9 ms·

This is the bit that hits close to home to me: > they must demonstrate commitment above and beyond their contracted work hours, and express constant satisfacti

by cesarbs 10y ago

This is the bit that hits close to home to me: > they must demonstrate commitment above and beyond their contracted work hours, and express constant satisfaction and happiness about their work My wife and I are both software engineers and that is a nearly constant source of stress for us. In our experience, people in our field frown upon people who treat software engineering as just their job. Two things I recall from my experience that illustrate this: - I had a team lead who once said, "I don't want people in this team working like this is a 9-5 job" - Something I heard from someone in a team that worked close to ours: "the candidate was solid in problem solving and coding ability, but we didn't hire them because they didn't show passion" This sort of bullshit is pervasive in our field and IMO is what the quote above is referring to.

kLeeIsDead 10y ago
I thought the call-center example was dumb too, but he got his point across. What you describe is the way I read it as well. That's why I don't think I'm going to pursue a career in software engineering despite doing it as a hobby since a young age. I think there'd be some irreversible damage to my brain if I used something I've liked and identified with for my whole life as a means to do something I hate. To me it seems like a form of self-induced brainwashing. I'll stick with blue collar jobs. The pay is not nearly as good, but my mind can be free.
- cesarbs 10y ago
  What sort of blue collar job do you do? A part of me dislikes that I turned what was a genuine interest of mine into my job. Software was a lot more fun to do before it became a professional thing for me.
  - kLeeIsDead 10y ago
    I'm still in college, but I have some experience in renovating apartments/houses so I'll probably do that.
    - Drdrdrq 10y ago
      That might work out well for you because it is creative. Working in a factory or in an office though... Not so much.
- Natsu 10y ago
  I dunno. I've done straight-up factory work, i.e. manual labor as well as IT. Maybe I just have a good company, but I'd much rather do this than ever go back to factory work, even if the pay were better in the factory job.
  - collyw 10y ago
    Try doing Salesforce integrations. Unstimulating, boring factory line work IT.
    - Natsu 10y ago
      When I compare that to the infamous 20 hour shift of unstimulating, boring factory line factory work, it still comes out ahead :) At least I can try to automate IT work more easily.
  - kLeeIsDead 10y ago
    Yeah, I may be eating my words in a few years but I figure I should at least try it out before going down the code monkey rabbit hole.
    - Natsu 10y ago
      If you can limit it to normal shifts and control overtime, it's not so bad. Also, it depends on whether working conditions are reasonable or not. My company could manage essentially none of that. Working conditions were extreme heat near a furnace (we had fans...), working hours were completely dictated by customer schedules and overtime was frequently required. All of that added up to a perfect storm of awful working conditions. I was motivated to work as hard as possible simply so I could get the hell out of there every night.
bluejekyll 10y ago
For some people it's a passion. For others it's a job. IMO anyone who is passionate about their work will have greater success and generally be more innovative. I'm sure this is true across all career paths not just engineering. In software there is no one right answer, the passion comes into play when you look for the most elegant or most performant solution, that may not be obvious on the first pass. This makes it a highly creative position, which I don't think software engineers are given enough credit for. So while I wouldn't have phrased it in the way that your lead did, I personally look for people passionate about their jobs. The actual hours they keep are less important (though should overlap with their team).
- cesarbs 10y ago
  > IMO anyone who is passionate about their work will have greater success and generally be more innovative. That is true, I don't dispute it. What I dislike is the shunning of those who want to do it just as their job. Also, passion comes in different forms. For example, I am "passionate" (as much as I hate the term) about delivering reliable, secure and well-documented products. Sometimes a project will be focused on that and my passion will show, other times projects focus on things I just can't get myself to care enough about and will only do as much as is strictly necessary to get the job done.
  - throwaway7312 10y ago
    I ran a project recently where we'd hoped to do everything in 30-hour workweeks, but it quickly became apparent we'd need 80-hour weeks to complete it for our deadline. We ended up working about 3 weeks straight in a full-on 80-hour-a-week sprint. Usually I hire for passionate people, and usually it isn't because we need 80-hour workweeks. Usually it's just because the output is often better, they notice more mistakes, take more initiative, and bond with their teammates more. However, in this case, suddenly we had to switch from, "It's a 30-hour per week project," to, "It's an 80-hour per week project," and because most of the team was deeply passionate about it, everything was fine and everyone continued to show up and do fantastic work until we completed the project. We had two team members who refused to stay more than the 30 hours per week we projected at the start. Even if we offered them more money, they wouldn't do it, because they just didn't want to. Work-life balance, etc. But it was okay, because both were in non-critical roles. So we let them go and continued without them. Had one of our hires in a critical role been "not passionate", we would've failed the project. But we