8 ms·
Ask HN: Software Developers – Do you like your job?
On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your happiness level at work? 1=horrible and 10=awesome.
How would you explain your level in one/two sentences max?
- morgante 10y ago10 I'm the founder of my own startup. I love being able to work on interesting technical challenges while solving tangible problems for companies.
- aoeu345 10y ago6 I'm a junior, so my dev work is very mentally draining. However I am well supported and respected by all.
- lando2319 10y ago10 - working independently I take on clients I want, work when and where I want. Freedom is fun.
- mythrwy 10y ago8.36233828377721 The explanation is that I haven't figured when to use the rounding function. But seriously, I love what I do. Hope I can keep doing it forever.
- marktangotango 10y agoIt ebbs and flows. Currently about an 8. Some places and projects have been hardly bearable, others have been great. Right now I'm leading a project to modernize an old Internet explorer 6 app. This thing has all the MS specific stuff; activex controls, dhtml behaviors, .htc files, I couldn't be happier. I never worked with that stuff so it's all new to me. No one in the org thinks it can be done, bring it on, I say!
- a-real-dinosaur 10y ago4 Part of it is golden handcuffs, okay income, okay workload. Everything is fine. Fine isn't interesting though.
- PhilipA 10y agoSeems like you might just be bored with your current work - perhaps a change of scenery might help?
- stinos 10y ago8 Senior level, parttime independent. I'd give a 10 because when not working for a couple of weeks I really start to miss programming, but -2 because working with other developers and working with users is not always sunshine&happiness and because I mostly like to do lower level detailed stuff, debugging nasty stuff, ... but I cannot do that all of the time.
- sagivo 10y agotech 8 - working on cool things office 4 - open office is the worst thing ever invented people 7 - mostly good people, few bad general happiness 6 - i need to stop working for others and choose my own path
- FLUX-YOU 10y ago4 I do a lot of junk outside of actual coding, so coding skills have suffered because I write very little code (I do help desk, server maintenance, troubleshooting software outside of our code bases, project planning, tech. documentation, unnecessary meetings). Uncertainly about the technical direction of projects we may be doing and the company itself, so it's difficult to figure out what new skills would be needed and to invest in or whether I should stick around.
- bluedevil2k 10y ago9 - I tend to love the first 95% of each project, where you are flying through code, learning new things, seeing nothing become a polished product. The last 5%, the obscure bug fixes, the silly "features" that the client wants added that don't add anything tends to get boring.
- AncoraImparo 10y ago1 - I hate my life. Plan is to get the money together to start a non tech business. Tech is boring these days.
- grx 10y agoWhat's your alternative? Do you already have a plan for this new business?
- AncoraImparo 10y agoYep. Work hard for 5 more years, go back to my home country and open a café where I can meet people who are less predictable than the people I am surrounded by in tech. I am studying as much as I can in my free time on the topic of coffee, and my counterpart involved is doing the same regarding cuisine :)
- Traubenfuchs 10y agoI love programming and thinking about architecture. I hate bad requirements, trade offs that lead to even more unmaintainable code written by me, outdated... everything and design choice that make me throw up. Thus I will rate with 6/10 and part of that mediocre score comes from the relatively high income and benefits.
- Pfhreak 10y ago8 - I have a huge amount of latitude in solving complex problems, I work with people who are way smarter than me so I'm learning all the time. Workload and office noise are higher than I'd prefer.
- etblg 10y ago7 or an 8. Isn't my dream job, but it pays the bills, has interesting enough work, and I don't feel like shit going in to work each day.
- ollysb 10y ago10 Greenfield project, techs of my choosing(Elm + Elixir), work from home (in different country), lots of say in direction of product, so yeah, pretty darn good.
- sparrish 10y ago10 - I'm so blessed to have a job with interesting work, co-workers I enjoy, working from home so I get to hang with my wife and kids, and a nice paycheck to boot! What's not to love!
