[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 :)