11 ms·

Posting from a throwaway because I know my current team are also HNers and they know of my other account but (as I’m sure some can relate) My advice is to try

Posting from a throwaway because I know my current team are also HNers and they know of my other account but (as I’m sure some can relate) My advice is to try to recognize when one's career is no longer fulfilling; save a little money along the way, and pivot hard in search of work/life satisfaction even if it means a big downgrade in income. Is exactly my plan in 2021. I’m leaving SWE and going back to school for finance and accounting. I’ve always enjoyed and been skilled at the numbers game and have done bookkeeping for a Local community outreach group for many years, I’ve found a very tangible calm doing something more quantitative than building CI/CD pipelines and roadmaps and oncall and feature standups and andnand and and and. I am so thoroughly burned out, disaffected and otherwise sick of my career and some of the doing this after 17 years that I’ve begun having legitimate anxiety attacks. I had two sitting at my desk last week. When I turned around to get up and get a glass of water I saw the dog cowering in the corner. He had never seen me like that. That’s when I knew it was time to go. Well, actually no I knew several years ago but the golden handcuffs were clamped tight and I was too scared to go. Not anymore. Bye.

BlargMcLarg 6y ago
If I may: what exactly is the reason for the SWE disdain? From your post, I can kind-of relate with my own disdain for enterprise practices attempting to turn the field into a factory job and piling on more and more responsibilities. Despite that, I still hold a love for creating things through code (which is also rapidly being taken away by these practices). This is not to dissuade your choice. Rather, I'm looking for similarities between myself and others, and potential pitfalls to avoid.
- simonbarker87 6y ago
  At the risk of putting words in OPs mouth, sounds like SCRUM burn out and continually keeping up with changing tech. I wish them the best of luck with their change of career.
  - mangochutney 6y ago
    Eh, you're not wrong, amigo. And thanks for the words.
  - hyko 6y ago
    SCRUM burn out?
    - simonbarker87 6y ago
      Daily stand ups, retros, refinements, planning, always striving for smaller tickets, deadlines every two weeks, not enough time to deal with tech debt, not enough time to focus on chunkier bits of work, story points, back to back to back to back never ending sprints. I don’t necessarily believe all of the points above are negative but scrum can be an exhausting way to work.
      - blunte 6y ago
        Most of my career has been solo generalist within companies and freelance, so what you describe wasn't my problem... but now I'm in the exact situation you so succinctly described! The not enough time to deal with technical debt problem is my biggest complaint.
      - hyko 6y ago
        This doesn’t really sound like SCRUM. One of the key notions is that teams work at a sustainable pace; if there’s not enough time to deal with tech debt and people are burning out then this pace is by definition unsustainable. The working conditions you describe also sound like they have no slack whatsoever (not a SCRUM requirement but not a bad idea either). There shouldn’t be deadlines every two weeks, instead you should be working towards a sprint goal. If the goal is not achieved then you can use that knowledge in the next sprint to reduce the amount of scope you try to complete. There are no deadlines per se, because deadlines try to fix scope and time, whereas a sprint only fixes time. The process of estimation and story pointing is where things become more art than science, but provided you are consistent in your approaches this mechanism prevents our inherent lack of foresight from becoming a catastrophic prediction failure. Meetings like stand ups, retros, and backlog refinement can be super effective tools but they have to be run properly and tightly, otherwise they become worse than nothing. I guess in this hypothetical team the thing to do would be to raise with the Scrum Master that you’re exhausted, raise in the retro that there are deficiencies in the process etc. and get back to a more sane baseline.
- mangochutney 6y ago
  I used to struggle finding the words for it, then I found this thread[1]. Instead of a long diatribe more or less saying the same thing, I think that article sums up 99% of it. Generally speaking: I just don't have the energy for the amounts of bullshit that comes with being in this career anymore. No job is immune from bullshit, this much is true--but I kind of hate this cop out because it strips agency from people in minimizing the amount of bullshit they are subjected to on a daily basis. For me, that means to hell with this career. I very much want to do something different, so that's what's going to happen. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25251029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25251029 Good luck on whatever voyage and path you end up taking, I genuinely hope you find a spot of zen for you and yours. EDIT: BY THE WAY--I will probably never stop coding, as there are always opportunities to be efficient in bookkeeping and do some low level automation (in fact I do this already). I've also got a home lab running a few local services and I enjoy tinkering. I'm just not at all interested in writing and maintaining feature/production code for another SaaS platform or "tech company". Not at all. Never again. The idea of even interviewing for one of these jobs has the heart rate ticking up and the jaw to clinch up.
  - BlargMcLarg 6y ago
    Thanks. The response is quite enlightening. It seems most people still hold their love for coding or what spawns from that coding. It is the environment in which they code, that creates most of the frustration (and doesn't seem to be stopping anytime soon). I wish you the same luck.
    - mangochutney 6y ago
      It is the environment in which they code, that creates most of the frustration Wholeheartedly agreed
anonymoushn 6y ago
I'm applying for jobs currently and I really cannot bring myself to join some company if their stated goal for the next couple person-decades of engineering is to work really hard to get data out of an RDBMS into a bunch of different key-value stores so they can rent overpriced commodity hardware to talk to the key-value stores instead of buying slightly more expensive hardware (I mean more expensive per machine, but less expensive per web site) to host the RDMBS and skipping all the work. For their low-traffic web site. And these jobs are a surprisingly high portion of backend positions out there.