- raisedadead 10y agoHave two jobs, CAD and 3D R&D by Day, Open Source (maintainer) by Night. Love both. Happiness level: Day = 9, Night = 10. The work environment in R&D is pretty much cool, co-workers are awesome, pay is not way too great by works for me for now. And the Open Source work is what brings me peace. So yeah I f*ing love my jobs! Thanks for asking BTW.
- PedroBatista 10y ago5 Early 30s, spending days staring at computer screens is a nice way to waste your life, the whole RoR to Node.js to Go and React hype cycle made me realize I'm too old for this shit. Finding a job where I'm above of all that madness would be great but middle management is even worse and it's not in me. Maybe self-sufficiency farming would be a better route. Also, when you have a mostly physical demanding job, you can easily socialize with your friends afterwards, with dev work you're brain dead by the end of the day.
- sagivo 10y ago> the whole RoR to Node.js to Go and React hype cycle made me realize I'm too old for this shit. i think the same!
- aroc 10y agoThere's certainly some aspects of bullshittyness to it all, but I find it exciting. It's cool to see new ways of doing things coming into the industry and people trying to improve. I think when you start thinking that it's all or mostly all negative and "hype", then it's time to maybe look for a new role (I mean this in a very positive way - not trying to be rude here!). If you're 30+, have a ton of engineering experience and are starting to feel bored - look for maybe how you can leverage your years of skills and experience in a new role that you can really get excited about. Life works in chapters, being at the end of one (in terms of motivation/passion) isn't a bad thing. It just means you're ready for the next one.
- tspike 10y agoThe cynicism also comes from the fact that all these "improvements" are just well known existing techniques coming into and falling out of fashion. I do agree that finding a new chapter is a productive approach. It would be nice to find a physical job that doesn't pay peanuts and where you don't get treated like shit.
- grx 10y ago> Maybe self-sufficiency farming would be a better route. Wow, are you me? When people ask me if I feel like programming is what I want to do the rest of my life I often reply with "No, I think one day I'll just drop it all and move on the country side". Nice to know I am not the only one :)
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- jazoom 10y agoNo. That's why I develop software.
- zachsnow 10y ago10. Run the engineering side of a company that I cofounded. I work on fun problems, help real people run their businesses (which ended up being more important to me than I expected), and keep track of the so-called work/life balance. I still get to write code, too.
- fernandotakai 10y ago8 Late 20s, working remotely for an american company. work is not that stressful, i earn good money, i have unlimited vacation time (that i 100% use. just spent a week in london with my wife because we found cheap tickets). all in all, would recommend :)
- yigitozkavci 10y agoJunior software developer & cs student here. I love programming so much that my part-time job sometimes gets ahead of school. With a big rails codebase, there are so much to learn for a junior and that's exciting. It's been 6 months since I started, and I still feel awesome at work, so it's 10/10.
- jkmcf 10y ago6 mostly-love my job, but hate my company and its disorganization and poor communication.
- morinted 10y ago7. I do love what I do, but I think a few things would push me over into ideal territory: - A high pay - Working with open source - Option to work less: either 4 day weeks or <8 hour days The only downside to always working with my brain is that I get less enjoyment out of puzzle games and critical thinking in my free time. I'd rather have it this way than the other way around, though.
- slyzmud 10y ago4 - Semi-senior. I love programming, but sadly at my work is hard to do a good job. Management is always requiring fast solutions, doing meetings frequently and expecting to use JIRA as if it was the solution for every problem. Keeping that aside, I am working with node, React and Redux because my boss loves those new things. It is really annoying to use technologies that don't last a few months and break in every minor update.
- g051051 10y agoTech 8 - It's a Java shop, and I get to try out a lot of new things when we're evaluating them. Office 10 - Full-time WFH for over 3 years. People 8 - Generally a lot of good, smart people. General Happiness 9 - Good job, well respected, good pay, no crunch time, educational assistance, it's really a great gig.
- tbrownaw 10y ago8 I have coworkers and a boss I like, a (mostly informal) project that I own, and usually get asked rather than told if there's another project someone wants to borrow me for. OTOH anything relating to HR borders on the kafkaesque, and the processes around any project that's formal enough to be "on the radar" are almost as bad.
