Ask HN: How to get back into tech after two years of absence because of burnout?
So I did not do anything coding or technical for the past two years because of severe burnout. Instead, I chose to become an engineering manager because it was a much different career path and this was really helping me get over the coding burnout that I've accumulated over the years.
I feel that I'm at a stage of my life where I can code again and move back to the IC path. Not that I dislike management, I just like being an IC more. My technical skills are very rusty, like I can probably system design my way through but will struggle initially writing code again.
But since that's my goal, I need a bit of advice in terms of how to "get back" into the industry after effectively being gone for 2 years as an IC? My current strategy is to do what I did before (choose a language, do leetcode, do sideprojects, join community, read books, etc, etc) but I'm confused about whether I should be specialising at my age or not? Specialisation for me means to either go into a specific industry (crypto, self driving, etc) or specialising like become a SRE, Data Engineer, etc.
Personal context (if stats matters): 37 yrs, 15 yrs tech industry experience. Last language I used before burnout was Go. I did pretty much the exact same thing in the same situation. Just never came up. I applied for a bunch of jobs, I got offers. Yay? Didn't do any leetcode, but then I didn't go for super competitive FAANG jobs or anything. Just some that sounded fun in a technology I was interested in. Don't overthink it. > super competitive FAANG jobs the faang hype is oversold. last 12 years of my career were at two of these. i lucked on the pay. that’s the biggest benefit. alot of work is mundane, little value. both my employers ballooned in size. the seeds of our extremely slow, painful regression have Ben obvious. chains of professional managers who dont care to understand the product, the customers, and have no mission or passion. its a self serving grift on how to survive, throw your own people under bus to protect yourself and extreme focus on personal advancement. all kinds of politics and games to get more head count and grow org so you can get to next level. practically zero time investing in people you hire, their development, and of course what value do you all provide, are your customers happy. 20% of people drive 80% of value and those systems are already built… most recent stuff is just experimental with no monetization strategy. the best people in FAANG are super super good. Hard workers, brilliant work ethic, hardcore engineers. the majority is just red tape bureaucracy of people who provide little to no economic value. at best it benefits company because they won’t start their own company and force faang to actually compete. sorry for long rant. Tl:dr pay amazing especially if market is good. everything else mixed bag, delusions, politics, empire building