8 ms·

Whenever I see comments like this I feel bad for the commenter. For all the opportunity and different companies to choose from in tech, to not enjoy your job a

by cj 3y ago

Whenever I see comments like this I feel bad for the commenter. For all the opportunity and different companies to choose from in tech, to not enjoy your job after 30 years probably means you picked the wrong career path. It’s not healthy to have this much disdain and displeasure around your work. It’s never too late to consider a career change.

mihaitodor 3y ago
Spot on! After 16 years, I'm looking to get back to academia and do a PhD. I felt like I don't enjoy what I'm doing for far too long, even though I changed jobs about 8 times.
andygeorge 3y ago
Agreed. I'm "only" 20 years into my career and, while it has ebbed and flowed, it's also something I love and am thankful I get to do for a living.
subjectsigma 3y ago
They might just have a different perspective than you. I complain about my job a lot. People say to me, “Wow, you must absolutely despise it.” The truth is that if I absolutely despised it I would have left a long time ago. I just have no reason to talk about the good parts. I focus on problems because I want to improve on them.
- deebosong 3y ago
  > I focus on problems because I want to improve on them. Does this work, though? Does the complaining lead to improvements? I'm posing the question as a challenge, and also out of curiosity. And I'm of the school of thought that it's necessary to acknowledge reality, but, complaining to the point where people think I despise what I'm complaining about may indicate that another approach may be necessary (such as finding practical solutions and giving yourself options that you can test out). Apologies if being presumptuous.
  - subjectsigma 3y ago
    It’s probably different for every person but complaining about my job either helps me arrive at a solution or realize that I can’t do anything about it and distance myself. I’m very lucky to have never been in a situation yet where the problem is unfixable, truly unbearable, and I also can’t just leave.
    - deebosong 3y ago
      Appreciate the response. I think I do something similar, but just in private.
felipellrocha 3y ago
Came here to say the same thing, but a lot more angrily and a lot less eloquently. Thanks!
jaipilot747 3y ago
Maybe... But isn't your view also very dismissive of their experience and the constraints and context of their experience? By far, most companies above a certain size do not operate in a way where these principles do not apply.
aleph_minus_one 3y ago
> It’s never too late to consider a career change. Absolutely, but the huge difficulty is finding a place where the grass is greener. Nearly the whole world is quite equally shitty, it is just the kind of shit that you will see at the various careers ("septic tanks") differs.
ThrowAway1922A 3y ago
I'm not that guy, but I don't have to like it. I'm not skilled at anything else and I couldn't make this much money in any other career. Most people will never enjoy their work, but I can dislike my work while being far better off than most people ever will be.
emanuele232 3y ago
harsh reality is that 80% of humanity works a dead-end/awful/not wanted job just because bills. IT is a nice bubble in which you do something you are mostly passionate about and you get paid well. I'm not saying "we got it good so don't complain" but sometimes is worth to analyze the situation from the perspectivo of an outsider. IMO i can do whichever tech job, the more i dislike it the more i need to be paid, that's all
- antifa 3y ago
  Pretty much any job I might have enjoyed more, if it's not a lot of fancy words for "become a celebrity", will look like minimum wage compared to software engineering. Even when it doesn't, pre-AI software engineers were aggressively stalking around the corners of dark alleys to cut the wages/number of seats of that job. Most other lines of work guarantee poverty or are a riskier gamble with worse prizes and worse loses. You want to be at the top of the titanic looking down at those swimming to what's left of the upper deck, not rearranging chairs seconds away from being underwater.
mytailorisrich 3y ago
No, this is being realistic. Time makes the rose tinted glasses go away. This would be the same with another career. It doesn't mean he does not like what he does, just that he sees the reality of working in an organisation.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  I don't know. I've been doing this for over 30 years and that seems far more cynical to me than realistic.
  - hello_moto 3y ago
    I've been doing half of yours and I found that the advise is more realistic and I'm doing exactly all the points he listed but still love my job.
  - cynicauliflower 3y ago
    To some extent presenting a cynical affect is seen as intelligent, or “cool”. The poster claims they like the work, so I’d just take them at their word.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
baz00 3y ago
At no point did I say I don't like this. It's absolutely the best career I could think of. No heavy lifting, no dealing with bodily fluids or excrement, no harsh weather conditions, low to no risk of getting killed, no dangerous chemicals, no being shot at etc. And I get to play with things all the time and solve interesting problems. But it is what it is!
- onethought 3y ago
  Right, but you are cynical and dispassionate. There is a world you could be working in a place where you are more passionate and less cynical. (This could be more personality than experience though, so I agree it could be a misread)
  - baz00 3y ago
    I am passionate about the things I'm interested in, not all the unnecessary fluff around them :)
  - d4mi3n 3y ago
    Not everyone needs to be passionate about the day job. Being present, competent, and reliable is enough. I’d personally go on to say that it’s risky to put too much emotional investment into something you don’t own/control. I prefer to invest my passion in things outside of my day job. Working is fine, but it’s a means to an end to fuel more meaningful things. We don’t live to work.
    - pseudoramble 3y ago
