
Ask HN: What to do if you hate your coding job? (UK, 24yr old) - dthrw
Okay, so after just reading my question again, it seems the obvious answer is just to quit it. But it&#x27;s not that simple. Or is it?<p>I taught myself coding when I was 14-15 years old. I love working on my own projects. Since I started my job (2 years ago) I wasn&#x27;t able to find any energy to do that, it just seems time is too valuable (after working 9 hours a day and feeling pretty tired) to work on some stupid idea just for fun when you know it will lead to nothing.<p>I moved to UK to get my Computer Science degree. I loved it. I love learning new stuff. That amazing feeling when you have some interesting problem and you need to solve it.<p>I&#x27;m sorry for this horrible mess of a text. I don&#x27;t know what I&#x27;m actually expecting to get for an answer. I guess people will just say quit it and go travelling. I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s that simple. I don&#x27;t want to just blow up my all savings for a few months of travel, and just start working again. Some will probably say go into academics, but even though I don&#x27;t care about money, I don&#x27;t want to live with strangers for the rest of my life. Plus you have to be way way above average to achieve something meaningful in academics. And even though I love learning new stuff and applying that learnt stuff to solve something, academics is just not for me.<p>I don&#x27;t know. I just posted this because I guessed many people here have been in my shoes. Have you? What did you do? I don&#x27;t care if I had to move again to some new country. I don&#x27;t care about large salaries. I have saved up some money for me to survive for the next 1.5-2 years. I just want to work on something interesting. Solve problems. Not just debug code and fix legacy code. I want to do stuff which made me fall in love with computers and programming. I don&#x27;t want to do this bullshit any more. Or it&#x27;s just the way it goes for average people?<p>Working conditions are fine. Managers too. I always have access to food and water. I&#x27;m not at war. How can I complain?
======
meric
_it just seems time is too valuable (after working 9 hours a day and feeling
pretty tired) to work on some stupid idea just for fun when you know it will
lead to nothing_

I've had that before, with an idea that's fun, but not fun enough. I thought
maybe I was getting sick of programming.

Now I work 9 hours a day, feeling pretty tired, and still go on to work on my
idea until 1am or 2am. 3am if I can make it.

 _If you aren 't energetic enough to work on an idea for fun after 9 hours of
tiring work, the idea isn't fun enough, and not worth quitting full time
employment_.

But on the other hand if despite 9 hour of tiring work, you find yourself
working till the wee hours every night working on your idea, perhaps consider
maybe there's something interesting in your mind?

That's the situation I'm in. I'm planning a year or two without working in a
year's time to work on this idea. Not because I have no energy to work on it
after 9 hours of work everyday, but because the idea is so interesting to me
even after 9 hours of work, I find myself working an additional 6 hours on it.
It's on my mind in the shower, on the way to work, at lunch, in afternoon tea
break, on the way home, eating dinner, when I am working on it, when I'm in
bed, as soon as I wake up. (And I try to resist thinking about it when _the_
director of the company is sitting next to me. I hope he didn't catch me
writing this comment. ;)) My ideas were the same ones I've had for the past
decade, except I've refined them as time gone by. An idea that was once stupid
and won't lead to anywhere, is now an idea I can't take my mind off, an idea,
for me, that will lead to _everything_.

Keep living. Look for a new job if you're sick of it. But I don't think you're
tired because you don't have time to work on your ideas. I think you're tired
because you haven't found or refined your existing ideas to a state where it
will be so interesting to you you're working on it even as your eyelids
struggle to keep opened. You don't have the time for ideas that aren't that
interesting, but when you have an idea that's interesting enough to you, you
will find you always manage to find some time for it.

------
atmosx
> I don't know. I just posted this because I guessed many people here have
> been in my shoes. Have you? What did you do?

Not in this context but in a similar situation yes. Long time ago. What I did
was introspection until finally I reached and embraced the cold, hard truth:

\- I'm finding all kind of excuses not to _do_ what I _know_ I should be
_doing_ because I'm afraid.

\- The fact that I am not happy has little to do with my job and everything to
do with me.

\- Why I feel unhappy? With whom am I really unhappy with and why?!

\- If I can't find some _quality time_ NOW (running, learning an instrument,
having fun with my then gf - now wife, etc.) it will _never_ happen. I have to
make it happen.

\- It's all about choices I do, some are intentional and others are
unintentional

... and finally it hit me! I lacked two things: A very specific _cause_ like a
clear destination, where do I see myself in 10 years, in 5 years, in 1 year?
How do I wanna look next year? How do I wanna my relationship to evolve? How
good do I wanna become? etc.

Once you have this sorted out (where do you want to and why) everything else
starts making sense. Good luck.

------
yrezgui
Hi dthrw, I'm from UK too. In my previous job, I was working on something very
cool with the best colleagues that I got so far in my professional life but I
wasn't feeling great by the new vision of the company. They weren't going in
the wrong direction, just not the one that I was expecting. So I left. I
didn't travel around the world like some people do but I searched for a remote
job because I wanted to take a break from offices and work in my cozy room. UK
and specifically London are looking for many developers so it should not be a
problem to find a new job. Take your time to choose the right one. You may
find it hard first (for me, it was remote or nothing) but you need to stand on
your choice of life. You may have chosen the wrong job, don't do the mistake
one more time. It's not selfish to privilege yourself. You worked and studied
hard for your future so you should have the life that you want. Cheers and
good luck bro ;)

------
pyrrhotech
I know exactly how you feel and I've felt the same way, except I'm 3 years
older than you. Still haven't figured out the solution, but I'm hopeful. My
biggest issue is that I'm a big picture guy.

