Interviewer: "I'll checked your GitHub, your side projects looks very interesting! Tell me about your other hobbies. "

Me:"Other hobbies? "

As a PhD student, I do not dare have hobbies. I mean, I don't exactly have time for it. I could make time for it, but then the phd would take forever.
☹️

✅ Fun project
✅ Salary
✅ Code ownership and leadership
✅ Appreciation at work
✅ WFH
✅ No overwork
✅ Sufficient time for relaxation/hobbies
and other things

Just a friendly reminder to fellow developers to take care of yourself.

If your system is constantly pumping out cortisol, even when threats are minor, it gets desensitized to the stress signals. We used to react to cortisol with the fight-or-flight response when our lives were in real danger. Nowadays it's produced when you disagree with your coworker or there's a deadline coming up. So your cortisol rises but you neither fight nor run. The result is a stress response that isn't functioning properly. This is when burnout symptoms develop. Same goes for testosterone, dopamine and some other hormones and neurotransmitters. Read up and start proper work hygiene that includes workouts, fresh air activities and manual hobbies.

Your back, wrists and eyes aren't the only things you have to watch out for when coding long hours. Cheers and have a fun weekend!

!(dev || rant)

Dudes and dudettes, i shall ask you all one question: what is the thing/hobby (or things/hobbies) that you always wanted to get into and never gor the chance?

For me i thing first would be brewing, as i would love to refer to myself as a "Brewmaster" like in Warcraft (bonus points if i wear a panda costume) more then an "Engineer" (a trust worthy one even), but i think i might have the chance to as soon as i will have the chance (and means) to move alone as i already know a few things from my dad. The second would be something really cool i saw on reddut and made me remember the old times when i will watch timelapses in this topic on you tube: Crystal growing! Like, middle school chemistry, not meth! At least for now.. 🤔 Anyway, here is a nice pic with some dude's work, looking forward to hear abiut yours!!

PS: Bonus Points for a pic related to the thingie!

i don't think that i'm having a burnout but i think that i'm maybe not so far away from it... several people, including friends, my therapist and also a colleague, told me they see me at risk of sliding into a real burnout.

i've known this for longer that i have a crappy work life balance. the habit of making work the most important part of my own life. thinking about work even in my private time, when i fall asleep, when i wake up in the night or in the morning. the tendency to think about problems, plans, coworkers, not being able to quit work mentally. the idea that i have to prove to everybody at work that i'm awesome. the feeling that, after a work day, i'm just "waiting" at home for the next day, in idle mode, so i can continue working on a problem (like a bug) that's occupying my whole mind. and at the same time, feeling totally empty after work, having no energy. i've lost interest and quit several hobbies in the last two years that once were important for me. and i think one important reason is that i didn't have any mental energy left to deal with that.

another factor for this development was also the pandemic for sure, because for some time, i had no real social life except for that at work.
but more important is probably that i find my job most of the time really fun and am highly motivated. i have the tendency to say yes to everything and to really commit to and own the problems that are handed to me. (right now, however i feel like there's not much motivation left)
then again there is the feeling that what i do is never good enough, i have little self confidence in my own abilities as a software engineer. there's a big discrepancy between how i myself perceive my work and how other people do (not only at work). on a rational level, i know that what i do is at least "good enough", otherwise i wouldn't have this job, and i wouldn't receive this amount of positive feedback from people. but it's hard to really deeply understand this thing, when there are deep-rooted beliefs like "only perfect is good enough" or "your colleagues will be disappointed and get a negative idea of you (and something bad will happen), if you don't give your best"... and there's also this idea that i have to be this super nerdy person who also codes in their free time, reads IT magazines and stuff, because only then i will fit this stereotype of a software developer, and only then i can be taken seriously and be good enough. no matter if this is fun for me or not.

anyway, right now i'm at a point in life where i'm realizing all this not only rationally, but with full emotional impact... :/ my life feels like it's gone stale and empty. i've lost creativity, warmth and human connection and that hurts a lot.

i'm trying to change my life.
one thing that really helps me right now is to talk with people who have (made) similar experiences. can you relate? if yes, how do / did you address those problems? i would really appreciate to hear your stories...

A rather happy/neutral post this time for a change. Lol

Firstly the good news: I have successfully recovered from the emotional/mental abuse and have been doing really well. My faith in myself has been slowly restored.

Secondly, I have started to pursue my hobbies again and find joy in them. I spend more and more time listening to music and play video games (CS:GO and AoM).

I have started getting more sun and also spend time outside socialising.

I can sense my happiness and joy get restored in my life.

Now on career front, I have started job hunting again as you all know. The interview process for Product Management is absolutely broken and taxing to go through all the loops.

During all my previous job hunts (three times), I was able to nail down at least one offer in a quarter.

This time, I started in October 2021 and still no success. I have much more experience and skill-set this time yet failures.

Fear not. My optimism is back this time. I am aware of where I am going wrong and sometimes I feel the situation is truly out of my control. The two major reasons I forsee are:

1. Relocation: it can take few months for me to relocate to UK/EU and hence, companies are preferring local candidates.

2. My duration with current employer is just 8 months which could be a potential turn off for many HMs. They might think I am a job hopper and maybe one of the reasons why I got so many calls and opportunities at my previous employer (I was stable with them for 7.5 years).

