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Reading through the comments is interesting, I seem to be one of the few looking for a more intense job rather than less. My current job, given who our custome

Reading through the comments is interesting, I seem to be one of the few looking for a more intense job rather than less. My current job, given who our customers are (the code does something a little more serious than advertising), should be a lot more intense than it is. At present we're just half-assing everything and cashing the checks. Sure it's easy, the pay is industry median, and the benefits are above average. That's not why I got an engineering degree though. What example does that set for my future kid? Bust your ass to get a STEM degree so you too can find a mediocre job with a sandbagged contract to comfortably mooch off of using a tiny fraction of your talent? I can't even really justify it from a "looking after my family" standpoint, because while the income comfortably pays the bills it certainly isn't going to pay my kids' future college tuition and buy us a good house. If I'm going to turn into a jaded clock puncher there are much more lucrative clocks I should be punching. I'm not so naive as to expect zero bullshit and engineering purity, money is ultimately the game at any private corporation. But we could be making the same money and doing a lot more. Issue is there's no business incentive to do that, and no way for me to provide said incentive in the short or even medium term. Even if I went management there's no single position I could target that would make a difference below the Executive level, and the longer I work here the more I see how that's by design. What with a kid on the way I'm staying put for the next 6 months at least. Don't want to be changing insurance during the wife's pregnancy and she'll obviously need some stability after the fact. But after that I'm looking for a job that's 50% bullshit instead of 90%. If I can say one thing for this job, it gives me a stable platform so I can be picky about my next position :)

coldsunrays 5y ago
One thing to consider is that some of the folks looking for less intensity at work are hoping to shift that intensity into hobbies or other endeavors. I think and hope the example this would set is more along the lines of: do whatever you need to make enough money to sustain yourself and maximize the time you have to live life and explore what the things you're curious about. This might work especially well if you'd prefer pursuing your passions as a hobby instead of a career. Less intensity shouldn't necessarily mean the product is half-assed, though, so I think I understand your perspective.
- scottLobster 5y ago
  Don't get me wrong I'm not looking down on anyone looking for a less intense job. Plenty of slave-driving middle managers out there that bring all the wrong types of intensity to a job and are worth leaving. Even with good management working your 40 and clocking out is a fine way to fly assuming the 40 hours is productive. People have different priorities in life and that's fine. But at my current workplace most of our time is wasted on maintaining and occasionally being forced to exacerbate inefficiencies, rather than working toward eliminating them. Just to name a few examples: All of our package dependencies are managed by hand with no time/money in the budget to implement any sort of automated dependency management, the software itself is hacked together from several pieces of internal corporate software that were never originally intended to work together and thus have a ton of redundancies, the hierarchy (or lack thereof) of the various software teams is WAY too loose to enforce good organization, and the infrastructure is begged, borrowed and stolen. All of this and more is what generates most of the "work" that gets done. Most of the time we're either putting out fires or treading water, or adding new features over the objections of senior engineers and then ripping them out when they don't work (so serious money does exist, just for all the wrong things). The only reason any of this makes money at all is because it's a very specific niche we've cornered and like it or not we're the only functional game in town. In theory it should be an important mission, that's what attracted me to it in the first place. Sadly the powers that be don't give a damn.

coldsunrays 5y ago

One thing to consider is that some of the folks looking for less intensity at work are hoping to shift that intensity into hobbies or other endeavors. I think and hope the example this would set is more along the lines of: do whatever you need to make enough money to sustain yourself and maximize the time you have to live life and explore what the things you're curious about. This might work especially well if you'd prefer pursuing your passions as a hobby instead of a career. Less intensity shouldn't necessarily mean the product is half-assed, though, so I think I understand your perspective.

scottLobster 5y ago
Don't get me wrong I'm not looking down on anyone looking for a less intense job. Plenty of slave-driving middle managers out there that bring all the wrong types of intensity to a job and are worth leaving. Even with good management working your 40 and clocking out is a fine way to fly assuming the 40 hours is productive. People have different priorities in life and that's fine. But at my current workplace most of our time is wasted on maintaining and occasionally being forced to exacerbate inefficiencies, rather than working toward eliminating them. Just to name a few examples: All of our package dependencies are managed by hand with no time/money in the budget to implement any sort of automated dependency management, the software itself is hacked together from several pieces of internal corporate software that were never originally intended to work together and thus have a ton of redundancies, the hierarchy (or lack thereof) of the various software teams is WAY too loose to enforce good organization, and the infrastructure is begged, borrowed and stolen. All of this and more is what generates most of the "work" that gets done. Most of the time we're either putting out fires or treading water, or adding new features over the objections of senior engineers and then ripping them out when they don't work (so serious money does exist, just for all the wrong things). The only reason any of this makes money at all is because it's a very specific niche we've cornered and like it or not we're the only functional game in town. In theory it should be an important mission, that's what attracted me to it in the first place. Sadly the powers that be don't give a damn.