Ask HN: Are you as passionate as you used to be?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34599433

by py4 • 3 years ago

58 83 3 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

At 13-20 years old, I was very curious and passionate about computers. I spent hours learning computer hacking and exploiting with buffer overflows, taught myself C, C++, linux, python, ... I did a lot of side projects in my 18s.

Now I'm 28 years old, working at a FAANG as a software engineer. It's been a couple of years that I don't have the same curiosity and passion to learn new technical things, outside of work, as I did before. I value and like learning new stuff in my day-to-day job, but thinking about learning a new programming language in my free time does not make me excited anymore.

Is this normal, possibly due to aging for some people? Or is it because all my curiosities have been solved after undergrad, or could it be a symptom of chronic depression as I pretty much don't have craving for anything anymore?

Octokiddie• 3 years ago

From what I can tell, this is a very common technical career arc. It's only a problem if you view it as one.

racktash• 3 years ago

After a while, a lot of software development starts to look the same, at least if you aren't working in cutting edge tech. I still love software, but mostly I only write code for work now. In my spare time, I do other challenging hobbies that are quite divorced from software (like fiction writing). I feel this keeps me balanced and avoids my getting sick of software.

swah3• 3 years ago

Heh - I should re-start reading books - I feel like they make like more colorful for me.

ElFitz4• 3 years ago

If you can’t find the time, there are a few wonderfully well narrated books out there.

PaulHoule• 3 years ago

For me it comes and goes.

I was a kid in the 1980s excited about 8-bit micros. Today I have days when I am more excited than I ever was about about what I and other people can do with computers and I have other days when I think the 2023 web is all ashes.

I have times when I play a lot of video games and watch a lot of TV shows. Other times I am into literature, art, psychology and soft subjects like that. Other times I do demanding technical side projects. I think I am doing my best when I do side projects that combine those interests.

I think it is good to have a rhythm. One thing I like about being involved in electoral politics is that you can work really hard on a campaign for a few months and then not think about it for two years which helps avoid burning out.

markus_zhang• 3 years ago

Work and passion do not work along very well unless you are lucky. Best option is to grab a few millions when you are still young (and better still single) and then do whatever you want. Without "fuck you" $$ we are simply glorified slaves.

disadvantage• 3 years ago

Is this normal, possibly due to aging for some people?

Be careful not to get set in your ways. In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few. Treat coding like a new adventure, as if you were 13-20 again just discovering new things for the first time. Never let that spark be extinguished. Fuel it.

py47• 3 years ago

The million-dollar question is how to prevent the extinguishment.

whateveracct2• 3 years ago

About work? Yeah

In life? Nope. I keep finding new passions. Picked up the guitar after years of not playing and my creativity is born anew.

swah3• 3 years ago

Is playing the guitar a good "rest" from coding? Or does it use the same muscles?

whateveracct2• 3 years ago

There's definitely some overlap, but overall it's fine. Definitely a good mental break. The guitar is a fingertip and wrist and forearm thing. So the wrist overlaps a bit but it doesn't mind me. I also am deliberately very aware of my arm and hand pain and tiredness.

I also play electric guitar so it's easier to play generally.

NewMountain• 3 years ago

Serious guitar player and coder. There is some overlap, but the areas prone to RSI are slightly different. I code 6-12 hours a day and play guitar 2-6 hours a day, most days in the middle of both ranges. Posture and form are really important in both but I've never had a problem where I couldn't do one or the other. However, I do notice some discomfort if I get sloppy or lazy doing either.

In guitar, posture, a good drum throne (roc-soc high stool with the back) and a more ergonomic guitar (Strandberg Boden) has allowed me to play as long as I'd want to daily as opposed to slouched over in a chair or on a couch with a Les Paul (that shape further exaggerated my slouch).

Similarly, good posture, an aeron chair, a good bright monitor with a monitor arm and a splitboard (UHK) has saved me from the aches and pains. My prior setup had me seriously wondering if I needed to start seeing a specialist for occasional numbness in one of my hands.

swah3• 3 years ago

No, I picked a new Thing just to makes things interesting (but its not a super exciting one - Tai Chi - I should really learn an instrument next)

PuppyTailWags2• 3 years ago

Do you experience joy when you perform activities that brought you joy in the past? Do you find your capacity for joy and activities in general to have decreased? You might get checked out for depression or nutrition/hormone levels. In cis men, low testosterone can cause you to lose your passion for a lot of stuff. But so can not enough magnesium and other trace minerals.

py47• 3 years ago

Not that much. Programming was much more fun when I was a kid. everything was new. Every single computer science concept used to amuse me. I used to think about how X works. how Y works. I feel like after finishing undergrad, I pretty much knew how everything in CS "basically" works. compilers, databases, machine learning, etc etc. I still like programming, but I'm not as passionate as I used to be about it.

PuppyTailWags2• 3 years ago

Is it just programming or is it for anything else that brings you joy, e.g. any hobbies or media you consume.

wintogreen742• 3 years ago

> I pretty much knew how everything in CS "basically" works

Ha! You haven't gotten that old yet, or you'd never believe that!

ElFitz4• 3 years ago

I thought the same. I was pretty much getting slowly convinced I had to get out before I threw my laptop out the window. I both loathed and dreaded the thing.

And then Stability dropped Stable Diffusion, with all the messy and impressive effervescence that followed. And OpenAI released Whisper and opened access to text-davinci-003.

Now I feel like a kid again. All the new things I can make, that before would have taken ages and required to catch up on tons of boring domain expertise. All the new interfaces and UXs possibilities that have just opened. It’s almost magic.

