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by amatxn 3789 days ago
I've been programming for 15 years, since I was 21. It used to be my passion, work, and hobby. Over the last 3 years I've gradually shifted from development to managing projects and product development, and recently moved to the team leader/manager.

Right now I really like the product and management side of the work, but the technical / programmer side I am very burned out on. I used to spend my free time consulting, coding, researching, and had dreams of starting my own company. Now I want to go home and relax, work with my hands out in the yard/garden.

I've been at the same company for 7 years now, we typically have enough freedom and project variation to learn new skills and keep from being bored. There are simply to many frameworks/languages to keep up with to stay relevant. I don't see myself finding another development job after this one, at least not without time off/a break. The money is great, and I've been fortunate to save well, and we live will below our means.

Honestly, I'm working on a plan to be out of the industry by the time my daughter graduates high school and I'm 45.

2 comments

> Now I want to go home and relax, work with my hands out in the yard/garden.

I find that stuff you've mentioned to be a great complement to working in the software field. Perhaps it's because we're exercising our creativity in new ways, where we wouldn't necessarily be able to do in a routine software job (there are only so many new challenges one faces day to day).

Gardening is very enjoyable as is working on my home. Something very gratifying about seeing your hard work in physical form versus virtual work.
Fellow project/product manager! I also programmed for 10+ years and got burnt out. But, I still program in my abundance (hah!) of spare time, and would gladly go back to programming for a living if the nature of the work fundamentally changed.
I've been trying to learn Elixir in my spare time, feels a lot like the breath of fresh air Ruby/Rails was when it came out.

Also, been toying with data science/machine learning w/ Python.