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What Happened to Lee

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1298 points jgrahamc | 2 comments | 15 Apr 20 14:31 UTC | HN request time: 0.398s | source
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rubicon33 ◴[15 Apr 20 20:42 UTC] No.22882787[source]▶
Terrifying.

As a software engineer, shit like this scares me. I've felt like I'm on a steady, slow, decline for the last ~4 years.

Is it just burnout? Do I need a new hobby?

I used to love programming... Spent 12 hours a day jamming on it. Now, I struggle to keep my mind on a line of code for more than 5 minutes.

At what point is it just burnout, or at what point is it something more? That's what's terrifying to me. I imagine that was a challenge for those close to Lee.

We just know so little about the human body. Our ability to easily query the state of the body, to assess which functional components are working, and which need help, is dismal.

I just hope that Lee, in whatever state he is in, isn't suffering.

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1. battery_cowboy ◴[15 Apr 20 21:35 UTC] No.22883365[source]▶
I'm here with you, I still love the idea of software, but I can't get myself to sit there and code even the most fun projects. I had a great idea for a project to start a business, I know people would need it, but I just can't get myself to do it. It's frustrating and makes me really depressed that I'm like this.
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2. marktangotango ◴[16 Apr 20 00:13 UTC] No.22884711[source]▶
I had this feeling for many years then finally put together 6 months of effort on an MVP that got zero traction. That great idea? Not so great in reality, I’d been kidding myself. So if it’s any consolation, great idea and great executions are really rare. The common advice is to build a landing page and get x number of signups for a beta before writing a line of code. Makes sense in retrospect.