      "I’d personally go on to say that it’s risky to put too much emotional investment into something you don’t own/control." Bingo! This is exactly what happened to me. What I learned is that, even in a great environment where there was a ton of latitude to have ownership of technical details and even product details, it's still contained within the broader context of a business. That business has interest in the thing you're working on while it's a factor in creating value, and when it becomes time to change focus onto other things, it will generally do that without much hesitation. I've been burned by this multiple times. Eventually it clicked for me in the way you phrased it. So I show up and do what I can, bring my expertise as much as I can, gauge where the limits of what I can provide are, and keep a healthy distance mentally otherwise. One other note - you can still be passionate about software and not one specific day job. You can still work on other projects and explore ideas as much as you want. It's just that that's a separate thing from work. Dedicate time and space separately for that IMO.
Trasmatta 3y ago
How many people in the world (, software engineers or not) actually have the privilege of enjoying their jobs after 30 years?
codeTired 3y ago
I love programming but can’t drink the koolaid. I haven’t found a company yet that meets my energy. All I get is people “excited” to be working for their company because they are “changing” the world. It’s marketing vomit. To be honest I would prefer to have few million dollars in investments and not to work for anyone at all. No arbitrary deadlines, no corporate ladder, no politics. I just want to write some code, build some servers and play with things. Maybe make something that benefits people in general.
- wiz21c 3y ago
  > It’s marketing vomit. An understatement. Do these people actually believe in it ? Or are they just faking it because one has to adhere to company's value ?
  - evantbyrne 3y ago
    Most people are faking it. Being able to spend your time on something that both significantly improves humanity and pays the bills is a rare opportunity.
    - staunton 3y ago
      I don't think that's really true (though the claim might be too general to even evaluate on its merits). The same way that I don't believe most religious leaders are secretly atheists.
      - baz00 3y ago
        I dunno I'm an atheist and I've thought about starting my own cult occasionally :)
  - lambdasquirrel 3y ago
    I've always wondered what substances people are using, the more that they have to touch that stuff. When I was more naive and inexperienced, I was blind to this, and I also judged it. Nowadays, as long as the marketers are taking care of it, and they aren't ruining their health, I don't care what they're taking as long as it's not meth.
Helmut10001 3y ago
I actually read that he is enjoying his job and has a healthy attitude.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  Aye. Sounds like there are no illusions and a "lets get it done so we get out at 5pm sharp" attitude. The "I love coding and need to stay to 8pm every day because we're going to change the world!" is insufferable. Hit whatchu gotta hit, don't play the games, and push the release out the door. Then get out there and live life.
bluGill 3y ago
Ever hear the term "mid life crisis"? It exists because people around 40-50 - that is 20-30 years into their job they realize they have been doing the same thing and it is getting boring. While it isn't too late to consider a career change, I'm not sure that is a good idea. For some it is, but many stay - particularly in tech - because they can make a lot of money and thus afford some hobbies that are not boring. Often this is overall your best course in life: find a hobby you enjoy and keep doing your job. Obviously everyone needs to make their own decisions.
Tangurena2 3y ago
> It’s not healthy to have this much disdain and displeasure around your work. The disdain and displeasure is a result of experience. Of knowing what needs to be done and not being allowed to do it. > The right way, the wrong way and the Army way Usually, the problem is the sort of people who get promoted into mismanagement. They were good at "people skills" (and all too often - their only skill is sucking up to their boss) and bad at programming. This is a systemic problem that I have not seen any sort of possible way to fix in all the decades I've been working (or visiting dad's office when a youngster). If you could find a way to ensure that only skilled managers get promoted (and incompetent ones fired), you will fix Capitalism. No more Enrons. No more Innitech.
- notabee 3y ago
  It's a self-perpetuating process though, since the productive, skilled workers are by definition spending the majority of their time learning and doing productive things, while the remainder have the majority of their time freed up to play political games and elect more of their own political kind into leadership roles. That tends to increase the workload of the productive people, further pushing them away from the nexus of decision-making as they're too busy keeping things running. Eventually a crisis occurs in the top-heavy organization (or society, even). The doers burn out or leave, only demanders remain, and everything goes to shit. Perhaps worker-owned companies could help with this, but I'm sure that the time investment imbalance dynamic would still be an issue to contend with.
hello_moto 3y ago
WAT? Seriously? Career change? Your parent post is on-point. You can be passionate about your job and still do the things that he said he does. You're gunning for absolutism while parent's post is realist. I love my jobs (yes, all of my employers) but there are few meetings that IDGAF but have to be there because of many reasons. I muted myself and do something else. I used to be an idealist but I slowly changed my approach because I realized at the end of the day, I'm dealing with human beings day-to-day.
nsxwolf 3y ago
It absolutely might be too late for a career change. If you're paid well, and have come to rely on your income, staying put is likely your only realistic option.
dontlaugh 3y ago
It's a job, trading labour for money. Enthusiasm isn't a requirement, it's not an acting job.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
gosub100 3y ago
