this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
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Lost the sauce. What should I do/think about? (lemm.ee)
submitted 11 hours ago by deaf_fish@lemm.ee to c/cs_career_questions@programming.dev
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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:

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

Thanks for your consideration.

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[โ€“] Anticorp@lemmy.world 3 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Idk who told you that game development doesn't pay well. I have two friends who are game developers and they certainly don't seem to be hurting for money. They both own big-ass houses in expensive areas, and take expensive vacations, pursuing their expensive hobbies.

[โ€“] bluGill@fedia.io 2 points 8 hours ago

Game development has earned the bad reputation, but not all game development is bad. SOME game development is hire the latest kid out of school, work them 80+ hours/week for little pay until they burn out then get the next one our of school. Some game development has figured out that the above practices result in a game that works but they will need to start over from scratch with the next, while if they spend more time on design, clean code, and keeping good people around they can save money in the long run because the next game will have a lot of features they can take from the last, and constant improvement in that code results in better details.