- aroc 10y ago10. Technology is incredibly interesting. But I base my number off the fact that I'm always pretty involved in product/growth/strategy at companies where I do software engineering and I'm 90% of the time working on an interesting side project. I swap back and forth between working for a company (always a 10-50 person startup) and working on my own company. I think to truly get the most out of engineering positions, you want to be really involved in the crafting of the overall solution to the problem, rather than being told precisely what it is and then immediately starting on the engineering work that needs to meet a handed over "spec".
- mgolawala 10y ago9 Mid 30s, Senior, Independent consultant, Generalist. Take on projects I find fun. Took 1 point off simply because income isn't steady and predictable.
- malux85 10y ago10 Early 30s. I love deep learning. Every day I'm challenged by my work, and inspired by the papers I read. I love helping people bring this tech into their business, and making sure real problems get solved The only thing that would change if I won the lottery would be I would have a larger GPU cluster
- dylanha 10y ago6/10 Total. Rationale: 3/4points Pay feels fair 1/3points surrounding people are funny, interesting, or mentors 1.5/2points difficulty of work is matched to me 0.5/0.5points purpose of work is meaningful 0/0.5points I exercise creativity I wish I did more than just sit in my chair all day and look at incorrect printf statements and compiler errors. I want to try fun things that I have to be creative about, like marketing or sales or video editing. I don't want to be a programmer my whole life. But I don't even know where to start. It would be nice to be paid to learn at other places too.
- enzolovesbacon 10y ago5, being an employee I'm in my late 20's, working for the same company for the past 5 years (worked on 3-5 projects in total, though), C, C++, Qt, VTK, ITK... it's very interesting and also my preferred stack to work with, I also learn(ed) a lot here, so no complains. But currently I'm bored and also the financial situation on the company isn't helping. So yeah... 5. 10, starting my own business After my 9-5 work and at weekends, I work on my own company (mobile security consulting). I'm full steam on this because everything non-technical is new to me, and I'm very excited to see where this is going.
- Jemaclus 10y agoDirector of Engineering, 12 years professional experience. Tech side: 10. I love programming, I love the language and framework we use, and I love having the ability to make the decisions we need to make without too much interference from above. I'm able to give back to the community in my spare time, which is great. Product side: 6ish. The problem space isn't particularly fascinating, but some of the issues we run into I can get pretty fired up about. All in all, I'd rather work on my own projects than my company projects, but them's the breaks. Office: 8. We're a 100% remote company. The flexibility is incredible and all my friends are jealous, but the main downside is that I've learned that I'm a fairly social creature, and I get really, really lonely working from home all the time. I got a new puppy a month ago, which seems to make things better. We'll see how it goes from here on out.
- grx 10y ago> I love the language and framework we use And what's that if you don't mind me asking? Also, > and I get really, really lonely working from home all the time. look up co-working spaces in your area! If you find a good one with private booths you might be able to stay productive but also have the benefit of having people to chat with if you want to. (and a good mix of startup people with seniors also does not hurt I guess..)
- ekzy 10y agoWhat language and framework you use that make you so happy?
- philippeback 10y agoI like my job. Because I am my own boss. New tech is fine. Lots can be leveraged through APIs and one has to accept to let go of some control in order to get results that are up to the expectations of today bleeding edge solutions. I have seen quite a couple of hype cycles and one shouldn't jump on all bandwagons. But money falls on the parade so it is important to be able to join it in some way.
- mgmt_wannabe 10y ago3. I work mid-management part time, software part time (lead a team of ~5). The management part is awful, not managing my team but interfacing with other teams is unbearable. The egos of other managers are sickening. Currently trying to figure out a way to give up the management part without being fired.
