How do you stay motivated after many years in the industry?

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MrDontCare12@reddit

I was about to say "food and roof", but your answer is more straightforward

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SleepingCod@reddit

The problem is after enough years, you have enough money. I have at least 4 years of runway, I don't need more money. I need more time.

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necheffa@reddit

Theoretically, if you get enough more money you can plan on retiring early which gets you that time.

Easier said than done of course.

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padiwik@reddit

I can pay for that with half a new grad salary. Are you paying for a big, "luxurious" home?

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weelittlewillie@reddit

Not in the USA surely. Post college grad cannot afford a house here, unless Mommy and Daddy pay for it.

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SanityAsymptote@reddit

You should be able to easily afford a house on even an early career developer's salary.

The trick is to not live in the most expensive cities in the world.

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MrDontCare12@reddit

Easier to do what we do mate. My wife is a cook, I won't do that, ever. Better getting fat on my fancy ergonomic chair that I use in a non ergo way.

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k_dubious@reddit

This didn’t fully hit for me until I had kids. Now that I do, I never want them to worry about whether we can afford an activity they want to do or a school that they can get themselves into.

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This is kind of a tough one for me. In theory I know I need more money but if I got fired today, it would take 10-20 years for me to end up a bum on the street. Maybe much longer. I also don’t have kids and have a low interest rate home. I’m also cheap as fuck. So while in theory I need more money… my brain most days is like nah… you don’t really

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SureConsiderMyDick@reddit

You can donate it to a 'share with me' or something.

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Skid_gates_99@reddit

Of course, money. A big part. But another vertical - is your interest in solving problems.

Your tech stack stops being exciting after a while, but understanding a messy domain deeply enough to simplify it never gets old. The engineers I know who stayed sharp after 10+ years all found something outside the code that kept them curious.

If you can't be curious about code, problem, systems, you can always be curious about money xD

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Tolexx@reddit

This is the best answer.

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terrible-takealap@reddit

It certainly helps!

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ChibiCoder@reddit

Be autistic and have a special interest in programming. That said, if you accidentally find yourself in a job/environment that is unsuitable to you, you crash and burn pretty quickly.

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Soasafrode@reddit

Break out of the popular rut. Do stuff the kids hate. It's genuinely fun to look at what 90% of people do, and realize you don't do any of it. Now you have to think for yourself!

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jtonl@reddit

Doing things that are not tech related outside of work hours.

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WanderingGoodNews@reddit

It is often to much after the 9-5

I tried many times, it resparks the intrest but never being able to commit to something bigger/finishing stuff is more exhausting in the long run

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ObsidianGanthet@reddit

Gotta be this. I know I'm supposed to upskill and try different new technologies outside work time but I'm also supposed to have a life

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Delicious_Scallion83@reddit

Creating your own company/ startup

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roger_ducky@reddit

Helping stakeholders and mentorship.

Technology starts sounding like a broken record once you’d worked long enough.

People ask me why I understood everything “new” coming out. Worked on at least another version of it before. So it mostly came down to syntax.

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lorean_victor@reddit

I don’t. it doesn’t. not all of my job requires motivation. if it does, and i’m not motivated at the time, I just give myself space until the spark comes back. if it doesn’t, I do it on autopilot and let other stuff motivate me in life, until the spark comes back.

I’ve learned long ago not to fight myself. ofc a side effect of this approach is that a lot of the time people think i’m actively dodging work and not even spending time behind my laptop / desk, but all teams i’ve worked with so far have come to accept this approach since in the end things do get delivered in a timely manner (sometimes much faster, sometimes a bit slower but with extra care).

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subLimb@reddit

Having interests outside of work is huge. I have a feeling there are a lot of devs out there who never really cultivated a passion outside of writing code. A lot of them are having a really bad time right now.

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nkondratyk93@reddit

tbh stopped expecting to be motivated all the time. some months are boring. that's fine.

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charm33@reddit

U dont

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marquoth_@reddit

Motivated? I'm about to go for a nap

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Elect_SaturnMutex@reddit

I get demotivated really soon when i see incompetent managers making decisions after listening to "senior" developers who have been in the company for centuries.

I find it hard to motivate myself, but if i could, i would set a goal, objective for myself. Learn such and such skills within X time, such that you can demonstrate them on your resume. And then jump for a bigger pay hoping that the environment there is better.

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CrazyPirranhha@reddit

managers listen to engineers?!

