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People Start Hating Their Jobs at Age 35, Study Says (bloomberg.com)
Older workers tend to be more unhappy in their jobs than their younger colleagues, according to a survey of more than 2,000 U.K. employees by human resource firm Robert Half U.K. One in six British workers over age 35 said they were unhappy -- more than double the number for those under 35. Nearly a third of people over 55 said they didn't feel appreciated, while 16 percent said they didn't have friends at work. From a report: There's the stress of being in a high-ranking position -- or the disappointment of not making it far enough up the career ladder. True, salaries are higher, but life starts to get more expensive. "Work-life balance" starts to mean taking care of children, rather than just personal stress management. "There comes a time when either you haven't achieved success, work has burned you out, or lived experience tells you family is more important," said Cary Cooper, a workplace researcher at Manchester Business School. "You ask yourself: 'What am I doing this for?'"
Software development is a fun hobby but a shitty career.
Between 25 and 35 the world is your oyster and the sky is the limit. From 35 to 45 fast living is catching up with the demands of family, you may have teenagers, and possibly overspent your credit cards. The mortgage on the house is feeling heavy. From 45 to 55 you settle into reality and just plough on, or reinvent yourself with a career change. From 55 to 65, your planning your exit strategy.
start treating it as more of an obligation
There's no treating, it IS an obligation. At about 35, if you are "typical", you will have a wife and family. Both will depend on you to one extent or another for your income, and sometimes also health benefits. Suddenly work isn't for fun, you can't take the risks you used to take before and have to play it straight, which IS utterly dull. You also start to realize that the fun money you blew on hookers and blow (or your favorite equivalent) should be invested in life insurance, and college funds, and also shit retirement is still a ways off but how the hell do you save for that with these others things? So you start to take more aggressively stupid jobs (management, for example, or technical jobs in lead roles) that pay bigger bucks. And soon, probably while working on a spreadsheet to enumerate fun work for other people to do, or perhaps while giving a power-point presentation on a project post-mortem, highlighting things that could have been done better, but will never be done better because upper management has tightened its sphincter, you realize you hate your job. You may think about a change, if you know your present employer isn't one of the best...and that leads to a series of events that is uncomfortable. Or, you are already in the very best employer in your field, and you get what I think is the worst feeling: shit, this is as good as it gets. And you hate your job more.
I often fantasize about winning the lottery even a small one just enough to reset me to 25 again. I kid myself: I would take an immediate demotion to college intern and just work on hardware design, or coding or wherever the fun I used to have was. But it's a joke, you can't go home again, and relieved of financial pressure I would probably not be fit for corporate employment. Having spent time in management, and knowing the things I know about how decisions are made, who makes them, and how very wrong the usually are, I would probably never be able to do that work again in a way that wouldn't get me asked to leave. This is what genuine overqualification means (not that HR shit). That is perhaps the MOST depressing part.