Ask HN: Burnt-out, directionless but want to turn it around
- You don&#x27;t need to be a rockstar programmer.  Why do you even want to be one?<p>- Some people are going to be more apt at building things from scratch than you.  This is true for everyone.  There are millions of programmers out there, and a small number of them will knock it out of the park, but it can seem like one is inferior to them.  Not inventing things from scratch isn&#x27;t inferior.  Given your work ethic, I&#x27;m guessing you don&#x27;t have the time to actually work on anything interesting and solve problems in a novel way.<p>- Your 20s are meant to be wasted.  Given your age, your brain has <i>just</i> finished maturing.  Yes, there&#x27;s some things you might feel like you&#x27;ve missed out on, but your 30s and beyond are full of possibilities.<p>- You are not a loser.  You know who&#x27;s a loser?  Someone who&#x27;s lost at a game.  Compared to most of the humans on earth, you&#x27;re doing fine.  You feel like a loser because you are missing out on life experiences by working insane hours.  Stop it.<p>- Stop working so hard.  What the fuck are you doing working 70 to 90 hours a week?  I try not to swear on HN, but I think it&#x27;s appropriate here.  Those hours are ludicrous, especially given how long you&#x27;ve been in the field.  Don&#x27;t work more than 40 hours a week.  Try to work even less than that.  Stop being on call.  Stop working on weekends.  If your boss complains, don&#x27;t budge.  If your boss does anything to guilt or coerce you, tell them to <i>fuck off</i>.  It really is that simple.<p>- Your salary will increase if you get another job.  At every job change I&#x27;ve had as a programmer, my wage has gone up by <i>at least</i> 30%, and once it went up 200%.<p>- Yes, you have been doing the opposite of &quot;Work Smart, Not Hard.&quot;  Start working less.  If your boss calls you at 1AM, put your phone on Do Not Disturb and go back to sleep.  Utilize your sick days and PTO.  Take long lunch breaks.<p>- Leetcode and algos are a meme.  Stop thinking that you are a loser because you&#x27;re not able to solve them <i>within the time alotted to you</i>.  Your job is to get shit done, not to impress dudebro coders with m4d l33t sk1llz.  That shit is stupid.<p>- You&#x27;re burned out.  Take time off from your job.  I don&#x27;t care how long it takes, or if they let you go for taking off too much time.  You need to go on some adventures, meet some new people, and actually enjoy your life.<p>- The only way to get good at networking is to just do it.  There&#x27;s things you can do to be more likable, but they won&#x27;t work if you can&#x27;t simply network.  Go to meetups and conventions.  Strike up conversations with people even if your opening line is ludicrous.  The more that people simply know who you are, the more likely you&#x27;ll get a better job through connections.<p>- Regardless if you stay at your current job, consider doing what you can to work as little as possible.  In the tech field, it&#x27;s really easy to overspend with the kind of money we are making (even on the low end).  If you can downsize your life and even move somewhere with a lower cost of living, you can take easier jobs to make ends meet while you use your free time to actually live.  By this point, you should have some time to actually live, especially now that you are approaching your 30s.  Don&#x27;t feel bad about wasting your teens and 20s.  But I would absolutely say don&#x27;t waste your 30s.  Your 30s are essentially the point at which your body has finished developing.  Make sure you have fun with the next few decades before your body starts to really slow down.<p>- Learn to care less about your profession.  We all need that passion as an initial drive, but at this point you&#x27;ve essentially &quot;done it.&quot;  Life isn&#x27;t about being a software developer.  It means different things to different people, but I do think a life devoid of serenity and shared experiences isn&#x27;t preferable.  You need to be able to show up, get paid, and go home.  Trust me, I&#x27;ve made the mistake of caring too much, and too many times.  The truth is that unless you are the next Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, 99.9999% of the world doesn&#x27;t give a shit how good a developer you are.  Yet far more people in life will love you if you lead a simple and honest life, and are a good person.  That&#x27;s way more important than any mount of leetcode you can do.<p>- You are by no means the only one.  Software development is ironically both a permissive industry and a high-pressure one.  We create these &quot;10x developer&quot; and &quot;rockstar developer&quot; myths to psych ourselves into excelling.  In general, it&#x27;s fake.  I&#x27;ve known some 10x developers, and while I respect them for their abilities, I don&#x27;t actually envy them.  They spend more of their life on work than I do, they don&#x27;t get <i>10x</i> my paycheck, and at the end of the day 99.9999% of the world doesn&#x27;t know who they are or even care that they are 10x developers.  Yet we all want to be them, more or less.