Dear Fellow Engineer,
Reading your message felt like looking into a mirror from three years ago. The fatigue you described, the emptiness after completing tasks, the creeping dread on Sunday evenings, and that persistent question: "Is this all there is to this career?" I recognize these feelings intimately, having lived in their shadow for longer than I care to admit.
First, recognize the courage it took to name your experience. In our industry that glorifies hustle and gamifies productivity, admitting that the flame has dimmed can feel like confessing a shameful secret. It isn't. It's a signal, like pain in the body telling you to adjust your posture. Listen.
Burnout and disillusionment aren't character flaws. They are signals that you've given too much of yourself to work that has gradually become disconnected from what gives you meaning. This disconnection happens subtly, almost imperceptibly, until one day you realize you're mechanically going through the motions that once energized you.
When work becomes identity, every bug feels like personal failure. So you dig in and the boundaries between yourself and your job erode. You become your output, your commits, your velocity. But your value as a human being is not determined by lines of code or story points. You are not your commit log. You are not your metrics.
When I hit this point, I made a critical mistake: I blamed myself. I thought there was something wrong with me for not being as excited about the next framework or the next sprint "as I should be". So, I pushed harder, worked longer, took on more complex problems, trying to jumpstart joy through sheer effort. It didn't work. It never does.
What ultimately helped me wasn't leaving the profession (though I came close), but rediscovering what drew me to it in the first place. For me, and perhaps for you, it wasn't just the cleverness of algorithms or the satisfaction of solving puzzles. It was something deeper: the act of creation, of bringing something useful into the world that wouldn't exist without me.
Even in the most prescriptive environments, look for tiny pockets where you can exercise creative judgment. Perhaps it's refactoring a class that's been bothering you, adding tests to make a brittle area more robust, or simply commenting code thoroughly so the next developer has an easier time. These small acts of craftsmanship can rekindle agency. Agency is oxygen.
Identity can be reclaimed. So can joy.
You may choose to start a side project with no expectations. Something small, playful, and completely yours. It doesn't need to be innovative, marketable, or even finished. The goal isn't to produce something impressive but to reconnect with the intrinsic joy of building. Let curiosity and pleasure be your only metrics.
Cultivate interests outside of technology. This may sound counterintuitive, but some of my most creative programming insights came after spending time completely disconnected from computers. Art, music, hiking, cooking. These activities engage different parts of your brain and spirit. They create space for integrative thinking that can't happen when you're always in code.
Whenever possible, talk directly with the people who use what you build. Understanding how your work affects real humans can transform mundane tasks into meaningful contributions. If direct access isn't possible, at least try to visualize the end user and their experience. Connect with the "why" behind the code.
Burnout isolates you. It convinces you that you're alone in your struggle or somehow deficient compared to your seemingly energized peers. This is rarely true. Many of your peers likely feel it too. Be the one to speak first. Find the ones with whom you can be honest about both the joys and the challenges of your work. Vulnerability invites connection, and connection heals. Find your community.
I can't promise that these practices will work for you exactly as they did for me. Our journeys are unique. But I can tell you that the void you're experiencing now doesn't have to be permanent. The joy of coding can return, sometimes in unexpected ways and often with a more mature, sustainable character than the feverish passion of our early career days.
What emerged for me on the other side of burnout wasn't the same intensity I had when I wrote my first programs. It was something richer. A more grounded relationship with my craft, a clearer sense of purpose, and a gentler relationship with myself. The joy became less dependent on external validation and more connected to internal values. I also noticed that my code changed. It became clearer, more deliberate. I stopped reaching for libraries out of fatigue and began solving from first principles again.
Be patient with yourself in this process. Healing from burnout isn't linear, and some days will feel like steps backward. That's normal. What matters is the general direction over time, not the day-to-day fluctuations.
You've already taken the most important step by acknowledging where you are. Now, give yourself permission to rediscover coding on your own terms, as a means of expression and contribution rather than merely a way to earn a living or prove your worth. Find one piece of code you wrote that frustrated you. Rewrite it. Not for review, not for others to marvel at and call you great, but for beauty. For craftsmanship. For clarity. For elegance. For flow. Comment it like you'd explain it to your past self. Then save it. Not for the world. For you.
I'm here if you want to talk more about specific challenges or share small victories along the way. The path back to joy looks different for each of us, but it helps to know others have walked it before.
With empathy and hope,
The Recovering Burnout