It will probably become my new normal, I guess. By It pretty sure there will be something else by then. I just have to make sure I’ll still have an open and curious mind when it happens.

"Stay hungry, stay foolish."

py47• 3 years ago

I feel I have lost my "hunger" and was wondering what went wrong (if any) along the way.

ElFitz4• 3 years ago

That can happen. It’s one of those things that, for many reasons, can come and go.

But I’m afraid a random stranger on the Internet wouldn’t necessarily be in the best position to help you here.

carom• 3 years ago

I'm 33, yes I am. Grew up on computers but only started programming in uni. Learning pytorch, programming every day, working at a security startup doing low level linux dev.

I worked at a FAANG and found it absolutely soul sucking. I hated the code bureaucracy.

I hope to go out on my own soon doing an AI related startup.

collyw• 3 years ago

No. Software gets crapper and crapper. Microservices, distributed nonsense, nothing is elegant any more. It's just stack overflow to manage to get parts to speak to each other for the promise of scaling, that so few companies actually need. No one knows how to build nice software any more, we just throw more cloud services at it and hope it works.

kawfey• 3 years ago

As a 14 year old I got into amateur radio and I was totally infatuated. That carried on through college. My ham radio experiences and learning helped me decide to get into electrical engineering where I've been blessed with opportunity.

Now as a 31 year old, it doesn't interest me as much, and in fact drains me to do some of the things that past me was invigorated by. Still seeking that former passion.

0xmarcin• 3 years ago

Something similar happened to me, the magic of programming is gone - now it is just another job that pays well. Personally I moved my interests to stock markets/investing/economy and also philosophy (but only basics).

I still feel about once or twice a year a need to quickly code a side project but it usually lasts month up to 3 months. In that time I code something that eventually is abandoned, but gives me some satisfaction.

When I was younger I tried things like taking part in CTFs and reading math books in my free time. Now something changed and those things seems pointless to me. Maybe it's the nature knocking on my mental doors telling me it is time to become a father?

worldsavior2• 3 years ago

Becoming a father is truly an amazing thing.

SoftTalker• 3 years ago

Yeah I was still feeling pretty motivated (I hate the word "passionate") at 28 but started to lose it in my 40s. I'm in my 50s now and want to retire but will need to wait at least until my kids are done with their educations.

You become much more cognizant of the ticking clock on your lifespan after you pass 50. You realize you have maybe 20-30 years left (which sounds like not much after you've lived 50), and you don't really get enthused about spending it learning yet another framework, language, or piece of infrastructure.

HeyLaughingBoy• 3 years ago

Right. My passion moved on from being about the technology itself to using it to help people with their problems. Realizing that something that is trivially easy to me can be almost life-changing to someone else is exciting.

lupyro• 3 years ago

I've read similar anecdotes for a decade now. That has really pushed me towards the FIRE movement and kept me there for a while. Only recently have I realized that my position towards my career (don't get attached or financially dependent, you can be laid off tomorrow, aspiring for days of no more work) has had a really negative effect on my life. I've been in a perpetual state of waiting for the future of no work. I spend plenty of time living in the moment but at the highest level my current life plan has been "wait" or "rest and vest". Life has been materially better in every single way but I couldn't shake this unhappiness of "waiting". I also felt very similar to OP. It wasn't until I recently turned down a much better job offer at Amazon and watched Stutz that has made a profound impact for me. Turning down a financially better job at Amazon (to put my sanity and happiness above money) really helped me realize I genuinely have the job I want. Watching Stutz made me aware of the 3 aspects of reality no one can avoid (Pain, Uncertainty and Work). In my mind FIRE was going to solve all 3 aspects for me. I write all of this only to say I agree with you. But for others who find themselves overcompensating by overlooking/hating work that can be just as big of a mistake. Except for this mental shift my life has been mostly the same for the past 5 years, but the past 6 months have been significantly happier.

sokoloff• 3 years ago

For me, I think it goes in waves. I went through periods where other things in my life were in disarray or where I had a lot of stresses from having kids and worrying about their future or just plain sleeping less while they were infants and toddlers or when the company I was working for was struggling financially.

Then there are upswings where the pure joy of learning something new or trying something challenging in computing comes right back with as much force as I could ever remember there being. (Doing Advent-of-Code in clojure this past Dec was one of those times of nearly pure joy for me.)

I do think it's easier in your first few years out of school because there's so much to learn and you're getting that feeling of progress and novelty every week, if not every day. After a while, you start to have more grind and less shiny-new, but there's still enough enjoyment that I get at not quite (but almost) twice your age.

If you "don't have a craving for anything anymore" that probably is a sign of general depression and you might need to talk to someone, might need to exercise, might need a vacation, or who knows what will help you climb out of it, but if you used to like programming and lots of other things and now you find you don't enjoy programming nor other things very much, I'd wager that it's not the programming part that's changed in that story.

gghffguhvc• 3 years ago

My passion for tech outside of work extended into my 30s but by late 30s, after having children, it dwindled. It has recently picked back up again in my early 40s as I can view the world somewhat through my children's eyes and their curiosity and creativity is infectious. So my advice is to try to be curious about the world again and if that curiosity flows to building technical things let it take you there, if not it might take you somewhere else just as interesting.

MuffinFlavored• 3 years ago

I feel like at your age (28) most are slowing being pushed (by society or cultural norms) to be passionate/curious about (instead of side projects):

what it's like to work towards a long term relationship (marriage) with a significant other

what it's like to raise a family

I'm always impressed when I see how productive people are online with coding projects/hobbies when they are 35-55 and have a family/children. It seems daunting to be able to manage both.

whateverman23• 3 years ago

For me, I just don't see anything exciting in the future for me with regards to software engineering and my career.

