[angersock]

Sounds like you were in industry from 2000-20007, right (just backtracking your timeline)? Those were some grueling years, and then the mobile/freemium avalanche hit.

You likely have a lot of native code experience, and probably dealt with annoying hardware issues, right (PowerPC, whatever)? Try getting a gig with somebody targeting embedded systems, or take some time off.

Live life for a bit, stop programming, and maybe attend the odd hackathon until you learn to love coding again.

Hit me up on email if you want to vent/chat/whatever.

[ryan-allen]

I think your reply is interesting because you're advising taking specific useful experience and kind of like, just working on selling the experience (which is absolutely worth something) rather than continuing pushing the 'next best thing'.

Reading tech news sites all the time kind of makes me feel like unless you're pouring your heart and soul into your job or startup or whatever you're just a useless asshole. Maybe that's not the case and experience is worth something, enough to coast along and be useful while you find new direction or new inspiration.

I don't know!

[angersock]

The reason I advocate that approach (other than it is what I do, to varying degrees of success, to support myself) is that it seems to be more straightforward a value prop than trying to sell an idea.

Read "Masters of Doom", read "Soul of a New Machine", read "The New New Thing", read iWoz: we see that products fail all the time, that pioneers take a bath, that the second mouse gets the cheese--but that engineers are always in demand.

A business can fail, but raw material is always being looked for.