This article is available on Medium. Read the full article here.
This article is for burned-out developers who are exhausted by endless corporate politics and quiet power games. Maybe the money stayed, and the meaning slipped away,
You’re not alone!
It’s natural to start craving an escape Not from coding itself, but from everything that drained the joy out of it.
Think about doctors. They work brutal overnight shifts and burn out far faster than most of us. If you’ve watched the award-winning series The Pitt, you’ve seen the pressure inside an emergency unit. Their work is harder than what we do.
Yet many of them still seem to find meaning and pride in what they do, even through exhaustion.
I personally think the difference is the “purpose”. As developers, what we do is optimizing profits for some client or an organization. We’re told our purpose is simple: earn more, climb higher, repeat forever. We do not have a greater mission or a purpose to live within.
The latest crisis in Sri Lanka was the massive flood in December 2025. Sri Lanka is no stranger to disasters. But as a developer, I witnessed something different, I saw fellow engineers building tools like floodsupport.org to find missing people and help those affected. And at that moment, a powerful idea struck me.
Developers can have a purpose too.
Tips to Reclaim Your Love for Coding
Contributing to open source
I never imagined I could learn this much through open source. You meet some of the most talented people while contributing to it. Even if your company teaches you nothing and your job feels like a dead end, open source can give you an unimaginable amount of growth in a very short time.
You’ll discover real best practices and welcoming communities in Open Source. You’ll meet people who dedicated their lives to code and changed the world through it. There is no greater satisfaction for a developer than contributing to something that truly matters.
And who knows, maybe this single step will change your entire future !!
Build purposeful side projects (Build tools that matter)
When you tackle hard problems at work or in side projects, you get the chance to build tools that help other developers. I often run into issues that are genuinely difficult. Sometimes even AI-generated answers miss the point.
I create small, usable tools or write blog posts that fully explain the solution. Recently, I’ve published a few posts covering issues I couldn’t find proper step-by-step guides for. Helping others this way gives me a rare sense of clarity.
Become a member
The creator of the Fast API web framework is Sebastián Ramírez Montaño. He is strongly driven on purpose and helping people. I found his story really inspiring. You can find a short documentary about him in the references section.
Consume healthy developer content
Are you worried because you saw a TikTok saying AI will take all our developer jobs ?
The internet is full of garbage content. As I highlighted in my previous articles, AI slop and algorithms are making it worse. If you don’t consume healthy, purposeful content, you’ll feel lost and even mentally drained. Starting your day with short, mindless content can shape your mood for hours. On the other hand, consuming inspiring, meaningful content and seeing how others made an impact through code can massively boost your motivation and drive.
Use YouTube as a content library. Don’t let the algorithm control you. Install an extension like Unhook YouTube to remove home feed and sidebar suggestions, so distractions won’t bother you.
If you want to discover new content, turn off the extension once a week to explore. The goal is to avoid letting the algorithm dictate what you watch every day.
With this setup, YouTube becomes the focused learning library it once was, guiding you only to the content you choose.
Few podcasts I found really useful and motivates me every week:
- Rework Podcast by 37Signals
- Deep Questions by Cal Newport
- The FreeCodeCamp Podcast
Finding purpose outside of screen
I ran a 10Km marathon race a few weeks back. I couldn’t run a Mile straight when I started training two months prior to the race. The first few days I signed up for the race, I couldn’t even sleep because I was stressed about the race. This is the first time I’m participating in an official sports event. But within consistent training and dedication I got confident and strong day by day, after a month running 5Km became easy. Then, with proper training, I completed my race below my target time.
This is the first time I’ve found a real goal beyond the screen. For the first time, I’m training consistently and pushing myself to complete a challenge I once thought was impossible. I’ve chased goals like building a dream body before, but none of them ever gave me the same sense of purpose and dedication.
Having goals beyond the digital world made me question the real meaning of my life. What am I actually chasing in this short time here? Is money and material success really enough? I don’t have all the answers yet,
but I know,
I need more goals that exist beyond the screen. !!!