Sure, Change Jobs!
9 Jan
Programmers get burnt out. Like the end of “Office Space,” some find more fulfilling careers doing something completely different. Reasons vary but the result is the same. I know, I left programming to join the Marine Corps.Now, I can see many of your faces scrunching up as you get ready to shout, “What!?”
First, let me answer a few common questions. No, I’m not a Republican (at all), or a fan of President Bush, for the war, and I was not on some crazy death wish. There are many great reasons to join the Marine Corps. Here are some of mine:
- They were hiring.
- I wanted to work outside. (Said while shoveling sandbags, in the rain, in ankle deep mud. I got to shovel a whole lot more for saying that.)
- All the terrorists went to Iraq so I had to go there in order to shoot them.
- Why not?
- I got sick of programming in a heated office where people never yell and we get off at 1700 (or get paid overtime!), for a boss who never once asked me to wear 150 lbs of gear and climb the side of a mountain. It was horrible.
As my Drill Instructor said, “Everybody joins for a stupid reason.” Okay, that decision was more personal, and I won’t discuss all of it here, but certainly burn-out was a factor.
Doing it wrong
As my former platoon is now readying to leave again, it’s hard for me to remember all the things that lead up to quitting programming. I had a great boss who was very technical and who shielded his team from most company politics. I was implementing a new webapp that’d manage a portfolio approaching a billion dollars, and I had pretty much carte blanche to implement systems the best way I could.
In the early days there was just so much to do that I spent nearly every waking moment working. I’d wake up on a work day and login. I’d read syslog messages and overnight reports and put out any fires that sprung up. Then it was time to rush through a shower and head to work. I was always the last to leave, too. Not that it mattered since most nights I could be found home at my desk, hammering away at something until midnight or later.
I lived for work.
This probably went on those last four years. I wasn’t required to do any of this but I felt a great need to prove myself with the massive task I’d been given. I never seemed to have enough time to implement anything. The more I finished the more work I saw ahead.
I was crazy productive. I’d not only managed to write large parts of the financial system, several supporting webapps, but also migrated most of the servers to Linux, created NIS servers and then replaced them with a home-grown LDAP system, JEPP, replaced a crazy expensive proprietary firewall, and on…. And on.
For some odd reason I felt trapped after a while. I felt that if I lost my job it’d simply take too long to sort through the ridiculous stuff most job posts require and I wouldn’t find another programming position. And after a while, I was tired and wary of proving myself all over again. I figured I’d never leave that job, which spurred me to work even harder.
It wasn’t as if I had a reason to leave, really. I had no personal life to interfere with work. But all of this lead to a deep desire to do something, anything else.
I think the real break came when I began to gain weight. I was like looking down and not recognizing yourself. I’d grown up in the mountains of Colorado. I’d always been athletic. I hiked Mt. Elbert and other fourteeners. I was on the football and track teams. Gaining weight was not something I was ready for and I flipped. There was a lot of time spent on the treadmill after that.
Oorah!
So I decided to join the Marine Corps. I come from a family with a lot of military background, so it wasn’t as unheard of as it seemed to be around San Francisco (go figure). They say boot camp changes you and my Drill Instructors quickly set about fixing me.
In my interview with the company I was quiet and unsure of myself. They told me later that they barely understood what I was saying. I don’t think anybody meeting me after the Marine Corps would have that same impression. My girlfriend tends to elbow me when I’m being too gregarious. Before I was self-absorbed but afterwards I would joke that I’d willingly walk down main street naked if it wouldn’t get me arrested. Other Marines tend to laugh knowingly at that. There’s just some things you stop caring about after boot camp.
After boot camp and schools, Marines are placed with their platoons for training. Even in a time of war you end up with time off. Like most I spent a fair amount of time drinking away the day in the off-hours, but it turned out that my programming itch hadn’t died at all. Every time they’d scream at us to, “Go to the barracks and standby,” I’d sit around and hack for a while.
It wasn’t the hours I’d spent before. It was for me, for fun. I worked on TOra after the original author left, played games and still got in plenty of time at the bar with the guys.
So, even though I was in the Infantry and my job involved a somewhat different set of skills, I was still a programmer at heart. I love coding.
I’m out!
I once worked for a product design firm that had some fantastically creative people. The designed many of the sexy computers and gadgets any geek would recognize on sight. What is interesting though, is that they allowed their senior engineers to take sabbaticals.
This company realized that even though they were engineers, they weren’t on the manufacturing line. In fact, their jobs required enormous creativity. It was expected that all of their employees would burn out given enough time.
But they had a way out, a way to take an extended time off and return, refreshed. Now I think of my time in the Marine Corps as an odd kind of sabbatical. I don’t think it’s necessary to live without stress to solve burn out or I would be a bottle of nerves. Instead, maybe the important thing was to turn off the creativity spigot for a while.
