softwareI’m 28, and after +10 years as a fully energetic/passionate software engineer, suddenly I start to lose my passion.
And briefly for those two reasons:
So, if this right what do you advise?! If not, what to do to renew my passion ?
Thanks,
I would imagine that most answers to your question will be subjective as I don't believe there is a sure-fire formula to answer it. Everyone's circumstances are different and all that I can offer is my own personal anecdote, for what it's worth. Feel free to use it as inspiration or as a cautionary tale.
At 31, I found myself in the same dilemma at the 10-year mark in my software development career. I worked for most of my career, up until that point, at a mid-sized consulting company, located in a mid-sized town, as a mid-level "Senior" Software Engineer. I felt like all I did was create the same CRUD applications day after day and, somewhere along the way, I lost my passion for development. I started to force myself to tinker with newer and newer technologies in my spare time and worked on my own small projects trying to rekindle the passion that I once had. But no matter how much I tried, nothing could bring it back.
Like you, I thought that my issue was the type of company that I worked for and the type of work that I was doing. I also thought that it would be difficult (where I was located) to get in with top-tier companies and work on newer technologies and "cooler" projects. I toyed with the idea of giving up development entirely and taking the management positions that I was offered, but for me, I felt like I would have died a little inside everyday with a life in middle-management.
Eventually, I quit my job, sold everything that we owned, and moved my wife and I to Silicon Valley, California. I got in with some very interesting companies (start-ups and enterprise-level) working on some "cool" products and made very good money (IMO). I had the opportunity to work with a lot of new technologies and advanced my skills quite a bit. Strangely, after a few years, I started to feel unsatisfied and dispassionate again. I eventually realized that for me personally I needed to either work on my projects where I controlled my own destiny (and with an opportunity for a bigger up-side) or get out of the game. For family reasons, we had to move back to my home state and I worked remotely for my last California company while I saved up enough to fund my own.
About a year ago, at age 41, I quit my job yet again and started my own software company. I now make just enough money to comfortably survive. I'm not rich and it's a long-shot, but damn I look forward to going to work the next day! I haven't felt that way since the first years of my career and I still code every day.
For me, I solved the first issue:
...tiny chance you can a job in cool company, and you are going to end up building database business system, which I really get bored of.
And I'm currently working to solve the second:
...you will not be rich being a software engineer only...
Almost all software engineering work is repetitive and has the potential to be dull. Put that another way, software engineering is pretty much like all technical fields, thought of as a job.
What you're starting to do is to think about software engineering as something that creates potential - potential to work on cool projects, potential to break out of the world of reward based on hours worked. And you're noticing that there's a growing gap between your potential and your experience.
Now is a good time to remember that being paid for hours worked isn't a luxury founders enjoy - certainly not founders who are bootstrapping. So just like people who want to retrain for software engineering work their present job and invest evenings growing their skills, that's your path. It's time to find out what entrepreneurship could be like.
Here's my prescription. This isn't right for everyone.
Set aside $1,000. If you can't, then set aside $200 a month until you can.
Go and buy a "business" on Flippa. This is going to cost you time and money, and you won't get either back. So be picky, and be patient. You are probably going to acquire something that's not really worth a cent, but it needs to have value to you. So it needs to have the potential to benefit from software engineering, and it needs to have some kind of user base, because it's engaging with users that is the skill you're going to learn. There's a lot on Flippa that's literally worthless and that you'll pay $500-$5,000 for. So if you're not sure, but you get excited, have the discipline to only get excited about auctions you are going to win for under $100, so if you regret it, you still have most of your cash. And if you see real potential, make $500 your limit, because you're still probably going to get it wrong first time.
Pay close attention to the acquisition process. In the dollar bin, it's not fancy, but you can learn most of the lessons you need, and the first is that you're going to make sure the vendor keeps every promise about knowledge handover until it's yours.
Congratulations! You now own a website / web app / mobile app / desktop app! More importantly, you should now have information about past or present users, or at least a way of reaching out to them. Before you do, you're going to do a very quick appraisal of your asset, focusing on the area you can impact by inserting time: the code. You need to do some basic housekeeping - create a development environment, a deployment method etc. And you need to work out where you could make an impact relatively quickly.
Now for the scary part. You're going to reach out to your users. Possibly, this will be a simple question - "would you prefer us to implement feature A or feature B?" Really your objective is to demonstrate that the business now shows a pulse, and to attempt to engage users in order to grow the value they experience. And you're looking for a promise you could make and keep that would be welcome to at least a subset of users and start to build a relationship.
No luck? Keep trying. Some results? Segment your user base and keep trying to move non-responders on. Some of what you are doing is going to annoy users, and they will leave. Remind yourself that this isn't a business, it's a school. So if you can, reach out to people churning and try and get their reasons and their stories.
There's a good chance that what you've acquired is going to slip through your hands. Capture the learning, and head back to step 2, as a more discerning buyer. But if it's going well enough, make yourself a promise. It might look like this: "For the next six months, this is my side project. I'm going to invest 10 hours each week. I'm going to spend up to $200 to progress the project. And then I'm going to decide between three options - grow it, milk it, or dispose of it."
If you follow this path, you won't have become an entrepreneur, but you will have sampled some aspects of the entrepreneurial life. You'll know what it's like, to quote Seth Godin, dancing on the edge of failure. Which will help you decide whether you're best sticking to getting paid for making yet more CRUD.
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