Hacker News Reader

Comment by PedroBatista | Hacker News Reader

Early 30s, spending days staring at computer screens is a nice way to waste your life, the whole RoR to Node.js to Go and React hype cycle made me realize I'm too old for this shit.

Finding a job where I'm above of all that madness would be great but middle management is even worse and it's not in me. Maybe self-sufficiency farming would be a better route.

Also, when you have a mostly physical demanding job, you can easily socialize with your friends afterwards, with dev work you're brain dead by the end of the day.

View on HN

> Maybe self-sufficiency farming would be a better route.

Wow, are you me? When people ask me if I feel like programming is what I want to do the rest of my life I often reply with "No, I think one day I'll just drop it all and move on the country side". Nice to know I am not the only one :)

Maybe someone should start a commune for ex-software-engineers.

On it ;)

Really? More info?

I grew up on a farm, and that's why I'm a programmer! (I kid! Actually it was the summers working construction that drove me to programming.)

Farming is not such fun, but rural living is pretty cool.

As a former poor rural farm kid myself, I recommend raising your family before, or have enough in reserve so they don't have to go without. Also go through a winter with heat from wood you cut yourself. That's a good indicator if the life is for you or not :)

Former poor rural farm kid here as well. I have to admit I wouldn't go back to the corn fields, corn harvesting is hard and painful (sharp leaves). But working with the animals is something I always miss, waking up early enough to see the sunrise on the fields, the smell of fresh manure...

I think a lot developers drastically underestimate how hard self sufficiency farming is.

There are billions are people trying to get out of self sufficiency farming because it's suffering.

To make it bearable you need tons capital intensive machinery, and extensive skills. You have to do it on industrial scale.

spending days staring at computer screens is a nice way to waste your life

Keep in mind that companies are happy to pay you more than twice as much to do that than they'd pay somebody to do anything else. Than means you can spend less than half your life staring at that screen each year and still come out ahead compared to the average joe.

Save your money and you can take 6 months vacation each year, or a 2 year sabbatical every 4. Certainly that would improve your quality of life a bit, no?

Compare to "self-sufficiency farming" where instead of a screen, you're staring at potato plants all day every day. Plants, I might add, that don't give you the opportunity to take half the year off each year and the money to travel the world while doing so. To an outsider, it would seem that trading one for the other is kind of a silly idea. At least I'm sure you could find no shortage of farm hands who would happily hold on to your seat in front of that screen if you wanted to switch places.

Are you working for start ups? Just from what you're saying, it seems like working at say Google or Amazon or Microsoft of Apple would really make you happy.

Don't mean to sound condescending or anything. It's just I know a lot of people that LOVED start ups post-college and are now feeling the exact same way as you, and kind of forget that there's super cushy jobs out there without a lot of the startup stupidity.

Yeah, all my life was spent in start-ups and I don't know nothing about big corps. It would be nice to start getting a decent pay but then there is the personality side where I'm not 9to5 material, the whole reporting to the manager thing etc. I understand and respect all that but I have a hard time putting up with it and I'm sure "they" would have a hard time putting up with me.

That's why they are always hiring and firing :)

> Also, when you have a mostly physical demanding job, you can easily socialize with your friends afterwards, with dev work you're brain dead by the end of the day.

This worries me, happens to me lately also. It's probably a pattern that our brain learns from programming, to optimise and simplify everything and actually ignore what does not matter. Probably this translates into our behaviour outside work, where your socialisation skills suffer. What I noticed is that the brain can be resurrected (partially) by exercising. Perhaps we could use the experience of more socialising jobs every once in a while but ... we have our golden-handcuffs.

I think it's down to open-offices - when you condition yourself to ignore and blank out the conversations and noise 3 feet away, it's no wonder it's difficult to snap out of it (it certainly is for me). That said, my experience of open offices has been of the condensed, touching-elbows variety.

> the whole RoR to Node.js to Go and React hype cycle made me realize I'm too old for this shit.

i think the same!

There's certainly some aspects of bullshittyness to it all, but I find it exciting. It's cool to see new ways of doing things coming into the industry and people trying to improve. I think when you start thinking that it's all or mostly all negative and "hype", then it's time to maybe look for a new role (I mean this in a very positive way - not trying to be rude here!). If you're 30+, have a ton of engineering experience and are starting to feel bored - look for maybe how you can leverage your years of skills and experience in a new role that you can really get excited about. Life works in chapters, being at the end of one (in terms of motivation/passion) isn't a bad thing. It just means you're ready for the next one.

The cynicism also comes from the fact that all these "improvements" are just well known existing techniques coming into and falling out of fashion. I do agree that finding a new chapter is a productive approach. It would be nice to find a physical job that doesn't pay peanuts and where you don't get treated like shit.

> [...] the whole RoR to Node.js to Go and React hype cycle made me realize I'm too old for this shit.

> Finding a job where I'm above of all that madness would be great [...]

I think the problem is your assuming that programming is limited to cranking out dynamic websites ("web applications" they call them nowadays) all day. There are plenty of problems out there -- even internal ones! IT tools that are missing -- that need solving that don't even come close to have web interface or where web interface is only a superficial part.

This is what I'm thinking. I'm also getting tired of web dev already... and I'm only 22.

I spend part of my free time learning math, distributed systems, and other subjects in hopes of moving to another area one day.

>>Early 30s, spending days staring at computer screens is a nice way to waste your life, the whole RoR to Node.js to Go and React hype cycle made me realize I'm too old for this shit. Finding a job where I'm above of all that madness would be great but middle management is even worse and it's not in me. Maybe self-sufficiency farming would be a better route. Also, when you have a mostly physical demanding job, you can easily socialize with your friends afterwards, with dev work you're brain dead by the end of the day.

I was going to reply to the parent, but I couldn't have said it better myself. I am not unhappy, but the constant switch from framework to framework that my coworkers push has jaded me. Maybe I am just getting too old (relative to them)

I too dream of homesteading, but I don't think it is a valid option.

> Also, when you have a mostly physical demanding job, you can easily socialize with your friends afterwards, with dev work you're brain dead by the end of the day.

This! I tend to think the same way. I can drain my brain so much that by 5pm I'll be a ghost. I've found helpful to divide my tasks into smaller composable units and if I can't reach that point then I try to think that I'm doing something wrong and I'll poke someone else in the team looking for some help. It's hard when you don't have anyone you can talk to.

My biggest challenge is stop thinking about work. It's not always like that but when it gets rainy and dark and there is something interesting going on at work I can get 100% absorbed. Not healthy at all but it's hard to overcome it. I'll wake up in the middle of the night thinking about something I'm working on. It's kind of scary but I also enjoy it. Do you feel like that at all?

Yes I'm like that too and I think it's ~80% a personality thing, meaning if you get a job at the local coffee shop you'll still be obsessed or preoccupied with something.

Maybe you wouldn't had that issue if you were, say, a hockey player. Like your body is not prepared to be sitting in front of a screen ten hours a day or a whole shift poring coffee. I've been learning to get over that brain draining feeling by exercising and not just a running session at the end of the day (which really helps) but shorter intervals in the middle of the day. E.g., I had great success exercising every 5 minutes in my pomodoro technique breaks - huge difference. Not sure if that applies to everyone though.

Socializing is also really helpful for me, but it's hard to make quality friends - I am an immigrant which doesn't help at all.

On a side note, I always try to remember that happiness is a choice. Simply try. It takes some work.

Youre not the only one: http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2016/07/27/TheChurn.htm...

and the follow-up

http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2016/09/01/TheLurn.html

Reply on news.ycombinator.com