I feel it's just the matter of time for me now where I must hold my horses and keep the momentum without losing hope.

I will win.

I have a dream that I will find a group of programmers that enjoy their craft and we are able to bond together and create the coolest shit we want and monetize it. We will inspire programmers to overthrow corporate America. We will all live in a big house and everyone will have their different hobbies and we can learn from each other and work on whatever we want to do each day. We will have unlimited dried mangoes, chocolate chips, and chips n salsa. We will create a kingdom.

I hate people who think they are always right.

A coworker who seemed to be a friend turns out to be an emotionally needy narcissist who seems to think that he is a perfect human being and is the best example of how to live.

Long story short is that we did some bonding via alcohol and smoking cigarettes. Especially when I was in a bad period in my life where I had little self confidence, was in a bad financial situation and overshared many details abound my personal life.

And yeah we also work as software devs in the same team but I started avoiding working with him directly, because due to his seniority he overcomplicates things a lot to the point where stuff gets postponed for months. Meanwhile I am a simple guy, I do my tasks and if they are not up to the standard I just work on the feedback until Im up to the standard, thats it. Its just a job for me, for him its a way of life and he considers himself to be basically an artist.

Hes always trying to prove me something, showing that the "long way" is the best way and so on. In reality I dont give a fuck about him. I live my own life and I have my own priorities. I work fulltime in one job, also I work part time as a freelancer and in total I make about 20 percent more than he does. Previously before this job I owned my own company where for 2 years I ran my own projects which generated a decent revenue. I know what is hard work and how to sacrifice myself in order to achieve results. I am more pragmatic and I have some limitations of what I can be good at (since I have a shitty working memory due to my ADHD). So I have systems in place and bottom line is that I earn a decent living and my skillset is different. Yeah I agree that in some ways he is better than me, but dude has such a massive inflated ego that now he thinks that he unlocked some sort of universal wisdom and now hes suddenly experienced in every field of life and his opinion is the right one.

This guy takes a massive pride in how good software engineer he is and in every topic or interaction he tries to one up me. Which most of the time is just his preference or in order to gain a 0.0001 percent performance increase. Dude is basically a big walking ego and since "we are close now" his ego started bleeding into personal relationship.

In my personal life, Im in a stable relationship, thinking of proposing soon and getting married. I already co-own an apartment with my current girlfriend. Everything is serious and planned, Im soon to be 30 years old. He is the same age but he still thinks hes young hot shit and all he cares about is getting shitfaced a couple times a week after work and he doesnt really have any other hobbies. He has a girlfriend but I dont see any future in there TBH.

So what I did now is I started putting some distance between us. No more drinking every week with him, maybe maximum once in 2 or 3 weeks. I started working from home more. Also I stopped sharing my personal life with him. Each time when he thinks he is right I just go along with it and dont even pay attention to his emotional manipulations. I just hope one day he fucks off completely and I wont give in to his gaslighting. Maybe in a few months I will be leaving this job, so I will never have to deal with him again.

Lesson learned: dont be vulnerable to coworkers who you bond together only via alcohol.

Non tech hobbies that helped me with developement:

Lego technic/mecano/knex were a great way to learn about abstraction, you build modules that you can reuse somewhere else.

Cooking is similar, you notice useful patterns that you can reproduce. E.g. roux, which is butter and flour is used for a lot of sauces, then add milk and you get béchamel, which is again used for a lot of sauces.

Coffee brewing helps because I can't focus if I don't get coffee.

Oh no it's happening to me too... Gave up so many hobbies/interests to focus on my career. Now I have almost no interest in side projects because I don't know what to build. (I mean something actually useful not a to-do list.) I love my job, but is this the path to burnout?

My personal top 4:
good tea,
good booze,
time with gf,
time with friends,

Just clears my head, but doing any of my other hobbies can really help because it just gets me in a different headspace

Got kinda addicted to video editing recently 😁

Apart from the fact that I arrived at a good framework at work to play in problem space than in solution space, this post is more about self realisation and a slight progress in my happiness levels.

Monsoons started in India. The vibe somehow had always been melancholic for me triggering SAD (aka seasonal depression).

However, this year I find it cosier than ever. Hot showers, lazing around on a holiday when it's pouring outside, watching my favourite show/movie. I feel very relaxed in the moment, even when work and life is not as expected/under control.

What I realised is that my problem can be solved. I need a bigger house. That would give me privacy, some personal space for hobbies, and put a barrier between me and parents easing the tension and clashes. I could then get married, and with all the money I will save (from not buying a house myself), can be used to pursue hobbies like music, art, travel, etc.

Whenever I relax, my sleep pattern changes where I have longer duration of deep sleep with many dreams (perhaps processing everything). Does anyone else experience such a phenomenon?

Anyway, life doesn't get easy or hard, we just learn to put up with shit.

i have a lot of art related hobbies, playing music, singing, painting, arts and crafts, a bit of everything

i think most of my interests/hobbies end up being useful at some point at work, that's why i usually try out a lot of different things. i think two major ones have been language and design, there are concepts in both that help a lot in coding. I've been particularly interested in semiotics, which is a total trip, but it's very worth looking into for any type of science.

Gunpla building
Gaming
DJing
Film photography
All of these expensive af hobbies powered by being a dev and having a good paycheck