didn't, because I made certain that when we hired the most critical roles, we hired for passion as much as anything else. We were on-site in a foreign country. So the options if there were no passionate people to hire would've been, "Stay 9 weeks instead of 3 weeks in a foreign country, for 3x the cost, and do it in 30-hour weeks," or, "Give up." Fortunately for me, I suppose, there were and are people passionate about our business, mission, and industry available for hire. You don't need passionate people for everything. I prefer dispassionate hires for repetitive roles that need steadiness and regularity. If we need a guy to clock in every Monday morning at 7 AM and clock out by 4 PM and do the same work every day and do it consistently, that's a role where we don't need "passion", and where passion would even get in the way (passionate people want to get more involved, they want more tasks and assignments, they want promotions, etc. Great for some roles, but not for the repetitive grinder roles). But, yes. There is a distinct need for passionate people. There is a market demand for them. It isn't just "Company X is cheap and wants twice the work for half the pay." Sometimes you want the guy who's going to do it "just as their job." Sometimes you want the guy who's going to do it as a personal mission, as a great undertaking to accomplish. It depends on the role, the project, and the hiring manager. But that's market forces for you - different people, looking for different things, end up in different places, and command different positions, rates, and lifestyles. It's the free market. And it allows us to do things we could not if we were all forced to adhere to one single way of doing things. This is a very good thing.
goatherders 10y ago
My biggest frustration at work is the colleagues - most of whom are software engineers - that are inconvenienced when being asked to consider work outside of normal business hours. I don't really care if they are happy; that's what overpaying them is for. What I care about is getting one of them to answer the phone at 5:05pm on a tuesday and not getting a return call until 9:03 on a Wednesday.
- cinquemb 10y ago
  Solution to that is easy, just pay them less, and they'll leave, so you wont have to work with them during normal business hours!
- StavrosK 10y ago
  What the fuck? What is unclear about the term "non-work" meaning anything other than "they aren't at work"? If it's not during work hours, it's entirely at my discretion whether I'll pick up or not. I usually will, because my employer is good to me, but your comment sounds entitled and of exactly the type of employer I wouldn't pick up the phone for outside work hours.
- taeric 10y ago
  If you are constantly having a situation where you need them to answer a question as late as 4:50 on a regular basis, you've already failed. I seriously mean that. Movies and revisionist history are full of companies that successfully pulled out last minute victories. Real life is full of companies that kept that death march until the end, and blamed the workers for not keeping up.
  - smileysteve 10y ago
    Steve Jobs killed Apple (Lisa, Macintosh, Apple2) and NEXT with the death marches; yet he is renowned because he did it better the last time.
    - asdfasdfa11112 10y ago
      I'd love to read more about this, without all the general Jobs fluff. Any recommendations?
hibikir 10y ago
Yes it is, but it is not everywhere, and it completely goes away on consulting. Suddenly companies are a lot less interested in 70 hour weeks when they cost almost twice as much as 40 hour weeks. Older, wiser developers often end up contracting or picking employers that are not that exploitative. Those good jobs exist, and they don't really pay worse in absolute terms. In fact, they often pay better when you calculate your pay hourly. So just pick the right employer and get out of the awfulness you describe.
jcoffland 10y ago
I don't want to work with you if you're a nine-to-fiver either. I'm not saying there's anything inherently wrong with you for feeling this way but I don't want to work with people who don't love what they do. Edit: to clarify, by nine-to-fiver I mean someone who is just punching the clock in order to make a living but does not care much about what they are doing. I don't really care what hours you work if you're really into it when you do.
- cesarbs 10y ago
  Why the false dichotomy? Can't someone designate a certain amount of time of their day to work, and focus on other things in the remaining hours? I love writing software, but that does not mean I don't love other things. Years ago I lived and breathed software. That's not the case anymore. I'd much rather help my daughter with her homework than read about the latest uber nifty JavaScript transpiler that will change my life and make everything awesome with unicorns and whatnot. Our field churns the same ideas over and over. After a few years things get old really fast. But there's what I said in another comment in this thread: I love writing reliable, correct, secure, well-documented software. Focus on those and my passion comes out. But come 5-ish o'clock and you bet I'm leaving the office to pick up my daughter from school and spend some time talking with her about her day and what she learned and whatnot. And then my wife will come home, we'll have dinner and we'll spend some time talking about our days and watching TV. Without those things I might as well not have a life. I don't like it when there's an expectation that I'll be available to work 24/7. I don't want people expecting me to be on social media promoting my work or things related to it. I'll disappoint anyone who expected me to think of work as my life's mission or anything like that (unless I'm using my skills to help find a cure to a serious disease, or realistically help solving the problem of poverty in the world - that would change the game). I have a number of interests in my life that are completely unrelated to work. Those are the things that I live for. Working is a means to bring in some cash that enables me to enjoy other things in life.
