Is a Software Development Career Right for You?

I recently spent time reconnecting with current and past mentors. One of the most valuable things I discovered during that process was, to me, surprising. Many of the people I connected with said they had suffered through a burnout and recovery phase. Even more people said they were currently battling burnout but just hadn’t succumbed to it yet. I can empathize because I too have had a past struggle with it. But I thought I was mostly alone in this regard. It turned out that nearly everyone I was in touch with had a story of their own burnout to share.

Some had already changed their career path entirely. Thu has fully embraced it and turned it into a coaching career. Several others had stayed in the technology industry but changed roles. Although one person said they missed software development and are looking to return to the front lines.

All of this has caused me to re-evaluate my own career path. I thought I wanted to return to software development. I’m still passionate about the problem solving, there is almost nothing more satisfying than when days of research and mathematics and testing and debugging finally come together to produce a quality solution to a problem. But the burnout has bit me once too. Am I like my one mentor that wants to return to the front lines? Or should I consider switching roles? Or maybe I should be like Thu and change careers entirely. At this point I’m not sure. If the right software development role came along I don’t think I could resist it. I just love the problem solving too much. But I’ve also become more open to changing roles too.

Is a software development career right for you? I’ve found that it requires the majority of your time to be spent on upskilling, on keeping up with industry trends and learning the latest frameworks and APIs. There will be “crunch-time” phases where it will require all of your time, absolute dedication and focus. Burnout is a real risk in this career. But solving deep technical problems is also incredibly gratifying, I think there is nothing quite like it.

My advice would be this. If you love learning, technology, mathematics, and especially if you love problem solving, then software development is absolutely worth your time. Just be careful not to overdo it; don’t burn yourself out 🙂