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Is this view that common? I'm all for work-life balance and working on passion projects on the side. But do that many people really think of their developer j

Is this view that common? I'm all for work-life balance and working on passion projects on the side. But do that many people really think of their developer job as a salary and a daily grind?

wambotron 8y ago
I do. I've only had two jobs I truly enjoyed doing the 9-5 work for, all the rest have been a slog to get through to pay for my other interests and family-related stuff.
juliangoldsmith 8y ago
A job doesn't have to be a calling, and a job that isn't a calling doesn't have to be a soul-crushing grind. Most developer jobs are for CRUD apps, and you'll rarely be doing greenfield development. There's not a whole lot of room for passion there. If you just treat it as a job, though, rather than something you have to force yourself to be passionate about, it doesn't need to be that interesting. Once you make a living, you can satisfy your creative urges elsewhere.
- scaryspooky 8y ago
  I've always wondered who the magical developers are that did the greenfield development of every project I've been on-boarded to. I never seem to get ahead of the maintenance grind to the point of being one of those creating the mess instead of wading through the mess.
  - tcrow 8y ago
    One way to get ahead of it is to try pitching proposals to problems your organization can't afford to ignore.
  - gonzo41 8y ago
    Yeah me too. But looking through the doco i keep seeing the names of people on all the green field work are the same. I think those people live the work life equivalent of hitting all green lights.
reitanqild 8y ago
I work on "boring" stuff (CRUD, frontend and backend) and love it. Maybe because I remember all to well what jobs I used to have: - farm hand (heavy work on smaller less automated farms) - construction (noisy, wet, dusty etc) - security - help desk Being paid 8 hours a day to work on borderline interesting tasks, getting free lunch, being paid to study etc feels great. Oh, and I can work from home if I need to. I also make my work interesting by putting some effort into it.
- matt2ray 8y ago
  How do you get over the chaos that is front end (hip frameworks every week).
  - reitanqild 8y ago
    Agree this is a problem. Here's how we make it work: Work with great people. Also code reviews make sure new dependencies don't usually in unless the team agrees (we are a reasonable bunch). Standardized on Angular. It seems to me Angular has less churn. Yes: there is a life cycle and we have to follow the releases but it is mostly well documented.
tigershark 8y ago
For me it doesn’t seem a daily grind. When I am actually writing software, I completely love it, even after 14 years of doing it professionally full time (and several years part time during uni). The only parts that I never liked were the bureaucratic bullshit, production support even at insane hours of the day, and the politics with your colleagues. Usually those were a relatively small part (20-40%) of the total and I still could enjoy writing good software the rest of the time. Now finally contracting I’m in a position were my coding skills are really appreciated and I enjoy my time coding and helping my colleagues without all the bullshit. Maybe I don’t score high in the interesting jobs lottery, but I’m perfectly happy of the pretty good amount of money that I get doing something that I love in old, boring, huge companies.

Is this view that common? I'm all for work-life balance and working on passion projects on the side. But do that many people really think of their developer job as a salary and a daily grind?

wambotron 8y ago

I do. I've only had two jobs I truly enjoyed doing the 9-5 work for, all the rest have been a slog to get through to pay for my other interests and family-related stuff.

juliangoldsmith 8y ago

A job doesn't have to be a calling, and a job that isn't a calling doesn't have to be a soul-crushing grind. Most developer jobs are for CRUD apps, and you'll rarely be doing greenfield development. There's not a whole lot of room for passion there. If you just treat it as a job, though, rather than something you have to force yourself to be passionate about, it doesn't need to be that interesting. Once you make a living, you can satisfy your creative urges elsewhere.

scaryspooky 8y ago
I've always wondered who the magical developers are that did the greenfield development of every project I've been on-boarded to. I never seem to get ahead of the maintenance grind to the point of being one of those creating the mess instead of wading through the mess.
- tcrow 8y ago
  One way to get ahead of it is to try pitching proposals to problems your organization can't afford to ignore.
- gonzo41 8y ago
  Yeah me too. But looking through the doco i keep seeing the names of people on all the green field work are the same. I think those people live the work life equivalent of hitting all green lights.

reitanqild 8y ago

I work on "boring" stuff (CRUD, frontend and backend) and love it. Maybe because I remember all to well what jobs I used to have: - farm hand (heavy work on smaller less automated farms) - construction (noisy, wet, dusty etc) - security - help desk Being paid 8 hours a day to work on borderline interesting tasks, getting free lunch, being paid to study etc feels great. Oh, and I can work from home if I need to. I also make my work interesting by putting some effort into it.

matt2ray 8y ago
How do you get over the chaos that is front end (hip frameworks every week).
- reitanqild 8y ago
  Agree this is a problem. Here's how we make it work: Work with great people. Also code reviews make sure new dependencies don't usually in unless the team agrees (we are a reasonable bunch). Standardized on Angular. It seems to me Angular has less churn. Yes: there is a life cycle and we have to follow the releases but it is mostly well documented.

tigershark 8y ago

For me it doesn’t seem a daily grind. When I am actually writing software, I completely love it, even after 14 years of doing it professionally full time (and several years part time during uni). The only parts that I never liked were the bureaucratic bullshit, production support even at insane hours of the day, and the politics with your colleagues. Usually those were a relatively small part (20-40%) of the total and I still could enjoy writing good software the rest of the time. Now finally contracting I’m in a position were my coding skills are really appreciated and I enjoy my time coding and helping my colleagues without all the bullshit. Maybe I don’t score high in the interesting jobs lottery, but I’m perfectly happy of the pretty good amount of money that I get doing something that I love in old, boring, huge companies.