After similar time in the industry (programmed for ~7 years professionally, 17 as hobby), I share your feeling. I had two big realizations that make me dislike my occupation.
1) Programming as a lone skill is essentially meaningless, in the same way being a master at using hammers is meaningless. The skill has to be applied to some domain in order to became useful for people. A hammer skill + steelworking skill = forging stuff. A hammer skill + carpentry skills = making furniture. Similarly, programming + medical knowledge = improving people's health by software. Programming + orbital mechanics knowledge = making space ships go where they need to. Etc.
(And by knowledge/skills I really mean knowledge + experience + being recognized in the community of practitioners.)
I remember when I first started to learn to program, I felt I can do anything with that skill. Only lately I come to realize that I can't do shit with that skill alone, and maybe I should've picked a different major.
2) Building things for sale != building things that're useful. There is a correlation between marketability and usefulness, but it's generally weak. At high level, there's plenty of ways to boost sales other than delivering actual value in exchange for money. Products that win tend not to be the best at their stated purpose; they're the ones best marketed. On low level, I see constant pressure towards reducing functionality, reducing interoperability, dumbing down the UI, which all makes software less useful, but better at making first impression and/or hooking people up.
I'm not likely to leave software, but right now, I'm focusing on acquiring knowledge, experience and contacts in other areas, so that I could do something with software that I also find worthwhile, instead of just settling on fighting to avoid jobs that are about maintaining the adtech machinery.
1) Programming as a lone skill is essentially meaningless, in the same way being a master at using hammers is meaningless. The skill has to be applied to some domain in order to became useful for people. A hammer skill + steelworking skill = forging stuff. A hammer skill + carpentry skills = making furniture. Similarly, programming + medical knowledge = improving people's health by software. Programming + orbital mechanics knowledge = making space ships go where they need to. Etc.
(And by knowledge/skills I really mean knowledge + experience + being recognized in the community of practitioners.)
I remember when I first started to learn to program, I felt I can do anything with that skill. Only lately I come to realize that I can't do shit with that skill alone, and maybe I should've picked a different major.
2) Building things for sale != building things that're useful. There is a correlation between marketability and usefulness, but it's generally weak. At high level, there's plenty of ways to boost sales other than delivering actual value in exchange for money. Products that win tend not to be the best at their stated purpose; they're the ones best marketed. On low level, I see constant pressure towards reducing functionality, reducing interoperability, dumbing down the UI, which all makes software less useful, but better at making first impression and/or hooking people up.
I'm not likely to leave software, but right now, I'm focusing on acquiring knowledge, experience and contacts in other areas, so that I could do something with software that I also find worthwhile, instead of just settling on fighting to avoid jobs that are about maintaining the adtech machinery.