4 ms·

What exactly is boring about it? Not /s, I'm interested to know.

usrme 7y ago
I can't speak for the author, but in my own case it's being so far removed from the actual end user that the problems being solved start to look less like problems and more like glorified yak shaving. The size of the company also starts to affect the size of the feedback loop - the sheer amount of people involved drastically increases the time to market, so to speak, for a given feature or 'deliverable', which can cause frustration. Over time this frustration builds up into a sort of 'death by a thousand paper cuts' situation. I will soon be going down the route of leaving a rather large company in favor of a start-up and I am largely driven by wanting to feel that what I am doing matters to someone other than my manager or manager's manager. Here's a quote that I haven't seen in this post so far: "Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying." ― Studs Terkel
throwaway1m 7y ago
Predictability of everything.
- iabacu 7y ago
  Go try something more risky, with a big (but uncertain) upside. You choose what the upside is, it does not have to be financial.
- mikorym 7y ago
  Are you a <some definition of normal> developer? Personally, I am much more interested in mathematics than necessarily coding and a lot of my "this is super boring" rants are related to that. Automation for me (in the job context), for instance, is not nearly as interesting as it would be for someone else. I am working on a large side project (in mathematical agriculture) that would aim to correct this personal imbalance, but I also wouldn't be upset if that failed and in 5 years from now I work for a big company, but with the ability to use my mathematics skills. Maybe I am too young? Having said that, my current job is boring. I think that the "my end goal is pointless" only becomes relevant after one ends the "at least I am learning skills" phase.

I can't speak for the author, but in my own case it's being so far removed from the actual end user that the problems being solved start to look less like problems and more like glorified yak shaving. The size of the company also starts to affect the size of the feedback loop - the sheer amount of people involved drastically increases the time to market, so to speak, for a given feature or 'deliverable', which can cause frustration. Over time this frustration builds up into a sort of 'death by a thousand paper cuts' situation. I will soon be going down the route of leaving a rather large company in favor of a start-up and I am largely driven by wanting to feel that what I am doing matters to someone other than my manager or manager's manager. Here's a quote that I haven't seen in this post so far: "Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying." ― Studs Terkel

throwaway1m 7y ago

Predictability of everything.

iabacu 7y ago
Go try something more risky, with a big (but uncertain) upside. You choose what the upside is, it does not have to be financial.
mikorym 7y ago
Are you a <some definition of normal> developer? Personally, I am much more interested in mathematics than necessarily coding and a lot of my "this is super boring" rants are related to that. Automation for me (in the job context), for instance, is not nearly as interesting as it would be for someone else. I am working on a large side project (in mathematical agriculture) that would aim to correct this personal imbalance, but I also wouldn't be upset if that failed and in 5 years from now I work for a big company, but with the ability to use my mathematics skills. Maybe I am too young? Having said that, my current job is boring. I think that the "my end goal is pointless" only becomes relevant after one ends the "at least I am learning skills" phase.