> I feel bad for the commenter yeah the post where you don't even directly address him, its just teeming with compassion.
agentultra 3y ago
Big boomer energy here: it's called work for a reason. You don't have to enjoy every minute on the job. It's not likely that you're going to be working on passion projects every day. You're not even going to be intellectually stimulated by the vast majority of tasks you will be given. You need to get used to the fact that almost every job as a programmer is probably going to be working on a system that retains eyeballs on screens, counts something, or shuffles around forms. When you do this for twenty or more years it gets pretty boring. Where are all of the data structures, type systems, formalizations, optimizations, etc? Taken. There are a few people who get lucky enough to have jobs where they can work on things that interest them, where they get to work on hard problems that get them out of bed and plague them while they're in the shower. But they don't leave those jobs and there aren't exactly a ton of new ones being created either. Unless you're lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time to get into one of these jobs, you're more likely to be sitting in meetings and filing JIRA tickets. Cherish the times when you do get to work on a project that piques your interest. It can happen. But it's rare for it to last for most people. You have to sustain your interest and curiosity in other ways. And it's totally fine if it's anything to do with not-programming. Meanwhile, on the job? Do your best, show up, be nice and professional. You'll do fine. You're here to clock in your time for money so that you can do other things that you actually like: reading books, spending time with family, doom scrolling, etc.
- lambdasquirrel 3y ago
  When I was in college I had a professor who joked that her standards had gone down over the years. Nowadays, her only criteria are: "no criminal record." Maybe it's just a joke and we don't need to get that cynical, but I think that in the end, enjoyment of the work comes from: whether you can find some creative process in it, and whether you like your coworkers. I think this is the optimistic way of looking at "work is called work for a reason." To that end, even plain-old programming beats a whole lot of other fields. But to think that we should be drinking the kool-aid and all is definitely not going to stick for the vast majority of us by the second or third decade. I certainly enjoy my job, even though it's just "work." My professional life and mental health definitely improved when I finally accepted this in full. Whereas at my previous job, the entrepreneurs sold everyone on using the tools and languages of their choice (and sacrificing for compensation in a big way). Noble attempt, perhaps, that may have worked in a different time and era of tech, and under vastly different macroeconomic circumstances. But ultimately, it should not have been surprising, in retrospect, that no one would do any of the work-work that it would've taken to make the company work.
fumeux_fume 3y ago
Working for any organization comes with its downsides. Pretending like they don't exist and gaslighting someone who's come to peace with them for long-term job satisfaction comes off as pathetic to me.
austin-cheney 3y ago
I love writing software and building things that solve real problems, but it’s astonishingly rare to do this as employment. Yet, you still need income as children don’t eat for free. So for the other 90% of us you have to make a choice: * Go to work knowing you are probably not productively writing software and just accept that reality for what it is: staring out the window while other people listen to the sound of their own voice out loud all day long. And, you often have to drive through lengthy traffic to relish in this experience. * Write software outside of work at cost to your marriage, time with kids, personal finances, and everything else with work life balance. * Go do something else.
yieldcrv 3y ago
nah, L take. Have a life. I remember going to hackathons and wanting forced timed experience to build anything. I remember going up to the companies that wanted you to build on their stuff and being surprised at their substandard APIs and how lackadaisical and unmotivated those engineering representatives were, I just didnt understand. A fortune 500 team just hanging out a hackathon with no capability or interest in providing real support? Now I think back and I realize they just had other things to care about The hackathon and job could be fulfilling, their DIY projects at home were more fulfilling. Their entrepreneurial endeavors were more fulfilling. Sure, they could be totally checked out and burned out too. But it doesnt matter, set boundaries with your job because that definitely doesnt matter.
jvanderbot 3y ago
Don't mistake zero-fucks with zero-cares. Staying cool while keeping your sleeves rolled up working on fixes is an absolute life skill. Knowing it's always "Same shit different pile" is maturity, not resignation. Working hard because you are a valuable engineer doing a good job, despite knowing that the world is full of chaos and nothing will matter in 5 years is called Professionalism. Get paid, invest, be chill and fun to work with, enjoy your family and friends, go fishing or something.
manicennui 3y ago
I don't think it is reasonable to expect to truly enjoy one's job. This seems like a luxury that some people in certain fields might enjoy, but most of us tolerate or hate our jobs and wouldn't do these activities by choice.
throw555chip 3y ago
Weird takeaway, I thought the comment was brilliant and spot on! 30 years here too!
timacles 3y ago
I used to think like this, but after getting a wife and kids, there’s just no way a corporate job can be continually rewarding like you describe. Everything is always mired in unpleasant bullshit and emotionally detaching like the above poster suggests is the most pragmatic way to handle work. I’ve lost all desire of proving myself and working on interesting problems, because at the end of the day, I’d just rather spend time with my family and do fun personal projects. Work is work and it will be never live up to an idealized concept that you have in your head.

