[ido]

To be undiplomatic, most jobs suck - most work for devs is “enterprise” or web development, usually for companies that are either not tech companies or that the tech is not that interesting.

Even in the prestige companies like Amazon or Microsoft most devs don’t work on greenfield projects but on maintaining the cash cows.

[devjab]

I guess it depends on what you like. I’m fortunate in the way that I like doing most programming. I love building things, even if they aren’t exciting or if they are using “un-cool” technologies. Heck, I even enjoy maintenance work as long as the end goal is for it to never need human eyes again.

What I dislike is typically tied to all the bullshit that comes with programming. Because I’m mentally damaged the way I am, I have to expend an enormous amount of energy to pretend to listen in a daily standup meeting when people I don’t work directly with mill about whatever the code I’m not at all involved with does. Which is how SCRUM “works” in basically any Danish organisation because none of them have teams actually working on the same thing to justify using SCRUM. Or if you bill by the hour, so you can’t help another developer chase down that silly mistake that turns out to be ridiculously obvious because then how do you bill that half an hour in JIRA? Those things are what I personally look to avoid.

So yeah, if you’re not that into programming anything, then I guess it’s harder but it’s still possible. The first thing I did at my current job was to work with solar inverters and collect massive amounts of data from our solar plants. Which was certainly a challenge, I haven’t really read a manual the way I needed to read those solar inverter manuals since I did some silly stuff in C with BitMap images during my computer science education. So those jobs are also out there.

[ido]

I think at the beginning of my career (I'm 40 and got my first job as a dev at 18) I really was, I just wanted to program and didn't really care what. That led me to enterprise dev as that was the most available work. After a while though I really did feel dead inside, working on stuff I didn't really care about felt like wasting my life. These days I'm doing better but I had to start my own company to truly get over it :)

[proprietario]

wow, this really resonates with me as I am 18, straight out of highschool and landed my first job at a swift shop for enterprise programming, I really didn't care where I started, I really just want to pogram stuff

Can you share more of your story and maybe give me some advice, I really don't want to end up burnt out

[ido]

I don't regret my path at all! I learned a lot at these early jobs, and honestly at 18 I wouldn't have gotten anything better (and for good reason).

I started uni at 19 (math & computer science at a local state university, I didn't have to go into debt for it) and that gave me a big boost in my programming ability (i continued working in that first job part-time throughout school). After that I went through several jobs in the next ±decade and made sure to always apply to places where I'd learn something new and level up as a developer.

At that point I knew a lot better what I wanted & didn't want to do. But I don't think I could have learned that without that experience and I don't regret it as it really helped me hone my skills and learn a lot. I also learned that the people you work with often make a bigger difference to the experience than the product you work on.

[versteegen]

...and may I ask, how did your hobby roguelike projects factor into your career? (Hi ido! It's been some years!) Were they significant for gaining skills, or are coworkers and existing codebases crucial for learning from? I often feel like I learn more slowly writing code from scratch rather than studying and contributing to someone else's.

[ido]

They were crucial! My first commercial game was a roguelike that directly came from those :)

[jnovek]

To me, this is the biggest challenge that comes with having ADHD as an adult. The quality of my work slips if I can't find some sort of novelty in it.

It doesn't always have to be greenfield, though. It can be complex and layered with legacy problems, it just has to be something I haven't explored before to be engaging. Right now I'm lucky to have a job where I'm assigned tasks from a variety of projects, modes and tools which really helps keep me focused.