

Ask HN: Does anyone else do what I do? - mohsen

I don't particularly like the work I do at my job.  Don't get me wrong, great people, smart people, and much to learn, but the work is not interesting at all.<p>So when I get home at night, I stay up and work on my own little projects here and there, just so I can remember that programming is a bunch of fun.<p>Anyone else doing/have done that?<p>-mohsen
======
kapilkaisare
I used to do that.

The difficulty with this state of affairs is that the work you do at your job
begins to become a [time+motivation+energy] sink, and you often find yourself
wishing that you could devote more of yourself to your pet projects.

This in turn affects your performance at work, giving you a perpetually
negative loop that's broken when you shift jobs.

There are very few excuses, I think, to not find good work these days. Pay
with personal circumstances is the only I can think of - if you have a family
with enough children to make accepting lower pay for better an impossible
decision, for example.

I beleive that you have just this life to live. Make the most of it.

~~~
JimboOmega
I'm stuck in this loop. At work all I can think about is getting home and
having fun or doing "real" work.

Not all areas are flooded with good jobs, and mine isn't one of them. I've
interviewed with a few companies that didn't hire me, and the process of
interviewing takes such a toll - mostly emotionally, but also several hour+
long phone calls, and a whole day off to interview, a few nights spent on code
samples... I'm reluctant to do it again. Especially when my job is "not that
bad" and it's hard to get a clear signal on just how great any other potential
job might be.

Also, pursuing my side projects is something I want to continue.

------
NickPollard
I think you'll find a pretty large majority of HNers do that, either just for
fun, or in the hope of eventually building a business out of their little
projects.

I work for a large game developer by day, and by night I go home and write my
own open-source game engine, as it lets me learn what I need to learn. It's
very hard to experiment with new techniques at work, but it's important to my
skill development. Also the codebase at work is so horrible, that working with
a nice, concise C codebase in the evenings is positively pleasant by
comparison.

------
bobds
Sometimes I get so frustrated with whatever I'm working on, that I start
thinking about how nice it would be to quit programming and become a farmer or
a builder.

Soon after that, I solve a little personal problem by coding the solution, or
I discover a cool new tool, or I fix a little bug in an application I use,
even if it's written in a language I'm not familiar with.

At which point, I remember that I'm never going to quit programming because
it's so damn useful. And it can be fun too, if you work on the right things.
Even if I go on to be a farmer, I'll still solve the odd problem by
programming the solution. And I'll always have an appreciation of simplicity,
bestowed upon me through endless nights of working against stupid, complicated
technology.

~~~
mathgladiator
I second the farmer path.

If I had some land and the skills to make it viable to live off of it, then I
would. That solves most of my life debt since I'm fairly ascetic.

~~~
bobds
I am looking for a cofounder for an open source farm startup.

Mostly kidding, though if anyone is intrigued by such ideas, feel free to
contact me.

~~~
mohsen
what do you have in mind?

------
madhouse
I do. However, not because I'm unhappy with what I do at work (I'm completely
statisfied). It's just that I love to tinker, so I continue to do that even
when I get home.

------
hasenj
Same boat buddy. But I find the day job to be such an energy sink, that by the
time I'm home I don't have enough mental energy to really code much.

~~~
mohsen
Same here, but you can't let them take your soul, just drink a cup of coffee
and get to work. Any idea would be good, because it's your idea.

