7 ms·

I have a subtly different take on this; op is cheating themselves. They work in a field famous for people deriving immense satisfaction from their job, but they

I have a subtly different take on this; op is cheating themselves. They work in a field famous for people deriving immense satisfaction from their job, but they aren't because they are living down to the expectations of others.

lykr0n 6y ago
It's selection bias. We're inundated with stories of how Person X changed the world with their software, or Person Y who solved this amazing issue, or Company Z is doing this cool thing- with out realizing that we're only seeing the people who broke through the mundane. Working at a FANNG means you might get a chance at being in the room where they're picking people for a new team that might do something cool. Where I work, we have this amazing internal database system we're going to open source. It's amazing tech, but for the 10 developers who made it, we have 1000 doing grunt work solving problems like "We need to get Apple Sign In working, but to do that we need to add X to Service A, Y to Service B, and refactor how we store accounts to make it work." It's not exciting.
- throw51319 6y ago
  Yeah good post here. Even within each of these organizations, there's always people starting to work on the "cool" project. You could get yourself to work on it, but if you're not spearheading it you'll prob end up as one of the guys who does 80% of the work to make the last 20% of the design work. Essentially my job right now. Learning a lot, but man is it frustrating.
icedchai 6y ago
Seriously? I don't know anyone in this field who derives immense satisfaction from their job. Maybe if they're less than 5 years out of school and reality still hasn't hit yet...
- sokoloff 6y ago
  I loved every week (though not every hour) of my computer programming jobs. I literally do it for free in my spare time and here some fools are willing to pay me handsomely to do it at their little glass and concrete spreadsheet/Powerpoint mine. The only "catch" is I have to work on problems they pick instead of ones I pick. Sounds fair enough to me; where do I sign?!
  - coolspot 6y ago
    Yeah, I think lots of engineers feel the same. We just love to solve puzzles, coincidentally this is also well paid.
    - vegesm 6y ago
      What GP meant is that after 5 years, you are just solving the same puzzles again and again.
      - Godel_unicode 6y ago
        If you feel this way then maybe programming isn't for you. Which is fine. But that doesn't make it that way for other people. There are a large number of programmers in this world, there's room for there to both be tons of people who love their jobs and tons of people who hate them. You should ask yourself, though: why are you arguing so hard against other people, who you don't know, enjoying their jobs? Why is it so important to you that this myth of happiness be debunked?
- Godel_unicode 6y ago
  I think you might be in a bubble of evil, I know tons of people who love their programming jobs.
  - icedchai 6y ago
    I've had some very enjoyable periods of time across various programming jobs, but it's far from the norm. I know plenty of folks who tolerate their jobs, are okay with them. But actually love their jobs most of the time? No way.
- maximente 6y ago
  yikes, this is painful to read. the power software engineers wield is almost unfair, compared to non-software laborers - there's unlimited ways in which to get paid fairly well, ridiculously easy lifestyle, and also work on tech that aligns with doing good in the world, generally speaking. one can't have it all at the same time... but with software, you can probably have one of the largest spreads of [mission, comfortable income, low stress, {fill in with your requirement}] out of lots of other jobs.