When I was first starting out, possibilities were endless. Lots to learn, lots to build.

When I was in college, I started getting internships, and dreams of disneyland-like big tech jobs were abundant.

Now, I have the big tech job and everything is objectively getting worse. Big tech jobs are less and less cushy. Jobs are harder to get. Salaries are going down. Layoffs left and right. Promotions and raises are a grind. Etc. etc. Absolutely nothing to look forward to.

People are talking about depression and low-test, but maybe the future just isn't bright anymore, and this is a normal reaction.

yunwal• 3 years ago

maybe the future just isn't bright anymore, and this is a normal reaction.

I think it's a normal reaction, but there are other normal reactions you could have. Could you be part of the solution? I think people (and software developers in particular) are trained to think that you must be able to fully accomplish something as an individual in your lifetime for it to be worthwhile, but this clearly hasn't always been the case.

keenmaster• 3 years ago

I’d be depressed if I was one layoff away from six-figure debt. Tech workers living in SF should build up enough savings and a Plan B such that they can easily recover from a layoff. This includes looking at where you live, big purchases, etc… Maybe a CX-5 or a hybrid RAV4 is perfectly fine for one’s needs instead of the Model X. Maybe it’s worth it to get two roommates if you’re in your 20’s - it’s not as bad as you think and you sidestep the scam that is rental prices in SF. Etc etc…

Sometimes depression (and maybe low test?) can come from an actual or perceived lack of control. There are tangible steps people can take to make themselves more anti-fragile, and if you have a significant other, you need to be able to articulate why cutting back on lifestyle expenditures is necessary and can actually make you happier/feel in control of your destiny.

Waterluvian• 3 years ago

I’ve been just as passionate as I’ve ever been. What I think helps is NOT working anywhere where you’re just a fungible cog, such as FAANG. Small companies where the founder is hiring you directly to solve a very specific, describable problem.

I go to work knowing precisely what my work does for those who use it. And I get feedback from those people and live for the moments of “holy shit that used to take 5 hours to do. Now it’s 15 minutes!”

I’m not sure how you can get that loop closure at big well-established companies.

I guess the rub there is that not everyone can be so lucky to not have to work at FAANG. But there are more small companies than you’d imagine!

greendude29• 3 years ago

I noticed a sharp decrease in my world curiosity at 34. This was also the time in life that I accepted a lot of "responsibility" towards the traditional way of life, ie, stable well paying job, career growth, long term relationship, etc.

My read is that once you are fully integrated into the "system", it has micro ways of keeping you engaged - working towards that next promotion, buying a new model of your favorite EV, having your stocks vest so your net worth can increase, etc.

Creativity requires freedom to take risk. Post industrial revolution life incentivizes you to not take risks. Overtime, variability of actions goes down as does creativity.

Our jobs are all consuming of our lives - we see it as a moral good to see our jobs as "crafts"; so if you want become a better X, you should not only invest your 9 - 5 in it, but also your weekends reading books about it, your free time doing side projects showing your "passion", found a business so you can ascend into a new social class of "founders", etc.

py47• 3 years ago

Very interesting view.

s_dev• 3 years ago

“I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”

-- Douglas Adams

solarmist• 3 years ago

This is extremely common but not discussed in technology because it changes rapidly and often happens naturally (but often only at a surface level).

For academics, there is a common piece of advice to change what you are working on every ten years radically [1] because by that time, you have explored all of the areas that occur to you (low-hanging fruit and your specialty) and that you need an influx of new idea to refresh that creativity and curiosity that you used to have.

This happens in every field and every career. Your options are to continue as you are (and things will stay the same), to learn something at a much deeper level by becoming a specialist (which only partially addresses what you described), or to change areas/fields (this can be as simple as backend -> frontend/mobile/OS/etc.) and start over.

Only the last one is guaranteed to relieve your feelings, but it comes with all the negatives and insecurities you had when you first started.

#2, you've solved most of your curiosities, and it takes more and more work to dig deeper to refresh your interest if you keep doing the same things. It could be the others, but your wording makes me strongly feel it's #2.

As far as depression goes, a lack of curiosity is the first step toward depression, but not indicative in itself. Everything becomes familiar with enough exposure, but not finding new things to be curious about means you're in a rut.

[1] https://www.science.org/content/article/scientific-swerve-ch...

jedberg• 3 years ago

You have responsibilities now, like rent and food. You probably didn't have those when you were 13-20.

As I often say, when I was young I had more time than money, and now I have more money than time. I'd rather use my money to buy time, which sometimes means just paying for something that I would have hacked together myself in the past (like a DVR or a piece of software).

I still have plenty of passion, but it's for other things, like stuff my kids like to do, because then we get to do it together.

akaij• 3 years ago

As I often say, when I was young I had more time than money, and now I have more money than time.

This observation is subtly touched on in The Dark Side of the Moon, by having Time and Money on different sides of the vinyl :)

potta_coffee• 3 years ago

No, I'm a soulless, burned out corporate drone. Thankfully, I've slipped through the cracks and am still getting a paycheck.

gardenhedge• 3 years ago

Time to go watch Office Space again! :)

jderiksen• 3 years ago

Is this normal, possibly due to aging for some people?

Yes, possibly. When I worked 40 hours / week I had very little energy or interest in creative pursuits as I approached my 30s. This is part of the reason that I work 30 hours / week now.

Or is it because all my curiosities have been solved...

This may very well be the case. I love music and pursue it with great energy but as I learn new styles, new instruments, try new ways to perform, etc. I find less and less satisfaction and magic. I still find enough in it that I continue to pour a lot of time and energy into it.