  - jcoffland 10y ago
    > Working is a means to bring in some cash that enables me to enjoy other things in life. Because you work mainly for the money is why I would not want to work with you. Not because you like other things.
meekins 10y ago
What bothers me the most about this is that passion and wish to work 9-5 are considered mutually exclusive. This feels like passion for software engineering just means passion for cranking out code for the company 24/7. Of course this is just a personal anecdote but during heavier work weeks I have very little energy or interest in any spare time hacking. In contrast on normal 9-5 weeks I tend to do a lot more of reading, coding and other things that develop my professional skills and enable me to perform better in my day job.
- pascalxus 10y ago
  For most job descriptions, Passion doesn't mean literally 'passion'. Passion is just a euphemism for "Wage slave willing to work 80+ hours per week"
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
hkmurakami 10y ago
Well when I interviewed in Japan for a traditional bigco, they asked me whether I was committed to working there for the next 40+ years of my life. So there's that, in other parts of the world.
- heisenbit 10y ago
  Did you ask them whether they are committed to stick around the next 40 years? Could they please demonstrate this?
  - hkmurakami 10y ago
    They were upper mid level managers and C level folks. Current tenure for them was 20-30 years, so yeah they had demonstrated this.
- flukus 10y ago
  Was this a software development job? I've wondered if having people stay that long would improve quality (self interest in maintainability) or lower it (less exposure to new/different ideas).
thirdsun 10y ago
It doesn't have to be like that. Personally, I work for a small company that manufactures a physical product (shoes actually) and manages a few retail stores, but also develops most of its internal software (CRM, ERP, BI), tools, website and shop in-house, which results in the fact that development and software engineering is just one of many areas the company focuses on. I can't remember the last time I couldn't leave 4 pm sharp with the rest of the colleagues from manufacturing, sales, design or accounting. It's certainly long ago and rarely happens. Plus, being a two man dev operation we enjoy a lot of freedom and are able to chose technologies and tools we see fit for the task. Furthermore you are confronted with all kinds of real world problems, interact with people of all trades (as opposed to living in a SV startup bubble) and colleagues value our work, actually perceive it as some kind of magic (in contrast to being code monkeys). To me this is a very enjoyable work environment, that combines the best parts of a 9-5 job and exciting startup atmosphere.
- mooreds 10y ago
  I was in a similar team and really enjoyed it for a number of years. Left when I realized I would "top out"--there is only so much room for advancement at such a company. I also couldn't justify learning and deploying all kinds of new tech for the company (because it would be a bad decision for the company to have a number of heterogeneous systems), and that was decaying my skillset.
afarrell 10y ago
This varies based on employer. The company Im working for (GoCardless in the U.K.) doesn't have this problem, but I've seen companies that do.
loup-vaillant 10y ago
Same here: a gig of mine, as a contractor, just ended prematurely because the client asked why I didn't seem motivated, and I answered truthfully: the tools forced on us were the worst I have ever seen in my career (we were using Rational Rhapsody as an IDE, on Windows, for Linux development). The only alternative I saw was lying: it will pass, I'll re-motivate myself… Instead I merely promised to do my best, which no longer included motivation or commitment. Didn't go so well.
- justinclift 10y ago
  As long as you're ok financially until you get a new role, don't sweat it. Hopefully moving out of a potentially er.. soul killing role (best wording I can think of) to something else will turn out to be the right move in hind sight. :)
mungoid 10y ago
I actually JUST left my company this week to do freelancing for this exact reason. They tell you to not work over 40 but then they give you more work than you can reasonably get done in a normal work week so what do you do? Either get behind on everything or you work many extra hours.
- pmoriarty 10y ago
  Not only is it common for companies to assign you more work than you can do in 40 hours while asking you to work no more than 40 hours, but it's also quite common for them to make you feel inferior if you don't accomplish the assigned herculean labors in 40 hours or less. I had a boss who would constantly tell us about some wizard team mates of his at another company who could perform miracles and knew everything. I'm sure he thought that he was inspiring us, but it actually made at least me feel like a complete bozo. No, I can't perform miracles. I don't know everything. I have better things to do with my time than devote my life and my blood to the corporation.
collyw 10y ago
I am on the fence on this one. On the one hand I completely agree that we should be able to treat it as a 9-5 job. On the other hand, I have worked with people like that and I far prefer working with those with some passion in the field. Our field is constantly changing and it requires that we keep up with the trends (not unlike medicine or other well paid careers). Its a pain in the arse having to explain a better approach to people who have never bothered to learn anything more than what they got taught at university ten years ago.
- flukus 10y ago
  Is it really changing though? Take out the framework and/or language churn and it really doesn't seem to change that fast.