  - icedchai 6y ago
    It's easy and pays well, yes. It's generally not satisfying though. Maybe 20% of the time you're working on solving an interesting problem or doing what feels like "real" work. Much of the time you're spending in awful meetings / conference calls, answering emails, or working on features that nobody's even going to use. Maybe it's different in Silicon Valley.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - Godel_unicode 6y ago
      It sounds like programming isn't for you. I hope you find happiness in whatever other things you choose to do.
      - icedchai 6y ago
        I've been programming for 30+ years, since I was a teenager. I enjoy it more as a hobby than as a career, but it does pay well.
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  Stop working for large companies then. Large companies always have politics getting in the way of engineering decisions, resulting in annoyed engineers who can't do satisfying work. Small organisations have less politics, more creative freedom (usually) and you can have a larger impact on the organisation. However, they usually pay less, too. If your main priority is money then you might have to suck up the misery.
  - geggam 6y ago
    Work is not really something I have come to identify myself with. Its a way to make money so I can do the things I enjoy. Trying to work at something you enjoy has always been the path to not enjoying that which you used to, for me anyway.
kerkeslager 6y ago
> They work in a field famous for people deriving immense satisfaction from their job Do they? Not saying you're wrong, I'm really asking. It's not my perception that FAANG software devs have high satisfaction--more often the impression I have from talking to FAANG devs is that they feel trapped in golden handcuffs. But I'm open to the possibility that someone has better evidence than me.
- nuclear_eclipse 6y ago
  It can vary highly from one half to the next, and changes with your teams, projects, etc. It can be extraordinarily rewarding to work on products that everyone you know uses every day. It can also be very frustrating and demoralizing to work on important components of the stack that noone inside or outside the company ever notices unless it breaks. The golden handcuffs are real, but most of FAANG gives you ample opportunity to switch teams and projects to find something to work on something that interests you, fulfills you, or lets you learn something that traditional companies would never let you work on unless you already had "industry experience". If you are proactive–and are "meeting expectations" in your current position–you almost certainly have the freedom to find something new whenever you start to get bored.
  - kerkeslager 6y ago
    You're answering a subtly different question than the one I'm asking. It sounds like you're saying people have opportunities to take steps to find satisfaction at FAANG jobs, but I'm asking, do people actually find satisfaction at FAANG jobs? I can see how self-directed-ness might give people a sense of agency. And I can also see how being able to seek out novelty could keep you from getting bored. But I don't think that agency and interest are enough to equate to satisfaction for me. For example, I think it would be difficult for me to find satisfaction at Facebook, Amazon, or Google, because the vast majority of the effect I see these companies having is harmful--I'd be waking up and going to a job where I believed I was making the world worse. No amount of agency or novelty would fix that. Obviously everyone is different, so maybe FAANG employees are able to find satisfaction in ways that I can't. I don't know--I'm genuinely curious if there's any actual data.

