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Is It Time to Step Away from Coding After 10 Years?
14 points by tiagom87 86 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 28 comments
After more than a decade of daily coding, I'm questioning whether to step back. When I take coding breaks, my energy and focus improve, but returning to coding brings back procrastination and fatigue. While I still enjoy the intellectual challenge, the industry’s saturation with AI tools has made coding feel less fulfilling and original. Financially, coding has been my best source of leverage aside from investing. For those who’ve stepped away, how did you find the courage to make the change and replace that leverage (and fun)?



About 10 years ago I graduated with a useless degree in mathematics. My dad was homeless in San Diego and I was tired of being unable to help him when he reached out for money for a hotel.

So I enrolled in App Academy. I got a job at Apple and four months later he's killed in a motorcycle accident.

I quit my job, floundered a bit, found sporadic success in startups, had a few breakdowns, spent some time in the hospital, but always went back to work, back to grinding out Python and SQL and other nonsense.

I hate it, to be quite honest. I want off this damn ride. It would probably help if I had family, friends, or mentors to fall back on, but I don't.

So I keep pushing, keep committing, cursing myself out for introducing more bugs, failing to find the spirit to go on fixing things for big mega-corpo customers. And if I stop, I don't have an alternative means of survival.

So it goes.


I don't mean this in a bad way, but I think your experience highlights a point I've been making for some years now.

Coding is a terrible job. Yes it pays well, but its tedious, frustrating, and mostly just a grind. Often it's meaningless, and can have a short life-span (if it ships at all.)

On the other hand, if it's your passion, it's fantastic. People paying you to do it is a bonus. It's not a job, it becomes a form of artistic expression. It's an act of creation, and that is the whole reward.

Most people don't get paid to persue their passion. Writing, art, music - they become hobbies indulged in free time. But programs offer value, lots of value, so there's gold in dem hills.

For most people mining that gold is a hard slog if digging holes in the ground. For a tiny fraction it's a creative movement of earth which is a special delight.

I am fortunately in that camp. I don't burn out coding, it's the fun part I get up early for. I don't think I'll ever stop.

BUT if it's not you, and you're only doing it for the money, then making peace with that is helpful. I'm not saying quit (you still need a job, and programming pays well) but find your identity, your passion, your significance elsewhere, elsewhere.

Trying to find significance in hole-digging is hard. Using the income from hole digging to fund your purpose gives meaning to both your work and yourself.

May you be blessed enough to find your passion.


You def had quite a roller coaster ride. Wish you all the strength in the world brother.


I'm about to step away I think. I love programming and creativity.

But I'm also about to be made redundant. So I've been job searching. I thought I had an "impressive" CV for 3 YoE - I mean I've built solo stuff with XXX,XXX+ users (and others with XX,XXX and 2 with XXXX users and one with XXX users!!)! But because I don't have C# commercial experience (in NZ) I can't get any jobs. I also had an abusive interview today which pushed me over the edge.

I felt like meeting "god" after that traumatic interview experience and the state of things (like the indigenous people having their treaty destroyed by a fucking racist right leaning bastard government). I'm sorry if thats not okay to say on HN, I'm just incredibly sad at the state of the world and it seems my career is about to evaporate and my life with it. I'm partially disabled so that doesn't help, I can't just go out and become a forest ranger or something cool.

I'm probably on several lists now for my comments on the state of the world. Fuck it. All privacy has been destroyed anyway.


Interviewing sucks, really hard, and when you put so much of your creativity up on the line like that it can feel like a test of the balance of your soul. Its not, its a test of whether you light up the right spots in the brain of someone you've never met. For this reason, and for many others: if you're giving 100%, don't. They don't deserve your 100% and would never even be able to benefit from it if you still give it. This was advice that not everyone needs, but I absolutely needed at one point. Hope you can find a brighter path.


You are not alone. Not sure you saw the other trending HN post around Ghost jobs. Despite this, I'm sure you'll land on your feet in no time!


