I don't know if you can ask your management, but as a total outlier solution, you could try to spend some time listening to CS calls that come in. You didn't even have to participate on the call, just listen.

Ive found this greatly increases motivation as you actually start to see the need of why you're doing what you're doing. Most products / businesses are not really going to change the world that much, but hearing how something you built is actually helping someone's life can be very rewarding.

You already kind of seem to know the solution: Work on your social skills.

Read this http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/06...

Sign up for internet dating and go on dates with strangers. You will soon discover everyone is awkward and it is all okay.

Or go to tech meetups. Ask people about themselves and just listen to what people have to say. People love to talk about themselves and you can learn a lot about them and yourself.

It will be hard It will be awkward It will feel really strange at first

But being really good at connecting with other people is vital to getting the jobs you want. Having hard skills is important too, but you seem to already have those.

Good luck.

"Teach them to be better than you. That may seem counterproductive. I have a type A personality, and I have decent coding skills. I've been in your situation a number of times. I also know there's these mythical expert developers out there that I can't seem to find (or afford). So, what to do? A few years ago I realized that if I continue down this path, I'll end up with some serious health issues due to the stresses that come along with having a reputation for being a really good developer. So, I decided that instead of searching for developers better than me, I would teach developers I work with how to BE better. It's taken a lot of patience. And it's taken me quite a bit to LET GO of my way of doing things. I had to take my ego out of the picture. (VERY hard to do.) Nowadays, I realize that developers don't have to BE better than me. I simply have to ALLOW them to do what they do without being so obsessive about it. Turns out, even junior developers really CAN do good work. They just need a little guidance that only comes with experience, and then they need me to get out of their way."

Specifically, I would suggest volunteering to teach those who traditionally don't get the opportunities to learn coding.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8649415

1. Left the job. 2. Got involved in other teams' projects. 3. Colluded with other employees to break off and form our own company. 4. Accepted it and collected the paychecks (that dwarfed the combined amount of what my parents made at their peak salaries).

You're not going to get what you want out of your job unless you ask for it. If it isn't feasible or possible for your workplace to accommodate you, then that leads you to finding it outside of work. Like mentioned in other comments - there's open source and charity organizations that might need something. If you don't have ideas of your own, you might want to find a business type person and help solve his problems. However, that will likely be quite similar to what you're doing now.

Consider doing something other than programming as well, or something where the programming is secondary. I, frankly, have lost a lot of interest in programming itself because I've been programming since I was 6 (>30 years) and I've learned over a dozen programming languages since then. It's lost its lustre for me. Changing the focus to the non-programming part helped.

The last thing to consider is getting involved in a university project. Those generally have enough difficult programs without the time crunch involved in industry.

I would suggest finding an open source project you are passionate about. There are some really cool open source software applications popping up that need passionate developers like you to get involved.

That's how you make an impact - get involved and do something that benefits the community, and that you can be proud to have put your name on!

It might not help so much with your day job, but it will certainly open up new opportunities for you, improve your skills and look great on your CV. Plus it's a lot of fun!

Do a search in GitHub, or if you program in C# come take a look at what we're doing (yes, you can change the world!): https://github.com/Warewolf-ESB/Warewolf-ESB

In the meantime, start trying to think up ideas and write them down, even half baked ones. Idea generation is a muscle. At my peak I write down a new idea every few days. Sometimes that slips to once a month. Regardless, you'll find that if you start doing this, you start getting excited about those ideas which leads to....

...moving forward. Either to a new job, an open source project, learning a new skill set, approaching your boss with an idea, or a new geekup meeting or whatever.

1. Lack of social skills.

2. Lack of ideas what to do with your spare time (at least I see it this way).

3. Lack of challenges and meaningful tasks in your current work.

The 1. is only a problem if you pay close attention to it and refuse to go out because of it.

The solution I see is to find a hackerspace (or similar association) nearby and just drop in to hang out with others. You'll get socialized, you'll find new areas you can look at and most probably it will give you an inspiration and new ideas, all at the same time.

This could solve your 1. and 2. problems pretty quickly, and in the long run, either 3. will become unimportant or you'll find a better job.

1) Take a deep breath and relax. What you are going through is normal. Your whole life up to a few months ago has basically been spent working towards this ultimate goal of getting a college degree. It is normal to feel a bit of a let down coming off this achievement high.

2) Realize that developing an elite skill set is the key to finding exciting and meaningful work. For more on this check out this book: http://www.amazon.com/Good-They-Cant-Ignore-You/dp/145550912...

3) Get to work honing your craft.

What would you do if you knew you only had a year left to live, a month, week, day?

Get a remote job, travel the world. Join an exciting startup or start your own. Take a step back and think about the bigger picture, break the mundane system, you're in a unique space and time to do so. Do what makes you feel alive, if you don't know, experiment. Whatever you choose to do don't settle, you only get one chance...

I don't do heroin now because I would (likely) be trading decades of health and happiness for a temporary bliss, followed by crippling addiction and the loss of my family, friends, and job.

(Also, I beg HN not to let this thread turn into an argument about drug policy, responsible drug use, etc., etc. There are probably people out there who can use heroin responsibly; I almost certainly would not be one of them.)

Send them an email introducing yourself. Explain why you are interested in what they are doing. Explain what your skills are. Offer to help.

this will do two things - one, it will let you write code that keeps you engaged, without needing to come up with ideas for something to write from scratch, and two, working on a large and active project with multiple contributors, mailing list, irc channel, etc. will be helpful with social skills (at least as far as interacting with other developers goes) and might even act as a form of networking (i've seen several job posts made directly to community mailing lists, especially if the job is for a non-mainstream language or framework).

if you can list some of the things you've found fun or exciting to work with in the past, we can help make more specific suggestions of areas to explore.