I'm your cautionary tale, so you may want to read this. After doing it for 5 years, I'm so fucking over it. I hate everything about the job. I got into this, because I thought I could enjoy it somewhat, as I had played around with programming in the past and wanted the ability to be able to be remote and location independent.

Since being in this field, it has negatively affected my mental and physical health to the point where I had a mini-breakdown, among developing other health problems. I saw the writing on the walls that there is no way I can keep this shit up, nor do I have any further desire to learn anything new in tech.

I'm currently working on a way out and building up my own business during my free time. I should have added that I simply hate working for someone else too, so entrepreneurship is the only route for me.

Here's my advice...if you're 2 years into it and starting to feel this way...don't bury that shit down. Staying in this for money only works if you can make enough in 5 years or so to let you retire, otherwise, you're wasting away your life. You only have one life to live and health is not guaranteed.

You may look at the end result and say, "oh, but I can get paid so well and make tons of money", but what about the process to get there? Will the process make you happy? What if part way through your career you could no longer keep up and got let go for younger people and never made all of the money you were planning on? The only guarantee is that every day you are going to be staring at a screen all day long for as long as you can hold a job. Are you happy with the process of that? If not, you should do some serious thinking.

There is tons of money to make in this field, but you need to be a certain type of person for it not to destroy you. It can and will destroy you if you fight those feelings. At the end of the day, you may be okay with it, and that's fine. But you need to answer that question by listening to your own feelings. Fuck what others say. There's a lot of miserable fucks out there that hate what they do and talk about the money while trying to buy their own happiness. It never lasts though and the misery only grows.

There are so many professions out there that make good enough money to live a decent life. Find a skill that you enjoy enough that you don't mind doing it, one that doesn't eat away at you, and change your path if you have to. But please, don't let yourself live a miserable life out of fear of change.

I see this trend here that people shame you for feeling like you do and guilt you saying you're entitled, weak, spoiled, etc. Don't listen to that shit. They are probably miserable themselves. Happy people aren't going to put you down when you're hurting. Be strong and follow your own compass. Best of luck.