by cj 3y ago

mihaitodor 3y ago

Spot on! After 16 years, I'm looking to get back to academia and do a PhD. I felt like I don't enjoy what I'm doing for far too long, even though I changed jobs about 8 times.

andygeorge 3y ago

Agreed. I'm "only" 20 years into my career and, while it has ebbed and flowed, it's also something I love and am thankful I get to do for a living.

subjectsigma 3y ago

They might just have a different perspective than you. I complain about my job a lot. People say to me, “Wow, you must absolutely despise it.” The truth is that if I absolutely despised it I would have left a long time ago. I just have no reason to talk about the good parts. I focus on problems because I want to improve on them.

deebosong 3y ago
> I focus on problems because I want to improve on them. Does this work, though? Does the complaining lead to improvements? I'm posing the question as a challenge, and also out of curiosity. And I'm of the school of thought that it's necessary to acknowledge reality, but, complaining to the point where people think I despise what I'm complaining about may indicate that another approach may be necessary (such as finding practical solutions and giving yourself options that you can test out). Apologies if being presumptuous.
- subjectsigma 3y ago
  It’s probably different for every person but complaining about my job either helps me arrive at a solution or realize that I can’t do anything about it and distance myself. I’m very lucky to have never been in a situation yet where the problem is unfixable, truly unbearable, and I also can’t just leave.
  - deebosong 3y ago
    Appreciate the response. I think I do something similar, but just in private.

felipellrocha 3y ago

Came here to say the same thing, but a lot more angrily and a lot less eloquently. Thanks!

jaipilot747 3y ago

Maybe... But isn't your view also very dismissive of their experience and the constraints and context of their experience? By far, most companies above a certain size do not operate in a way where these principles do not apply.

aleph_minus_one 3y ago

> It’s never too late to consider a career change. Absolutely, but the huge difficulty is finding a place where the grass is greener. Nearly the whole world is quite equally shitty, it is just the kind of shit that you will see at the various careers ("septic tanks") differs.

