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I held out for a little over 30 years, but ultimately reached a similar point. I just lost patience with the various ways I was forced to keep a part of my brai
by notacoward 6y ago
I held out for a little over 30 years, but ultimately reached a similar point. I just lost patience with the various ways I was forced to keep a part of my brain devoted to work at all times, with the focus on "move fast" over quality, with the dizzying array of bad choices in languages, idioms, and configuration/deployment methods, with the endless ego wars, etc. Note that none of these had much to do with the work of writing software itself; they were all aspects of doing it with other people and even more specifically for profit. After having worked at a dozen jobs and even more projects, I knew that switching again would seem better for about a year and then descend into the same grind, which I was disinclined to do when I didn't really need to. So I left.
To be fair, while I do think the tech industry has some problems (which I've expounded on elsewhere), a lot of my misery was self-inflicted. I might have been able to put up with a lot if I were the kind of person who uses influence to cherry-pick the most enjoyable tasks, but I'm the kind of person who takes the most important unclaimed tasks - which are often unclaimed because they're unpleasant. I'm proud of that, but it's not conducive to happiness. Failure to find that balance is mostly my own fault.
So my advice to anyone reading the OP (or my own first paragraph) and thinking along the same lines is: spend some time figuring out what kind of role or specialty within tech would actually make you happy and work toward it ... or toward a comfortable exit if that's your conclusion. Chasing dollars (especially FAANG/VC dollars) might work out almost by accident, or you might end up damaging yourself. Just drifting along, doing what everyone else does or says you should do, will not cut it.
- giantg2 6y ago"I'm the kind of person who takes the most important unclaimed tasks - which are often unclaimed because they're unpleasant." I feel you. I've always been one to fill the gaps on the team. You need someone to learn this new tech/process/etc - sure, I'll do it. It's hurt my career. Now I'm 9 years in and I'm not an expert in anything (anything that matters - they outsourced the tech/system I was an expert at), just average/passable at a bunch of stuff. I'll be an intermediate developer permanently.
- notacoward 6y agoSometimes it significantly helped my career, when the New Thing that I learned became important and interesting and a gateway to new experiences like giving talks or traveling to other countries. But other times it left me toiling in the shadows while others had all the fun. Like anything, I guess, it's a mix.
- giantg2 6y agoThe new stuff for me has always been boring things that we are required to do. Usually they are a small volume compared to the regular work, so they aren't seen as valuable. For example, I learnt the basics of Blue Prism, as I was asked to. It's really just an automation stop-gap until the underlying system can be updated or replaced to handle the target scenario. Then I was told we wouldn't even be using it, so I learnt it for nothing.
- vbsteven 6y agoYou can spin that around to a positive if you want to. I'm in a similar situation where I know just enough about a lot of things and that is my strength. I can be assigned to pretty much anything tech related which means I see a lot of different projects and roles (as a freelancer) which keeps things exciting for me instead of burning out after 6 months on the same mobile app with the same tech stack and the same people.
- giantg2 6y agoI guess I just suck
- maximente 6y agobeing able and willing to learn new things is one of the most attractive qualities for candidates when we are hiring. we try not to execute on that in the sense of rewrite it every 6 months, but it is typically a signal for individuals who possess some level of humility, patience, willingness to get trained up, struggle a little bit, etc. - all very important things for technical staff.