How to Know When It's Time to Go

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Many long-time programmers are reassessing if and when to step away from professional software development, weighing burnout, declining joy in day‑to‑day work, and corporate dysfunction against financial realities and enduring love of coding. Commenters describe mid- and late‑career turning points: shifts toward management, freelancing, niche domains, or passion projects; frustration with Agile rituals, constant tech churn, and AI hype; and anxiety over ageism and changing hiring expectations. A recurring theme is that the “right time to go” is highly individual, often tied less to raw ability than to money, health, and whether the struggle of modern industry work still feels worth the reward.

Burnout vs. Being “Done” with Programming

  • Many distinguish temporary burnout from a deeper sense of being finished with the field.
  • Signs of being “done”: mind no longer drifting to code, loss of curiosity, dread rather than challenge, feeling work is unimportant.
  • Some argue money is the practical differentiator: if you’re financially dependent, you’re “burned out”; if independent, you’re simply “done.”
  • Others say only time and reflection make the difference clear.

Love of Coding vs. Hate of the Job

  • Numerous comments: still love writing code or solving problems, but dislike corporate reality—tickets, ceremonies, KPIs, politics, and “bullshit around it.”
  • Scrum/Agile is often criticized as ceremony-heavy, meta-planning that slows work and displaces real design.
  • Hiring (whiteboard/LeetCode), on-call, and tech-churn are major turnoffs, pushing some toward freelancing, semi-retirement, or personal projects.

Age, Ability, and Experience

  • Several older developers (40s–70s) report being sharper or more effective thanks to experience, even if raw recall is slower.
  • Others describe seniors who coast, resist change, or underperform, showing age ≠ ability in either direction.
  • Many feel experience is undervalued and ageism is real, yet niche or regulated domains (e.g., mainframes, medical devices) still value deep expertise.

Technology Cycles and Skill Bets

  • Debate around Java’s future: some see it as “new COBOL” (stable, maintenance-heavy, less exciting); others emphasize its ongoing evolution and strength.
  • Kotlin is cited as a good modern bet; Rust seen as oversupplied but potentially valuable longer-term.
  • Several note that many “new” ideas (containers, WASM, RPC, async, NoSQL, monorepos, SSR, Tailwind-style CSS) are rebranded versions of older concepts.

Economics, Retirement, and Strategy

  • A few high earners plan to quit by 50 and view working past that as unnecessary; others push back that such pay is rare globally.
  • Cost of living and lifestyle, not just salary, dominate early-retirement feasibility.
  • Some pursue “partial retirement”: intense contracting for part of the year, or 2–4 day weeks, keeping coding as a enjoyable, optional activity.

Meaning and When to Leave

  • Common heuristic: if the struggle consistently outweighs the enjoyment, it’s time to change roles, companies, or fields.
  • Many redirect skills into domains they care about (art, robotics, teaching, small tools) once corporate work stops being satisfying.