ThrowAway1922A 3y ago

I'm not that guy, but I don't have to like it. I'm not skilled at anything else and I couldn't make this much money in any other career. Most people will never enjoy their work, but I can dislike my work while being far better off than most people ever will be.

emanuele232 3y ago

harsh reality is that 80% of humanity works a dead-end/awful/not wanted job just because bills. IT is a nice bubble in which you do something you are mostly passionate about and you get paid well. I'm not saying "we got it good so don't complain" but sometimes is worth to analyze the situation from the perspectivo of an outsider. IMO i can do whichever tech job, the more i dislike it the more i need to be paid, that's all

antifa 3y ago
Pretty much any job I might have enjoyed more, if it's not a lot of fancy words for "become a celebrity", will look like minimum wage compared to software engineering. Even when it doesn't, pre-AI software engineers were aggressively stalking around the corners of dark alleys to cut the wages/number of seats of that job. Most other lines of work guarantee poverty or are a riskier gamble with worse prizes and worse loses. You want to be at the top of the titanic looking down at those swimming to what's left of the upper deck, not rearranging chairs seconds away from being underwater.

mytailorisrich 3y ago

No, this is being realistic. Time makes the rose tinted glasses go away. This would be the same with another career. It doesn't mean he does not like what he does, just that he sees the reality of working in an organisation.

JohnFen 3y ago
I don't know. I've been doing this for over 30 years and that seems far more cynical to me than realistic.
- hello_moto 3y ago
  I've been doing half of yours and I found that the advise is more realistic and I'm doing exactly all the points he listed but still love my job.
- cynicauliflower 3y ago
  To some extent presenting a cynical affect is seen as intelligent, or “cool”. The poster claims they like the work, so I’d just take them at their word.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

baz00 3y ago

At no point did I say I don't like this. It's absolutely the best career I could think of. No heavy lifting, no dealing with bodily fluids or excrement, no harsh weather conditions, low to no risk of getting killed, no dangerous chemicals, no being shot at etc. And I get to play with things all the time and solve interesting problems. But it is what it is!

onethought 3y ago
Right, but you are cynical and dispassionate. There is a world you could be working in a place where you are more passionate and less cynical. (This could be more personality than experience though, so I agree it could be a misread)
- baz00 3y ago
  I am passionate about the things I'm interested in, not all the unnecessary fluff around them :)
- d4mi3n 3y ago
  Not everyone needs to be passionate about the day job. Being present, competent, and reliable is enough. I’d personally go on to say that it’s risky to put too much emotional investment into something you don’t own/control. I prefer to invest my passion in things outside of my day job. Working is fine, but it’s a means to an end to fuel more meaningful things. We don’t live to work.
  - pseudoramble 3y ago
    "I’d personally go on to say that it’s risky to put too much emotional investment into something you don’t own/control." Bingo! This is exactly what happened to me. What I learned is that, even in a great environment where there was a ton of latitude to have ownership of technical details and even product details, it's still contained within the broader context of a business. That business has interest in the thing you're working on while it's a factor in creating value, and when it becomes time to change focus onto other things, it will generally do that without much hesitation. I've been burned by this multiple times. Eventually it clicked for me in the way you phrased it. So I show up and do what I can, bring my expertise as much as I can, gauge where the limits of what I can provide are, and keep a healthy distance mentally otherwise. One other note - you can still be passionate about software and not one specific day job. You can still work on other projects and explore ideas as much as you want. It's just that that's a separate thing from work. Dedicate time and space separately for that IMO.

Trasmatta 3y ago

How many people in the world (, software engineers or not) actually have the privilege of enjoying their jobs after 30 years?

codeTired 3y ago

I love programming but can’t drink the koolaid. I haven’t found a company yet that meets my energy. All I get is people “excited” to be working for their company because they are “changing” the world. It’s marketing vomit. To be honest I would prefer to have few million dollars in investments and not to work for anyone at all. No arbitrary deadlines, no corporate ladder, no politics. I just want to write some code, build some servers and play with things. Maybe make something that benefits people in general.

