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When you're at university you get used to learning a lot, quickly, under pressure. Learning is fun! Sadly, many jobs have that initial rush of learning and then - once you know what you're doing - it stops. That's hard when you're only recently out of education. Others have posted links on how to meet UK startups. Perhaps there are meetups or conferences you can attend to get to know some startups, or look at the HN job postings. Startups are fun because there is more learning and challenge, things are often changing and you have to adapt to mistakes. But they have boring bits too. Being at a startup isn't a magic bullet. Can you take on more responsibility in your job and challenge yourself in new ways? Investigate new technologies to create more efficient solutions to problems you are solving (e.g. continuous deployment, analytics, dashboards, code health, new frameworks, cross-platform development, asynchronous patterns, client-side apps...). Perhaps your hunger for learning is a sign you should go back into academia. I felt similarly while working in the year after I graduated, so I went back to do a Master's. I think it was the right move for me, but it isn't the right move for everyone. If you have the finances for it, maybe it's time to quit, travel for a bit, write, relax, and start coding for fun again. But eventually you might have to worry about money, so keep thinking one or two steps ahead. Finally, another way to achieve fulfilment is to seek mastery elsewhere. Whether it's fitness, gaming, language or other skills, you can mark time at your job while expanding your mind outside of working hours. I had an incredibly boring internship and pretty much the only way I got through it was working on math problems and studying linguistics for fun during my lunch break and evenings. Good luck! |