Bored at a developer job? | 3 tips to keep a 9-5 from killing your creativity

Why do we learn software development?

To make money and useful stuff that excites us, somewhat of a creative outlet.

What happens when you take a random software developer job...

Once you take a software development job, most of the times you are stuck working on boring projects that mean nothing to you. Projects that suck!, and suck the soul out and drain all your energy and enthusiasm, leaving nothing but a shell of your previous self, working on end like a zombie.

So whats the solution? I say...

1. make games

now you might think thats stupid, what if I am a backend engineer who doesn’t give a sh*t about games

Just make something for the sake of it

It’ll stimulate your creative muscles and maybe give you ideas for your new startup!

One thing I have noticed about ideas

💡 You get the most number of ideas when you are not looking for them weird but true. And when you want a good idea, something impressive, you get a blank page.

Just like last weekend I created a html file, a css and and of course a js file, and made a Snake game. It was cool, not something that’ll get me hired but it was cool Here it is if you want to test your snake skills - https://darshandev.tech/mini-games/snake

I'm going to learn Unity, if you are starting too, DM me. It's fun to learn together :)

2. look for coding competitions

Whats better than having a bunch of coders come together and duel in programming battles.

Yup yesterday I participated in one, didn’t win but yeah still it was a good one. I’m surely try going to look for more of those.

3. join programmer communities

It doesn’t need to be something very unique, just a discord server with a bunch of programmers discussing stuff. Now in such communities you can find help with your projects, I was kinda surprised when someone offered me help for the first time. Didn’t seem like the person was expecting something in return. That was quite a weird experience. But yeah thats what the spirit of open-source is about, not saying that open-source is easy or you should open-source your project to get free labour or something.

Here is Ben Awad’s video if you are wondering if you should open-source your startup - https://youtu.be/YIL5fuAUPiA

So thats what a bored programmer does

For employers

If you are an employer, please make sure your employees are excited about the work they are doing. Sometimes software is boring, but when a project starts to feel meaningless, employees will try to get by doing the bare minimum. Its your job to make them excited about the impact their work is going to have on the world, thats what they say gen-z is looking for right?

If you don’t you will end up with a zombie writing sub-par code, who will want to eat your brains but would stop just in time and leave you.