Ask HN: Does anyone else do what I do?

[mohsen]

I don't particularly like the work I do at my job. Don't get me wrong, great people, smart people, and much to learn, but the work is not interesting at all.

So when I get home at night, I stay up and work on my own little projects here and there, just so I can remember that programming is a bunch of fun.

Anyone else doing/have done that?

-mohsen

[kapilkaisare]

I used to do that.

The difficulty with this state of affairs is that the work you do at your job begins to become a [time+motivation+energy] sink, and you often find yourself wishing that you could devote more of yourself to your pet projects.

This in turn affects your performance at work, giving you a perpetually negative loop that's broken when you shift jobs.

There are very few excuses, I think, to not find good work these days. Pay with personal circumstances is the only I can think of - if you have a family with enough children to make accepting lower pay for better an impossible decision, for example.

I beleive that you have just this life to live. Make the most of it.

[JimboOmega]

I'm stuck in this loop. At work all I can think about is getting home and having fun or doing "real" work.

Not all areas are flooded with good jobs, and mine isn't one of them. I've interviewed with a few companies that didn't hire me, and the process of interviewing takes such a toll - mostly emotionally, but also several hour+ long phone calls, and a whole day off to interview, a few nights spent on code samples... I'm reluctant to do it again. Especially when my job is "not that bad" and it's hard to get a clear signal on just how great any other potential job might be.

Also, pursuing my side projects is something I want to continue.

[mohsen]

I could not agree more, however I don't want to leave my job for two HUGE resons: 1) Family 2) If I can manage to get past this project, there are very good projects with very bright people working on them, that I am certain will motivate me.

[NickPollard]

I think you'll find a pretty large majority of HNers do that, either just for fun, or in the hope of eventually building a business out of their little projects.

I work for a large game developer by day, and by night I go home and write my own open-source game engine, as it lets me learn what I need to learn. It's very hard to experiment with new techniques at work, but it's important to my skill development. Also the codebase at work is so horrible, that working with a nice, concise C codebase in the evenings is positively pleasant by comparison.

[bobds]

Sometimes I get so frustrated with whatever I'm working on, that I start thinking about how nice it would be to quit programming and become a farmer or a builder.

Soon after that, I solve a little personal problem by coding the solution, or I discover a cool new tool, or I fix a little bug in an application I use, even if it's written in a language I'm not familiar with.

At which point, I remember that I'm never going to quit programming because it's so damn useful. And it can be fun too, if you work on the right things. Even if I go on to be a farmer, I'll still solve the odd problem by programming the solution. And I'll always have an appreciation of simplicity, bestowed upon me through endless nights of working against stupid, complicated technology.

[mathgladiator]

I second the farmer path.

If I had some land and the skills to make it viable to live off of it, then I would. That solves most of my life debt since I'm fairly ascetic.

[madhouse]

I do. However, not because I'm unhappy with what I do at work (I'm completely statisfied). It's just that I love to tinker, so I continue to do that even when I get home.

[hasenj]

Same boat buddy. But I find the day job to be such an energy sink, that by the time I'm home I don't have enough mental energy to really code much.

[mohsen]

Same here, but you can't let them take your soul, just drink a cup of coffee and get to work. Any idea would be good, because it's your idea.