8
ben85ts
4y

I've been a frontend engineer at 6 companies for the last 10 years. Both big and small companies currently at the largest I've ever worked for. I'm totally over it. Maybe burnt out is the term. I have zero motivation to do any work or coding. I'm not a lazy person. I love working, solving problems, learning new things. I'm just sick of what I do. I used to love following all the newest tech trends, following devs on twitter, checking hacker news and creating side projects. Now I feel like my job has lost all that joy and excitement. I work remote and have been for the past 3 years. I wonder how much of that, not having any social feedback and interaction around the job has attributed to me feeling like this. All the JS frameworks suck. PR reviews, process, requirements; I'm just tired of everything. Has anyone else experienced this? If so, what did you do? Were you able to find the passion for programming again?

Comments
  • 3
    Girlfriend can help if you don't already have. ;)
  • 1
    @Lexter great suggestion! I am married with a 6yo daughter so maybe I should ask my wife what she thinks. I might get the "just deal with it" response though haha...
  • 3
    @ben85ts As i said, girlfriend can help if you don't already have one.
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    Just kiding. :P
  • 0
    @drac94 OMG thank you so much for sharing your experience! Do you find working in a PM role you miss coding at all?
  • 2
    This is the inevitable outcome of a career in web design, at least for me. I write tools to automate system administration tasks for a team that manages enterprise hardware. That means there is ALWAYS something new to fix or improve.

    That said, apart from this job, I've never had the same job for more than a year or two at a time, so it's been very helpful to move from job to job over the last twenty years. As it stands, I'm 41 and I love what I do, and I'm still excited about the tech.
  • 1
    I know, i will be at your exact same feeling by now if i ever "forced" myself to code whenever i didnt felt like coding.
    I did it few times (like last day before production) but otherwise, i code only when i miss wiring a line !
    It is like everything...
    If everytime u have sex with ur wife, u do it becasue "u have to" u will end up hating it !
    Let ur self "miss the thing" ... U may have followed so long the "what i should do" ...
    Let ur self follow the "what id love to do now" ...
    Ur left and right brain got desynchronized. That's what is about.
    Nothing dramatic. U just wanted so much to do it the right way... Didnt listen to ur heart quite enough.
    Back to the roots bro
  • 1
    I would suggest a few tips to help you overcome the 'burnout'

    - Delegate work. With 10 yrs experience, you must have a junior dev on the team; if not, convince your Manager to hire another member. They'll get the message once you tell them that the Project would suffer if you were to go off for a while.

    - Go Full-stack. Front-end experience is a great way to start programming; combine it with knowledge of Databases and you'll be all set to take on large-scale system integration projects where the emphasis is on performance, scalability and so on. A new perspective helps.

    - Work less, Read more. With experience I think we ought to be become more efficient, which means lesser time on the grinding wheel and more time evaluating what suits us better - job profile, company culture, team setup.

    Hope it helps.
  • 1
    I always found learning a new language and finding the clusterfuck of issues every language has reignites the passion for the stack I already use.

    Worst case would probably be you finding a new passion.
  • 0
    @bahua that's awesome you're still enjoying it. I think you'r right moving around jobs has certainly helped keep it interesting and different. I was hoping that I could settle in with my current job as it is a larger stable company. Maybe I should look at it differently however and consider a move in a year or so.
  • 1
    @ben85ts

    I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to stay at one company in particular for an extended period, but finding that one with a good culture and workload is a real gem, and coming up on four years in this job, I still don't have any interest in moving, even though it's a great time to find a new job in Denver.
  • 0
    @devapsarl Thank you so much, that's very encouraging. I would love to take a break from coding and I definitely have been slowing down my progress at work (partially because of the time of year, holidays, etc.) I will try to create some space between me and coding, see if I miss it at all.
  • 0
    @themounthead these are really good tips. I think having another frontend dev on the team is a good idea. I have done a fair amount of DB and backend design for some of my personal projects. I wonder if switching to full stack I would have a harder time finding a position somewhere. Your last point is dead on. I should definitely put more consideration into my next move.
  • 0
    @Angry I suppose you're right. It couldn't hurt to try learning a new lang see if it sparks anything.
  • 1
    I've seen this *particular* kind of burn out before, but I'm hesitant to explain it to you because you might no believe it. Eh, here goes.

    I'm gonna be frank here: It's almost always because of certain people in the workplace. Before you go self-diagnosing with burn-out or depression, ask yourself if you're not really just surrounded by assholes and psycopathic cunts?

    First, ask yourself what days you REALLY don't want to go in. Do this over a week or three. Then note all the people in common on the schedules for all the days you dreaded going in.

    Do this enough and eventually it narrows down to just the subset of people who need to thrown into the ocean with concrete shoes.

    Badabing Badaboom, you have the source of the problem, then it's up to you to decide if you need to 1. switch teams, 2. switch work schedules, 3. switch companies, or something else.

    Hope it helps.
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