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Comment by nonrandomstring | Hacker News Reader

Be careful with thinking that deep work, expanding your mind, culture, emotional and spiritual literacy, philosophical, psychological and political understanding will make you better.

You will become different. Whatever measures by which you discern 'better' before, will be irrelevant, almost laughable to the person you become. And beware too that growth can itself become a preoccupation.

If you have goals like be more productive, make more money, change the world, be more liked... then prepare yourself for at least the possibility that you will, in the course of real growth, end up rejecting those things as silly.

edit: accidentally posted as reply to wrong comment

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> Be careful with thinking that deep work, expanding your mind, culture, emotional and spiritual literacy, philosophical, psychological and political understanding will make you better.

After watching my friends go to Peru to trip balls with shamans (or just go to Burning Man yearly) and "expand their mind" -- but not really change their lives in any meaningful way -- I'm highly skeptical of the "deep understanding" school.

Did they drink Ayahuasca? [1] I know a person that changed their personality with it, and a shaman that was poisoned by another shaman with adulterated ayahuasca and almost lost his mind.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayahuasca

consider perhaps that your perception of your friends may be incorrect, their lives may have more depth then you can readily perceive. Or any other possibility that doesn't put you on moral highground. Its odd that you even bring up drugs, neither OP nor parent comment mention psychedelics at all.

I discovered I don't enjoy programming at all and I was only ever trying to prove myself smart, because my father had hang ups about being stupid after getting brain damage.

Programming itself is horrible, now I'm stuck in a career I hate (or rather I am now aware of my prison).

I'm not sure knowing is better.

in gestalt therapy this is called being at an impasse - you are in touch with yourself enough to know that you're not happy, but not yet sure how to change your life to be happy. long term I do believe it is better to be in touch with yourself even though there may be periods of discomfort or confusion. it's better to do that than to be humming along feeding your trauma until you reach the age of 50, have a mid-life crisis and realize you've wasted so much time not in touch with yourself.

Mid-life crisis is a real thing - didn't really expect it. But can be viewed in a positive way. Out of what can be a pretty terrifying psychological breakdown, can also be considered part of a process of evolution and discovery.

If you're perhaps grounded with the goal, I want to evolve into the person I really am, and should be. Remembering (or discovering) that most of what the world tells you and teaches you is just false. There are reasons why we want the particular things we want and upon deep examination those reasons may be found to be silly. This realization is heartbreaking cause then we feel we are past the mid-point - and have wasted our life!

But is a necessary step toward our real goal. It's a tough road, but I believe provides one more dignity than a lot of people's alternatives - numbing the pain with alcohol or drugs or chasing money or false idols so to speak. Not dealing directly with one's pain and difficult questions about oneself.

Absolutely!

I'm 40 and have a mortgage and a family, changing course is not easy. I've sent out hundreds of emails I got two interviews, both going nowhere. I went to do a startup with a friend with the hope of making something and then growing into a different role. But we haven't made much money and I'm still stuck in development.

What makes you say you are imprisoned in your career as a programmer?

People career hop a lot.

Why do You believe that programming is itself horrible? I do it for almost 20 years and have love and hate relationship with it, but would never say its intrinsically horrible - its just a tool (the real hell is other people as they say :))

If you don't know, then you can't act to change. That's how I try to think about it. Once you're aware of the problem, you can start work to change it, even if slowly.

Somewhat related, I used to weigh 270lbs. I changed my mind and made some changes, and was down to 180lbs after 1.5 to 2 years.

Programming is what you do. It's not what you are. And lot's of what you've learned will not be wasted on the new you, who I wish every happiness to in the future.

This.

It's nice to find meaning in your work, but doing so is a luxury not everyone cann afford. More importantly ones work should never be the only source for meaning, nor the most important.

There are competeing schools of thought that value and life satisfcation can be measured by what we produce and what we consume. Both those schools of thought are lies, or at least incomplete.

This depends on the kind of person you are. Some personalities can survive without purpose others are absolutely floored without it, it's not a philosophy it's a matter of psychological makeup, rooted in biology.

Programming provides enough income and ideally time outside of work that you should be able to slowly expand in any direction you want.

I will say I have always wanted to be a programmer but I've so far ended up being a better Systems Engineer, regardless though it doesn't worry me since at the end of the day, I am exchanging labor for money.(although I wont Rule out a career change!)

Now my job does have some added meaning in that I help to provide internet to rural areas and I can see myself in many of these end users and I can see how impactful it is to provide services. Real life and meaning and by extension happiness is beyond work, it encompasses work but is so much beyond work. Happiness is like gas in that it expands to fill the space you give it, if you look for happiness in programing, you might be miserable. If you look for happiness in being an excellent worker and craftsman then you might be a little bit happier but there are still probably larger spaces.

Of course people's brains(and hearts) are different so you may want to see a therapist and there is nothing wrong with that.

Why not become a product owner, manager, technical sales, consultant, software architect, solution architect, technical evangelist, PM or some other dev adjacent role? I'm dev adjacent and 1/3 of my coworkers are ex-devs.

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