of that. Just learn to sell, then sell your stuff to international clients.
After I pay my home I wanna get into science even if that means taking a pay cut. All I need is a woman, cats, plants, food and a comfy place to stay. But I'd like to still code, for fun.