Thanks for sharing this! I’m at a point in my career where I could move up to management, or I could stay on a pure tech path and start to have limited opportunities for advancement. I’ve also been feeling less satisfaction for my technical work lately. I’ve thought about looking around at other jobs, but I’ve been coming to the conclusion that it would be the same anywhere, because it is ultimately for someone else and most of the time either the goal of the project or the method required to get there don’t align with my own goals or interests. From the bottom looking up, there’s a lot about management that doesn’t excite me either, but I’ve been wondering if it would free me up a bit to keep hobby work fun.

I’m glad to hear you were able to feel an increase in your passion about coding after moving to management and I’m hoping it can do the same for me. I’m a little weary of becoming just another cog in the system though. I’m just hoping that I can keep my current perspective in focus so I can use that to bring compassion for my reports and keep them from being burned out as long as I can.

It’d be nice to just to screw off and make my own things, but I have bills to pay. None of my hobby project ideas are money producers and even if some of them could be, I don’t know that I want to pervert them by making that a goal. I feel like that would suck out the fun of them for me and put me back in the same trap I’m already in.