
I like coding but I hate coding - bedbot
I forgot my username so I had to make a new account to post this. Hope it&#x27;s not too long.<p>I&#x27;ve been coding on and off since I was a kid. I&#x27;m twenty-nine now. To be frank, I&#x27;m not that good at it. I&#x27;m not bad at it, but I&#x27;ve never invested the effort to get really good, because I never cared to be. I like making things and solving problems, but I don&#x27;t get exactly get a thrill out of learning a new framework or spending hours debugging a single function.<p>Writing code, as you all know, is incredibly frustrating and often stultifying work. For me, it&#x27;s rewarding to make something, and I&#x27;ve enjoyed building many small projects in the past. That said, the process sometimes seems like more trouble than it&#x27;s worth.<p>I&#x27;m not sure what I&#x27;d be doing if market forces hadn&#x27;t steered me to deploying my (limited) tech abilities, but as it stands, I&#x27;ve been working as a data scientist for a little while. I&#x27;m not that great at that either. I&#x27;ve invested some time and money in skill-building—I just graduated with an MA in a quantitative subject from an Ivy League university—but I&#x27;m nowhere near the level of competence of many of the data scientists on the job market now.<p>And I don&#x27;t think I want to be. I don&#x27;t want to spend my whole day writing ETL pipelines or optimizing ad prices. Ideally, I don&#x27;t want to spend my whole day in front of a computer. But I do want to make enough money to go on vacation occasionally, and I want the flexibility and mobility that it seems like only the tech industry is offering these days. Millennials, right?<p>So I feel sort of trapped. I&#x27;m not sure what I want to be doing, but when I scan job listings, I find nothing interesting to me. I feel like I have lots to offer, like I&#x27;m a real generalist with a lot of interests and a lot of aptitude, but the only thing a hiring manager will see is that I can code--and that I&#x27;m not very good at it. I can&#x27;t be the only person who has had this experience.
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lostmymind66
Most jobs are boring, but I find interesting things to learn in almost every
boring task I've been given over my career. It keeps me interested and can be
used as building blocks to work on something more interesting.

I don't think there's any way around this. Even if you run your own company,
99% of the work isn't glamorous or world-changing..but needs to be done.

"Ideally, I don't want to spend my whole day in front of a computer. But I do
want to make enough money to go on vacation occasionally, and I want the
flexibility and mobility that it seems like only the tech industry is offering
these days. Millennials, right?"

I wanted this too, so about 10 years ago I started contracting. I can work
from anywhere and many times, I only need a decent internet connection (which
is available in most parts of the world).

I traveled all around Asia for a year, while coding at night.

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x0hm
> I find nothing interesting to me

> I'm a real generalist with a lot of interests

You say you have a lot of interests and aptitudes, but your entire post is
about how disinterested and not good you are.

Maybe you should identify your interests and your aptitudes and try to align
yourself toward that more.

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verdverm
Those who put more time and effort into improving their craft get the choices
and good jobs.

Are you willing to put in the effort to gain the opportunities?