...or could it be a symptom of chronic depression as I pretty much don't have craving for anything anymore?

This could very well be the case. If you haven't talked to a good therapist I would recommend doing that.

wkat4242• 3 years ago

I'm 47 and it only just started happening to me.

But I'm in a big company and my last boss stimulated creativity. My new boss is very process-driven. ITIL crap, stuff like that. Hiding behind stupid RACI matrices and tickets.

I think I'm just going to look for another role. Or another company.

nickd20013• 3 years ago

ITIL will do that to anyone ;)

ChrisMarshallNY• 3 years ago

I'm more passionate than I have ever been. I'm 60.

Big believer in software, and am looking forward to seeing what comes.

The industry is now way too big to understand the whole, so I have been staying in a fairly narrow lane (GUI apps for Apple systems).

But these days, the passion is tempered with a great deal of realism. Also, I have come to understand that people [make|spoil] everything. The people involved with a project or technology are just as important as the technology, itself, and can either do great things, or turn it all into a puddle of sludge.

isthisthingon99• 3 years ago

You liked hacking, computer hacking is more or less a solved problem.

People are very interesting, consider them.

cfltlayoffs• 3 years ago

Honestly if you still enjoy your day job, consider yourself lucky. Do something else in your free time and enjoy your massive FAANG salary.

mrweasel• 3 years ago

Passions are overhyped. People keep talking about finding a passion, doing what you're passionate about. We're almost conditioned into thinking that we must have a passion or we're not living life to the fullest.

I'm 41, I have wonderful family, I live in a safe rich part of the world, my job is challenging and fun, relatively low stress, job offers are plenty full, should I want to do something else and I generally happy with my life, but I am passionate about NOTHING.

Every so often a fun idea for a coding project pops up, either for work or just for fun. Sometimes it's a DIY project, and that keeps me entertained for a bit. I'm just not passionate about those idea and projects. I don't recall ever being passionate about anything the way the internet and society leads me to believe that I should be.

You can liken it to women who expects a prins in shining armor, riding a white horse, to come and carry her away and only he will know her true self, her most inner feeling. You tend to get disappointed if that's your baseline expectation.

I'm as passionate as I ever was, which is "not much". I have interests and beliefs, both in terms of work and life, but they where never passions.

Jemaclus• 3 years ago

The human brain thrives of novelty and exploration. When things get repetitive, your brain starts tuning it out. When you first learned to drive, it took focus and initiative and it was exciting. You had freedom! You could go fast! Your friends were jealous! Now, you can drive for 30 minutes and not even remember a moment of the drive. Your brain just tunes it out.

The nature of evolution caused us to be hyper aware of danger. New things can be dangerous -- old things are safe! Safe things can be ignored.

Your brain literally ignores the clothing on your body after just a few seconds of wearing it. Your nose (for those of you with a large schnozz like myself!) disappears from your vision -- your brain says, "That never moves, I don't need to see it," and erases it from your vision. If you focus, you see it, but if you don't... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

All of this is to say that common cliche we've all heard: variety is the spice of life. Passion is shorthand for your brain paying particular attention to something. When you are excited about something, it's because your brain thinks "Hey, if I don't pay attention to this, I might miss something important."

So the key? Variety. Spontenaeity. Try new things. In the world of computers, you may have solidly mastered programming, but try messing around with hardware. Try learning a brand new technology -- not just a new programming language, but a whole new way of thinking. If you're a backend engineer, try and build a mobile app. Consider experimenting with the new AI stuff that's the current rage, or explore retro computing.

Also consider expanding your repertoire -- the world is bigger than computers! (Join us in /r/outside!) Take up hiking, take up running, take up flying kites or canoeing or drinking a beer from every brewery in town. Join trivia nights, find friends.

The more you do the same (or similar!) things over and over, the more your brain thinks "That's not important," and the ho-hum becomes the hum-drums, and then you start thinking, "Do I have depression?"

Maybe you do. I'm not a shrink. But in my experience, and while working with my therapist, I've found that this working from home thing 100% of the time, and doing the same exact routine with my life every single day, has caused my brain to say "This is dull," and therefore I feel depressed.

I've started going into my work's office once a week. My wife and I go to trivia night once a week. I run or work out every day, but with different activities. I think of ways to give my dog novel experiences, too!

TL;DR: Passion is your brain on fire, but your brain doesn't catch on fire if it's safe. Mix it up. Inject variety. Your brain will thank you later.

(Disclaimer: I am not a therapist, and this is just my opinion. I hope it helps.)

blockwriter• 3 years ago

The expression of my passion for literature used to be fervent, but also egomaniacal. A more subdued, less intense, but far more intensive, passion has taken its place. I appreciate both, and the former may return intermittently, but I consider myself lucky that I had an epiphany which allowed me to transition to my present phase. Even if only esoterically, I realized I needed to cultivate a concern for others at the heart of what I do. A similar phenomenon played out in my romantic relationships to a significant extent, and in my interpersonal relationships to a lesser extent.

wintogreen742• 3 years ago

I turn 49 this week and I'm more intellectually curious than ever before. I think there's a few things at work:

1. I'm financially in a good place.

2. I work hard but don't have an all-consuming job. I'm also much more focused on the work around me then looking only upwards towards the next promotion.

3. I've 98% given up the idea of going on to a PhD, which means learning is really fun and only on topics that I find super-interesting.

