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.

  • Drew Belloc@programming.dev
    12·
    16 hours ago

    This does sound like a burnout, i would recommend to try and rest a little bit for a feel days, maybe a week to put your mind at easy if possible, also gamedev can be a good hobby for taking your head out of work, look on itch.io for a game jam and try to have fun along the way

    • deaf_fish@lemm.eeOP
      2·
      13 hours ago

      Thanks! I do game jams every once and a while. While fun, the deadline stress leaves me in a bad place. I have tried the resting thing. I just got off a holiday vacation for a week and it didn’t do much for me. I am not sure I have the PTO to take a week off whenever I need it. Not that the company has a bad PTO policy, it’s more that I seem to need it a lot.

      • zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev
        3·
        11 hours ago

        I’ve heard but can’t confirm that recovery from burnout only really happens after two weeks off. If you don’t have the pto to do that, do you have the financial option for unpaid time off? If not, then I’d say start looking for some place that pays better anyway and make sure there’s a few weeks between the end of one and the start of the new one.