I think the thing to realize (which can take 10+ years), is that coding can be a means to an end, and non an end in itself.

You can lean into the business and people side of wherever you work, help people out, mentor the new joiners, try to become a manager if you want. Try to connect with the purpose of the organization. If there's some urgent bug or temporary project, by all means jump in and roll up your sleeves with the coding, but you don't need to be doing it all day, every day, to the exclusion of anything else.

Ultimately, coding is just like accounting, plumbing, sewers, etc., yes, it's "important" and you couldn't have, say, a hotel, restaurant, or city without them, but they're in the background, enabling the _whole thing_ to function. No amount of overachievement by a plumber is going to make for a better restaurant experience.

Perhaps you don't have to "step away" and start from scratch with something new, but you can try to do it less, and do other things more.


Thank you. Solid advice!


I feel you to some extent. I love the challenges and problem-solving but the actual coding part becomes less interesting over time.

I am not quite as far along my career as you but after three failed startup ideas I decided to do freelancing for now. This gives me the opportunity to work on problems that companies really have and while I still code a lot of this is now more focused on the architecture not so much on boring tasks.

Besides that, I also get to see new companies and new projects every couple of months and I am working for myself and not for the secnd vacation home of some boss.

It sounds like consulting could be something you'd enjoy, too.

Also, quitting and finding a new job is really underrated for mental health


I did coding freelancing for some time now. But i'm thinking on doing consulting working in a completely unrelated thing. At the end of the day, what gives me pleasure is adding value to other folks.


Ure, if you don't see yourself coding at all or doing technical work, doing consulting in an unrelated things is perfectly fine. I guess it's easier if you already got some experience in the field but at the end of the day the only thing that matters is signing clients


Truth...


How painful was the transition to freelancing for you?


It was okay. I first realized that freelancing might be an option after I was approached by someone on Linkedin to help them with a project and then I had little success with getting more projects but for 2024 I have been booked most of the time.

The things you learn in a startup are mostly applicable to freelancing, too.


Thanks for sharing your insights


I don't code on weekends but 15 years in and I am finding inspiration in the AI tools. I'm so pumped in being extra productive. Especially when working in a new technology, the learning experience is so much better. I can chat back and forth to learn things, I can ship so much faster. I love it. I hope you can find that.


They are indeed great and I use them thoroughly (Cursor, Warp etc...). Thanks for the wishes and inspiration.


I code for 22 years and be almost 40 years old. Years ago I felt the need for the social aspect in my life and so I started another education path as social councillor beside my 4-day work week with the support of my wife. Now I finished this path and be very happy about it! I won't start changing my professional field yet I have another, better position in my current work and might replace the ceo soon. I look after my coworker and the social balance at my workspace _and_ code. You see, I still code (it's my hobby after all) but my focus shifted somewhat.

I hope you can find your way. If you want to talk just tell me :)


> but returning to coding brings back procrastination and fatigue

This is burnout and psychological support might help.

Maybe focusing on building skills for a career change (or just a career detour or pivot) would help reignite passion?


Thank you. I'm actually thinking on trying different things that are completely unrelated...


I kind of feel you. I also feel that AI is going to be so powerful that most of the developers read it as "all average developers" are going to be in threat.

I am trying to build my own products, trying to build a business around so that money gets taken care of. Then I will code for fun, not for paying bills :)


I wouldn't be so sure. LLMs have hit a wall, anthropic and openai can't seem to make anything that performs better than their current offerings.

Developers are going to be in threat short term because the market is very competitive right now, but unless there's some brand new kind of AI that isn't an LLM, I think we've probably seen all they can do


I understand. One of my biggest problems right now is when I make a new side project, the fear of redundancy some months from now kicks in.


Sounds like management and mentoring might be a satisfying diversion at this point in your life.


That's a really good insight


I’m in the middle of reading the book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. You might find it worth a try.


I've read it :) Thanks for the kind suggestion though!


If you like that one, a really under-hyped one that has a similar message: An Unlikely Guru by Chick Atkins




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