4. There are a lot of things that I never knew, and feel I should have learned much younger, but now I don't feel any shame in revisiting "first principles"

5. I have a balanced set of interests that are both technical and non-technical, as well as intellectual and physical.

6. I think I'm starting to understand that IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE FUN!

nickd20013• 3 years ago

3 is interesting. Why have you almost given up on a phd? If you are financially OK, and intellectually curious, would seem like you are in an excellent position to do a Phd on your own terms at your own pace, possibly self-funded so not have to jump through so many hoops and instead focus on the subject? Personally, I still harbour some desire to do a Phd, but not sure if I can be bothered 'cos of having kids and other interests, and like my day job too much.

snozolli• 3 years ago

Why should you? Outside of work, specifically? You probably work eight to ten hour days and have a commute on top of that.

When you were 13 - 20 years old, did you work on programming for eight to ten hours a day, five days a week, 50ish weeks of the year? Probably not.

You've learned so much about programming in your 28 years. There's arguably infinitely more to learn, but it's far less valuable than what you've already learned.

There's also so much more to learn in life. Hobbies, interests outside of technology, travel, language, relationships.

Personally, my passion for programming was killed almost instantly by my first job. I naively looked forward to a future of cooperative work in a team of skilled peers, building great products. Turns out real work is constantly fighting against the apathy and incompetence of others, and management's goal is to force you into submission rather than enable you.

I've always been baffled by this Silicon Valley attitude that everyone is supposed to have some passion project outside of work. I've never heard of another profession where people work full-time and then go home to do more of the same work. How many lawyers go home and then walk around their neighborhood offering free legal advice? How many CPAs go home and crank out some 'fun' tax returns?

MattPalmer1086• 3 years ago

This whole "passionate" thing drives me crazy now.

It kind of made sense in the earlier days of the industry, before the web and software eating the world.

There was little training or certifications. The people who were available were genuinely passionate about it. It was all new and exciting for those who cared, and very niche as far as most people were concerned.

So passionate became the quality that marked you as someone employable.

These days I don't bother looking at jobs that demand passion. I now see it as a synonym for exploitable.

marginalia_nu• 3 years ago

Yeah sure. I think in part it's about doing interesting stuff.

To be real, I'm not at all passionate about my dayjob. I do what I do because I get paid. I would not do any of it if I didn't get paid or didn't need to get paid. I do a good enough job not to get complaints about the workmanship, but not much more. The truth is I get paid the same regardless.

Recognizing this, I work less. Part time. 30 hour weeks. Saves some sanity toward things I do care about. A lot of people seem to be working themselves to the bones trying to save up some nest egg to retire early. I just don't have that faith in the future I guess. Seems like an awful lot of eggs in one basket. All I know I might be run over by a bus next week, or die of a heart attack at 42. At least then I'll die having lived a little, rather than having postponed life entirely.

All the while I'm every bit as passionate as I've ever been about building Marginalia Search. That's like a fractal of interesting problems, by design. The more I work on it the more ideas I have. At this point I have probably years' worth of plans and ideas, and how well I realize them has a real impact on the project. It's completely different. Very foreign from how my dayjob works.

In the end, it's sort of paid off. Having a project like this has created a lot of opportunities I wouldn't have if I was working 60 hour weeks hoarding money until some time later.

giantg2• 3 years ago

10 years in, I'm completely disillusioned on a professional level.

I am still personally curious about products useful in my own life, like 3D printers or homebrew Lepton based thermal imaging.

I think most people start out with idyllic visions of what something is, only to have a more realistic view after some time. I think that's normal.

blue039• 3 years ago

When you are young you think you can become anything. You dream big and have tremendous reserves of creativity, and importantly, time to draw from. As you get older you begin to realize that you aren't special, you'll never get to be what you want, and more-or-less from birth you've be pre-ordained into a set of paths in your life and you can only choose one. Some people manage to break this in small ways, for example being the first to go to university and get a STEM degree. Though, it just opens a few more paths. You're still a cog. By the time you're 35 over half your useful life is gone, and the most important formative periods are long in the past. You're now a derelict ship flying through space solely on inertia waiting to slam into whatever is your final resting place.

Once I realized this I lost almost all of my passion for anything. I don't program outside work, I am by-and-large a luddite when viewed externally. I absolutely hate new technology and learning about it. It took over a decade of industry work grinding me to the bone and destroying my passion to do this. I wouldn't be so cynical, except that because I work 8-10 hours a day I don't even have much time pursue a replacement passion. I exist to serve. In this light "depression" is really a survival mechanism. If you start having hope of becoming something better after you leave school you'll just watch it be dashed right in front of you by some tech-moron you're working for. Or worse, the non-technical person turned "programmer".

dmorin• 3 years ago

At 53 years old I've been writing code for almost 40 years. Sure, I'm counting those very early, TRS-80, "I couldn't do what I wanted in BASIC so I learned assembly language" years because, why not? Those were the most passionate.

The answer is, sometimes. I guess probably never "as much as I used to be", no. I've got a family now. Given X hours of free time where I could spend it with them, and choosing programming? Nah. But, from the hours of 9pm to midnight-ish, when the house is asleep? Here we go.

Coding is my job. To that extent there are limits, both to effort and passion. I'm not necessarily a "live and breathe for your employer" guy, just because I will often work on code late into the night. I am and have always been a, "If I can solve this problem by writing code for it, I want to do it" guy. That's my choice. I don't feel like I'll get fired if I don't. And I don't feel competitive with the engineers half my age that know twice as many new languages and frameworks.

Coding is also what I love. I love getting things out of my head and making them into reality via code. It doesn't have to be a big thing. I wrote some code to make my predictions for the football pool. I won. I know very little about football. That was fun. I have a side gig where I make merch. I wrote some code to generate t-shirt layouts. I have a zillion little projects like that. I'm passionate about those things because that's me choosing to express those ideas in code, whether to make a buck, or to make my life a little easier, or sometimes just because I had the thought and wanted to see if I could make it work. Nobody makes me. I don't get passionate about tasks other people assigned to me.