After long enough, that creativity burst out of me.
Now, I’m not recommending that every one struggling with burn-out go join the Marines. You’ll regret it while you’re in and miss it after you leave. But there was all this discussion lately if one could really leave programming. What, are we whining too much?
No, burning out is perfectly normal. Especially if you did everything wrong like I did. So I would encourage people to take all of those vacation days you’ve saved up. Or take a job that’s radically different. Maybe writing programs for a different industry would do the trick.
Now I’m purposefully trying to work smarter. No more crazy hours unless absolutely necessary. I’m writing again. I keep a personal life now, and I cannot wait until my danged Android Dev Phone gets here. In my own time I do things I like. And you know what, I think I’m writing better code than ever.
good for you!
i think alot about taking a long break sometimes… im a really outdoors person who moved to a big city from a little regional town and i miss it alot.
the city sux and i try to get as much of the real world in as i can
I spent 8 years in the Corps before I left to follow the programming itch! I have seriously considered going back twice. It’s not something that ever truly leaves you. My first year as a software developer was interesting. I had to learn how to deal with the subtle and the timid more than I ever had to in the Corps.
Good Luck and Semper Fi
* never truly leaves you.
Nice story
I got the bug in 6th grade. Joined the marines at 18. Didn’t see a computer for 6 years, and then decided I needed it, so I moved to the valley and I’m still riding the wave. Semper Fi.
You too man. Semper Fi
I’m still hacking on the cheapo laptop I got at the base PX. :-)
Semper Fi
Yeah, I hear you about the city. I don’t live there anymore but I’m not sure it was a factor really. But it did bother me that I went months without my feet ever touching anything but concrete.
I don’t miss that… :-)
Edit: I’m opposed to deleting posts on principal… but I won’t have that kind of ignorance on my site, either.
Don’t be an insensitive clod. Rightly or wrongly this guy is putting his life on the line because he’s doing what he thinks is right. Enjoy your freedom in your comfy western hempisphere home with every convenience at your fingertips and stop complaining – or else if you really think there’s an injustice get up and go over there yourself and start helping with the humanitarian work – you can’t have it both ways punk.
@Tom – It’s most unfortunate you choose to spew your ridiculous political rhetoric towards in individual Marine. Save your murder talk for the letters to your Congressman. If you are young enough (and live in the US) I suggest you take your turn at serving your country. Please visit http://www.marines.com and join the 2% of the population to serve. If you are too old, then you should contact the Red Cross or USO and volunteer to do some relief or aid work in Iraq. Watching CNN a few minutes a day gives you zero credibility to allege murder for oil. In the future, direct your misguided anger at those that create policy, not enforce it.
No more crazy hours for me either. I’ve learned that the amount of benefit between doing a gung-ho awesome job and doing and average job is the same, sadly enough.
However, I have to be careful. It seems now that not putting in at least 10% free overtime means that I’m not that good of a team player, and ’someone else is picking up my slack’. (In reality: no.)
That was well worth the read. I also worked like a mad dog when I first entered the field until I inevitably burned out. I lost it finally and walked off a contract. When I look back at the amount of work I did on crazy short schedules, I’m not surprised that I went nuts. For a couple of years there it was like I was on drugs.
Since then I’ve accepted that I’d rather be poor and sane than rich and crazy, so I work freelance and take on easy jobs while getting my professional enjoyment building my own software. These days I’m more smart productive than crazy productive.
I served for 4 years in the Military after high school. I took my G.I. bill money and ended up getting my bachelors and eventually masters degree. Now I code for a living. Anyway, serving taught me some serious lessons. I let others sweat the small stuff and do what I need to to support my family.
We live in a bubble here in the US. Chaos boils just under the surface. Free lucky that those that serve allow you the freedoms that you so easily ignore. You may feel otherwise… but you would be wrong and not know it until it was too late to change your mind.
Haha, I actually was a CS major who took a commission in the Navy due to (among other things) not wanting to burn out!
I liked programming so much (and still do) that I didn’t want to do it for a living.
So I ended up joining the Nuclear Navy as a Submarine Officer. I’ll probably get out and get a job in the programming field I think but I completely understand what you’re talking about.
When I got burned out in the tech field, I spent a year working as a production welder in a major shipyard.
I got to see a three-story-tall engine installed, and worked in the belly of an oil tanker, the only natural light being a few open hatches 200′ above where I was standing. It was incredible.
After I left that job, I went back to tech, and things have been much better. I no longer complain about lugging a heavy server around; my 75lbs of gear in the belly of a ship was tough– a couple computers across a couple floors, not so much. I got perspective I needed, and wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.
COMMENT_DELETED
Great story, Marine.
