The funny thing is most of my college mates who took mathematics or electrical engineering degrees, or some other random similar degree all ended up doing programming. The pay in coding is so much higher that they all end up in it, and half of those degrees ended up being coding anyway :)

> financial incentive to work on big boring software engineering using the same skills

This is so true: as I've made more, my github has grown more silent.

Similarly, as I've been promoted (and spend more time advising), my skills have atrophied

I used to be excellent at kernel hacking, random Linux things that would often be several-weeks trials. Now that I'm not 'in it' constantly, mostly just advising, I've lost a lot of that sharpness

Doesn't help the onslaught of the day really kills my desire to learn/play around

As I've gotten more senior my need for coding has not gone away, so I may even be doing more opensource coding now, on my free time.

Coding C++ at work all day, maybe not C++ all night at home.

Meetings all day at work? Yeah, I still have code that needs to come out.

not to beat the constant drum of anti-capitalism, but this is the effect that we get when every company is for-profit and massive growth. curiosity doesn't have a direct path to profit, and so most people are stuck working on moving metrics, and nothing else.

one can make the argument "well you have free time on the side, just do it then if youre truly interested" but realistically most people, myself included, are completely braindead after work. i have a lot of interests and hobbies but i can only find 2-3 hours on the weekends to get into them because i am mentally drained and shot after a day of work full of (mostly) pointless meetings. i don't mind work, i NEED work. but, i also need it to be fulfilling, motivating and the function of those is to me at least, seeing a positive effect on society. i imagine most people deep down inside want to help the world in some way.

this is the life we've created for ourselves in the USofA. R&D/curiosity is reserved for certain demographics, and that's not even saying ONLY the privileged or the rich, that includes young people who have energy and drive before it gets hammered in by <insert corporation>, or the people who are willing to load up on methamphetamines, or the select few people who truly are amazing at having a 9-5 and being cognitively healthy enough to do brain intensive tasks after work.

the point i'm making here is that we are frogs in boiling water. i remember the days (a decade ago) when I was working and exploring new personal frontiers of interest. Projects at the startups i worked on were exciting and interesting even if they were failures. Nowadays I work at <bigcorp> where every work stream is defined by some OKR. Product people have moats and act like feudal warlords. Everything is resume driven development, and the common theme here is more money/income and ultimately capitalistic greed being shoved down everyone's throats. It all sucks. Our culture in America revolves around money and greed, and it's getting worse and worse. Everything glows a certain shade of gray, and soon we'll all be indistinguishable from gray goo

> this is the effect that we get when every company is for-profit and massive growth

I am a huge fan of capitalism and yet I also wish we saw a lot more small-to-medium sized companies where the focus is on a product you can be proud of, satisfied customers, and especially, happy employees. While I'm wishing I might as well add a shorter work week and more time spent on the auxiliary parts of engineering / development (maintenance, training, contributing to OSS dependencies, community service, etc.).

Then again, I've never been employed full time before so I don't know how it is in the industry anyways.

This is why I have made it a point to consider my activities that most people would call "hobbies" as my primary and most important activities. What I do for a living is secondary to everything else, and I only do it to give me the funding I need for my real work.

Github came in relatively late for me... so mine is mostly one-off contributions, comments or feature requests. There's a handful of times I'll fork and push my fork out, while waiting on a PR (that sits in queue for a month or more).

I wish I didn't have to have a day job, but alas, I do. I didn't chase the money earlier in my career and I kind of regret it to be honest. I'm closer to 50 now, and while I don't see myself ever retiring, I definitely don't have the energy to put in a 40 hour week and do another 20 on personal or side projects on top all the time. I do spend a good 10-15 hours a week reading, keeping up and exploring, but I find on my own time I'm more in decision paralysis than actually getting stuff done. There's too many good options to explore.

> If I could enjoy my work 30% more that would be great. Is it worth making less than half income though?

If that’s the calculation—if you find yourself doing the calculation—probably not. However, if you can’t make yourself not do it (build software, build hardware, figure out maths or better ways to put maths into words, write, ...), if you find yourself doing it even at your most busiest and staying up at night when every other minute of your day is occupied, then... Many such people have found they still need the income, and every one of them that I’ve seen is deeply unhappy because of it.

Ditto with a physics education, although I specialized in statistical mechanics and simulation pretty early so it made sense to catch the ML wave.

> If I could enjoy my work 30% more that would be great. Is it worth making less than half income though?

I've never once thought of it in those terms, but now that you pose the question... for me the answer is "yes, absolutely, no question about it."