I'm not. I have been doing it since I was 9. I pulled most of the heavy-duty, hardcore all-nighters during my teenage years; I grew up writing C, and was hacking on socket code and compiling kernels when I was 12-16. So by the time I was 20, I was utterly burned out. Most of my peers discovered the crazy, hyper-caffinated, 24/7 techie life in university years, and still have a few years of this insanity left in them. I don't.
I'm 30 now, and feel like I've been running on fumes ever since. I am still interested in software architecture at a conceptual level, of course, but suffer from immense fatigue at the keystroke-based deliverables aspect. It's always a motivational struggle to write even a little code, with few exceptions. I procrastinate horrifically, because I find it tedious.
Some of it may be because my work entails dealing with fairly uninteresting and unexciting things, and some of it is the cash flow schizophrenia of constantly operating at the very margins of economic survival, but above all else, it's just psychological, cognitive and physical fatigue. I'm also fairly extroverted and have always been interested in the social and political dimension of what I'm doing, but, through eight years of self-employment, have pigeonholed myself into a solipsistic role without a collective--rewarding to those who crave peace, quiet and code, but not at all catering to my particular reward centres. I love selling what I do, but the dreaded implementation of what I just sold is like pulling teeth. Deprived of a collective, recognition, the competitive aspect, and any sense of larger purpose, it's a real challenge to get myself to work on code.
In retrospect, I probably would have been better off sticking it out in corporate America and tracking myself into technical management. However, I left the employment world at age 22 and decided to hole up in a business model where I'd be most economically rewarded if I could get myself to write more than a few lines a week.
I am deeply specialised in a niche vertical that can pay well, so one would think the money would keep me going (I can easily bill $250/hr for what I do), but it doesn't. Some of that is a business and life problem, but some of it is that I just don't care enough to pound code anymore at virtually any price--though, of course, that's not to say that taking the bricks of economic stress that come with a bootstrapped eight-year consulting-turned-product death march off wouldn't help.
I still do it, but it's taken me five years to write a slightly half-assed software suite that an energetic and motivated programmer could have done in far, far less time.
Have you considered that there's something wrong with you emotionally? You sound like you're constantly under stress and even anxious about your economic survival. Those two can very effectively dig you into a slippery hole of depression which would just amplify them and you'll falling into that depression even further.
It's like a loop that nearly impossible to break out of, and even when you do returning to a comfortable life rhythm will take considerable effort, too.
Also, for a lot of people there is no rock-bottom, you'll just keep slipping deeper and deeper.
So, my advice is to ask for professional help—which I realise is one of those "easy to say; hard to do" type of advices, but try to ask for support from your friends—and try discovering something new, which can be completely outside of IT!
Another thing that you can try—which is very effective, but doesn't require you to dish out money is downloading some CBT (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy) tracks or guidance applications. There is quite a few of them and they can help a lot (although they might not be as effective as with professional guidance).
Also, something "odd" which I can also recommend is 7cups.com (which is an online therapy platform; you can have 1-1 sessions or group sessions, it's great if you need to just talk to someone). You can even try becoming a guide (called a "Listener"), helping others can also help you (and this especially true, if you're an extrovert).
1. If there are objective sources of stress (e.g. problems of economic survival), I don't perceive that to be an emotional problem. Emotional problems, as I would use the term, are problems which are strictly endogenous in nature.
2. I generally go about my business just fine and am quite functional. But since the OP asked if I'm happy per se doing software work...
3. I'd probably be happier in engineering management, or in technical sales and marketing (i.e. of the highly consultative sort). I seem to have a pretty healthy - even cheerful - appetite for those things, when the opportunity to do them arises.
I'm not depressed. I'm just beyond burned out on coding as a mode of existence, and then some.
> 1. If there are objective sources of stress (e.g. problems of economic survival), I don't perceive that to be an emotional problem. Emotional problems, as I would use the term, are problems which are strictly endogenous in nature.
I meant psychological problems rather than emotional, but I feel like those two are intertwined, anyway. Sorry for the confusion.
Being burnt-out is also a type of stress. What I meant to say is that, if you're constantly under stress it can have an impact on your emotional/psychological state as well, and you shouldn't underestimate the damage psychological stress can do to your personality.
Duly noted! But the question was about whether I'm happy working as a programmer, not whether there are large, existential and cosmological life issues to solve here apart from and beyond that.
Apart from the highly rewarding business model I've gone through exactly the same path as you have. I have no appetite for coding now. But at the same time I don't know what else I can do. I don't want to give up the lifestyle I have now but starting from scratch will mean getting a pay cut. It's a vicious circle.
I would sincerely, sincerely suggest to research the MISERY most of our world is in. There are 1 billion people without food or clean water. Imagine what someone with your skills can do to help? You don't need to make any money - and implementing deliverables in that scenario will only alleviate actual, real PAIN for others - not fuel the chase of more profit for someone who has hired you.
I'm sure you've probably thought of this before, but I thought I'd throw this out there anyway. Volunteer to make the lives of people trying to help people better, with software. You probably don't even need to write anything new most of the time, just know the good software from the bad and deploy it to awesome effect on operations for good across the world.
I'd be interested to know a good place to start with this kind of thing.
Do you have some examples of software engineers contributing their skills to charities, open source projects aimed at assisting in these situations or just some boards or communities that can assist in finding a starting point?
I'm searching for an efficient (read: not waste my time and affect my means of living) way to do this myself. The easiest way to start is to look for non profits operating in your area - or close to you - ask them to go have coffee with you (use LinkedIn). Do a virtual chat if necessary / pressed for time or distance. Discuss their work, and I guarantee you that ideas will come rushing out, this is what makes us tick. Then, just start. Do something for someone, talk about it.