“You’ll regret it while you’re in and miss it after you leave”…Of the Marine Corps and Tijuana Strip Clubs, truer words have never been spoken.
Semper Fi brother
I cracked up when I read that… Semper Fi man
Mike,
How did you put up with the not so nice marines?
Or was everyone you worked with pretty decent?
Well, don’t get your head blown off.
Being a salary slave sucks! Being a contractor rocks!
“I’m opposed to deleting posts on principal” … then you shouldn’t have deleted it.
2%? Where did you drag that number from?
If you’re talking people currently serving, there are about 3 million armed service personnel, which assuming an approximate US population of 300 million, comes to 1%.
If you’re talking people alive who have served, according to the article I found, in 2004 that totalled about 26 million. So once again assuming about 300 million population it comes out to about 11%.
Why throw around arbitrary numbers to back an otherwise relatively sound argument?
I did the same thing. Of course, Clinton was President back then.
To the guys who were Marines first? It isn’t the same thing.
In my opinion, the current wars are immoral.
All terrorists goes to Iraq? People like you and me live there, and there are just as many terrorists in the USA as in Iraq, or any other country for that matter.
You probably got burned out because you’re ignorant in many ways, one of them most likely yourself.
If you don’t take consider the signals your body/brain is sending you, of course you’re going to hit the wall in some form of depression/endless tiredness.
I hope you come home without firing your gun, not in a coffin and with higher respect for human beings in other countries like Iraq.
There’s truth in this post
Great article…it puts life in perspective…perspective away from the drone like dogmatic view of work. I work in the office all day, but have learned to pick up new hobbies outside of work, and when the work hours are done, they are done. Now when ever the chance arrives, I will fly to another state i have never been before for at least a week, or on the weekends go hiking for hours!…do some primitive camping for the whole weekend, mountain biking, or just go somewhere or do something i have never done. This is important, not just for experience, for the the mind and body…it refreshed you.
I’ve been feeling creatively burned out as well as a software architect/designer.
I guess my imposed sabbatical has turned out to be the need to take 6 months off to get a bone marrow transplant due to Blast Crisis phase with Chronic Myelogenous Lukemia.
Maybe my creative juices will return. Sure hope so. Otherwise, I might have to go work as a cook at Denny’s or something.
Yeah, well like I said I wasn’t for the war. But I’m a strong believer in “you break it, you fix it.”
Huh? Of course civilians live there. But since we’ve removed Saddam, there’s been an influx of terrorists mainly from other countries.
And if you read the article it said nothing about my having gone to Iraq. I’m not even in anymore. Seems you jumped straight to the comments to make your own point without understanding anything.
If you’re going to correct people, you’d better be correct yourself! 26 million is not 11% of 300 million. It’s 8.67% approximately.
“You’ll regret it while you’re in and miss it after you leave”
This sums up all you need to know about the Corps. I joined at *16*, and was a dual MOS 4066/4067 computer programmer while in! So what do you do when you’ve burnt out on programming while *in* the Corps? :)
This article makes me reconsider joining the military. For the longest time I’ve had the urge to enlist; primarily Army, but after watching/reading ‘Generation Kill’ and reading “One Bullet Away” by Nathaniel Fick, the Marines too. I sometimes get the urge to just live and do something different with my life. But, mounting responsibilities and the fact that I seriously doubt I’m cut out for the military prevents me from doing so.
Thank you Mike, your article provides some food for thought!
Nice post, and thanks for serving the country. Part of me isn’t surprised that a liberal would be unhappy in the fortunate and comfortable positions us developers work in.
Wow… the irony in that lately I feel this strong urge to go backpacking throughout Europe.. just leave everything behind for three months and see things I’ve never seen before. Be totally isolated, alone and doing something totally different. It’s my belief I’d come back charged and better than before I would’ve left.
Thank you for this inspiring article.
Yeah, sorry, I used the 2004 population estimates from http://www.census.gov/popest/states/tables/NST-EST2008-01.csv to do the original calculation which was 292892127 / 26000000. Approximately 11.27%. I didn’t adjust when I rounded it up to 300 million for the sake of simplicity.
Actually Dave, you’re entirely correct and I fail at simple math today. I apologize for my error. But the point still stands. People shouldn’t throw around arbitrary numbers as fact.
I know what you’re talking about – I needed a break from programming a few years ago. It took a tour in Iraq with the Army to make me love programming again.
And yes, you really do see things differently after experiences like that.
Hey Mike
I’m sure I screamed a couple of times while working with you before you joined the Marines!
I think I too needed a change of venue after a while. The same ol’ same ol’ got repetitive – that was one of the reasons we moved…
Matt
Mike, its like you’ve read my mind completely. Thanks for the great article.