by cesarbs 10y ago

kLeeIsDead 10y ago

I thought the call-center example was dumb too, but he got his point across. What you describe is the way I read it as well. That's why I don't think I'm going to pursue a career in software engineering despite doing it as a hobby since a young age. I think there'd be some irreversible damage to my brain if I used something I've liked and identified with for my whole life as a means to do something I hate. To me it seems like a form of self-induced brainwashing. I'll stick with blue collar jobs. The pay is not nearly as good, but my mind can be free.

cesarbs 10y ago
What sort of blue collar job do you do? A part of me dislikes that I turned what was a genuine interest of mine into my job. Software was a lot more fun to do before it became a professional thing for me.
- kLeeIsDead 10y ago
  I'm still in college, but I have some experience in renovating apartments/houses so I'll probably do that.
  - Drdrdrq 10y ago
    That might work out well for you because it is creative. Working in a factory or in an office though... Not so much.
Natsu 10y ago
I dunno. I've done straight-up factory work, i.e. manual labor as well as IT. Maybe I just have a good company, but I'd much rather do this than ever go back to factory work, even if the pay were better in the factory job.
- collyw 10y ago
  Try doing Salesforce integrations. Unstimulating, boring factory line work IT.
  - Natsu 10y ago
    When I compare that to the infamous 20 hour shift of unstimulating, boring factory line factory work, it still comes out ahead :) At least I can try to automate IT work more easily.
- kLeeIsDead 10y ago
  Yeah, I may be eating my words in a few years but I figure I should at least try it out before going down the code monkey rabbit hole.
  - Natsu 10y ago
    If you can limit it to normal shifts and control overtime, it's not so bad. Also, it depends on whether working conditions are reasonable or not. My company could manage essentially none of that. Working conditions were extreme heat near a furnace (we had fans...), working hours were completely dictated by customer schedules and overtime was frequently required. All of that added up to a perfect storm of awful working conditions. I was motivated to work as hard as possible simply so I could get the hell out of there every night.