Whenever my wife sees me at the computer she tends to call it work. I typically point out the difference because sometimes it technically is, sure. And I can turn that off when it's dinner time or what have you. But often I'm at the computer because I want to be. It's relaxing to me to have hands on keyboard. This might garner some eye rolls, but consider a painter who sets up an easel in the park and charges $10 to paint tourist portraits. That's using your skillset as your job. But is he passionate about that? Unlikely. When he's done for the day does he put away his brushes and think, "No more of that until tomorrow morning!" Probably not. He's probably just as ready to get up early the next morning and go paint the sunrise, just because he wants to.

Not to say my code has ever been art, by any measure :), but that just because you use the thing that you have a passion for to support yourself, doesn't mean you have to lose your passion for it.

syntheweave• 3 years ago

It's normal. When you're young everything is pretty exciting to learn. You hit a make-or-break threshold with continued study at some point as it gets more difficult. And then as you go deeper into technical specialty the ROI diminishes, and you have to decide if that's what you're really studying now, or if you're just filling in a certain social/professional role, and if you're okay with that. A lot of people fall into crises as they end up realizing they don't want the role they've studied for, even getting all the way through medical school or passing the bar to practice law, only to quit there.

A lot of the misgiving and frustration with specific fields is really with the society and what it rewards: we live under nation-states, and within those, regardless of what the political system calls it specifically, what the state says deserves credit gets credit(funding, official titles, legal protections etc.) As a consequence a majority of big ambitions, artistic statements and such are just a matter of chasing after that, being "head of the class" and vocally believing whatever things are deemed Good For the Nation at the moment, and going on to build products and develop technologies that support and enable those beliefs(as your most wealthy and fanatical customers are likely to be true believers). Which will all change with the next crisis or election as the rules shift and a new set of beliefs rise up to the top spot. It can make a soul very cynical in short order, and it produces emptiness once you've reached a FAANG level of material satisfaction.

What we're ultimately building all the ambitions on are the "big three" of mathematics, science, philosophy. Studying those is generally virtuous, and you can definitely spend forever on them. But you can also "go wide" into the arts and sample bits and pieces of academic ideas as you need them. I've gotten really into cartooning and the whole idea of that is to go wide and simplify - take complex reference materials, copy them, understand them, break them down, put them back together in a more symbolic form. Communicate ideas that aren't clear, more clearly, finding new metaphors for them.

One of the rules I live by now is that on average, my day is better by seeking ordinary contentment instead of "big ups". Big ups lead in the direction of immaturity since they mostly involve paying for some kind of high-profile consumption and avoiding visibly hard work. But ordinary contentment is in just taking a small thing and fixing that, even if it's temporary or difficult in the moment. It can be the difference between "$50 storage container that adds a slight convenience for the next 30 years" and "$500 gadget that goes obsolete next year". And that carries over to stuff like programming in that most of the new stuff in programming is going to turn out to be a gadget, something used for a few moments of history and then discarded for the next big thing.

sowbug2• 3 years ago

It's normal. However -- and I say this with respect, as it's true for all of us -- you have to realize how dumb you were in your teens. Back then, your brain was about at sharp as it will ever be, but you didn't know very much. Almost everything you encountered was truly new to you in some way. And novelty is fun, especially if you're capable of making sense of it.

If your 13-year-old self met you today, he or she would be astonished how wise and experienced you are. And you'd probably be amused how eager but naive your younger self is.

In some respects, this transition is unavoidable. You're supposed to get a little bit jaded as you get older. You can't be excited forever that today's the day you first saw a giraffe up close or discovered type inference. Eventually people will expect wisdom, experience, and judgment from you, rather than raw enthusiasm and energy. But does this mean your future needs to suck? Not at all.

The key is using your experience to see a situation differently than you would without that experience. Think back to your first week on your current team and how little you knew. What would you tell yourself if you could teleport back to then? Are you taking that advice now? If not, why not?

If you keep applying accumulated experience to your current decisions, then either you'll continue growing, seeing repetitive things differently over time, or you'll decide that your current environment is toxically static and can't stand up to the kind of introspection that you demand, and you'll move on. Either you change your perspective, or you change what you're looking at. Either way, you never see the same thing twice.

py47• 3 years ago

Interesting take, sad though. I miss that "raw enthusiasm and energy".

sowbug2• 3 years ago

So do I.

As someone almost twice your age, who would give all his earthly possessions to be 28 again, I advise you: use what you now have. Better to have memories of what you did with your youthful energy than to have regrets about how you wasted it reminiscing about your teens.

hypertexthero• 3 years ago

Get away from the computer and go for a walk every day for at least 30 minutes, preferably during work hours, to break up your day and think.

Sit down somewhere and simply watch other people going about their day, and daydream.

Write to your friends and try to meet them regularly.

Get a paper notebook and a pencil or pen and keep it by you. Write ideas and thoughts as they come, not later. Write about what interests you and what you would like to happen in your life. Write ideas for personal projects and break them down into small items that you can do to move them forward. Tick them off as they get done.

Spend time doing things other than programming. Draw. Take photographs with a digital camera and make sure to look at them after some time has passed (a few days to a few months) and mark the ones you like and put them in a folder. Play an instrument made of wood. Go to a concert or an art exhibit. Drink a beverage in a place that feels cozy. Seek out and listen to music that you like and watch movies that you like.

Play video games that you like, especially ones with good sound and good humor, and cooperative PvE ones with friends. Some good ones are Zelda Breath of the Wild, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Everything, Noita, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Arma 3, Broforce, Jagged Alliance 2, Watch Dogs: Legion, and GTA Online in private lobbies with friends.

