|
What about a career change? Go back to school in something entirely different? I've been coding since I was 8 years old, and professionally for a couple decades. Late 30s here and feeling pretty burnt out too, especially with the current market. I think the bigger lesson here is that we're just as disposable as any other trained monkey, and the market is correcting itself for the overhyped advertising bubbles of the last few years, especially covid. There's nothing that special about what we do, and we were just temporarily overpaid in an era of irresponsible easy capital, with lots of detrimental social impacts. It was bound to crash at some point. Still, there will always be companies chasing the latest fads on investor dollars, but if you're not the latest and greatest, they probably don't want you. I've been able to find reasonable employment in the long tail of "other" companies, ones who need mediocre low level dev work and pay livable wages (but nowhere near FANG level). Would you be happy in such an org, getting by without getting rich or really leaving a mark on anything in particular? Yes, you'd be just settling, but still better off than most of the 8 billion people on this planet. Is that enough? If not, hell, if you have the savings... why not use this time to do a PROPER midlife crisis and reevaluate what you want out of your life? Who cares what algorithms you know and what percentile performance you eeked out of some service that's going to be forgotten in ten years? None of that matters. Your family won't care, your friends will come and go, most of these companies will either be gone or become boring monopolies. Instead of leetcode, maybe some soul searching? |
I've spent (probably too much) time in a 'soul-searching' place; I'd love to do some creative work and have some affinity for music, and maybe there's an intersection where my love of music and my love of code has enough economic value to make a living off of.