bluejekyll 10y ago

For some people it's a passion. For others it's a job. IMO anyone who is passionate about their work will have greater success and generally be more innovative. I'm sure this is true across all career paths not just engineering. In software there is no one right answer, the passion comes into play when you look for the most elegant or most performant solution, that may not be obvious on the first pass. This makes it a highly creative position, which I don't think software engineers are given enough credit for. So while I wouldn't have phrased it in the way that your lead did, I personally look for people passionate about their jobs. The actual hours they keep are less important (though should overlap with their team).

cesarbs 10y ago
> IMO anyone who is passionate about their work will have greater success and generally be more innovative. That is true, I don't dispute it. What I dislike is the shunning of those who want to do it just as their job. Also, passion comes in different forms. For example, I am "passionate" (as much as I hate the term) about delivering reliable, secure and well-documented products. Sometimes a project will be focused on that and my passion will show, other times projects focus on things I just can't get myself to care enough about and will only do as much as is strictly necessary to get the job done.
- throwaway7312 10y ago
  I ran a project recently where we'd hoped to do everything in 30-hour workweeks, but it quickly became apparent we'd need 80-hour weeks to complete it for our deadline. We ended up working about 3 weeks straight in a full-on 80-hour-a-week sprint. Usually I hire for passionate people, and usually it isn't because we need 80-hour workweeks. Usually it's just because the output is often better, they notice more mistakes, take more initiative, and bond with their teammates more. However, in this case, suddenly we had to switch from, "It's a 30-hour per week project," to, "It's an 80-hour per week project," and because most of the team was deeply passionate about it, everything was fine and everyone continued to show up and do fantastic work until we completed the project. We had two team members who refused to stay more than the 30 hours per week we projected at the start. Even if we offered them more money, they wouldn't do it, because they just didn't want to. Work-life balance, etc. But it was okay, because both were in non-critical roles. So we let them go and continued without them. Had one of our hires in a critical role been "not passionate", we would've failed the project. But we didn't, because I made certain that when we hired the most critical roles, we hired for passion as much as anything else. We were on-site in a foreign country. So the options if there were no passionate people to hire would've been, "Stay 9 weeks instead of 3 weeks in a foreign country, for 3x the cost, and do it in 30-hour weeks," or, "Give up." Fortunately for me, I suppose, there were and are people passionate about our business, mission, and industry available for hire. You don't need passionate people for everything. I prefer dispassionate hires for repetitive roles that need steadiness and regularity. If we need a guy to clock in every Monday morning at 7 AM and clock out by 4 PM and do the same work every day and do it consistently, that's a role where we don't need "passion", and where passion would even get in the way (passionate people want to get more involved, they want more tasks and assignments, they want promotions, etc. Great for some roles, but not for the repetitive grinder roles). But, yes. There is a distinct need for passionate people. There is a market demand for them. It isn't just "Company X is cheap and wants twice the work for half the pay." Sometimes you want the guy who's going to do it "just as their job." Sometimes you want the guy who's going to do it as a personal mission, as a great undertaking to accomplish. It depends on the role, the project, and the hiring manager. But that's market forces for you - different people, looking for different things, end up in different places, and command different positions, rates, and lifestyles. It's the free market. And it allows us to do things we could not if we were all forced to adhere to one single way of doing things. This is a very good thing.

goatherders 10y ago

My biggest frustration at work is the colleagues - most of whom are software engineers - that are inconvenienced when being asked to consider work outside of normal business hours. I don't really care if they are happy; that's what overpaying them is for. What I care about is getting one of them to answer the phone at 5:05pm on a tuesday and not getting a return call until 9:03 on a Wednesday.

