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True. At least passion should be complemented with a good exit plan.



That's why I studied Computer Science instead of 'Game Design' in college. I've been designing and making games for most of my life in some form or another (currently board and card games, previously video games) in my spare time, and spent some time in the video game industry, but I got burned out after 4 years and then was able to get a much higher paying job by going back to the corporate world.

The coding problems I solve while coding feels similar (wrestling file formats and external frameworks, optimizing bottlenecks, automating routine processes, recording various data about users and what they do in the system, and debugging hairy multithreaded procedures exists in both industries), and overtime is much less common.

But even though what I work on now gets used by major corporations and assist hundreds of thousands of people, it's hard for me to feel passionate about complex Insurance Policy objects or setting up phone systems so people can get annoyed when a robotic voice is programmed to ignore them as they jab the 0 key or say "customer service" sixteen times because they want to skip the automated process and talk to a human.

And corporate development has its own share of problems, things that are completely out of your control often times, because the directives come down from on high.

And despite there being hundreds of different industries I could work for as a software developer, I imagine I'll still encounter a lot of the same frustrations, just with the veneer of a new problem domain. Past experience shows that learning that new problem domain will carry me and keep me interested in the job for the first year, but after that starts to fade. I suppose I could hop from job to job, but I'm getting older and getting more tied down (i.e. I just bought a house, planning a wedding right now, etc.)

So what do you do when you get burned out by your exit plan?


You may want to consider contract work, where you can work on projects in multiple industries. If you get bored with a project, you just need to ride it out for a few months until something fresh comes along. Gaps between work are a great time to recharge. Of course, contracting comes with downsides like having to deal with crappy expensive health insurance, assuming you are in the US.


Have you considered a craft? Carpentry, say?




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