How Do I Get Back a Passion For Programming?

bigsexyjoe writes "I am a somewhat experienced software developer who is pretty much an office drone. I used to enjoy writing code. I even enjoyed writing routine code before it became routine. But now I just come in day in and day out. I work for manipulative jerks. I don't care about the product I create. I don't enjoy coding anymore. I'm not great at interviewing. I don't have an impressive resume. I stick in more advanced stuff into my code when I can, but that is always on the sly. So my question is how do I get back the enjoyment I used to have writing code?"

Comments

Sucks to be you!

[Q-Hack!]

How about getting out of your comfort zone. Get your resume up to date. Have people review it for readability. Start looking for a new job. You may not enjoy your current employer, but find one that peaks your interest and the joy of coding will return. Also, it helps if the projects have an overall goal in mind that you agree with. For some that may be the Defence industry, others may prefer coding for the Medical industry. Industries that have a meaningful goal will help you to achieve that missing passion.

Re:Sucks to be you!

[Anonymous Coward]

first of all. LOOK FOR A NEW JOB!.

Second: Start a project on your own that is fun. (in my case: Make games!).

Cheers

Re:Sucks to be you!

[Moryath]

I work for manipulative jerks.

This right here tells me it's not about your passion for coding. It's the fact that you dread going in to work each morning to face the manipulative jerks.

Either go above the heads of the manipulative jerks and report what's making a hostile work environment, or start brushing up your resume, practice interviewing, and start looking for a new job.

Re:Sucks to be you!

[nepka]

I enjoy coding greatly. But even before I started working, I saw that coding for work will ruin the fun for me. So I got a job in related industry where I can greatly use my coding experience in my advantage, but isn't really about coding. It's like with game testers - if you test games for living, it will take the fun of playing any games from you. Now I work in other industry, but I'm a really handy guy around (both for others, and for myself) because of my extra ability to code, suggest things about computer security and everything else IT-related. This not only ensures I don't ruin the fun from coding, but makes me more valuable to any company (as per the extra stuff I can do) and I find work generally more interesting.

Re:Sucks to be you!

[dkleinsc]

Either go above the heads of the manipulative jerks and report what's making a hostile work environment, or start brushing up your resume, practice interviewing, and start looking for a new job.

If you're going to do the first one, going over the heads of manipulative jerks, do the second one as well, because chances are the manipulative jerk's superiors are manipulative jerks who are more invested in your manipulative jerk bosses than they are in you.

Re:Sucks to be you!

[Captain Splendid]

LOOK FOR A NEW JOB!

In this economy? Screw that.

Re:Sucks to be you!

[JoeMerchant]

Either go above the heads of the manipulative jerks and report what's making a hostile work environment, or start brushing up your resume, practice interviewing, and start looking for a new job.

I'd order that more:

1. Brush up the resume
2. Go on some interviews, even though you hate to, you'll get a better feel what's out there
3. Once you have an offer that is at least a lateral move, go above the jerks heads and see what you can accomplish (hint: there's a reason you have an offer in hand when doing this)
4. Choose your destiny

Happiness comes from control, that why your bosses are manipulative jerks, they're basically pleasuring themselves at your expense.

Don't discount the possibility of things turning around where you are, it has happened for me in the past.

Re:Sucks to be you!

[s73v3r]

Second: Start a project on your own that is fun. (in my case: Make games!).

This can be a good suggestion. But before that happens, he needs the inspiration to actually go through with it. Wanting to do some programming, but not having a single idea of what to do is an awful feeling.

Re:Sucks to be you!

[s73v3r]

Yes, in this economy. Programmers are one of the professions that are almost untouched by the recession.

Re:Sucks to be you!

[s73v3r]

Yes, but being dissatisfied at work can take a huge drain on you, to the point where you really don't want to do anything else after you get home, especially not something associated with what you do at work.

Re:Sucks to be you!

[Coolhand2120]

Yea, favoritism and nepotism run deep in management.

And pleonasms run deep in you.

Re:Sucks to be you!

