What's your other thing?

In software engineering, especially as an IC, 35 means you're no longer considered young among many of your peers. That's a weird sentence to type. 35 isn't old. I don't feel old, and most people would laugh at the idea. But in this industry, it's enough tenure to start asking different questions.

I'm lucky. Fifteen years into a career I love, I get to show up every day and build cool stuff on the internet. The people I work with are great. By any reasonable standard, I've found my place in the system. I know many of my peers feel similarly.

But there's a question that keeps coming up among those of us around this age, with about this much time in tech:

What's your other thing?

Here's what I mean. With the rise of generative AI, the dopamine hit of building something from scratch - toiling away to debug every tiny issue, shaping raw logic into something that works has started to feel like a waste of time. There's stuff to build, and AI can sweat the small stuff so I can focus on the big, audacious visions. That's a genuine joy. But it removes the crafting part of the job. Or at least the part of crafting that I, personally, got satisfaction from.

Progress is going to progress. There's nothing I can do about that, and I'm content to use AI at work. It makes me more productive, it keeps my employer happy, and the work is still interesting in a different way.

But the thing that filled my cup outside of work? That was also coding. Building things on my own time, for the love of the craft. And I know I'm not alone in that.

Which leaves two options:

Refuse to use AI. Code everything by hand. Sure, I could do that. And I'd get left behind. Progress will continue whether I participate or not. This benefits nobody, least of all me.

Fill the crafting gap elsewhere. My personality thrives on toiling over small, difficult problems. I got genuine joy from a class of technical puzzles that will probably not exist for much longer. That's the gap.

So find the thing that fills it. Whatever AI has hollowed out for you, find a way to put something back. It's a normal thing to feel, even if it's happened faster than any of us expected. Filling that gap is what will let you keep loving your work - without mourning the parts of it that are no longer asked of you.

My other thing is throwing myself head-first in to getting good at the piano again.