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symbiatch@reddit

Sure. I’ve often almost run the development part of things and told them what to build and when. There’s many managers out there who actually understand they’re not experts in everything and engineers are a resource for other things also than just vomiting code and applications out.

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Elect_SaturnMutex@reddit

In Germany they do. There will be some engineer who has been there since 70s working with Pascal code. Managers wouldn't listen to new young engineers. They would rather ask younger enginers to learn Pascal than rewrite the code in C or C++. Thats been my experience. Well, not exactly, but in an exaggerated sense. Wonder if its different in America.

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pydry@reddit

really soon when i see incompetent managers making decisions after listening to "senior" developers who have been in the company for centuries.

That aint the worst thing they do.

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symbiatch@reddit

I choose my work carefully so it itself is already something that motivates me to some degree. Medical discovery, catching drug lords, security, saving lives, education, renewables - there’s a lot there to keep me happy.

And also new tech is fun and all but doesn’t come that much to play at work. But it’s still a bonus to just learn things.

I also enjoy helping people more close by so mentoring, educating, teaching the young ones to do things better and seeing them get forward brings me joy.

So there’s a lot out there and even after 30 years I’ve never been bored in general doing this.

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franz_see@reddit

the work eventually becomes familiar

Stay long enough and you’d see several shift that will make your specialty obsolete or commoditized.

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klevismiho@reddit

Focused work. I am 15 years in the industry.

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ragsappsai@reddit

5 kids, mortgage, 2 wives, 2 dogs, electricity, food, cars.

Does it keep you motivated? If not I am sorry, it does for me.

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ViRROOO@reddit

Wow bro 5 kids! In this economy?!

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OhNoItsMeAgainHaha@reddit

Muhammad?

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ragsappsai@reddit

Nop, Josianderson

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Odd_Perspective3019@reddit

I find motivation dies with so many bad engineering managers at tech. They may be really good technical but literally none of them know how to manage or set expectations or care about growth.

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ZunoJ@reddit

To me it is the learning new stuff

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Careful_Let509@reddit

Around 10 yoe. I just don’t take work so seriously so I don’t have to rely on motivation to work for someone else. I’ve agreed to sell 40 hours of my life a week for a bunch of money and that is it, fair and square.

Motivation in my mind is reserved for stuff that does not reward you immediately, like personal projects, starting a business or idk losing weight.

I did struggle with motivation to work when I was younger, but it mostly came from constantly feeding my brain with the idea that I’m a slave to the system and that somehow just the idea of having to work is unfair. Just read too much of /r/antiwork I guess lol.

I’d rather refactor code or implement a new feature sitting at home in my pajamas than hunt for food in the woods and spend most of the year preparing for winter and risking dying from a tooth ache.

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Looz-Ashae@reddit

I have mouths to feed

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Factory__Lad@reddit

I don’t know. The “industry” (clue: it’s not an industry until you have a business model rather than “will program for food”) is now in total crisis.

I’ve just been lucky and ended up in a place where I am working with great people and learning stuff, but it’s such a problem that for most, this has become impossible.

The only realistic prediction is that Big Tech will take over everything because they at least understand the means of production. Unless AI makes it commonplace for people to start billion dollar solo dev businesses out of their garage.

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kir_rik@reddit

I realy like to eat and own a real estate

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Chewlies-gum@reddit

The work I do has consequences, and that means I have some level of reasonability to keep society running until someone else is ready to take over. Any advanced society has millions of roles that just have to be done to function, and I have generally held one of those roles, and I guess I take that seriously. Consequences.

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SkyGenie@reddit

I work at startups where there's always something different to do.

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Square-Fix3700@reddit

There’s always something new to learn and that’s what gets me up. I had quite a low in my 30s though and almost left the industry. It was only the 2008 crash and lack of opportunity to move that kept me in. I raised my skills again slowly after that and love it again.

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tacosdiscontent@reddit

Previously it was type of work and learning and using new tech, and surprisingly also company culture. Nowadays in the age of ai, only money. The previously mentioned things have been completely destroyed. Previously I loved knowing the fact that today is workday, more fun stuff to do, etc. Now, since this year, it’s complete numbness and dread in regards to the work

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chikamakaleyley@reddit

I hit a wall trying to become a better swe in my domain (frontend). I decided to switch it up and learn more about my system (installed Arch linux) and becoming better with my development tools (VSCode => Neovim)

Those two changes put me on a different kind of learning path that opened up a lot of concepts, new habits; and so when i finally returned to improving my skills as an SWE a lot of things started to make more sense, and my ability to connect the dots is much easier

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