How to Live a Meaningful Developer Life
Tags: programming, career, philosophy
Published: 2021-09-09 12:08:38

---
title: How to Live a Meaningful Developer Life
published: true
description: contributing to open source, teaching the next generation, becoming an angel developer, finding a better job, sharing my experiences, founding a business,  leveraging my talents
tags: #programming #career #philosophy
cover_image: https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/p2lwumu8u12xvptnthet.png
---

I have many years of experience as a developer and enough money to live by. I want to make something useful and fulfilling with my time and skills.

## What I expect with this post
- **to learn** from your feedback and experiences
- **to motivate** developers into setting their hearts on something more than just retiring and ignoring all your years of experience
- maybe **to connect** with some of you, so we can work together to realize some of these ideas
- to push me **out of my safe zone** and giving these topics more attention


## Some things about me
- I'm 38 years old
- I have 17 years of professional experience
- I live a frugal life, only need money for basic needs
- I like helping out developers less experienced than me
- I like to code
- I have a good job, but I'm feeling burned out of being just a cog in the machine
- I don't have kids and have a lot of free time, whenever I'm not working overtime
- I like to explain things using bullet points :-)


## What I'm brainstorming about


### Working for free
- contributing to open source
- it is OK to do charity / social work
- but money is a measure of success

At the beginning of my career, I never thought about giving back to the community. Seventeen years ago **open source** was not as hot as it is now, but mostly I was just worried about learning what was required to get the job done. Later, I never seemed to have a bug I needed to be fixed so bad that I would spend my time fixing it.

I'm open to giving my time for free for **charity** projects, but I never found one where my skills are needed. I'm not a "create me a website" kind of guy.

Other than these cases, there is a saying "when you work for free you are worth as much as you are paid". **The less somebody pays, the less they appreciate you**.


### Leveraging my talents
- I know best practices, unit testing, agile, many tech stacks
- do I want to create niche websites and live-off ads?

Nothing wrong with gaining **money through ads**, but it doesn't sound satisfying to me. I am curious about how much I could earn though.

I think most of what I learned in all these years are things that I like, but perhaps I'm just used to them. I enjoy the **problem-solving** and **creativity** aspects of software development. Looking through thousands of lines of log and fixing other people's bad code, no.


### Teaching the next generation
- the basics: not enough intellectual challenge
- advanced stuff: only if in a work environment, not a classroom
- online classes, ebooks: too much of these already

I've tried teaching people with **very little skill**, and it was a drag. Unless you're dealing with an exceptional learner or maybe a friend or family member, it is not worth my time.

As for more **advanced stuff**, this is something I've always done. When somebody doesn't know something, I "teach".

I feel there are enough quality places to **learn online** already, I don't see myself doing something better right now.


### Following my passions
- sharing about my experiences in the tech industry
- becoming a fictional book writer, one of my lifetime dreams
- writing about philosophy and living a good life

This might sound too generic, but programming is one of my passions. This is basically **the blogger's path**. Learn something, share something.

Naturally, my life isn't just about programming. I'm a lover of knowledge, therefore philosophy, and I find reality too boring, hence I like fiction.


### Founding a business with like-minded people
- I'm a tech guy, bureaucracy/marketing are not things I aspire to do
- hiring experienced developers is hard, focus on teaching junior developers
- look for people who love programming
- no employees, only partners, everyone is a real owner, profit share
- focusing on the local economy, no cutting costs by outsourcing

I don't want to spend time on things I might be able to do, but don't like. Partnering up is the way to go, as much as I like flying solo.

I've been a part of many hiring processes, the best programmers are usually **already well-employed**. Helping to shape the career of young developers is in line with my teaching goals.

I know this sounds a bit naive, but I want to find people who like code as much as I do. Variable/bonus compensation is nothing new, but I want to make clear I'm not just after employees, I want colleagues and to **make new friends**.

I'm not against outsourcing, but profit is not the end goal in this stage of my life.


### Becoming an angel developer/co-founder
- finding promissory projects with people struggling with the technical aspects
- helping with the MVP, team formation, and then moving on
- keeping myself available as a long time consultant
- putting my foot on as many projects as I can
- maybe I will fall in love with one idea and stay full time

This seems easier than the previous idea. I would get a taste of all the stages required to launch a successful, or not, business. This might be a lot of work though, but it seems like a valuable experience.

Don't commit to just one project, trying out the field until something resonates with me. And if it doesn't, not a problem, it is still aligned with my goals of helping out other people in the industry.


### Finding a better job
- some people are leaving Google/Facebook to work on their own
  - so this might not be an ultimate goal in life
- money in, money out: the more money I make, the more people I can help
- don't just make more money at the expense of my soul

**I still have more juice in me**. Although I mentioned people leaving the companies many of us consider the top in the industry, I'm sure some plan to die working there, because they love it.

I have a very narrow experience switching companies, for one thing, it is a very laborious process. Perhaps I should **give another one a go** before giving up traditional employment.


## Will I be leaving my job?
Probably not right now, but for the first time in years I'm back into considering it. I have many reasons to keep working where I am right now:
- **the team is great**, and they count on me
- **the company is amazing** overall, they have the best of intentions
- I'm in a **good position**, being one of the seniors earns me some **respect**
- **I'm loyal** to the bone, in 17 years, I worked for 2 companies, and I just left the first one due to cutting costs
- yes, it is more **comfortable** to stay where I am in maintaining a big and complex software I know everything about. This also makes me feel more needed here.

But I do want to have a plan mapped out in case things continue to not go my way. My **health is at stake** here, working overtime for too long messes up my sleep, and then everything falls apart after that.

I will keep expanding on the ideas I mentioned here. I already contribute to open source, and I am trying to write more in order to share what I know.

It remains to be seen if I will delve into the **entrepreneur route** or just go for **another job** if I ever quit my current one.


**Thanks for listening to me.**