[Grishnakh]

Exactly. I've worked in a several different companies, and basically shit rolls downhill: if your bosses are jerks, then the people above them are going to be even worse. I've been in companies where my immediate bosses were OK, and the management above them not too bad either; one place where my immediate boss was cool, but as you got up the chain they got exponentially more horrible (incompetent, stupid, etc.), another place where my boss sucked, but the ones above him were far worse. People are frequently a product of their environment; at that last place I think my boss might not have been so bad if he had always worked in a better company than that one, but he had always worked there, so he was firmly invested in the place and its dysfunction.

Trying to go above your boss's head is always a losing proposition, as far as I'm concerned. If you don't like where you are, get out and find a new job. That tripe about "change coming from within" is good in some other contexts, but not in corporate employment. You're just a hired gun, nothing more, and the people calling the shots are the sociopaths at the top, so if you're not satisfied with the environment they've set up, you need to go find some place where the grass is greener. Even if the new place isn't any better, a change of scenery will make you feel better for a little while, and give you time to find a better position.

Re:Sucks to be you!

[Grishnakh]

Once you have an offer that is at least a lateral move, go above the jerks heads and see what you can accomplish (hint: there's a reason you have an offer in hand when doing this)

I disagree completely. Counteroffers are almost always losing propositions, especially if you don't like the people you're working for (because they're manipulative jerks). Your job offer from the new company is only good for a short time. If you blow it by taking that to your boss, and getting a raise or some other minor concession, they're going to see you as "not a team player", and start looking for your replacement right away. Then, they're going to can your ass, at a time that is convenient for them but not so convenient for you, and that job offer will be expired. If you go above your boss's head, unless you get assigned to a new department with a new boss, you'll always have an antagonistic or toxic relationship with your boss, until they find your replacement.

If your company isn't keeping you happy, that's their own failure. You can't fix it for them, and pointing it out to them is not going to make them happy or appreciative; they'll just be annoyed that you bothered them instead of staying in your place as their peon. There may be some exceptions to this, but they're rare; the poster here already said his bosses were "manipulative jerks", and I've never heard of a company where the upper management were nice people and the people below them were jerks; if your boss is a jerk, the people above him probably are too: birds of a feather flock together.

Re:Sucks to be you!

[xmundt]

Greetings and Salutations....
          Ageism has been, and continues to be, a serious problem in the IT profession. It does not apply to just coders either, as it seems that being over the age of 50 is a kiss of death for system administrators, DBAs, analysts, etc. I suspect that the issues that control this are (in no particular order)
          1) Folks doing the hiring assume that anyone over the age of 50 is so stuck in their rut that they are out of touch with the newer technologies. Actually the cut off age here seems to be closer to 30....
          2) The younger a hire is the cheaper they will be for the company. Most companies would rather pay a kid $40K a year and not worry about the fact that it might take him a week to do what a $100K a year hire could do in a day or even a few hours.
          3) Again, because of the incorrect perception that IT people are an expense rather than an asset, HR hires the kid who knows how to do ONE thing, instead of the older, more experienced person that knows how to do a dozen things, and can likely apply that knowledge to find a way to make the company more efficient, using the excuse that the older hire is going to be "too expensive".
          I will agree that, in the short term, the older hire requires a larger check...but in the long term, is likely to more than pay that back with the increases in efficiency and the savings he or she can bring to the company. This makes no difference, though, because these days, short-term profit is the only goal that companies can look for.
            4) most management knows that the older hire is going to be more of a pain for them, because experience brings understanding of exactly how poorly most management runs things, and, a considerably lower tolerance for that sort of nonsense. The "fresh face" just out of school is willing to put up with a lot more crap that we, with that experience, are not. The kid actually believes management's vague, hand-waving promises of great rewards later on for 80 plus hours of work now!

Do It Yourself

[ClayDowling]

The Man is paying you to write this routine code because it's mind numbing, soul-sucking work that nobody would ever do of their free will. If the problem you were solving was fun, there's be an open source project that was solving it.

The solution I had to use was writing my own software to solve problems I found interesting. That also let me test out new techniques and tools that I couldn't do at the day job. After all, there are only so many ways to CReate, Update and Delete records from a monolithic database.

Projects

[Bucky24]

Start your own projects on the side. Or if you don't have any ideas, join an open source project. Unless you're amazingly good at programming you'll probably learn something either way, and, at least for me, that's what makes it fun.

But like anyone else I can only really give you suggestions that would work for me or I know worked for someone else. you have to really discover it again on your own.

