From time to time you may question whether getting into a software career was the right thing to do and whether or not you still enjoy it. It is normal to feel like that at least once in your career, perhaps you will feel like that several times throughout your career. If you’re at the beginning of your career it’s even more normal to feel like. One of the following reasons could be the causes for the way you feel:

1. Preoccupied: if you’re not completely focused on your work you will never be passionate about it and therefore will not like what you do. It could be:
   1. Other problems in your personal life completely unrelated to your career. Identify what these problems are, get them resolved and push them out of your way. Once you’ve cleared your mind, see if you then feel differently about software engineering and your career.
   2. Other interests/hobbies that are distracting you and pulling you in a different direction. Ask yourself if those other interests are worth it. Can you make a living out of those other interests? Be honest with yourself whether you can balance both your hobbies and your career. If you can’t, then drop your hobbies, get them out your way, focus on your career and then see if you feel differently.
2. Not being good at what you do: a person only starts enjoying what they do when they’re good at it. If you’re not particularly good at what you do then you won’t be passionate about it. There could be a few reasons of that:
   1. Beginning of your career: obviously if you’re at the beginning of your career you’re probably not going to be good at what you do (relative to your co-workers) and therefore not enjoy your work. In a case like this you need to stop comparing yourself to others that know more than you and start comparing yourself to yourself i.e. am I a better person and more skilled today than I was yesterday? Put in an effort to improve yourself everyday. If you do this, your skills and self esteem will slowly start to improve day-by-day. Before you know it you will be like the rest of your colleagues and other people will start looking up to you, but it takes time and perseverance.
   2. Lack of talent: this is a difficult realisation to come to and to accept if that’s the case. It’s possible that perhaps you don’t have a knack for it. If that’s the case, then no amount of effort and work will make you good enough to get you to the point where you start enjoying what you do. You might feel horrible for a short while about having failed at your attempts, but the good news is that you can stop feeling miserable about your futile attempts and start working towards something that you are talented at. Try your hand at other things to find out what your other talents, then get a direction in your life and stick to it.
3. The wrong work environment: this could be one of two things:
   1. Assholes: as the saying goes (it might have been Freud or the Twitter user Notorious d.e.b that came up with it) , “Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self esteem, first make sure you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.” Being surrounded by those kinds of people can act as a drain on your self esteem and therefore if you lose confidence you will lose the ability to produce good work and be passionate about your work. It could be constant criticism or passive aggressive behaviour from co-workers or a horrible manager etc. If that’s the situation you’re in, then get out and find another job with people you can relate to, then see if you feel differently about your career.
   2. Mismanagement: it could be that you have a terrible boss who doesn’t know how to manage people and you find yourself in the middle of chaos everyday. It’s normal to go through stressful times and chaos, but if it’s ongoing it means that people and projects are mismanaged. In this scenario, see if you can correct any mismanagement by you managing yourself and your projects. If that’s not possible, then the same advice applies: get out and find another job before you give up on your career.