Ask HN: How to find your passion?
I'm a freelancing software developer who builds full stack web applications, apps and more. But something's wrong.
I'm 20yo and study computer science for 2 years now (although I'm not very committed bc of the following): It drives me mad when I visit clients e.g. web shops and see all those programmers sitting in front of their computers. They may be happy, but I can't imagine to do this. I also don't want to be a consultant working 80-hour-weeks doing legacy SAP maintenance or building yet another website to manage some documents.
I'm always seeking for opportunities to build a start-up. I've got chances to get "CTO" positions (you know what that means in early start-ups) and significant shares. But the problems weren't interesting or meaningful.
I'm into that "crazy professor" style of working i.e. solving challenging problems while being in a project for just a short amount of time (only some weeks). That would suit my style bc I despise routine. I can imagine to optimize workflows (digitalization) where I just analyze the processes, make them faster and go to the next project. I'm currently doing this for a company and it's exciting to see the direct effect of my work. - I've built several bots (e.g. solving reCAPTCHAs, simulating user interactions, nothing sketchy), but I don't know if that's a direction I want to really dive in (it's pretty simple).
I'm also interested in ML and currently learning it, but without good ideas for applications it's just another thing in the tool belt. But I don't want to do R&D, I want to use it.
So here I am, wondering if software is even the right field for me - I don't want to build compilers, websites or maintain legacy codebases. The "sexy" stuff e.g. web dev is something I can do but don't like. I can sit 3 days in a row and build applications - but I don't want to wake up in 10-15 years and ask myself: "wtf am I doing? my life can be reduced to LOC."