- xabotage 10y ago5 I get the feeling that every job requires me to exaggerate how passionate I am about what I'm doing and how strongly I believe in the company's "mission" (I missed several job opportunities before I learned how this game is played). The truth is I would rather work to live than live to work, but I still want to learn and grow where I do work (i.e. work at an innovative company with smart people). Are these mutually exclusive? My current company is good, but I have no idea what I'll do when I realize I can't pretend I like what I do anymore and quit or get fired.
- foobazzy 10y ago6 While I respect the fact that the overall critical thinking bar is high, I absolutely hate the fact that most of us have a hobby/timepass activity that involves coding. I think we should work on hobbies that are less brainy and more physically challenging(I'm thinking general fitness here).
- bluejekyll 10y ago10. writing software is like entering a virtual world, going behind the screen and controlling everything about that world. You get to be master of the universe, and there is no end to learning or creating new things.
- bas_ta 10y ago8 - I'm a junior developer working mostly with Angular.js and (previously) RoR. I love doing low-level things like solving a tiny problem, but I sometimes wish I was doing something more science-y than front-end development. I also miss my artistic side (I don't do web design as part of my job) and I would easily switch jobs if I could work for a more art-oriented or creative tech startup. The reason I often doubt whether software development is my true calling is because I don't like concentrating on just one thing in my life. Work-life balance could be better, for that matter :)
- madmax108 10y ago8 I work at a mid-sized startup operating in the eCommerce space. We're well funded (Series D, recently acquired another company) and have lots of clients so it's a good place to be at. Honestly, since we got bigger, I miss the joys of being able to code more engg driven features, and actually innovate, as opposed to be driven by what the clients want (which are usually fancier dashboards or more reliability). But being at a good work place at a stable time means I have time to take it easy at work and actually work on stuff that I'm more passionate about outside of work while not having to worry about financial stability.Currently doing a deep dive on Deep learning/LSTMs etc., reading like crazy, planning travel as well. I have good work-life balance, and I'm making sure I grow as an individual/developer while also contributing to the company so I'm in a pretty good place! :)
- grigjd3 10y ago4 - I get projects where I spend two or three months getting something really noteworthy accomplished only to see my efforts wasted as leadership changes their minds on what they want. My most important contributions lately have been ways to reduce long term maintenance, which is fine, but I have the leadership's attention and they don't seem to care about that stuff.
- acidus 10y ago9 - I love it, it's my passion. Programmer by day, programmer by night. Not a 10 because I struggle trying to enjoy life in alternative ways. Not that I haven't found other ways to enjoy life but it's harder to me to get out and make friends out of nothing vs staying in front of the computer.
- k__ 10y agoPoints: 7 10 years experience, freelancing as a front-end dev. Working remote for a start-up, it pays well and I don't have to meet people on a daily basis.
- punchingpeople 10y ago1 Already working on making an small goat cheese operation. Goats are amazingly cost efficient and reliable. To all the other jaded developers: I intend to create an small haven of freedom, but need smart people to do it. Something self-organized, self-sustainable and anarchic. Who is up for it?
- ld00d 10y agodo you have a ping pong table?
- jacobwg 10y agoCurrently an 8. Worked at an 8 or 9 a few years ago, architecting large parts of a startup's backend and really enjoyed the creative freedom. Then changed jobs and hopped on the new technology hype train and burned myself out down to probably a 2 or 3. As other people are mentioning, that can be a quick way to kill happiness. I'm all for learning new things, but in balance with productive, creative work, not as my primary job. Just recently changed jobs and the new company has gone above and beyond to make me feel welcome, which really contributes to job happiness. And it's a better blend of established and newer tech, so less turmoil. For context, I'm a senior web engineer.
- gaara87 10y ago10 I'm an Android Developer. 2 years in this job. Absolutely love it as over time I've expanded from just core coding all the way to being the bridge between design teams, business interests and server/backend/api teams. I think biggest contribution to my happiness of the job are the people i'm working with. They make it a place to go with a smile in the morning.
- Fonzarelli 10y ago6 - I quit my $80K job over a year ago, haven't been looking since. I enjoy web dev, but I can't find a good company to work for. Mostly due to unqualified mgmt and avg. devs who think they are rockstars.