lykr0n 6y ago

It's selection bias. We're inundated with stories of how Person X changed the world with their software, or Person Y who solved this amazing issue, or Company Z is doing this cool thing- with out realizing that we're only seeing the people who broke through the mundane. Working at a FANNG means you might get a chance at being in the room where they're picking people for a new team that might do something cool. Where I work, we have this amazing internal database system we're going to open source. It's amazing tech, but for the 10 developers who made it, we have 1000 doing grunt work solving problems like "We need to get Apple Sign In working, but to do that we need to add X to Service A, Y to Service B, and refactor how we store accounts to make it work." It's not exciting.

throw51319 6y ago
Yeah good post here. Even within each of these organizations, there's always people starting to work on the "cool" project. You could get yourself to work on it, but if you're not spearheading it you'll prob end up as one of the guys who does 80% of the work to make the last 20% of the design work. Essentially my job right now. Learning a lot, but man is it frustrating.

icedchai 6y ago

Seriously? I don't know anyone in this field who derives immense satisfaction from their job. Maybe if they're less than 5 years out of school and reality still hasn't hit yet...

sokoloff 6y ago
I loved every week (though not every hour) of my computer programming jobs. I literally do it for free in my spare time and here some fools are willing to pay me handsomely to do it at their little glass and concrete spreadsheet/Powerpoint mine. The only "catch" is I have to work on problems they pick instead of ones I pick. Sounds fair enough to me; where do I sign?!
- coolspot 6y ago
  Yeah, I think lots of engineers feel the same. We just love to solve puzzles, coincidentally this is also well paid.
  - vegesm 6y ago
    What GP meant is that after 5 years, you are just solving the same puzzles again and again.
    - Godel_unicode 6y ago
      If you feel this way then maybe programming isn't for you. Which is fine. But that doesn't make it that way for other people. There are a large number of programmers in this world, there's room for there to both be tons of people who love their jobs and tons of people who hate them. You should ask yourself, though: why are you arguing so hard against other people, who you don't know, enjoying their jobs? Why is it so important to you that this myth of happiness be debunked?
Godel_unicode 6y ago
I think you might be in a bubble of evil, I know tons of people who love their programming jobs.
- icedchai 6y ago
  I've had some very enjoyable periods of time across various programming jobs, but it's far from the norm. I know plenty of folks who tolerate their jobs, are okay with them. But actually love their jobs most of the time? No way.
maximente 6y ago
yikes, this is painful to read. the power software engineers wield is almost unfair, compared to non-software laborers - there's unlimited ways in which to get paid fairly well, ridiculously easy lifestyle, and also work on tech that aligns with doing good in the world, generally speaking. one can't have it all at the same time... but with software, you can probably have one of the largest spreads of [mission, comfortable income, low stress, {fill in with your requirement}] out of lots of other jobs.
- icedchai 6y ago
  It's easy and pays well, yes. It's generally not satisfying though. Maybe 20% of the time you're working on solving an interesting problem or doing what feels like "real" work. Much of the time you're spending in awful meetings / conference calls, answering emails, or working on features that nobody's even going to use. Maybe it's different in Silicon Valley.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Godel_unicode 6y ago
    It sounds like programming isn't for you. I hope you find happiness in whatever other things you choose to do.
    - icedchai 6y ago
      I've been programming for 30+ years, since I was a teenager. I enjoy it more as a hobby than as a career, but it does pay well.
marcus_holmes 6y ago
Stop working for large companies then. Large companies always have politics getting in the way of engineering decisions, resulting in annoyed engineers who can't do satisfying work. Small organisations have less politics, more creative freedom (usually) and you can have a larger impact on the organisation. However, they usually pay less, too. If your main priority is money then you might have to suck up the misery.
- geggam 6y ago
  Work is not really something I have come to identify myself with. Its a way to make money so I can do the things I enjoy. Trying to work at something you enjoy has always been the path to not enjoying that which you used to, for me anyway.

kerkeslager 6y ago

> They work in a field famous for people deriving immense satisfaction from their job Do they? Not saying you're wrong, I'm really asking. It's not my perception that FAANG software devs have high satisfaction--more often the impression I have from talking to FAANG devs is that they feel trapped in golden handcuffs. But I'm open to the possibility that someone has better evidence than me.

nuclear_eclipse 6y ago
It can vary highly from one half to the next, and changes with your teams, projects, etc. It can be extraordinarily rewarding to work on products that everyone you know uses every day. It can also be very frustrating and demoralizing to work on important components of the stack that noone inside or outside the company ever notices unless it breaks. The golden handcuffs are real, but most of FAANG gives you ample opportunity to switch teams and projects to find something to work on something that interests you, fulfills you, or lets you learn something that traditional companies would never let you work on unless you already had "industry experience". If you are proactive–and are "meeting expectations" in your current position–you almost certainly have the freedom to find something new whenever you start to get bored.
- kerkeslager 6y ago
  You're answering a subtly different question than the one I'm asking. It sounds like you're saying people have opportunities to take steps to find satisfaction at FAANG jobs, but I'm asking, do people actually find satisfaction at FAANG jobs? I can see how self-directed-ness might give people a sense of agency. And I can also see how being able to seek out novelty could keep you from getting bored. But I don't think that agency and interest are enough to equate to satisfaction for me. For example, I think it would be difficult for me to find satisfaction at Facebook, Amazon, or Google, because the vast majority of the effect I see these companies having is harmful--I'd be waking up and going to a job where I believed I was making the world worse. No amount of agency or novelty would fix that. Obviously everyone is different, so maybe FAANG employees are able to find satisfaction in ways that I can't. I don't know--I'm genuinely curious if there's any actual data.