I’ve been wondering lately — how many years am I going to keep working as a software engineer? I genuinely don’t know.
It’s been difficult of late. I find I’m having trouble maintaining the motivation, and I’m beginning to feel I won’t be able to do this on a daily basis. I get bored so quickly. The type of bored where you look at your screen for a full hour and yet somehow you can still convince yourself you deserve a break.
Then I look back at how it all started.
I was only 14 years old the first time I wrote a line of code. I was that young. And at that time, the thought of being able to code was good enough to keep you up all night. I was that excited about the future — I was convinced I was gonna be something. I was just looking for a shot. Just one opportunity to amount to something.
Fast forward a few years: having shamelessly borrowed some gigantic beginner-friendly projects from a kind Indian YouTuber (thank you, legend), and having created some pieces for a portfolio I barely understood at the time, I landed my first actual job. A GCC retail group gambled on me. I was 18, and that moment was everything.
I dove head-first at the work as if I had something to prove — which I did. I was always in learn mode, treating each incremental achievement as a promotion, and enjoying the experience of being 14-year-old me's dream job. I was a software engineer. That title means less now. But at some point, the excitement began to fizzle. The work was. repetitive. And that experience — of waking up with no energy to do something you used to be passionate about — that’s a new thing for me. It sucks.
But now, don't get me wrong. I’m grateful. I’m still learning. But that passion I had at the beginning? Flickering. And I’m realizing increasingly: This profession is not just about writing code. This work is about maintaining curiosity, seeking out challenges, and continually redefining what "success" means for you.
No — I don’t know for sure how many years I’ll be doing this. But I know one thing: I’ve gone too far to turn back now. Perhaps what I require is not a new career or a promotion. Perhaps I merely need to discover a new justification.
If not, I'll work it out. I've debugged worse.
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