I've been coding for most of my life, I'm 37 years old. I studied electronic engineering and I really loved embedded/firmware development at the time. After graduating, I ended up in web development for most of my career, I did move to Germany so taking whatever opportunity came my way made sense at the time.
As time went on, I became burnt out from working in web development roles. I was pretty unbalanced and gave it my all. I was annoyed at the waste at my last major employer, and felt like I could honestly work a lot more efficiently and turn out more results if I just worked by myself. No project managers, no team mates, politics, dramas, just me. I really dislike power dynamics and socialising with people in work contexts. My experience with work environments has been quite lacking to say the least.
So, rather than looking for another job, I wanted to do something more challenging, solo. So I decided to start a small business designing, coding, manufacturing, and selling electronic music instruments.
Running a business has been as immensely rewarding as it has been stressful. I wanted to wear more hats and learn more about the world, I learnt Rust intimately, learnt PCB design and manufacturing, not to mention all the business related stuff, logistics, customs, marketing and sales etc... But at the same time I feel like my baseline of stress over the past 3 years has has risen a lot. My mental health has declined sharply and I wake up at 4AM most nights with feelings of despair and being trapped now by the business, it also doesn't help that my finances are treading water at the best of times.
My family has given me the advice to get some space and relativity from the project, to allow new opportunities to enter my life but right now I'm in the trenches trying to get my bills paid and I feel like its all consuming. I do have some runway left but its daunting me.
So I don't really know what to do, I feel like typical employment isn't for me because I'm too entrepreneurial now, and I want to be my own boss. I've considered freelancing or starting a consultancy, which might be my best option although Im not entirely sure my EE skills (RF, high-speed etc) are at that level yet. I do feel quite confident in my embedded knowledge though.
If anyone has any advice for me, I'd really appreciate it.
Get over this feeling. Get the easiest job you can that makes a decent amount of money and learn to relax.
I didn't wanted the insecurity so I downgraded to a quasi junior job still good salary, no corporate pressure, and several weeks training in a new role/language, learning things with smart people
Was quite refreshing, gave me some new experience and new prespectives
My previous company consultant would google a lot, almost being paid to learn. Because the state of art is constantly moving. And a lot of contributions were mostly a conversation with senior team members to tie in with what they also thought was better moving forward. So you could definitely do it
While doing that, you can build something on the side, but thats not the main things. Enjoy the life, be in the current moment and go with the flow.
I’m 50, been developing professionally since I was 22 and as a hobbyist since I was 12.
I have never felt burn out. I have always gone to work, given my employer the benefit of my skill set for 40 hours a week and not thought about work until the next business day.
Until 2012, I was part time fitness instructor before and after work and on the weekends. It was never about the little money. It was an outlet, a commitment device to force me to exercise and a way to make friends and hang out with people.
I stopped doing that in 2012 because I saw trying to juggle the commitment of teaching, taking my career more seriously and my new instant family - I got married that year and became a father to my two step sons was going to be to much.
The next part of how I prevented burn out was never to really get on the hedonic treadmill. But we really got off of it after 2021. Thanks to a combination of the remote job at BigTech that fell into my lap and our younger son graduating in 2020, we were able to downsize, pay off some debt and I didn’t have to chase compensation to be happy.
When Amazon started Amazoning in 2023, I had no stress. My bills were so low, I knew someone would hire me even if I did have to get a job as just an enterprise CRUD developer making much less than they were paying me.
I also had decent savings. Not quite enough to be “in a position of f%%%% you” (https://youtu.be/I8kHzZykCI0?si=M_Mss0YIwziyuNTe). But enough not to stress.
Context: I work in strategic cloud consulting focusing on application development. That was my job at AWS and now at a third party firm.
There is a huge difference between strategic consulting where you talk to business stakeholders and bring your specialized knowledge to bring business value and staff augmentation where you just join a team as an easily replaced cog in the wheel. Do you have the soft skills for consulting? The network? The financial runway until your “consultancy” gets off the ground?
When I had the choice to go independent after 2023, I thought that I really didn’t see myself wanting to deal with the stress. I like the same amount of money coming into my account whether I have a client or don’t have work to do. I like someone else going out and chasing clients and all of the other work that goes into running a business.
When that job fell out from under me, I replied to another internal recruiter and got another full time job at another consulting company. Like the last one with benefits and PTO
It also comes with stress because if stuff doesn't sell you don't get paid. And if you have staff they all get oaid first.
It can be an emotional roller coaster, feast or famine, where every task is a risk.
You also end up doing all those businessy jobs (marketing, accounting, sales, support) and you get very little time to do the "fun stuff".
I say all this so you can read it, and decide if the upside is worth the downside. Does the above make you happy or sad?
Given the current financial stress, perhaps you get a job and scale this back for a bit. Perhaps you focus harder on sales. Take some time, and get clarity on what you want to do.
I don't know I'd you have employees, but if you do you understand that they always believe they know better than you. It's easy to criticize management when you don't have to juggle all those balls.
If uou do go get a job, there will be cases where management does things differently. That's OK, but remember the stress they're under. Work to make their lives easier not harder.
By all means give them your input, but equally back them up whatever decision they make.
Good luck!