Beware of sociopaths. They are few and far between, but can also work at FAANGs. Read The Psychopath Code by Pieter Hintjens.

Spend time in a park or a forest walking and listening to the sounds that trees and birds and other things make. Seek out nature.

Try exercising at least once every other day. Search "7 minute workout".

Practice cooking something you really like yourself, and once you make a version you enjoy, make it a habit to do it once a fortnight or so. Go out and eat your favorite junk food once in a while, too.

Read books made of paper about things that interest you. Use a pencil to draw lightly on the pages around the passages you like. Try a book like Think on These Things by Jiddu Krishnamurti and A Village Life by Louise Glück and Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke.

Always work on your own projects, at least in your paper notebook or in your mind or on your computer, even when at work working for someone else.

Don’t worry about what other people who are not dear to you say. In the end, it doesn’t matter.

Love someone. Help someone. Be kind.

Good luck!

buggy6257• 3 years ago

I lost passion for _programming_. More recent career situations have led me to the conclusion that I simply cared _too much_ about my work, and it was causing me stress and honestly causing some personality issues too.

I didn't lose my _passion_ though. I just redirected it. I've taken up woodworking, I've learned a ton about 3D printing and CAD, and my wife and I have our eye on getting a laser printer soon. I've travelled a bit more too, and have learned more about home ownership/improvement than I ever thought I would enjoy (turns out I do enjoy it!). I've started learning more about finance and economics, and took a random dive one weekend into geography so that I could try making a realistic D&D world map that took into account naturally forming rivers, coastlines, mountain ranges, etc.

On top of all that, I have a newborn daughter now and get to pour my passion for all of these things and more towards her as she grows, and getting to learn what it means to be a parent and how to do it better than my parents did (they did a fine job; but isn't it always good to improve?).

I think oftentimes this passionless burnout comes, like it did for me, from attaching too much personal worth to one single topic. May be different for others though.

py47• 3 years ago

makes sense. I too have also started to explore more diverse topics including psychology. But I miss my old days. I guess I was 7 or 8 years old when I got my first computer. During these 28 years of life, nothing has ever given me more joy and excitement than learning doing cool edits in windows registry, commands in windows cmd, and discovering features of Microsoft access, when I was at that age.

JohnFen• 3 years ago

I lost my passion for working as a software engineer -- it's just a job now -- but I think that's because the industry has changed and made such jobs less desirable.

I haven't lost my passion for computers and programming at all, though. They are still my primary hobby and I am as excited as ever when doing that.

alexfromapex• 3 years ago

No. I'm 32 and I'm at a FAANG company too. I hate how soul-sucking and low-paying jobs have become in the US. Almost none of the non-FAANG companies can pay what I would consider a livable wage (my wife does not make much money and I have a kid). Even more problematically, the vast majority of the companies don't care about your mental health and so I have really no incentive beyond doing the bare minimum.

makz• 3 years ago

What has worked for me is going back to my origins. Go back to C, C++, linux, python... from there everything will be clear. It might sound pointless but believe me, it works. Besides, there is so much stuff nowadays on github that you can clone and play with.

worldsavior2• 3 years ago

The following is critisim so be ready. You probably don't use your skills for the things your mind wants to. Learning is fun, yes, but it's not the only thing in programming.

Programming also involves thinking, and creating new projects you're "passionate" about, or solving cool challenges. Try to find out what makes you happy in programming and use that.

Or maybe, programming is not for you. Your mind can change a lot in just a few years, just do some thinking.

lambdaxymox• 3 years ago

I think I have kept a high level of interest (passion as a word has been abused into meaninglessness) in computing as a whole, but what keeps things interesting has definitely shifted over the years. I don't have much love for the current technological state of affair. I find one has to reinvent oneself periodically to keep anything fresh. Software Engineering is a peculiar field because really every developer has two skill sets. In this way, software engineering isn't freestanding in that it is always alloyed to some other purpose as well.

(1) Computer technology and computer programming. This portion does not fundamentally change much. At the end of the day, all our code is running on some kind of Von Neumann architecture hardware, with a C-like ABI, on a 1970s paradigm Unix-like OS based on identity-based access control, that pipes and transforms, displays, and persists data. Given how fad and fashion driven computing is, the vast majority of the change isn't innovation, it's just surface-level change (Change != Innovation). There's very little real deal change in computer technology these days. Refinement yes, step change no.

(2) Domain knowledge. The great part about the second part is that whereas (1) does not fundamentally change very much, software is applicable to pretty much anything, so there is always ample room to explore interesting topics. I like to use side projects as a way of exploring new topics and finding new fields to try my hand at. Even e.g. game development with all the technological wizardry that goes into game engines and tooling is ultimately about creating compelling interactive experiences and entertainment at it's best. At it's worst it's about creating attention-thieving rent-extracting Skinner boxes.

On part (1), I think a big source of the complexity of modern software is the fact that we're trapped in a local maximum that's no longer fit for purpose. But in keeping with established things, big players in any industry--including the tech industry--hate nothing more than real innovation or invention. Couple this with massive amounts of inertia, it makes it really hard to meaningfully explore alternative software systems paradigms. It's a rotting pile of awful, but a pretty darn useful one for a lot of people, so here we are.

In particular, there is a quadfecta of ideas I am thinking of things along the lines of: (a) Capability-based operating systems. (b) Interactive software systems. Things along the lines of the LISP machines of old, Smalltalk, Self, Luna, Erlang, Elixir, and Unison. That is, the idea of software systems as living interactable artifacts. (c) Content-derived code versioning and (binary) reproducible builds. (d) Programming language designs based on linear logic, affine logic, or other kinds of separation logics (Rust, ATS, Austral, and others).

