I have a problem!

I used to love programming and I really had a passion for it! I was a fast learner and realized quickly that I had a talent for this. It felt obvious that I should go for a career as a software developer! I have now been working with this professionally for about 2.5 years and I already hate it! I'm not sure if it's the job or the career that I hate but all my creativity and passion for this is gone! I feel like it's way too early to get tired of a career!

Has anyone else been through something similar? Is it a phase? Should I get a new job? Should I change career completely?

Same here. Loved it during my training, whilst I was still able to decide for myself what I wanted to do and how. Now it's just a chore.

The talent and "fast learning" may be an issue. You are used to get anything fast or not at all and getting something new and interesting every time, while real work is usually quite repetitive with applying already relatively known solutions, which might not be as engaging compared to constant novelty.

@iiii You are probably right! Whenever I get to work with something that I am less familiar with, the days drag a lot less!
It's a bit disappointing. This is really not what I had in mind...

@Olverine you could try seeking some novelty in the work you're doing now

I’ve been there. Burnout is real. You might try working at smaller startup companies. The good ones require references to get in so it might not happen overnight and networking is a must. But there are places that require you to learn new concepts constantly and even fight to give engineers opportunities to learn other skills (e.g., customer relations, budgeting, marketing) when they’re interested. Start reflecting on what parts of your job (if any) you do enjoy, and try to make a career around that. You might not need to turn your whole life upside down to find a better environment.

What is the issue?
The pressure?
The boredom ?
What could you please elaborate?
There are many causes for that...

@dror is the boredom! Programming and computer science is still interesting but sitting at the same desk, starting at the same screen, and looking out the same window all day every day is just not fun! The days feel so long and I struggle to find motivation. I never have any fun personal hobby projects going on anymore either because I'm so done sitting at a computer when I get home!

It's probably extra hard right now since I'm going through a breakup so that's probably why I feel the need to rant about it but I also can't say that I like my job in general and I'm seriously thinking about trying a different career!

Find a remote job.

Remote job won't fix that.

@Olverine well you have half a problem ..
Try to be bored and stressed out at same time...

Well joining the common opinion , u need to do a new job. Or get prepared for a new one .
Boredom passing the time material:

One game I have when I bored (it can get me fired), is for every escalation on mail I'm adding some manager in charge of one of the people on the mail (u need at least 50 people to make it fun ) ..and wait for the mail for the manager u added replying-added by mistake,
And the one u actually escalated on saying 'WTF man not cool.. u should have talked to me before escalation..
'
**One variation can be applied is to have
2 levels up manager (expect 3 mails ..😎)

Not doing it too much just in cases of extream boredom this shit can get you homeless..

@Nanos Yes, you bring up some good points. I think you are right! Every job will be a job and having obligations and responsibilities is simply not fun. That's why we get paid. But I don't think a desk job is for me! I wish I could work as an electrician for example and do stuff like rewiring people's homes. I understand that it would also be work and it wouldn't be fun. But at least it wouldn't feel like every day is the same!

@pkhairkh I think working remotely would help a lot! I think one thing that I really lack is just a change of scenery during my days. I love traveling and if i could do that while working and not just when I'm on vacation, I would be very happy. I was actually planning on going to South Africa this Saturday to stay there for a few months with my girlfriend. My boss had, very reluctantly, agreed to let me work remotely during that time. But then we suddenly broke up last Friday and I had to cancel the flight. Now I will be stuck at work instead. I guess I could try to find a different place to go but I don't really feel like I have anything to do anywhere because it's not like I have other girlfriend in other places and it doesn't feel like my boss would allow me to go work somewhere else just because I want to. It was hard enough to convince him when I had a reason to go!

@olverine Mate, we always reach out for things which we don't have dreaming of possible enhancements in life. For sure working remote has it's benefits as working from the office also has.

I once felt like you three years ago. I was stuck with a dead ass bitch manager who was barely able to run a straight line while sober. What I want to figure out here is that he was a really dumb human being - and of course we all hate dumb dictating managers who's requirements makes no sense.

Long story short - I handed in my two weeks notice in an escalation to my managers manager. Got self employed - opened a company - gathered customers from pharma-sector - built up a team.

What I am trying to make clear is that all of that was everything which I ever dreamed of. Do I still dream of that shit? For sure no. Are my pockets full of money? Shit yeah.

Am I happy? No way... Work is work bruh. The alien from fb might be a happy one but who knows. Problems scale, you with me?

@Nanos man! You really make an effort to help me, don't you! Or maybe your trying to smash my dreams, it's hard to tell :)

Would climbing 1,500 ft tower be the coolest thing ever though!? That's the kind of excitement I'd never get at my workplace!

@Olverine yeah, breakup might be a significant role in all this.

@Nanos Don't get me wrong. I had tough times too... It was just a really little story frame of what happened till I got things running. I did mean to get more in details how even success and financial wealth might not be the key to happiness and self fulfillment.

Just as a little sidestory: When we launched our application somewhen my frontend lead developer decided that he had chosen the wrong path for his career and that working in a startup destroys his relationship. Just 5h before launch - boy have I been in miserable situations to be the one in charge. We hat cypress in our CI/CD pipeline and deployment terminated with errors which were foreign to me. Toughest day of my life until now.

However I know how it can run otherwise as you also have experienced it. I am feeling sorry for you to have gone through that hardening life sequence - but for sure going through tough times sometimes makes you come out stronger. Keep your head up mate!

@Nanos It went from me being 100% sure I was going to marry her to her leaving me for someone else pretty quick. I think she has commitment issues because I know she's had quite a few relationships before and none of them seem to have lasted very long. I'm heartbroken and it happened just a week before I was about to fly over there to be with her after two months of being apart.

So I'm trying to figure out how to deal with it. Sitting at work all day definitely doesn't help because I can't get her off my mind and it's hard to get anything done. I told my boss today that I'm trying to be productive but I just can't. Luckily, he was pretty understanding!

You sound like you might feel better in academia

Look for differnent ways to do what you need to do. Know how to create SPA, learn MPA with static site generator. Know how to make crud API, try to use something like postgrest, learn funcional programing and make projects faster.

having constant drive to improve UX or the product and speed of development is keeping me in this proffesion.