That's the thing, I've been trying to do that for years now. I've got about a dozen cool ideas that bounce around in my head and a new one every few months or so. I can spend all my non-free time thinking about and designing them in my head, but when it comes time to actually write the code, I just kinda lose all motivation.
Just do it at work. All this side project stuff is ok but a lot more stress (I.e. deep thought killer) than just being a bad attitude employee and doing something awesome because you think it will be good. Don’t spend too long on it. If your learn something, you win. If it is useful to other people at your job, double win. The worst type of employee or a software project is the well-intentioned sincerely obedient one. That is how mega disasters happen in software. Despite sprint scheduling stuff, you can take a week and play with some new stuff. You will look bad in Standup for a while, but cost of victory is looking bad for a little in some bogus unimportant context. When you finish the new thing, write a story for it and then sell the hell out of it to the other people.
That's the thing, I've been trying to do that for years now. I've got about a dozen cool ideas that bounce around in my head and a new one every few months or so. I can spend all my non-free time thinking about and designing them in my head, but when it comes time to actually write the code, I just kinda lose all motivation.
Just do it at work. All this side project stuff is ok but a lot more stress (I.e. deep thought killer) than just being a bad attitude employee and doing something awesome because you think it will be good. Don’t spend too long on it. If your learn something, you win. If it is useful to other people at your job, double win. The worst type of employee or a software project is the well-intentioned sincerely obedient one. That is how mega disasters happen in software. Despite sprint scheduling stuff, you can take a week and play with some new stuff. You will look bad in Standup for a while, but cost of victory is looking bad for a little in some bogus unimportant context. When you finish the new thing, write a story for it and then sell the hell out of it to the other people.
Yes, wait until writing code is no longer your job though.
I'm in a similar boat. At my job, the junior engineers do most of the coding and I get to enjoy designing systems and project management.
I'm considering just hiring people to do the side projects I wish I had the energy to write the tedious code for.