Yes, it's a feeling majority of us experience at some point or another. After writing code and making software for a few years, you feel it's not fun anymore.
You should experiment more and find out what tasks or activities you find fulfilling so you can look for roles that allow you to do them more. For instance, if you enjoy investigating issues or incidents, then there are roles that allow you to spend majority of your time doing that.
Looking back helps. Why did you get into programming in the first place? Perhaps you like working from scratch. So go back and do that. This is a good way to reevaluate whether you still like programming like you once did.
If you don't care about low level details and don't enjoy programming, that's fine too. You can explore management roles, where majority of time goes in managing people, processes, and/or products.
If you feel you still want to be on the tech side, there are plenty of roles that are worth exploring: platform engineer, data engineer, network engineer, compiler engineer, research engineer, database engineer, etc.
The field is vast; you can just keep expanding your breath. It's okay not to find a niche.
You can teach, or study more, then teach. Presuming you still like learning more about computer science.
You can write about tech, instead of writing code. Still be in tech industry, but write words instead of code. Communicate with humans, instead of computers.
You can go further away and still be in tech I suppose, get into math modelling roles or quant roles.
Also worth ruling out is burnout. If you are burned out, you probably won't find anything interesting. So take a break, and contemplate what sort of things interest you. Whatever piques your curiosity, just follow that, and see where that takes you.
Thanks! Some good thoughts in here. I took a month off before starting my current position and it made me feel even less interested in writing code once I got back to work. Maybe finding a different place in the field will get me interested again.
It does resonate to some extent, but I still like software.
If you dislike the industry, you might still not like product/engineering-management roles.
It seems to me like myself, you need to find out what kind of work you like, what you'd explore for your own curiosity even if you are not paid.
Trying out OS/networks/compilers/data-science/research roles might be worth your while. But, if core CS is not your thing, it's possible you will find management roles (product/engineers) more satisfying.
I liked how Hunter S. Thompson put it in words when he was asked for advice.
You ask advice: ah, what a very human and very dangerous thing to do! For to give advice to a man who asks what to do with his life implies something very close to egomania. To presume to point a man to the right and ultimate goal— to point with a trembling finger in the RIGHT direction is something only a fool would take upon himself.
I am not a fool, but I respect your sincerity in asking my advice. I ask you though, in listening to what I say, to remember that all advice can only be a product of the man who gives it. What is truth to one may be disaster to another. I do not see life through your eyes, nor you through mine. If I were to attempt to give you specific advice, it would be too much like the blind leading the blind.
I give a version of this every time I give advice. I remind people that it is just that: an advice. "Please, remember the decision is still your responsibility and I don't mind you doing anything you see fit with my advice including completely ignoring it"
Being advisor is dangerous because you can become entangled in the matter you have no power to decide on. I make sure that people understand managing the issue and advising on it are two completely separate roles. It usually is a chat in the form: If you want, cede the power to make decisions and only then I can try my best to resolve it and be responsible for results.
When it comes to somebody's life, it is not possible to cede the responsibility and so by very definition it is just not possible for me to take any responsibility for the advice I give and it is still up to the person to decide whether they can trust the advice and how to use it.
I will take the bullet and suggest Ayn Rand's Fountainhead.
If you are a teenager it will definitely make you think and likely leave an impact on you. It's not a typical novel, more like philosophical ideas presented in the form of a novel. Ideal characters placed in real life. You will also understand why the world is divided into Ayn Rand lovers and haters.
It questions how the world works, how it should work, how people live their lives, and how they should live their lives, etc, etc.
Great suggestion. This is one of my favorite books, and I enjoyed it more than Atlas Shrugged because I found it a bit more subtle.
Rand has a very distinct philosophy and is quite black-and-white, but even if you don't agree with everything hopefully you can appreciate the writing and storytelling in The Fountainhead (and others). It seems that a lot of the discussion about Rand is focused on her philosophy and if it's right or wrong. This is probably justified but also obscures the fact that she was a master at writing.
I read this book in my early 20s and loved it. Even though I've become much more liberal on many issues (proponent of universal healthcare, tax-payer paid higher ed, etc.) I can still appreciate the themes in her work.
Also just finished Anthem last night- I recommend checking it out. Super short but really gripping read.
It's similar to your description of the book, ideal characters doing ideal things. Some scenes feel like they could be trimmed down and convey the same information.
The web of characters gets more rewarding to watch past the halfway line as the conflicts start to blossom. The film builds over time and comes to a powerful and satisfying end.
The 1940s emphasis on tall verticality in its art style is on full display. The strict adherence to command in speech seems foreign to me, not having been through the fighting forties.
Yeah its good. Cant say it will have any surprises left for you.
The biggest problem with Ayn Rand's thinking is that skilled, intelligent, and talented people are always moral people in her universe. This is not always the case.
It is emotionally intense, beautifully written, and is a hypnotic read. Larger than life characters centered around one enigmatic protagonist, Jude. It's about pain, friendship, love, and the brutality of memory and experience.
An Australian gangster escaping his home country and falling in love with India (Mumbai). Lots of philosophy. A moral tale. Plenty of drama. And a love story with deep, dark characters.
A novel on idealism for the irrational, real world we live in. Centered around an ideal man, Roark, who struggles to survive despite being a brilliant architect; he doesn't give up on his principles and never conforms. Not a typical novel, disliked by many.
The first time I implemented the backtracking algorithm it felt really special. I was struggling to solve 8 queen problems for a couple of nights, banging my head around it. And then when it worked, I knew my love for programming was not going anywhere any time soon.
It was ugly, I had used 8 for loops, each running for 8 iterations, but, I still felt awesome when it worked. Before this, I had written only lab programs. Next, I applied the backtracking algorithm to solve Sudoku recursively, and that's how it all began. I entered the world of algorithms.
I know it's just one form of brute force algorithm, maybe doesn't even count as one, and is not that elegant, but, it will always remain my favorite.
> I know it's just one form of brute force algorithm, maybe doesn't even count as one, and is not that elegant, but, it will always remain my favorite.
Backtracking is really a depth-first search over the search tree, so it's definitely an algorithm and I would say it's "elegant" in some sense (like simplicity).
