4 ms·

>However! I will say that this way of working and living comes with some significant hazard to your mental health. Doing something you don't like, care about, o

>However! I will say that this way of working and living comes with some significant hazard to your mental health. Doing something you don't like, care about, or believe in for decades long periods of time can really mess with your sense of self worth and happiness in life. You only have one life, do something with it that is satisfying. Get out of the rat race. This is where my comment about remote work comes into play. When I worked in an office, I spent most of the day just entertaining myself on the internet. That isn't great for long-term mental health. Now that I am working from home I can put in the same level of work while spending the rest of my work day in more satisfying ways as long as I keep an eye on my Slack and email for urgent issues. I can't imagine ever returning to an office in which there is more pressure to spend 8 hours a day sitting in front of my computer. I have thought about switching careers a few times over the years. However anything I would want to switch to would require a big pay cut. My relatively high salary as a software developer is what enables the rest of my life. Maintaining that lifestyle is my priority as that is where I find my happiness.

somethoughts 5y ago
As a SW developer you provide two benefits to the company: - the build phase: develop spaghetti code - the maintain/insurance phase: maintain the spaghetti code and keep it up to date with the software package dependencies required by the spaghetti code In the long term its easier/cheaper to have the person who originally wrote the spaghetti code be around to maintain and add one off small feature improvements to it (i.e. ensure log4j patches are handled properly) than to find/hire/train a new developer every time a 0day patch needs to be applied.
- condorito 5y ago
  In my experience if the system is important enough, once you ship a couple of features to production you can coast there until the system is replaced. If the features were core the better. I don´t like it but after 2 decades of coding I have come to accept it as it is.
  - somethoughts 5y ago
    I think a good way to frame the role of a SW developer is you are in a sense a manager of a new "team". But instead of developing new hire training material and recruiting/managing people to do the new task, you're developing/training/creating/deploying software programs/scripts/bots to do what needs to get done for the organization. While infinitely easier than dealing with HR problems that humans bring along, your team of programs/bots still needs some manager. And just like a traditional manager, if you set up your "team of bots" just right and handle all the corner cases in the training manuals, a good managers job will actually ideally not be that hard day to day - particularly since the meatspace problems have been abstracted away.
- thow-58d4e8b 5y ago
  There's one more reason - the one I use to rationalize my idleness to myself: in addition to our work output, the corporations are also paying us to be a part of their "reserve army". We might work 3-4 hours a day, but when things escalate, the company taps into its reserves to get stuff done. Having doldrums about that is like soldiers worrying they only spend 3 hours a day in combat
  - somethoughts 5y ago
    That reminds me of this article for some reason :) "Google has a secret ‘bench’ program that keeps execs at the company even when they’re not leading anything" https://venturebeat.com/2015/05/09/google-has-a-secret-bench-program-that-keeps-execs-at-the-company-even-when-theyre-not-leading-anything/ https://venturebeat.com/2015/05/09/google-has-a-secret-bench...
  - mech422 5y ago
    I used to work in Operations...there were 2 of us on shift for a 1 man job.. The extra was 'insurance' :-)
dennisy 5y ago
> I can't imagine ever returning to an office in which there is more pressure to spend 8 hours a day sitting in front of my computer. But this is what you are paid for. Do you not feel that this is what you should be doing in the time you are contracted to work?
- analog31 5y ago
  In the US, very few full time professionals work under contract. In fact, companies go out of their way to assert that there is no contractual relationship (the "employment at will" principle). They do not count their hours, and are in fact not allowed to do so. With that said, I'd find it hard to work such a short week. The time I spend that's unaccounted for, I tend to spend helping other people at my workplace, learning new stuff, etc. I enjoy the work. Granted, I don't work as a programmer.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    > In the US, very few full time professionals work under contract. In fact, companies go out of their way to assert that there is no contractual relationship (the "employment at will" principle). Americans keep saying this means "no contract", but I don't get it. You probably have some weird American-only meaning attached to the word "contract" that doesn't apply to the rest of the world, in English as well as other languages. To the rest of us, "a contract" means a formal (usually written) agreement to exchange goods or services for payment. I find it utterly hard to believe that any full-time professional, even in America, is employed without having any piece of paper signed by their employer -- and they a copy signed by him -- that states basically "John Doe and Corporation X agree that John shall work full-time for X, and receive a salary of $Y per month". If you do, that's a contract. If you don't, how do you know how much of a salary you're going to get at the end of the month? How does HR / Accounts know how much to pay you? Of fucking course you have a contract. It's just that the terms for termination of that contract, whether specified within it or implicit because of "at will" legislation, are much more abrupt than most everywhere else. That doesn't make it not a contract. > They do not count their hours, and are in fact not allowed to do so. Like, if the company wants you to work 272 hours per week (hint: 24 × 7 = 168), you can't say you won't? Or is it the company that can't say anything if you show up three hours a month? Of course they count their hours, at least roughly. Everyone does. Not that this has anything to do with whether something is a contract or not.