cinquemb 10y ago
Solution to that is easy, just pay them less, and they'll leave, so you wont have to work with them during normal business hours!
StavrosK 10y ago
What the fuck? What is unclear about the term "non-work" meaning anything other than "they aren't at work"? If it's not during work hours, it's entirely at my discretion whether I'll pick up or not. I usually will, because my employer is good to me, but your comment sounds entitled and of exactly the type of employer I wouldn't pick up the phone for outside work hours.
taeric 10y ago
If you are constantly having a situation where you need them to answer a question as late as 4:50 on a regular basis, you've already failed. I seriously mean that. Movies and revisionist history are full of companies that successfully pulled out last minute victories. Real life is full of companies that kept that death march until the end, and blamed the workers for not keeping up.
- smileysteve 10y ago
  Steve Jobs killed Apple (Lisa, Macintosh, Apple2) and NEXT with the death marches; yet he is renowned because he did it better the last time.
  - asdfasdfa11112 10y ago
    I'd love to read more about this, without all the general Jobs fluff. Any recommendations?

hibikir 10y ago

Yes it is, but it is not everywhere, and it completely goes away on consulting. Suddenly companies are a lot less interested in 70 hour weeks when they cost almost twice as much as 40 hour weeks. Older, wiser developers often end up contracting or picking employers that are not that exploitative. Those good jobs exist, and they don't really pay worse in absolute terms. In fact, they often pay better when you calculate your pay hourly. So just pick the right employer and get out of the awfulness you describe.

jcoffland 10y ago

I don't want to work with you if you're a nine-to-fiver either. I'm not saying there's anything inherently wrong with you for feeling this way but I don't want to work with people who don't love what they do. Edit: to clarify, by nine-to-fiver I mean someone who is just punching the clock in order to make a living but does not care much about what they are doing. I don't really care what hours you work if you're really into it when you do.

cesarbs 10y ago
Why the false dichotomy? Can't someone designate a certain amount of time of their day to work, and focus on other things in the remaining hours? I love writing software, but that does not mean I don't love other things. Years ago I lived and breathed software. That's not the case anymore. I'd much rather help my daughter with her homework than read about the latest uber nifty JavaScript transpiler that will change my life and make everything awesome with unicorns and whatnot. Our field churns the same ideas over and over. After a few years things get old really fast. But there's what I said in another comment in this thread: I love writing reliable, correct, secure, well-documented software. Focus on those and my passion comes out. But come 5-ish o'clock and you bet I'm leaving the office to pick up my daughter from school and spend some time talking with her about her day and what she learned and whatnot. And then my wife will come home, we'll have dinner and we'll spend some time talking about our days and watching TV. Without those things I might as well not have a life. I don't like it when there's an expectation that I'll be available to work 24/7. I don't want people expecting me to be on social media promoting my work or things related to it. I'll disappoint anyone who expected me to think of work as my life's mission or anything like that (unless I'm using my skills to help find a cure to a serious disease, or realistically help solving the problem of poverty in the world - that would change the game). I have a number of interests in my life that are completely unrelated to work. Those are the things that I live for. Working is a means to bring in some cash that enables me to enjoy other things in life.
- jcoffland 10y ago
  > Working is a means to bring in some cash that enables me to enjoy other things in life. Because you work mainly for the money is why I would not want to work with you. Not because you like other things.

meekins 10y ago

What bothers me the most about this is that passion and wish to work 9-5 are considered mutually exclusive. This feels like passion for software engineering just means passion for cranking out code for the company 24/7. Of course this is just a personal anecdote but during heavier work weeks I have very little energy or interest in any spare time hacking. In contrast on normal 9-5 weeks I tend to do a lot more of reading, coding and other things that develop my professional skills and enable me to perform better in my day job.

