The Burnout Post

This is the post where I talk about software developer burnout.

I don’t think I have a particularly innovative take on this subject, but I feel like it’s worth writing about. Plus it helps me keep up with my monthly blog post goal (yes that is a little ironic, given what I’m about to talk about).

I’ve been programming for about 14 years now after starting in highschool computer tech class. I loved that class and it’s what pushed me into electronics engineering and ultimately becoming a software developer.

I remember spending my lunch periods working on my fire fighting robot, writing the code to navigate the maze and blow out the candle. Figuring out how to get to each room and clever ways to backtrack if the room was empty.

Planning, designing, building and programming systems are the kind of challenges I enjoy taking on.

Really anything programming I enjoyed and I just like making things in general. I remember digging through Java Swing documentation to make silly GUIs for useless things or even spending the time on Blender tutorials (And for the record, some of that stuck).

This blog is about 9 years old. I started in college along with my Github account. I figured Github would be a good portfolio and it was a place to put some of my projects. This blog itself was a continuous project, I’ve worked on multiple site designs, tweaking the layouts and CSS. I even added blog comments at one point.

In college I learned about electronic system design and more programming. My HCS12 board was a highlight in that program. But I also worked on some of my biggest personal projects like Gameboy Core or my Voxel Engine.

During college I had several co-op placements and ended up getting hired at the company I did my last two placements (and where I’ve been for the last 6 years).

Then real life begins. Have a job, get things done. Dealing with people and their expectations (reasonable or otherwise). Trying to learn as much as you can in the position your in. I always maintained side projects along the way.

Last year was, without exaggeration, the best year of my life. I said as much in the 2022 Retrospective Post. I was doing important things at work, probably the most productive I’ve been, got promoted and did some traveling.

This year. Ha, well, is why I’m writing this.

At work, it was hard to find the time to work on the things I really wanted to (and for the record, needed to) work on. Not accomplishing the goals I had set for myself. This also leaked into my personal projects as well. Icarus stalled and took me months to get to PID tuning, which was only about 2 hours of work. My 3D printing projects also halted. I didn’t really work on much this year.

I’ve been reflecting on this for a few months and I guess the conclusion is: It’s about finding a balance.

Wow insightful.

Set reasonable goals (career or personal). Learn to flip the work switch off after hours. Not everything has to be a hobby project.

To be clear, this was hardly a bad year. I got to go to San Francisco, New Orleans, and London! I also started doing some martial arts!

So all that said, next year I going to try to approach things in a more balanced way. But I’ll never put down my personal projects because they are just too much fun.