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Comment by JohnDeHope | Hacker News Reader

I'm 50. Yes. "It's about trying to come up with a working solution in a problem domain that you don't fully understand and don't have time to understand." This has been my trick for staying engaged and excited about my work. Do try to understand the problem domain. It makes a world of difference in what you code, how you're perceived, the kinds of roles you can be promoted in to, etc.

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I'm 52. I absolutely love building software find customers for it and building businesses on serving them. It's the most intellectually challenging and financially rewarding thing I can think of for myself. And programming is one of the joys of the job.

The reason I find it more enjoyable than others might, is because I have considerable autonomy on how I will build my software, on what timelines, and who I'll sell it to.

The real problem with software development is not the complexity of our tech stack. It's the lack of agency that most programmers are forced to live with.

I fully agree with you. After a few happy experiences in development, I started to work as a developer for an ERP service company. I was served functional spec that I had to implement. I only had to look at the technical of things, and I quickly became bored.

So I transitioned to a client-facing role which was more interesting in a way, but with too much stress and too much management to do.

Now I try to find my niche in between, staying client facing but still handling the technical tasks. I find it's a really interesting position, it's very efficient since it reduce the amount of necessary communication, and it's very satisfying.

It does not work for big projects though.

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