pascalxus 10y ago
For most job descriptions, Passion doesn't mean literally 'passion'. Passion is just a euphemism for "Wage slave willing to work 80+ hours per week"

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

hkmurakami 10y ago

Well when I interviewed in Japan for a traditional bigco, they asked me whether I was committed to working there for the next 40+ years of my life. So there's that, in other parts of the world.

heisenbit 10y ago
Did you ask them whether they are committed to stick around the next 40 years? Could they please demonstrate this?
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  They were upper mid level managers and C level folks. Current tenure for them was 20-30 years, so yeah they had demonstrated this.
flukus 10y ago
Was this a software development job? I've wondered if having people stay that long would improve quality (self interest in maintainability) or lower it (less exposure to new/different ideas).

thirdsun 10y ago

It doesn't have to be like that. Personally, I work for a small company that manufactures a physical product (shoes actually) and manages a few retail stores, but also develops most of its internal software (CRM, ERP, BI), tools, website and shop in-house, which results in the fact that development and software engineering is just one of many areas the company focuses on. I can't remember the last time I couldn't leave 4 pm sharp with the rest of the colleagues from manufacturing, sales, design or accounting. It's certainly long ago and rarely happens. Plus, being a two man dev operation we enjoy a lot of freedom and are able to chose technologies and tools we see fit for the task. Furthermore you are confronted with all kinds of real world problems, interact with people of all trades (as opposed to living in a SV startup bubble) and colleagues value our work, actually perceive it as some kind of magic (in contrast to being code monkeys). To me this is a very enjoyable work environment, that combines the best parts of a 9-5 job and exciting startup atmosphere.

mooreds 10y ago
I was in a similar team and really enjoyed it for a number of years. Left when I realized I would "top out"--there is only so much room for advancement at such a company. I also couldn't justify learning and deploying all kinds of new tech for the company (because it would be a bad decision for the company to have a number of heterogeneous systems), and that was decaying my skillset.

afarrell 10y ago

This varies based on employer. The company Im working for (GoCardless in the U.K.) doesn't have this problem, but I've seen companies that do.

loup-vaillant 10y ago

Same here: a gig of mine, as a contractor, just ended prematurely because the client asked why I didn't seem motivated, and I answered truthfully: the tools forced on us were the worst I have ever seen in my career (we were using Rational Rhapsody as an IDE, on Windows, for Linux development). The only alternative I saw was lying: it will pass, I'll re-motivate myself… Instead I merely promised to do my best, which no longer included motivation or commitment. Didn't go so well.

justinclift 10y ago
As long as you're ok financially until you get a new role, don't sweat it. Hopefully moving out of a potentially er.. soul killing role (best wording I can think of) to something else will turn out to be the right move in hind sight. :)

mungoid 10y ago

I actually JUST left my company this week to do freelancing for this exact reason. They tell you to not work over 40 but then they give you more work than you can reasonably get done in a normal work week so what do you do? Either get behind on everything or you work many extra hours.

pmoriarty 10y ago
Not only is it common for companies to assign you more work than you can do in 40 hours while asking you to work no more than 40 hours, but it's also quite common for them to make you feel inferior if you don't accomplish the assigned herculean labors in 40 hours or less. I had a boss who would constantly tell us about some wizard team mates of his at another company who could perform miracles and knew everything. I'm sure he thought that he was inspiring us, but it actually made at least me feel like a complete bozo. No, I can't perform miracles. I don't know everything. I have better things to do with my time than devote my life and my blood to the corporation.

collyw 10y ago

I am on the fence on this one. On the one hand I completely agree that we should be able to treat it as a 9-5 job. On the other hand, I have worked with people like that and I far prefer working with those with some passion in the field. Our field is constantly changing and it requires that we keep up with the trends (not unlike medicine or other well paid careers). Its a pain in the arse having to explain a better approach to people who have never bothered to learn anything more than what they got taught at university ten years ago.

flukus 10y ago
Is it really changing though? Take out the framework and/or language churn and it really doesn't seem to change that fast.