- _tulpa 10y ago1 OK company but underpaid, pretty good team, and the technical bits are really interesting. The project is a 10 year boondoggle (still dogglin' strong), I've been here for four and there's been basically no progress since my first year when the only good manager left and nobody else would sign off on anything big enough to actually make a difference. It's incredibly frustrating to spend so much time and energy to go nowhere. Also the team is distributed over four locations, we work weird hours because of the nature of the project, and we travel reasonably often but flexible hours or working from home are disallowed "to make management easier". T minus three weeks till I'm out.
- ld00d 10y agoAt the moment, 8, but pretty soon they'll want me to help out with Delphi again, and it'll be hell (1). I'll probably start searching for a new job then. I wish I could just make my own sw and make money that way, but 1) I don't know what my product would be and 2) it's risky with kids and all. It'd be great to pick the technologies and environment and tools that I prefer.
- lj3 10y ago5. Senior Dev. 15 years of experience in web dev. Most of what I do is pumping out new features and tracking down and fixing bugs that never should have been there in the first place. As a domain, Web Development just isn't hard enough to challenge me anymore. My focus for the last 5 years has been figuring out ways to increase new feature throughput on whatever the latest framework is. That's largely because that's what my employer has valued. I had a brief stint (3 years) in video game development as well. I find the problems in game dev to be challenging, but I also like personal time and sleep, so I went back to web dev. I'm working on a few more ambitious side projects that aren't related to web dev and have me excited, but I don't have enough experience with it to jump fields. Also, it's slow going because I can only sit in a chair for so many hours a day and paid work takes priority.
- sigi45 10y agoI enjoy writing code somehow but i think the big issue is, that as a software engineere you don't have the feeling that it is a proper job (at least for me). What i'm doing, i enjoy enough, i have somewhat enough freedom but often enough you bump into your cage wall out of glass. Than you realize, that what you are doing is just a job and the only reason you are doing it, is because of the money. Of course you could have a job in a factory with low wage, standing and working all day long instead of having a high payed job sitting in front of a computer and doing what you enjoy doing somehow. But after all it is a job. It is a non fulfilling thing. Something to spend your time with, something the society approved of and appreciated it enough thru good money. But one day you realize that and still go to work because why would you write code all day long for some software which doesn't solve a problem? And with problem i mean something meaningful. But it doesn't help. Our society could be perfect but it doesn't want to be and you only look at it from a distance while walking home from your job and feeling more or less entertained from what you did 8-10 hours long. I don't hate my job, its easy enough, enjoyable enough but that is basically it. And that is with all whats happening in a lifetime anyway.
- anotherevan 10y ago6 to 7 I've been working with the same company for about 11 out of the last 17 years. Obviously there's a long history there and there's been a lot of ups and downs along the way. It is a small company and these days I am the only software developer in the company. Currently I would say the job is fine. Neither overly exciting nor overly vexing, not quite boring. But at this stage in my life this is perfect for me. I currently am working part-time (three days per week) and entirely remotely from home. The part-time started about five years ago by mutual agreement (they suggested it, I agreed to it, wife went back to work full-time which she had wanted to do for ages) working one day a week in the office. About a year later it became entirely remote as my daughter had increasing issues with anxiety and being unable to go to school. So yes, nothing exciting with the job, which has been a godsend given the huge amount of stress there has been at home with a kid who didn't go to school for two years. Who some days couldn't get outside her bedroom. With myriad appointments with medical professionals and with many days where you get up in the morning and walk on eggshells wondering what you're going to face that day. We've been fortunate that my work situation was flexible enough to allow me to do what needed to be done. But whenever someone asks, "How's work?" I always give a shrug and say, "Work's there, it's ticking along." Which, at this stage, is exactly what I need it to be. Paradoxically, I love working remotely, but miss working with other developers. We had a contractor in working on a project for us last year and I realised how much I miss the techie discussions. I'm hoping for the next job to be working with a 100% remote company. But for now, we've got daughter in a much healthier place, and back at school and just starting Year 11 (which has been a rough transition but we're getting there). I'm hoping work will just be there, ticking along for the next few years, as that's what we need right now. I know I went over the one/two sentences max stipulation, but sometimes you can't measure the happiness level at work in isolation to the rest of your life. Given my life at the moment, I'm very happy with work.
