There are several fears that can keep us from making this break with programming. The first fear goes by the fancy name of the "sunk cost fallacy". The sunk cost fallacy is the belief that the time and effort we spent learning and developing is an investment, and that investment will be wasted if we quit. Thus, in order to preserve our investment we must keep programming. The problem with this fallacy is that it assumes you have not already received the benefit from that time and effort. I'd argue that learning any sort of programming is not a wasted skill. Programming can be applied to many facets of our lives, such as simplifying tasks into manageable steps, structured thinking, and basic Boolean logic. Many other fields have also adopted computers so having computer skills can be helpful for yourself or other colleagues who are struggling to learn the technology. The knowledge you have will not go to waste.
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+The second fear is the fear that we'll let down our fellow programmers and others in our organization if we stop programming. This one is tricky. It's tricky because it includes others in our decision-making process. We might be in an organization that has a large load of tasks to complete. Our decision to quit will mean these tasks won't get done the way we wanted them to get done. It's not hard to imagine our absence causing harm to the entire enterprise and result in its eventual collapse. Is this scenario true? It's up to us to tease out whether our absence will truly let everyone in our organization down. This puts us in a situation where our fear leaves us feeling stuck. We feel stuck because our fear has created a situation where we're choosing between our own well being or the well being of others. But this can be a false dichotomy. Our absence might be the catalyst for someone else to pick up our tasks and work on them. We need to ask ourselves if we are really irreplaceable for this organization or could someone take our place? The answer might be "Yes, I am irreplaceable, but I need to leave this situation or I will cause harm to both of us if this continues". It's up to us to review if we are helping ourselves and the organizations we serve, or if we are harming them and ourselves by continuing to delude ourselves that this is working.
-The second fear is that if we stop programming then we are letting down our fellow programmers in some way. This one is tricky because we might be on a team where we have a large load of tasks to complete and our decision to quit may mean these tasks won't get done the way we wanted them to get done. Or we may fear that our absence will cause harm to the enterprise and its eventual collapse. This fear requires us to choose between which is more important: our well-being or the well-being of others. It also requires us to explore whether those fears are true or whether they are groundless. Are we really that irreplaceable or could someone take our place? The answer might be "no, but I need to leave this situation or I will cause harm to both of us if this continues". Thinking in terms of the well-being of both yourself and the organizations you belong to from a longer-term perspective may help you make this decision.
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The third fear deals with our own personal fears of identity and the memory of our community. If we decide to stop being a programmer will that somehow erase a part of our identity? Will our community stop identifying us as a programmer and will we lose contact with folks that have become friends, colleagues, and such? Again, this fear is tricky to overcome because programming may be a large part of the identity you have crafted for yourself. Letting go of that can lead to feeling less like yourself. And the fear that folks will stop calling you for programming projects can be compounded if you decide to take a break from programming (especially if this break is temporary).
projects / themediocreprogrammer.git / commitdiff