[jaitaiwan]

Seems like you’re experiencing burn-out and from what I’ve read and experienced, burn out is a function of emotional investment vs the emotional return.

So I see that you have two options both of which shouldn’t happen before first taking a small break: 1. Continue to work in the industry and reduce your emotional investment. Hint: great places for that are big corporates. 2. Continue to work while upskilling in another field or your current field depending on what you prefer.

Depression often comes with the temptation to catastrophise the situation, avoid that urge. Seek out others who can be objective and talk you through it, be prepared to hear their answers.

I started out front-end, did a lot of my own side projects to get backend stuff. PHP is pretty good despite the hate because not many people want to do it these days but a legit and easy way to get some backend experience.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

> PHP is pretty good despite the hate

I suspect the "hate" is rather localized.

I find the "Fishtank Graph"[0] to be a fairly good way to get my feet firmly planted back on the ground.

That said, I don't like PHP, and avoid it, if possible. I use it for my backend work, and it does a great job, there. I just prefer writing apps in Swift.

The "game-changer," for me, was retiring, and working on the stuff I want to work on, at my pace, and using my methodologies. No more insecure middle managers, pissing on my work, and no more insecure co-workers, fighting over every detail, and deliberately sabotaging team dynamics (to be fair, I spent a good part of my career, as a manager, which I hated, but it paid the bills).

I know that retiring is not an option for a lot of folks, and realize how fortunate I am (I didn't feel that way, at first, though. My retirement was not by choice).

But it's not work, if you love what you do.

These days (and for the last five years), I actually get more done, every day, by 10AM, than I used to get done, all day, in the office. My GH activity graph is solid green (no exaggeration), and it isn't "gamed," like so many of them. I do two things, every day:

1) I walk three miles, and

2) I write Swift code.

Life is good.

[0] https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/programmin...

[agumonkey]

> and working on the stuff I want to work on, at my pace, and using my methodologies.

I had one excerpt of that, did part time manual labour gig, coding during night and mornings on a side project. It was quite blissful. No negative emotion only pure intrinsic motivation. The manual labour gig acted as a good time constraint (30min to make a clean patch, 1h to think of how to add this feat) and gave a good balance of creativity and productivity. No bad colleague, no friction, no unwanted feature.

[meowtastic]

Nice stats. Pretty surprising how Java's doing better than JS in overall market share, and growth.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Lots of infrastructure written in Java, and I suspect it still features heavily in school curriculum development.

[jiggywiggy]

I would be careful with corporates

Most people who had burn outs in my life had it while working for corporates, where actually there was hardly any pressure outwardly, but they all put it on themselves inwardly.

Outwardly there was hardly anything going on, but I think the internal politics & having a personality being sensitive to social pressure played a role. But not fully sure.

Sometimes I'm more tired when there is hardly anything to do, or when there is no real possibility to add any value because there is so many stiff ideas floating around. I prefer hard work but with real results then corporate cushions. Maybe that also plays a role for certain people.

The best places are in my experience team with a reasonable goal, people who care for the goal and each other and there is pressure but also understanding.

[spoiler]

This is all excellent advice.

I'd just like to emphasize your point about being prepared to hear their answers. But really hear it. Don't let the brain demons (depression warps perception) get to the words before you do!

Also, people often don't know how to have difficulty conversations, so this is another thing that can just make hearing the message harder. Eg, they often try to encourage as a way of showing compassion, instead of just showing compassion. They're stills being supportive, but it might not be the support you need. And just encouragement, without a good framework and a healthy mindset—which could have has been compromised by burnout—won't be enough.

I wholeheartedly also recommend going to therapy (and people often think this takes years, but it can just be a couple of sessions).

[alvis]

I'm almost in my 40 and I can feel the OP's pain.

But I agree with @jaitaiwan, you look you're burnt-out rather than depressed. It's too easy for us to focus on our skill and less about our emotion & other things. Then over time, we see less light on our career because what we left is only the skill which probably already obsolete.

Skill is tradable but a person is not. You're who you're. If you like what you do, then it's fine. But if tech genuinely doesn't excite you, then looking for what you like now is not too late.

[matesz]

> function of emotional investment vs the emotional return

This!

[martopix]

I was also struck by this definition, which I had not heard before.

[spyremeown]

Same, resonated very hard with me. Thanks for this, OP.

[mouzogu]

> 1. Continue to work in the industry and reduce your emotional investment.

thanks, this is what i've been doing. but it's really impacting my mental health.