This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Michael Jordan
TL;DR; A rant from a dinosaur that can't keep up anymore. How do you guys do this?
EDIT: Holy cow. This turned into a real thing, didn't it? Thanks everyone for the replies. At this point if I keep responding to everything, I'm just digging myself a whole I'll spend the rest of the week crawling out of, but I appreciate all of your continued responses and advice. Even if I don't response, keep it coming!
UPDATE:
To be completely honest I wrote that post as a cathartic rant in the depths a particularly exhausted moment. I fully expected to get down-voted and/or removed. I did not expect it to catch fire in the way that it did.
What I discovered is that there are a lot of people that are in a similar place: overworked, burnt-out, and/or frustrated by the constant skill set churn.
But I found out there are a lot of others who aren't: they're still happy and excited, and don't feel over-worked.
Then there were a handful of folks who basically said "quit yer bitchin'." Fair enough. But I have to question whether they'd say that to a nurse, a doctor, or a tradesman that started his own business and burnt himself out trying to grow it. I appreciate everyone who shared, and gave me some much-needed perspective in all directions.
And I question how much money you think I'm making. As I said I work a lot of 14 hour days. And til' it's all said and done I made around $80,000 last year. No benefits. Supporting a family of 4. We don't struggle to put food on the table, but we don't make enough money to be frivolous either. And not once have I complained about the money. I know I'm blessed, if not as wealthy as some of you seem to think I am!
So here's what I've learned from you all:
Those that have long-term happiness in this career are those that can put it to rest at the end of the day. It is ultimately a job that makes other parts of their life better. For me starting my own business basically killed that possibility. I work 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM. Then 9:00 PM - 2:00 AM. And in between, I'm "on call." I also know there are plenty of you that aren't owners that feel similar pressures, and I feel for you. This was a choice I made, and it's mine to fix.
I noticed a trend between childhood passion for coding and adult career burnout. I noticed this as I read all 800+ comments. Those of us with stories about cutting our teeth on DOS and coding games for our TI-82 calculators all seemed to share a similar "malignancy." I'm not sure why. Was it a mistake turning something we loved into a career? Are humans just not meant to do (and love) the same activity for 25+ years? Are we expecting too much? I don't know. its just interesting to notice.
Maybe web development as a career has some problems. Some of you have pointed out that you've simply accepted that a full day of work each week will be spent re-educating yourself and not earning money. I think everyone should be thrilled to be lifelong learners. But I think nobody should have to accept losing a day each week, essentially unpaid, simply to keep their job. It's also a real possible that these problems are working themselves out. The web job market has expanded. There are now entire career paths around more specific skill sets. Its far more manageable to keep up with "Local SEO" or "front-end developer" or "UX engineer" or even "React Developer" than wearing and maintaining all of those hats at once. A lot of people told me to limit my scope but deepen my knowledge of whatever I'm left with. That's a great idea that I took to heart.
The agency model sucks for developers. Period. When I left my old agency and started my business, I didn't leave the agency model. I just made myself the agency. That was a mistake. A lot of folks suggested that I need to do more to move myself out of the developer role and into a management role, and put young blood in the coder's seat. I've actually tried this through the past year. It's been difficult, but I'm going to try harder. Others told me life is completely different working a 9-5 development job that's not agency. I'm going to give serious consideration to closing my business and taking a job working for the man again. I'm not precious about "ownership." Especially if it makes my life more balanced.
The speed at which front-end development changes is maddening and that seems to be an idea that's far more accepted than the more general premise of my original post. But we are under no obligation to learn every new technology/framework. Fair enough! I prefer back-end and I have entirely skipped Ruby, RoR, Node, and Python. Zero regrets. My background in pure computer science will help me get up to speed if and when I need to.
There are a lot of ways to do this career path. If balance is important to me, then I am doing it wrong. That's on me. I take full ownership of the mistakes I made to get to where I am. I can't tell you how much I appreciate the advice all of you who are "doing it right" gave me.