somethoughts 5y ago

As a SW developer you provide two benefits to the company: - the build phase: develop spaghetti code - the maintain/insurance phase: maintain the spaghetti code and keep it up to date with the software package dependencies required by the spaghetti code In the long term its easier/cheaper to have the person who originally wrote the spaghetti code be around to maintain and add one off small feature improvements to it (i.e. ensure log4j patches are handled properly) than to find/hire/train a new developer every time a 0day patch needs to be applied.

condorito 5y ago
In my experience if the system is important enough, once you ship a couple of features to production you can coast there until the system is replaced. If the features were core the better. I don´t like it but after 2 decades of coding I have come to accept it as it is.
- somethoughts 5y ago
  I think a good way to frame the role of a SW developer is you are in a sense a manager of a new "team". But instead of developing new hire training material and recruiting/managing people to do the new task, you're developing/training/creating/deploying software programs/scripts/bots to do what needs to get done for the organization. While infinitely easier than dealing with HR problems that humans bring along, your team of programs/bots still needs some manager. And just like a traditional manager, if you set up your "team of bots" just right and handle all the corner cases in the training manuals, a good managers job will actually ideally not be that hard day to day - particularly since the meatspace problems have been abstracted away.
thow-58d4e8b 5y ago
There's one more reason - the one I use to rationalize my idleness to myself: in addition to our work output, the corporations are also paying us to be a part of their "reserve army". We might work 3-4 hours a day, but when things escalate, the company taps into its reserves to get stuff done. Having doldrums about that is like soldiers worrying they only spend 3 hours a day in combat
- somethoughts 5y ago
  That reminds me of this article for some reason :) "Google has a secret ‘bench’ program that keeps execs at the company even when they’re not leading anything" https://venturebeat.com/2015/05/09/google-has-a-secret-bench-program-that-keeps-execs-at-the-company-even-when-theyre-not-leading-anything/ https://venturebeat.com/2015/05/09/google-has-a-secret-bench...
- mech422 5y ago
  I used to work in Operations...there were 2 of us on shift for a 1 man job.. The extra was 'insurance' :-)

dennisy 5y ago

> I can't imagine ever returning to an office in which there is more pressure to spend 8 hours a day sitting in front of my computer. But this is what you are paid for. Do you not feel that this is what you should be doing in the time you are contracted to work?

analog31 5y ago
In the US, very few full time professionals work under contract. In fact, companies go out of their way to assert that there is no contractual relationship (the "employment at will" principle). They do not count their hours, and are in fact not allowed to do so. With that said, I'd find it hard to work such a short week. The time I spend that's unaccounted for, I tend to spend helping other people at my workplace, learning new stuff, etc. I enjoy the work. Granted, I don't work as a programmer.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > In the US, very few full time professionals work under contract. In fact, companies go out of their way to assert that there is no contractual relationship (the "employment at will" principle). Americans keep saying this means "no contract", but I don't get it. You probably have some weird American-only meaning attached to the word "contract" that doesn't apply to the rest of the world, in English as well as other languages. To the rest of us, "a contract" means a formal (usually written) agreement to exchange goods or services for payment. I find it utterly hard to believe that any full-time professional, even in America, is employed without having any piece of paper signed by their employer -- and they a copy signed by him -- that states basically "John Doe and Corporation X agree that John shall work full-time for X, and receive a salary of $Y per month". If you do, that's a contract. If you don't, how do you know how much of a salary you're going to get at the end of the month? How does HR / Accounts know how much to pay you? Of fucking course you have a contract. It's just that the terms for termination of that contract, whether specified within it or implicit because of "at will" legislation, are much more abrupt than most everywhere else. That doesn't make it not a contract. > They do not count their hours, and are in fact not allowed to do so. Like, if the company wants you to work 272 hours per week (hint: 24 × 7 = 168), you can't say you won't? Or is it the company that can't say anything if you show up three hours a month? Of course they count their hours, at least roughly. Everyone does. Not that this has anything to do with whether something is a contract or not.