- raihansaputra 10y agoAgree with you on needing context. Glad everything worked out in the end.
- cyphar 10y ago10. I'm <20, working as a free software developer from home, and contributing to the future of container runtimes. What isn't there to love about that?
- zippy786 10y agoEarly 30s. Was 8 when I was writing ruby, 7 when using Rails, now Node.js it is 1.
- voycey 10y ago9 Would be a solid 10 as I love the actual work I do but being so busy at the moment means I am basically sat on my ass 12 hours a day - one of the downsides of working at home is not even getting your "Morning stroll to work" - not great for the waistline!
- jasonkester 10y agoThere's nothing wrong with taking that morning stroll to the home office. It may not be the most direct route, but as you say, it's a lot more enjoyable. I often do mine on a mountain bike. Fortunately, my home office complex has shower facilities.
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- akulbe 10y agoYou might want to consider investing in a treadmill desk. This is a picture of my office setup. I did it this way, so I could alternate between sitting and walking. It's the best! https://www.dropbox.com/s/089qqvaa7j5ob77/office_setup.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/089qqvaa7j5ob77/office_setup.jpg?d...
- voycey 10y agoI have honestly looked at all of these but I really dont think you can get any meaningful "brain work" done on these, maybe others can - I just definitely can't!
- sidcool 10y agoI absolutely love it. Been a programmer for long time, but love it. Only concern is that with age, your programming skills matter less and management skills matter more. I am not a very good Manager. But I love what I do.
- jetti 10y ago2 I was misled to think this was a .net developer role when in fact it is ETL with SSIS. The only reason I have 2 instead of 1 is that the people I work with are friendly
- eecks 10y ago9 Only because I would like a few more benefits with my job (health insurance, free gym)
- nunez 10y agoAbout a 6. I enjoy writing code and troubleshooting but there is a ceiling on how much i can make doing this and I'm pretty close it. I'd rather go into sales or management so i can lead teams and make more money.
- nicolashahn 10y ago8 Working at a ~20 person startup. Paid a little more than my market value, very flexible work-from-home/time off to do errands, unlimited PTO, interesting and intelligent coworkers, very little bureaucratic BS, nice boss that I'm learning a lot from, 15 minute motorcycle ride from home in a city I love (San Francisco), and I'm working on a product I genuinely believe can make a huge impact in our industry. 2 points off because I wish there were more people in the office, it feels lonely at times. And while my boss the CTO is extremely smart and hard working, we're all in somewhat uncharted territory as far as our code base which he inherited from a less skilled CTO, as well as there not being much devops talent on our team. Full disclosure: I'm only 24 and have been working as an engineer for only a year, so I'm not as jaded as a lot of people here seem.
- jotato 10y agoProgramming/Tech: 9. I really enjoy working in the field. My dissatisfaction comes from Employment: 5. I am in consulting...I don't think it is for me. My opinion is often ignored. I don't get to explore what I want, and am often considered "staff aug". I have nearly a decade in start-ups. I miss that. I think my next gig will be a remote one - start-up or not. I was on a contract where I was able to work remote for a year. It was the best schedule for me. Being able to eat lunch with my family, start/finish early, no traffic. It was great. Did I mention there was no traffic! :)
- dagw 10y ago7 on average. 70% of my time is doing the same data analysis tasks I've already done a dozen time using models that are pretty much 'done', and that stuff is a 5-6. The other 30% is developing and improving new models and techniques and that 's an 8-10.
- yoloswagins 10y ago8 Software Engineer I get to look for interesting patterns in real estate data. I can do some interesting tech(to me), so I'm pleased with my job.