Going forward I have a lot of things to think about. To start, for the next 6 months I'm planning to put my clients in "maintenance mode." I won't accept new clients or ambitious new projects during that time. Incoming maintenance work and ongoing retainers are enough to sustain my family for now. This is a buffer to give me time to sort out my career and work/life balance.
I'll use that time to think about my future. If I want to keep my business, how do I do it in a way that supports the lifestyle I want for me and my family? If that's not possible, how do I responsibly walk away, and where do I go from here? Ultimately nobody has a gun to my head forcing me to perform agency-style development. It is a choice.
In conclusion: I thought it was worth pointing out to folks that are considering web development or are just getting into it that my experience is not everyone's experience. And that I take responsibility for decisions that contributed to my burn-out. Learn from my mistakes, as I've learned from everyone who responded to me.
Hopefully in a year I will post a far more positive follow-up.
ORIGINAL POST-----------------------------
I'm 37 which in web developer years mean's I'm a dinosaur. I've been programming since I was 13. I thought I was "l33t" because I made a pixely snowstorm in QBASIC in high school.
I've been making websites since 28.8 kb/s was standard. I've been doing it for money since 2003. I was around when nested tables were the only way to do layout. I embedded my share of animated GIFs and MIDIs, unironically. I was there when "To Hell with Bad Browsers" was published. I remember WASP, unaccompanied by Ant Man. I was there when Jeff Zeldman taught us how to Design with Web Standards and Eric Meyer introduced us to CSS. I'm pretty sure I probably masturbated to CSS Zen Garden at some point or another.
I've written guestbooks in C and home-brewed a CMS in Perl. I was building websites when the world was more familiar with Java than JavaScript, and people assumed they were related. I used MooTools, Prototype, and Dojo. I'm still maintaining web apps I wrote when ExtJS was still ExtJS and was open source. I was there when jQuery was new. I was there when jQuery for all intents and purposes WAS JavaScript. And I'm here today, wondering why half the web is still loading it.
I learned to love the HTML 5 DOCTYPE. I've coded in PHP 3, 4, 5, and 7, Zend Framework 1 and 2, Symfony 3 and 4. I've built enough WordPress sites to both understand the love, and the hate. I've slung gigabytes of data between MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, and SQL Server and mish-mashed it all into XML, JSON, and YAML. I've learned to love vanilla JavaScript again. And I've watched the JavaScript ecosystem spread out on the front and back-end. Sometimes, I feel, like a cancer.
Dudes.... I'm tired.
This was fun when I was young and cared about nothing else. I felt like I was doing something interesting. I felt like I was solving problems and building things that nobody else could build.
But then I discovered the outdoors, and hobbies. I got married. I had kids. I discovered the world outside the familiar glow of my screen is full of interesting things and unique challenges.
All the while, I've been through cycles upon cycles of changes in web technology. It's a hamster wheel. It's a rat race. It's whatever rodent metaphor accurately describes both the feeling of constant struggle and the utter pointlessness of going through it. We're a digital Sisyphys being crushed by gigabytes of npm modules that seem to be required to do anything useful nowadays.
I've realized that there are other people that are far better at this than me. I've realized that the myth of /u/breich having a genius level mind for technology only exists in comparison to the other minds in the small, rural community in which he grew up. And I've realized that I don't actually care.
I spent years terrified that website builders, automation, and machine learning would replace me. And I stuck it out long enough to be sitting her begging for website builders, automation, and machine learning to replace me.
How do you stay both excited and relevant in this career while developing as a well-rounded human being? Can you develop as a well-rounded human being and a web developer?
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Michael Jordan
Michael Jordan | Sciencx (2021-10-02T13:42:38+00:00) I am a Web Dev. And I am Burnt The F#*K Out.. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2021/10/02/i-am-a-web-dev-and-i-am-burnt-the-fk-out/
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