Okay; I can empathise with that (not an empty statement).
In that case, I can suggest that your happiness (and 'effortless' productivity) can stem from wanting to dig yourself out of that hole and "set your family up for life" - because looks like you've committed to that direction.
This is easily construable as a presumptuous statement, these things are so much easier said than done. I have no right to play "guru" out here. I just care that a fellow peer in this same struggle is unhappy and talking to you as I would talk to myself and self-counsel.
Whatever you do, good luck, because you don't seem like one of the "bad people". Cheers.
I don't know if my goals are anything so lofty as setting my family up "for life", but certainly, part of the issues are economic and, to some extent, money can cure them.
I'm not a low-income individual--certainly not by non-SV US standards. But I started this business with $200 to my name and a high personal expense base, and ground my financial history and financial position to powder as a result. I also lost big on an upside down property in the housing crisis, a still ongoing matter. The volatility and sliding-backwards stress of self-employment in a non-scalable niche is a big part of my stress, with cash flow being the dominant stressor; a highly volatile $200k income can be effectively discounted to like $65k. I'm often envious of people who get paid a good salary to just code and not have to think about anything else.
However, I'm capable of conceptually and emotionally disentangling all that from the question of whether I fundamentally like programming per se. I'm still burned out on it in the best of circumstances. If money were no object, I'd do it a few hours a week to meet some functional need, but I doubt I'd be writing new software.
If you can bill $250/hr, why not hire people? Sounds like it would help fill your social/conceptual gap.
Someone in a regular job might need to ask for a promotion to management, but with your own company you become a manager as soon as you're willing to pay for someone else's time.
1. Because I'm not billing $250/hr @ 40 hours/week. I wish! I just meant it's considered a normal consulting rate for what I do.
2. I've tried to transition out of consulting and into 100% product company, but have not so far been successful. There's a significant short-term revenue hit in that.
There's plenty of recurring product licencing and support revenue, but not enough to break me even, so it gets supplemented with consulting. And you know how lopsided that distribution is; 75% of the work for 45% of the revenue, or something like that.
Amidst that kind of schizophrenia, it's very hard to hire someone, both for financial reasons and because the hiring decisions that would need to be made are very different in those cases.
3. I've hired numerous people over the years, back when I was doing consulting/project work full time and not engaged in this productisation effort.
The people I could afford were mostly entry-level. In the niche vertical I'm in as well as the high-expertise business model I've created for myself, customers expectations are specifically for domain knowledge and multifarious skill sets. In other words, it doesn't scale out much beyond me and other folks exactly like me, so I couldn't find ways to bill my employees out.
Being a conscientious person who largely blamed himself and chose to view it as an entrepreneurial & management failure on my part rather than on theirs, I kept them on far longer than I could afford to, effectively working 2-3x as hard to keep the lights on and subsidise their salaries.
Clearly, the solution is to hire non entry-level people. But the folks with the expertise to be able to do the work are definitely a high-salary proposition, and I can't afford it.
4. Hiring is very much a question of cash flow. Learned that on hard mode. If someone took my $ANNUAL_GROSS, divided it by 12, and disbursed it to me on the 1st of every month, damn right I'd hire someone again. :-)
It is far from amazing, and I'm not saying it always fetches that kind of bill rate, just that it is specialised work and requires telephony domain knowledge.
I read your description of your work and how it makes you feel. I thought it sounded awfully familiar. It isn't you, it's voice. I've worked in this industry for 18 years and it keeps getting worse, but there is money to be made. It's a trap, but a mildly soul destroying comfortable one. Do get out if you can.
Thanks. I do wonder if there's something in particular about voice that lends itself especially to cynicism. Every time I wonder that, I always figure: surely not, when there's actuarial software, Wall Street...
I'm 30 now, and feel like I've been running on fumes ever since. I am still interested in software architecture at a conceptual level, of course, but suffer from immense fatigue at the keystroke-based deliverables aspect. It's always a motivational struggle to write even a little code, with few exceptions. I procrastinate horrifically, because I find it tedious.
Some of it may be because my work entails dealing with fairly uninteresting and unexciting things, and some of it is the cash flow schizophrenia of constantly operating at the very margins of economic survival, but above all else, it's just psychological, cognitive and physical fatigue. I'm also fairly extroverted and have always been interested in the social and political dimension of what I'm doing, but, through eight years of self-employment, have pigeonholed myself into a solipsistic role without a collective--rewarding to those who crave peace, quiet and code, but not at all catering to my particular reward centres. I love selling what I do, but the dreaded implementation of what I just sold is like pulling teeth. Deprived of a collective, recognition, the competitive aspect, and any sense of larger purpose, it's a real challenge to get myself to work on code.
In retrospect, I probably would have been better off sticking it out in corporate America and tracking myself into technical management. However, I left the employment world at age 22 and decided to hole up in a business model where I'd be most economically rewarded if I could get myself to write more than a few lines a week.
I am deeply specialised in a niche vertical that can pay well, so one would think the money would keep me going (I can easily bill $250/hr for what I do), but it doesn't. Some of that is a business and life problem, but some of it is that I just don't care enough to pound code anymore at virtually any price--though, of course, that's not to say that taking the bricks of economic stress that come with a bootstrapped eight-year consulting-turned-product death march off wouldn't help.
I still do it, but it's taken me five years to write a slightly half-assed software suite that an energetic and motivated programmer could have done in far, far less time.