I remember the moment I hit this. I was developing a desktop app in C#, using Entity Framework (v1), and I had just had the realisation that lazy loading in EF didn't, and the bugs I was seeing in my application were because I hadn't checked whether EF had actually loaded the data (and loaded it myself if it hadn't).
I lost it. I was done. That was it. I couldn't get past the lies (the documentation was outright lying about this behaviour). My entire career had been in the Windows stack, almost 20 years from VB3 to C#, but I was done. I loved coding, but this... this was bullshit... this had to change.
The next day I installed Linux and started again, learning web development properly and eventually finding Go, which I still code in to this day. I have never touched C#, or developed anything on Windows, since that day (roughly 8 years ago now).
I was freelancing, and doing OK at it, and that was hard, but I picked up some JS work and some prototype work for local startups (and tried a few of my own). I joined all the meetups and made friends who I could ask questions of.
Now I'm pretty much back to where I left off, and much happier for it.
I know that most people wouldn't consider this to be a "career change" story - after all I stayed a software developer. But I did have to throw most of what I knew out of the window(s) and start again from scratch, and which was hard but incredibly enjoyable. I fell in love with coding again, and it took me years to rebuild my career on my terms again.
I don't know what your circumstances are, but if you're burned out from 5 years of professional development, maybe try changing what you hate about it?
I lost it. I was done. That was it. I couldn't get past the lies (the documentation was outright lying about this behaviour). My entire career had been in the Windows stack, almost 20 years from VB3 to C#, but I was done. I loved coding, but this... this was bullshit... this had to change.
The next day I installed Linux and started again, learning web development properly and eventually finding Go, which I still code in to this day. I have never touched C#, or developed anything on Windows, since that day (roughly 8 years ago now).
I was freelancing, and doing OK at it, and that was hard, but I picked up some JS work and some prototype work for local startups (and tried a few of my own). I joined all the meetups and made friends who I could ask questions of.
Now I'm pretty much back to where I left off, and much happier for it.
I know that most people wouldn't consider this to be a "career change" story - after all I stayed a software developer. But I did have to throw most of what I knew out of the window(s) and start again from scratch, and which was hard but incredibly enjoyable. I fell in love with coding again, and it took me years to rebuild my career on my terms again.
I don't know what your circumstances are, but if you're burned out from 5 years of professional development, maybe try changing what you hate about it?