1. Introduction

Published on: 2025-08-05

My journey in Tech started with me being fascinated by the possibilities and the power I have just using my laptop, my IDE, and of course Stack Overflow. From writing my first lines of code in assembly, to building complex management systems that operate large machines, diving into the world of ASIC development and being overwhelmed by the complexity of hardware design... All these things were and still are fascinating to me. My development and improvements were always driven naturally by my curiosity and the desire to learn more. Somehow, this feeling of organically being pulled in the right direction changed. I am facing three major problems as a Senior in the Tech industry. Let me annoy you with my problems.

2. Where are the problems?

As I stated before: when you start in tech, the level of complexity that hits you and the joy of learning and mastering new things is almost like a drug. The release you feel when you find that one little bug after spending the whole night—okay, let's be honest here—several nights debugging, and your code finally does what you want it to do is just amazing. And the weird thing about it is, no one except you knows about it. It doesn't even feel like work... it feels like joy. So I would say if you are blessed with highly qualified managers who always give you tasks (problems) that challenge you early in your career, it can be like magic. If you don't have this, search for it.
Solving problems assigned to you that support the business will not only boost your development, it can also lead to a position where you suddenly start to classify problems. This basically means that you have reached a technical skill level where you don't have to be guided or feel overwhelmed by the complexity anymore; it has become your new normal. And although you are able to analyze and classify problems, they are not your problems anymore. Because you won't grow from them.

3. Learning became a habit

For us humans, the process of learning is a hard requirement to live life. Additionally, it can make your life much better. If you boost your social skills, you will have much more fun; if you boost your technical skills, you will most probably have a nice career or receive the next big raise. To maximize this process, you could say: don't simply learn something new, but learn how you should learn something new and make a difference. I guess I realized at some point, it is not really about the topic itself, it is about the approach to master a topic. Making learning a habit means you master the process of learning itself.
Okay, but what is bad about it? Why is this a problem? Well, I don't know how to state it differently but to say this becomes boring. Unless you are Elon Musk and have the freedom to pick your next technical challenge which is reaching the limit of your capabilities, it is really hard to find new challenges. Of course, you can get busy, learn new tools, study again how to optimize the current stuff around you, create new pathways for your team. But the learning curve and the satisfaction won't be like in the beginning. It is like a mechanism which lets you function in the system around you. If the challenges around you are not challenging enough although they are forcing you to learn new things, you will master them with less effort than before.

4. AI

I am far from being an expert in AI so I don't want to talk about it on a technical level. I just want to make two points. The first one is that simply by using AI tools, my code quality and productivity have increased dramatically. As an example, whenever I start a new project, I have the target architecture very clear, and since I am using TDD, the predefined structures I want to implement are quite detailed. So before I write the first line of code, my AI partner already knows what I want to do and speeds up my development. Since I love to write code, I am both amazed and frustrated at how fast AI comes up with crazy solid code which I just have to autocomplete. After that, you generate tests for every edge case. Implementation is becoming less and less a challenge.
Some might say: No problem, just become a master at building AI, switch to this field. That is a valid point. When I started to write, or rather started to train, my first ML or reinforcement learning models, I truly understood for the first time what is coming at us. I also realized how little I actually know. In the end, my code is compiled to machine instructions which the CPU executes one by one at an unimaginable speed. If I ever believe that I can come up with a better solution than a machine itself in the future, I am simply delusional. Plus, working with AI has nothing to do with traditional software development, where you give the machine instructions. It is more like raising a child.

5. Conclusion

I really enjoy being an engineer. For the time I have left working as one, I will enjoy it to the fullest. I guess it is a normal process that your level of comfort increases over the time and it is getting harder to find new challenges. And I guess for the most of us it is fine, since the ego is satisfied with other currencies, like status, money or power. I just miss this feeling of not having an idea where to start, have people around me that want to see me grow and learn. Maybe it is time for me giving back this feeling to others.