Building something that you don't believe in | Hacker News Reader

Building something that you don't believe in

I am an Software Engineer/Manager, How easy is it for you to work on a product which you don't believe in ? Just because you are getting paid. My boss is a old man who has no experience building a product in last 35-40 years and wants to build something that makes no sense to the existing market. The company does not understand the need to stabilize and modernize underlying tech. We are building product on top of the existing legacy code which has outage once a month.

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It's... not easy at all. Over the past 7-ish months I've gradually, but severely, lost faith and interest in the product I develop at work. Once I realized I no longer cared, and the only thing keeping me from quitting is a paycheck (a realization I only had about three weeks ago), I started taking the first baby steps towards switching careers to something more fulfilling.

It's easy enough for people to say "everyone hates their job, find fulfillment on your own time" -- but when working 40+ hours a week, and presumably sleeping 56-ish hours a week, that's a ridiculous suggestion. Nearly 60% of your life or more is meant to be unfulfilling and miserable? If that's true, then society is severely broken.

What I'm saying is, it's hard, and it shouldn't be expected. The fact that it's so existentially risky to try to find fulfillment in life is depressing and terrifying, but if it works out, it's worth leaving the misery behind.

It helps if you have something else in your life you get meaning from. If you define yourself with your work, and your work sucks, that's when you're going to be unhappy. Try to focus on short-term work goals that you can take pride in, and celebrate the parts you deliver. The weak parts are someone else's problem. When this all collapses, you need to be emotionally ready to walk away (with a bundle of cash) even if you have nothing else to show for it.

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