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Lost the sauce. What should I do/think about? (lemm.ee)

submitted 9 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I have been a software engineer of off highway farm equipment for most of my life. I have like 15 years of it. I have just lost the ability to care about it anymore.

I have explored all the things that interest me and now it seems like everything is just turning the crank to completion. A very boring/slow turning with deadline pressure. I am doing less development and more code reviews because I have become a more senor developer.

My position in the company is pretty good and I could probably ride it out until I die or the company picks up on the fact that my output has dropped due to the lack of caring. But that eats at my soul and it isn't fair to my coworkers.

If money wasn't an issue, I would jump to game development but I hear that doesn't pay well or treat their employees well either. I suppose I could start my own company...

I have a wife and we plan to have one kid if that is possible for us.

Burnout is a possibility, but if that is what this is, I am not sure what to do about it.

So here is what I think my options are. I am open to other suggestions:

Stay where I am.
Pivot hard to management where I am.
Try to find a new job within Embedded Systems
Try to do Game Development.
Drop everything, become a philosopher like Diogenes of Sinope

Thanks for your consideration.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

What should I do / think about?

I've been in your shoes, and I did eventually make a move for a challenge.

Then I moved back, after I got that urge out of my system. So my best advice, that I followed and it paid off, is leave on good terms, if you leave.

I had to process the transition that I'm no longer primarily paid for making things but for availability and mentorship.

If I was paid hourly for making things, I could never make a living wage. I simply work too fast initially, and I no longer waste enough hours on fixing my past mistakes.

So now I spend an inordinate amount of my time training on whatever amuses me that might someday be valuable to my employer. And I prioritize taking breaks in my schedule to mentor and explain things to peers - whenenver I can afford to. I'm genuinely very good at what I do, so "whenever I can afford to" is astonishingly often.

Eventually that transition to availability and mentorship led to a promotion into roles that demand it more. So I accepted a promotion into management and then read a crap ton of management books.

I'm still a renegade manager whose boss understands that I'll do some coding whenever I please...I mean, whenever my other duties allow.