BlargMcLarg 6y ago

If I may: what exactly is the reason for the SWE disdain? From your post, I can kind-of relate with my own disdain for enterprise practices attempting to turn the field into a factory job and piling on more and more responsibilities. Despite that, I still hold a love for creating things through code (which is also rapidly being taken away by these practices). This is not to dissuade your choice. Rather, I'm looking for similarities between myself and others, and potential pitfalls to avoid.

simonbarker87 6y ago
At the risk of putting words in OPs mouth, sounds like SCRUM burn out and continually keeping up with changing tech. I wish them the best of luck with their change of career.
- mangochutney 6y ago
  Eh, you're not wrong, amigo. And thanks for the words.
- hyko 6y ago
  SCRUM burn out?
  - simonbarker87 6y ago
    Daily stand ups, retros, refinements, planning, always striving for smaller tickets, deadlines every two weeks, not enough time to deal with tech debt, not enough time to focus on chunkier bits of work, story points, back to back to back to back never ending sprints. I don’t necessarily believe all of the points above are negative but scrum can be an exhausting way to work.
    - blunte 6y ago
      Most of my career has been solo generalist within companies and freelance, so what you describe wasn't my problem... but now I'm in the exact situation you so succinctly described! The not enough time to deal with technical debt problem is my biggest complaint.
    - hyko 6y ago
      This doesn’t really sound like SCRUM. One of the key notions is that teams work at a sustainable pace; if there’s not enough time to deal with tech debt and people are burning out then this pace is by definition unsustainable. The working conditions you describe also sound like they have no slack whatsoever (not a SCRUM requirement but not a bad idea either). There shouldn’t be deadlines every two weeks, instead you should be working towards a sprint goal. If the goal is not achieved then you can use that knowledge in the next sprint to reduce the amount of scope you try to complete. There are no deadlines per se, because deadlines try to fix scope and time, whereas a sprint only fixes time. The process of estimation and story pointing is where things become more art than science, but provided you are consistent in your approaches this mechanism prevents our inherent lack of foresight from becoming a catastrophic prediction failure. Meetings like stand ups, retros, and backlog refinement can be super effective tools but they have to be run properly and tightly, otherwise they become worse than nothing. I guess in this hypothetical team the thing to do would be to raise with the Scrum Master that you’re exhausted, raise in the retro that there are deficiencies in the process etc. and get back to a more sane baseline.
mangochutney 6y ago
I used to struggle finding the words for it, then I found this thread[1]. Instead of a long diatribe more or less saying the same thing, I think that article sums up 99% of it. Generally speaking: I just don't have the energy for the amounts of bullshit that comes with being in this career anymore. No job is immune from bullshit, this much is true--but I kind of hate this cop out because it strips agency from people in minimizing the amount of bullshit they are subjected to on a daily basis. For me, that means to hell with this career. I very much want to do something different, so that's what's going to happen. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25251029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25251029 Good luck on whatever voyage and path you end up taking, I genuinely hope you find a spot of zen for you and yours. EDIT: BY THE WAY--I will probably never stop coding, as there are always opportunities to be efficient in bookkeeping and do some low level automation (in fact I do this already). I've also got a home lab running a few local services and I enjoy tinkering. I'm just not at all interested in writing and maintaining feature/production code for another SaaS platform or "tech company". Not at all. Never again. The idea of even interviewing for one of these jobs has the heart rate ticking up and the jaw to clinch up.
- BlargMcLarg 6y ago
  Thanks. The response is quite enlightening. It seems most people still hold their love for coding or what spawns from that coding. It is the environment in which they code, that creates most of the frustration (and doesn't seem to be stopping anytime soon). I wish you the same luck.
  - mangochutney 6y ago
    It is the environment in which they code, that creates most of the frustration Wholeheartedly agreed

anonymoushn 6y ago

I'm applying for jobs currently and I really cannot bring myself to join some company if their stated goal for the next couple person-decades of engineering is to work really hard to get data out of an RDBMS into a bunch of different key-value stores so they can rent overpriced commodity hardware to talk to the key-value stores instead of buying slightly more expensive hardware (I mean more expensive per machine, but less expensive per web site) to host the RDMBS and skipping all the work. For their low-traffic web site. And these jobs are a surprisingly high portion of backend positions out there.