wiz21c 3y ago
> It’s marketing vomit. An understatement. Do these people actually believe in it ? Or are they just faking it because one has to adhere to company's value ?
- evantbyrne 3y ago
  Most people are faking it. Being able to spend your time on something that both significantly improves humanity and pays the bills is a rare opportunity.
  - staunton 3y ago
    I don't think that's really true (though the claim might be too general to even evaluate on its merits). The same way that I don't believe most religious leaders are secretly atheists.
    - baz00 3y ago
      I dunno I'm an atheist and I've thought about starting my own cult occasionally :)
- lambdasquirrel 3y ago
  I've always wondered what substances people are using, the more that they have to touch that stuff. When I was more naive and inexperienced, I was blind to this, and I also judged it. Nowadays, as long as the marketers are taking care of it, and they aren't ruining their health, I don't care what they're taking as long as it's not meth.

Helmut10001 3y ago

I actually read that he is enjoying his job and has a healthy attitude.

red-iron-pine 3y ago
Aye. Sounds like there are no illusions and a "lets get it done so we get out at 5pm sharp" attitude. The "I love coding and need to stay to 8pm every day because we're going to change the world!" is insufferable. Hit whatchu gotta hit, don't play the games, and push the release out the door. Then get out there and live life.

bluGill 3y ago

Ever hear the term "mid life crisis"? It exists because people around 40-50 - that is 20-30 years into their job they realize they have been doing the same thing and it is getting boring. While it isn't too late to consider a career change, I'm not sure that is a good idea. For some it is, but many stay - particularly in tech - because they can make a lot of money and thus afford some hobbies that are not boring. Often this is overall your best course in life: find a hobby you enjoy and keep doing your job. Obviously everyone needs to make their own decisions.

Tangurena2 3y ago

> It’s not healthy to have this much disdain and displeasure around your work. The disdain and displeasure is a result of experience. Of knowing what needs to be done and not being allowed to do it. > The right way, the wrong way and the Army way Usually, the problem is the sort of people who get promoted into mismanagement. They were good at "people skills" (and all too often - their only skill is sucking up to their boss) and bad at programming. This is a systemic problem that I have not seen any sort of possible way to fix in all the decades I've been working (or visiting dad's office when a youngster). If you could find a way to ensure that only skilled managers get promoted (and incompetent ones fired), you will fix Capitalism. No more Enrons. No more Innitech.

notabee 3y ago
It's a self-perpetuating process though, since the productive, skilled workers are by definition spending the majority of their time learning and doing productive things, while the remainder have the majority of their time freed up to play political games and elect more of their own political kind into leadership roles. That tends to increase the workload of the productive people, further pushing them away from the nexus of decision-making as they're too busy keeping things running. Eventually a crisis occurs in the top-heavy organization (or society, even). The doers burn out or leave, only demanders remain, and everything goes to shit. Perhaps worker-owned companies could help with this, but I'm sure that the time investment imbalance dynamic would still be an issue to contend with.

hello_moto 3y ago

WAT? Seriously? Career change? Your parent post is on-point. You can be passionate about your job and still do the things that he said he does. You're gunning for absolutism while parent's post is realist. I love my jobs (yes, all of my employers) but there are few meetings that IDGAF but have to be there because of many reasons. I muted myself and do something else. I used to be an idealist but I slowly changed my approach because I realized at the end of the day, I'm dealing with human beings day-to-day.

nsxwolf 3y ago

It absolutely might be too late for a career change. If you're paid well, and have come to rely on your income, staying put is likely your only realistic option.

dontlaugh 3y ago

It's a job, trading labour for money. Enthusiasm isn't a requirement, it's not an acting job.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

gosub100 3y ago

> I feel bad for the commenter yeah the post where you don't even directly address him, its just teeming with compassion.

