I am feeling frustrated after 15 years in programming
I am feeling exhausted and I am only in 30s. I am already tired of the monotony of my work. It doesnt seem to have an end, same sprints, same delivery schedules, same race for promo and TC. The fun Is lost. Is it only me or do other people feel similar. If you aren't, may be something I should learn from you.
Is it the monotony of the process or the work that bothers you?
A bit of both I guess. May be what's happening in my personal space
Look for a change? New role? New company? Join a startup? Become a PM? Or...
Personally I still love what I do (in my early 30s aswell). I think there are a few reasons for this: - I started my career as an IT engineer, moved to DevOps and today a software eng. this made me always strive to reach new goals. - quit jobs often, my average tenure is about 2 years per job, this keeps things interesting. - Keep learning new technologies, after 5 years of working on AWS it wasn’t as cool any more, then I started working on Kubernetes, now I have probably few more years until I am bored with it. I do feel exhausted and can resonate with that part of your post, but still love engineering and am constantly improving myself. If you really love software engineering, all you need is diversity in what you work on. The hard part is knowing when to take a break and not obsess over TC/money in the bank - I suck at this, hence feeling exhausted constantly. Dont get me wrong, If I was able to retire now, would do so in a heartbeat.
Learn some new tech or skillset that interests you, and pursue work in it.
Get closer to customers. Consulting, freelancing, project work
Doing 40 and can’t wait to write code tomorrow morning. I left my last commit on a cliffhanger.
Nice.
Time to switch gigs?
Make a change to work on something new.
I went through the same thing 2 years ago after my first kid was born. Might be mid-life crisis, but you also get tired of the same gig. Look for something else.
The worst best job in the world.