Partly, yes. I left that company and started my own. That's brought its own set of troubles, but it has at least given me a chance to regain my love for programming.
Looking back, I did really enjoy trying to fix the organisational issues that caused my burnout. So I was going through this constant cycle of
- Get frustrated by something when programming
- Realise there's an issue in process / workflow
- Get excited to fix that issue
- Come up with an idea
- Get shut down because I'm not paid enough to have those kinds of ideas
- Go back to programming, even more frustrated
I've since realised that I actually never fit the developer role in a company that well. I was good at it, but always got drawn towards creating tooling, CI pipelines, running the retros - the meta-changes and process improvements. In previous jobs that was fine because they were a lot more agile. There wasn't as much that needed fixing, and they were happy to let me fix the issues that did exist.
I felt no meaning to my work because I was motivated by improving things, whether they were in my job description or not. I could have a minimal impact by writing some code, or a huge impact by helping everyone else write code more efficiently, but I wasn't allowed to do the latter.
Anyway yeah long story short I'm currently pivoting my career towards the managerial/coaching/processes side. Something like "Software Development Coach" rather than just "Software Developer". I'm excited for the future again, and excited to help other people that are dealing with similar issues :)
This resonates very much with my own experience. I’ve quit my last job because it broke this camel’s back and now the last thing I want to do is going back as a developer.
I also do enjoy fixing things and processes so that others don’t needlessly suffer through work and actually enjoy themselves.
But how do you go about switching tracks to coaching? What does it even entail? How do you learn?
And more importantly: who’s buying? I was trying to better things in every job I had and every time I met the wall of “not being paid enough to have these ideas/being road blocked”.
If companies have this attitude (no matter how much they’re losing through low morale, inefficiencies, mistakes, attrition, etc) when offered a chance to fix it “for free” by an actual employee, why would they pay top dollar for a coach to make it happen?
It feels to me that management is even more cynical than the burnt out grunts and their objective is to squeeze as much as they can out of their employees while they last because they know they’ll quit or burnout in a year or two anyway.
How do you even begin a conversation when that’s the prevalent attitude?
I get where you're coming from, and they're questions I'm working on answering as well. Unlike you, I have worked in jobs where that kind of proactive find-and-fix mentality was prevalent, where they bought into continuous improvement. They do exist, it does work, and that's what made it so frustrating when I wasn't allowed to fix things in this job.
I don't have all the answers yet, and it's something I'm in the process of doing. However, what is really helping me (and what made me realise this was the issue in the first place) is working with a coach. It's a bit like therapy/counselling, basically someone to guide me through the process of figuring out what went wrong and why, and how to fix it in future. He's from the tech industry, so has a base level understanding of things, and was able to give me some good pointers for how to find resources.
I think the thing that started me off learning & reskilling was reading blogs from technical coaches like [1]. Clearly the job I want does exist, and there is a demand for it. It's not common, but it exists.
Looking back, I did really enjoy trying to fix the organisational issues that caused my burnout. So I was going through this constant cycle of
- Get frustrated by something when programming - Realise there's an issue in process / workflow - Get excited to fix that issue - Come up with an idea - Get shut down because I'm not paid enough to have those kinds of ideas - Go back to programming, even more frustrated
I've since realised that I actually never fit the developer role in a company that well. I was good at it, but always got drawn towards creating tooling, CI pipelines, running the retros - the meta-changes and process improvements. In previous jobs that was fine because they were a lot more agile. There wasn't as much that needed fixing, and they were happy to let me fix the issues that did exist.
I felt no meaning to my work because I was motivated by improving things, whether they were in my job description or not. I could have a minimal impact by writing some code, or a huge impact by helping everyone else write code more efficiently, but I wasn't allowed to do the latter.
Anyway yeah long story short I'm currently pivoting my career towards the managerial/coaching/processes side. Something like "Software Development Coach" rather than just "Software Developer". I'm excited for the future again, and excited to help other people that are dealing with similar issues :)