I like thinking about AI at the high level, reading about the ultimate fate of
the universe and studying macroeconomics. I don't like worrying about the
details, Angular vs. React, writing unit tests, fixing bugs. I suppose I'm
just lazy. But at my point in my career at least, I'm the one supposed to be
doing the grunt coding work and I find it boring.

One day we'll figure it out, but it's not a problem you solve overnight I've
learned. I've been dealing with this for half a decade now. Some days feel
worse than others, but at the end of the day, we can pay our bills and live a
pretty nice lifestyle to find consolation, so I guess it's all a first world
problem.

------
Jack000
I was in a similar spot almost two years ago. I actually didn't mind the work
that I did, but it just became rather dull.

So I quit and traveled. It does seem like traveling is the "default" thing to
do to cure one's ennui. What I can say is that being in a new locale doesn't
magically give you newfound motivation/inspiration etc, and depending on your
personality it can be quite isolating.

Over the years I've kept a list of things I'd like to build if I ever found
the time. Now I'm just going down the list and seeing what sticks.

The way I see it, if you really do _hate_ your job then quitting is simply a
matter of time - better sooner rather than later, for both you and your
employer.

~~~
lgieron
> So I quit and traveled. It does seem like traveling is the "default" thing
> to do to cure one's ennui. What I can say is that being in a new locale
> doesn't magically give you newfound motivation/inspiration etc, and
> depending on your personality it can be quite isolating.

This. I never understood how being thousands of kilometers from anyone you
know or care about is supposed to be good for you.

------
coderKen
I am in your exact situation right now and I also am 24year old.

------
J_Darnley
Quit and let someone else have it.

------
gargravarr
Hi OP, I'm in much the same position. Perhaps with a few differences - I was
more interested in computer hardware and setup, but got into coding because I
was told that is where I would make money. These people were not wrong;
hardware monkey jobs pay considerably less than developers, but I hate my job.
I've stuck with it for 2.5 years now (age 25) for the money and convenient
location (not in London) but I've been desperate to move on for over 12
months.

The problem with working in IT, I find, is that it saps the fun out of your
hobby. The best place to work if you actually want to code and enjoy it would
be a start-up, but those are uncommon in the UK and come with their own
drawbacks - unusual/long working hours, impossible deadlines, holding the
future of the company quite literally in your hands. Big corporations give you
more stability there and reduce the pressure, but at the cost of your input
having little to no direct impact on the company. You also have to fight
corporate bureaucracy which seems to be inevitable once a company reaches a
certain size. The company I work at has recently crossed that tipping point,
so I'm watching everyone's work ethic come crashing down.

The other option is to go freelance. If you can do web development, there will
always be people wanting websites built, maintained or enhanced. Obviously you
would become self-employed but you would have ultimate freedom over your work
life. You could also start a local computer maintenance business for companies
to outsource their IT work to; not all companies will hire someone in-house
for small projects. It's difficult but not impossible to do at our age.

I've considered a lot of options in the time since I've graduated university.
Computing was always my hobby: working in the same field seemed natural, but
I'm finding the drawbacks are numerous. I'm moving teams within my company
into more of a DevOps role - it means I will be doing less hands-on coding,
and no client interaction, so my immediate contribution to the company's
product will be essentially zero. However, I'll be working on systems that
support other developers which sounds like a better option for me. It will
also give me a break from coding professionally, which might leave me some
energy to code in my spare time. Ultimately though, I've decided to get out of
IT completely and do something else, because it just doesn't fit in my long-
term plans.

The problem with IT in the UK is that everything is based in London, and we do
not foster as much of a startup culture here as other countries, so most work
is with big, historic companies where it's easy to become a small cog in a
very big machine. You'll need to do some soul searching to decide if you can
keep going with that.

I have also thought long and hard about complaining about my situation;
correct, all our basic needs are addressed by having a job - food, shelter,
even transport - but being in a bad job is equally bad for your mental health.
I know it takes less effort to complain about it than do something about it -
believe me, I've done enough of that! - but that's what you'll need to do. See
if you can move sideways in your company into another job, or look into other
options.

Hope this helps.

~~~
bigmanwalter
I am 26. Quit my job almost 1 year ago after 2 years of soul-crushing,
passionless web development.

After 6 months off the job, now I'm trying to figure it out as a web
freelancer. Not making anywhere near my old salary but I'm optimistic.

I'm enjoying it more for now, but it's tough. I'm broke. Blew through my
meager savings in the first 6 months of unemployment, and I'm now dealing with
back-to-back underestimated contracts. But I'm taking out a small loan and
gonna be optimistic about it. I mean, worst case scenario I end up back in
another soul-crushing job making mad stacks.

In the meanwhile, since starting the freelancing journey, a couple other
promising opportunities have come up. A couple friends of mine started a
company selling a plugin for a popular online platform and are looking for
someone to handle their support line part-time (help people when they can't
install his software, fix bugs that they uncover, and help building small
features that customers request).

Programming just full time might actually be a good solution. I can handle a 3
day/week commitment, it'll pay enough for now and give me opportunities to do
something outside of programming for a change.

My other option right now centers around a couple friends who are similarly
dissatisfied with the life of a corporate programmer and who are seriously
considering "doing a startup".

We're not American, but flights are cheap. The money seems so loose over
there, and if we can manage to convince some investors to give us an even
half-decent salary (hell, I'll happily work for half of what an engineer gets
in Silicon Valley) it could be a great time.

I'm fortunate to have some amazing friends who are willing to go on this
journey as a team. No way I'd ever have the stamina to do it alone.

All this to say is that there are a handful of ways to make a living as a
programmer without losing your sanity, but you'll have to really keep your
eyes open and ears to the ground to find them.

