I know this is a weird post for this sub, but I wanted to share this somewhere. I’m a software engineer with 10 years of experience, full stack, but primarily focused on frontend. I’m in my late 30s, having transitioned to dev from a different engineering background a decade ago. I used to be so motivated. I had a hunger for learning and was excited about what I could build. Four years ago, I was still spending my free time on pet projects, dreaming of one day founding my own company. But I lost that spark in recent years. I’ve been stuck in a soul-crushing job where most of my time goes toward maintenance or endless, bureaucratic meetings about architectural decisions. I haven’t left because it pays better than 99% of the jobs in my country, and it isn’t very demanding, so it leaves me time for chores and being with my wife and kid. But even with that free time, I couldn’t motivate myself to work on personal projects. Who wants to do more “work” after work? My MVP felt miles away from being shippable. I felt like a zombie, surviving day after day, feeling empty inside. I kept telling myself that “now wasn’t the right time” to take risks, and that maybe in 10 years I’d do my own thing. Deep down, I knew that was bullshit, because in 10 years, the bills and the mortgage won’t be gone. I was just a prisoner in a job I didn’t care about. Then I discovered Claude Code, and it has been a total game-changer. Like many engineers, I was an AI skeptic. My experience with Copilot was disappointing, especially since my job uses an uncommon stack and a codebase so large that the AI’s usefulness was limited. But recently, I heard colleagues talking about how much better it’s become. I got a Claude Code license at work and was struck by the potential, so I bought a personal license for my own projects. The results have been magnificent. I’ve accomplished more on my pet project in a couple of weekends than I would have in three months of manual work. It has reignited a light in me and empowered me to build without sacrificing my family life. I’ve turned my project into something production-ready. Claude helped me improve robustness, security, test coverage, and CI/CD practices. It even helped me polish the Design and UX/UI. Now, I’m adding features at a speed I never thought possible. My current workflow: I use Opus to plan a task. We do it together. I have it ask me questions, and I try to be as precise as possible and also have a clear validation for considering the task complete. We then break the task into multiple parts. I have then Sonnet implement them one by one. I review the code in a PR before merging. I always have plan mode enabled to avoid it going into dead ends or unwanted changes. This method produces surprisingly high-quality code. But be aware that I’ve never been an overly opinionated engineer and for me, shipping fast is more important than debating minor details, though I still try to avoid tech debt and I always considering the big picture in terms of archtecture. I feel alive again. I’m empowered to do things I thought I no longer had the will for. Maybe I actually enjoy “product/engineering management” more than raw coding now, but I’d never want to be an EM at my company because of the endless meetings. I no longer feel like a zombie. I’m excited to learn more about LLMs and how to make Claude more efficient. I’m in love with the possibilities again. I’m not afraid of losing my job to AI anymore, because I know I’ll stay at the top by mastering these new tools. Maybe I am in a honeymoon phase that will end when I discover that everyone is doing the same, but at least the potential of this tool is making me dream big and feel alive again. Maybe this text would be better to be shared with a psychologist, but I have the feeling that this story will resonate with others here. submitted by /u/Squalido
Originally posted by u/Squalido on r/ClaudeCode