The set of four ideas above have the kernel of some very different paradigms for interacting with and creating truly robust and resilient software systems. Unfortunately the first three ideas also have a very long history of failing to gain traction going back to the 1980s. My sense is that software engineering as a field is in a gnarly state of arrested development (that makes most of us miserable at least some of the time), and the quadfecta above is a big thing that keeps me passionate about it. It's a deep well of idea to explore, and one that keeps me out of apathy over the current state of affairs in computer technology. There is a huge amount of latent potential in software engineering and computer science that feels like is just being left on the ground, even when it feels Sisyphean to bend over and pick it up for the umpteenth time.

On part (2), given the circumstances around part (1), my interests have on another axis shifted towards computers as media for creative expression. In other words, computers as a tool for doing other things. I tend to lean more digitally vegan (in the sense of Andy Farnell's 'Digital Vegan') in my daily life, so I can get to the business of using computers for creative purposes. Of course I still end up doing a lot of tinkering anyway, but that's how things go sometimes. In that sense much of what I like about computers has evolved from the technology itself, to what I can do with it or create with it instead. The beauty of the essentially universal applicability of computer technology is that one's career can always stay fresh by changing business domains. Skill set (1) is pretty stable, so one has a nice stable place to stick a foot while exploring around with skill set (2).

TL;DR it's natural for one's interests and passions to ebb, flow, and evolve. It's called being alive.

guinness74• 3 years ago

Yes, but about different things.

unforeseen9991• 3 years ago

Yeah I lost the interest awhile ago after over 25 years in the industry. I grew up with computers being my whole world well through into my 30's, started on a TI99/4a.

I'm now a independent contractor that works about 40 hours a month, but I am not enjoying it. I still really enjoying tinkering (I have an Unraid server that I spend a lot of time messing with Dockers and VM's, etc) and technology news and advancements, but the daily grind of making someone else rich is old and tired, just like how I feel haha.

I started building a new career on the side that I started as a side hustle several years ago and it's finally starting to become viable as an income replacement. I really enjoy it, I can't even call it "work", because it doesn't feel like work, it's just something I want to do. I guess it's the difference between doing something you want to do, vs doing something you feel you have to do. It pays a lot less, but has the potential for more later on. I'd be happy to do this for the rest of my life and never retire (and I should be able to manage into old age, barring anything major), so I don't worry about the money aspect much. I could likely quit the IT now, but it greases the wheels, but I will likely cut it down to only the occasional project this year.

I'm not sure i'd call it a craving (I spend a lot of time on it, but certainly not all my time), I like playing video games, other hobbies like reading and journaling, going out to dinner and walks with friends, etc.

Not sure what my advice is, but maybe consider scaling your hours back, and filling that time again with side projects. I know I certainly would not have the energy anymore to do IT full time, as well as devote my time to a side project again.

nickd20013• 3 years ago

Good Q. :) I think its normal. "Office Space" should be compulsory viewing if you haven't already seen it. ;) Many things that are fun, become not fun when you have to do them for a living , with pressure, deadlines, workplace politics. Its by no means limited to software. Plenty of musicians , who you'd think have a dream job, loathe it as a job while loving it as a hobby. Another one is teaching, meant to be the number 1 most satisfying activity so should be number 1 job, but lots of BS gets in the way. Software pays enough that its considered a first-world problem to be unhappy at work, and people think we all make big bucks, so, you'll get a sympathetic response on HN, but perhaps be careful mentioning such thoughts to anyone working a minimum wage job.

daltont• 3 years ago

Think about the time period we lived through we regard to tech. The 2000s was a "gold rush" era of "web enabling" everything. Remember how fascinated we were when we first saw Google Maps running in a browser?

BA_and_bored• 3 years ago

And even more. I really hate IT and do it just for money, but since IT jobs pays well and don't require more than 8 hours a day, I can finally dedicate myself to things I'm really interested in, i.e. learning new languages, visiting new places, buying rare and expensive books on my favorite subjects.

tpoacher• 3 years ago

[starts typing]

...

[sighs]

[backspace][backspace][backspace]

"No."

frollo• 3 years ago

No. Not about programming, anyway.

I was passionate about programming when I didn't do it 8-10 hours a day, 5 days a week, most weeks of the year. It was a fun, new thing and I could spend my free time on it. Now, I spend most of the day on it and want to do something else when I clock out. Also, I already have some trainings on the job and anyway we're always trying something new so I already learn technical stuff anyway.

A couple of times a year I have some non work-related problems and decide to solve them coding stuff, but I still view them as chores, as much as changing a lightbulb or painting the porch.

kledru• 3 years ago

Ups and downs are normal. But I suspect there might be general apathy in society ("long covid" kind). Maybe that's only my country. I'm over 40 and most of the younger software engineers I work with do not seem enthusiastic about anything at the moment. Could be an illusion of the brave new era of remote work.

I find the ongoings of the IT world very interesting at the moment and think if I should get myself fired to play with all the new tools and ideas they induce. Not optimistic about the prospects of the society in general, but it has never been as interesting in IT...

ezedv• 3 years ago

To be honest, since I started working at Rather Labs, my curiosity for new things like blockchain and cryptocurrencies has only increased. The work we do at the company is so cutting-edge and innovative that it has sparked a new level of passion in me for these technologies and the potential they hold.

I've been a full stack developer for some years and now that I'm learning more about blockchain, my curiosity is increasing!

Ask HN: Are you as passionate as you used to be?

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