agentultra 3y ago

Big boomer energy here: it's called work for a reason. You don't have to enjoy every minute on the job. It's not likely that you're going to be working on passion projects every day. You're not even going to be intellectually stimulated by the vast majority of tasks you will be given. You need to get used to the fact that almost every job as a programmer is probably going to be working on a system that retains eyeballs on screens, counts something, or shuffles around forms. When you do this for twenty or more years it gets pretty boring. Where are all of the data structures, type systems, formalizations, optimizations, etc? Taken. There are a few people who get lucky enough to have jobs where they can work on things that interest them, where they get to work on hard problems that get them out of bed and plague them while they're in the shower. But they don't leave those jobs and there aren't exactly a ton of new ones being created either. Unless you're lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time to get into one of these jobs, you're more likely to be sitting in meetings and filing JIRA tickets. Cherish the times when you do get to work on a project that piques your interest. It can happen. But it's rare for it to last for most people. You have to sustain your interest and curiosity in other ways. And it's totally fine if it's anything to do with not-programming. Meanwhile, on the job? Do your best, show up, be nice and professional. You'll do fine. You're here to clock in your time for money so that you can do other things that you actually like: reading books, spending time with family, doom scrolling, etc.

lambdasquirrel 3y ago
When I was in college I had a professor who joked that her standards had gone down over the years. Nowadays, her only criteria are: "no criminal record." Maybe it's just a joke and we don't need to get that cynical, but I think that in the end, enjoyment of the work comes from: whether you can find some creative process in it, and whether you like your coworkers. I think this is the optimistic way of looking at "work is called work for a reason." To that end, even plain-old programming beats a whole lot of other fields. But to think that we should be drinking the kool-aid and all is definitely not going to stick for the vast majority of us by the second or third decade. I certainly enjoy my job, even though it's just "work." My professional life and mental health definitely improved when I finally accepted this in full. Whereas at my previous job, the entrepreneurs sold everyone on using the tools and languages of their choice (and sacrificing for compensation in a big way). Noble attempt, perhaps, that may have worked in a different time and era of tech, and under vastly different macroeconomic circumstances. But ultimately, it should not have been surprising, in retrospect, that no one would do any of the work-work that it would've taken to make the company work.

fumeux_fume 3y ago

Working for any organization comes with its downsides. Pretending like they don't exist and gaslighting someone who's come to peace with them for long-term job satisfaction comes off as pathetic to me.

austin-cheney 3y ago

I love writing software and building things that solve real problems, but it’s astonishingly rare to do this as employment. Yet, you still need income as children don’t eat for free. So for the other 90% of us you have to make a choice: * Go to work knowing you are probably not productively writing software and just accept that reality for what it is: staring out the window while other people listen to the sound of their own voice out loud all day long. And, you often have to drive through lengthy traffic to relish in this experience. * Write software outside of work at cost to your marriage, time with kids, personal finances, and everything else with work life balance. * Go do something else.

yieldcrv 3y ago

nah, L take. Have a life. I remember going to hackathons and wanting forced timed experience to build anything. I remember going up to the companies that wanted you to build on their stuff and being surprised at their substandard APIs and how lackadaisical and unmotivated those engineering representatives were, I just didnt understand. A fortune 500 team just hanging out a hackathon with no capability or interest in providing real support? Now I think back and I realize they just had other things to care about The hackathon and job could be fulfilling, their DIY projects at home were more fulfilling. Their entrepreneurial endeavors were more fulfilling. Sure, they could be totally checked out and burned out too. But it doesnt matter, set boundaries with your job because that definitely doesnt matter.

jvanderbot 3y ago

Don't mistake zero-fucks with zero-cares. Staying cool while keeping your sleeves rolled up working on fixes is an absolute life skill. Knowing it's always "Same shit different pile" is maturity, not resignation. Working hard because you are a valuable engineer doing a good job, despite knowing that the world is full of chaos and nothing will matter in 5 years is called Professionalism. Get paid, invest, be chill and fun to work with, enjoy your family and friends, go fishing or something.

manicennui 3y ago

I don't think it is reasonable to expect to truly enjoy one's job. This seems like a luxury that some people in certain fields might enjoy, but most of us tolerate or hate our jobs and wouldn't do these activities by choice.

throw555chip 3y ago

Weird takeaway, I thought the comment was brilliant and spot on! 30 years here too!

timacles 3y ago

I used to think like this, but after getting a wife and kids, there’s just no way a corporate job can be continually rewarding like you describe. Everything is always mired in unpleasant bullshit and emotionally detaching like the above poster suggests is the most pragmatic way to handle work. I’ve lost all desire of proving myself and working on interesting problems, because at the end of the day, I’d just rather spend time with my family and do fun personal projects. Work is work and it will be never live up to an idealized concept that you have in your head.