Code for yourself in your spare time

[DoctorPepper]

I found that programming for a living does tend to take away the passion I used to have for it. To compensate, I tend to code for myself on my off time. I'd like to get into an open source project one of these days, but for now, I just write my own programs and enjoy the process.

You could get into an open source project, see if that might re-kindle your passion for programming. Make sure you check you company policy for code you write after work, you wouldn't want to run afoul of that.

Good advice .. but check your contract

[Anonymous Coward]

Start a project on your own that is fun.

That is a really great idea.. probably one of the few things will get him to love programming again. He puts more advanced code into projects for his employer for no reason (not a good idea IMO), when all that effort should be put into his own project.

BUT he needs to check his employment contract first. Very common for the employer to say they own everything you create, even if it's not on company time. And if he works for jerks, I wouldn't assume they won't take the project from him when he leaves if it has any value at all.

Re:Good advice .. but check your contract

[CelticWhisper]

I really don't mean to derail the discussion, but as a netadmin who generally doesn't code very much (beyond basic scripting for automation) I've always wondered about the "we own all your code" thing. Has it ever been tested in court whether an employer can lay claim to work done off company time on non-company resources, assuming the program has nothing to do with the company's operations (or even if it does)? Failing all else, can't the coder just release the program anonymously?

Re:Good advice .. but check your contract

[ATMAvatar]

Even if you do sign away all rights to your code, there is a small handful of states whose laws override those contract provisions.

For example, I live in Kansas, and Statute 44-130 explicitly states that employment contract provisions about code I write on my own time using only my own resources are null and void. There are a few limitations to that, of course - the coding I do has to be unrelated to my workplace and not derived from work I do at the office, and I have to disclose to my employer what those projects are.

This was covered a little more in-depth in a question on OnStartups, one of the StackExchange sites.

Retrain

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Do like I did: retrain and start a new career. I used to be an overworked software project manager with the love of coding drained out of me, and now I'm a happy gunsmith.

It's never too late to go back to school. No sense in living a life you don't like, you only have one life and you need to enjoy it to the fullest.

What's stopping you?

[dmomo]

You don't have to love your job. It's work. You get paid to do it. I used to like my job a lot, but it paid absolute crap and I was working over 60 hours a week. So, I left it. I liked my new job less but was getting paid a lot more to do it. I was working only a 40 hour week. So, I used that extra time and money to enjoy my LIFE outside of work. Passion for programming? I now have the time and resources to foster that creative need on my own time and more importantly on my own terms.

Find a new project at work?

[frostfreek]

I was in the same situation, bored out of my mind working on a product that *nobody* cares about, let alone me; The product was mature, so there was very little development. Coming in to work was getting to be a major drag. I was starting to consider changing careers entirely, thinking I was a burn-out.

Fortunately, a new project popped up at work, and I was lucky enough to be on it, and it has definitely improved everything. I am having fun cranking out code just like "the good old days", so the burn-out thing was really just boredom, and knowing that the work I was doing was never going to affect, well, pretty much anyone.

So perhaps the question is, "How do I get onto a new project?"

Maybe it won't happen with your "manipulative jerks".
Maybe you have to come up with something completely new.
Are there other devs there too? Or other people who like to come up with product ideas?

I think I was pretty lucky. You may have to make your own luck here.

Re:Get another job

[cashman73]

That's because programmers have no people skills. They are not good at dealing with people. So they have to hire people with people skills to talk to the customer so the software engineers don't have to. What in the hell is wrong with you people?

Re:Get another job

[cashman73]

You know. I don't like paying bills, so I don't think I'm going to do that, either.

There is actually a club...

[Yold]

"There is a club for people who don't like their job, it is called "EVERYBODY"; they meet at a bar".

-Drew Carey

Just ask for a waiver ...

[perpenso]

I've always wondered about the "we own all your code" thing.

Companies with such a policy generally have a mechanism for waivers as well. Myself and coworkers at various employers had no problems in this regard. There was an admonition not to work on the hobby all night and show up in the morning exhausted. The admonition was offered with a smile in a humorous manner but there was probably an element of seriousness in there.

I think a famous example of waivers may lie with Steve Wozniak and Apple. Supposedly Steve did some work at HP, management was not interested in it, Steve asked for a waiver and it was granted. That work wound up in the Apple II.