“Why Do You Code?” - A Surprisingly Hard Question

The end of the year is coming, and for me it’s always a time of reflection. I’d like to invite you to ask yourself one simple question.
Imagine that from January, the IT job market simply stops existing. No more well-paid jobs, no more “career in tech”. Programming becomes just a hobby.

Do you keep coding?
Or do you throw it all away and say “I’m done”? 😅

To be honest, my own answer isn’t that simple. I’ve technically been coding “forever” — I wrote my first website when I was 12, back in glorious HTML 4.01 😎 But programming has always been more of a medium of expression for me than a goal in itself.

Over the years, my approach to coding has evolved a lot — maybe you’ll recognize yourself somewhere on this spectrum 👇

🔹 First, there was curiosity

How does this even work? Why does something show up on the screen? How does the internet work? How do you build your own website?
That curiosity is still there. I love exploring new technologies and playing with things.
But let’s be honest… curiosity doesn’t pay the bills 😉

🔹 Then came the money phase 💸

If I already have this skill, why not make a career out of it?
I still remember my first manager laughing when, after my internship, he asked about my career plans and I said:
“Well… I don’t really have any. I just wanted to become a junior developer and I did it.” 😄
Luckily he was a great guy and helped me figure out what to do next.

🔹 Then I went full tech-fangirl mode 🤓

New stacks! New frameworks! No legacy ever!
It didn’t really matter what the project did — NGO app or cigarette factory system — what mattered was ANGULAR/REACT/VUE (delete as appropriate 😂). Definitely the newest store management, the newest tools, shiny everything.

I never reached the “I’ll build the worst garbage as long as it pays” mindset… but yeah, once I had the skills and leverage, I negotiated my rates pretty hard 😉

🔹 And then… the famous “what now?” stage

You know the one.
I’m not building a revolutionary product. I’m not inventing a new framework. I’m not writing a browser engine. I’m not a startup founder.

I work in regular enterprise Angular. Problems start feeling repetitive, pressure grows, everything “has already been done”, expectations rise.
Yep. That’s a very comfy road straight to burnout 🥲

🔹 So I had to figure things out

I didn’t want to leave tech — I genuinely like programming.
So I decided: if I’m spending 8 hours a day coding anyway, those 8 hours better mean something.

Since then, whenever I changed jobs, I paid a lot more attention to the project itself. It needed to tick at least one (ideally both) boxes:

• interesting technology
• social impact / meaningful purpose

Thanks to that, I’ve helped build a Fair Trade certification platform, software for retirement homes, hospital equipment management tools, worked in anti–money laundering, and now I work for the European Commission on a huge socially important project. And I can even visit Brussels a few times a year. 🥰

And yeah — work is still work. We joke, gossip, talk about the gym, complain, drink coffee. Nothing magical 😅
But if every job more or less feels the same, and I can choose the kind of work I do… why not choose something that actually contributes something good to the world? 🌍

So now I’m curious:

👉 Why do you code?

What’s your motivation today?
Would you still do it if programming was only a hobby?

Share your thoughts — I’d love to read your stories! 💬