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I've definitely struggled with that feeling in my work as well. When I was growing up, the metric for having done something were things like: All the hay is ba

I've definitely struggled with that feeling in my work as well. When I was growing up, the metric for having done something were things like: All the hay is baled and we moved it all into a loft, or we finished shingling the roof. Working in a technical position, it feels much vaguer. Maybe I finished a project, but then again, maybe there's a bug, and I'm back working on what I thought was done. Maybe I made a tool accessible online, but now there's a new tech stack and my tool is irrelevant unless I update it. It feels very Sisyphean at times I suppose, in a way that making a physical product and then seeing someone use it or eat it really doesn't. It's interesting that it feels like that though, because I certainly didn't have to throw hay only one time, and I didn't have to scrape paint from a wall only one time. I suppose I'm interested in why it feels more real and less repetitive, and maybe part of that is what you point out, that people outside of the field just don't understand what the work that tech workers do consists of in actuality.

racl101 2y ago
> It feels very Sisyphean at times I suppose I feel this every time I touch CSS. Sometimes I spend hours just fiddling with it, and my code commit is a few characters. And what's worse, it's the thing I stumbled on in the first 10 minutes of debugging, but that, for some reason, never worked that I tried again out of desperation, after not getting anything else to work (an hour later) and that I'm now trying again for some reason. Yet, for some reason, it works this time. CSS makes me feel stupid.
andyferris 2y ago
> It feels very Sisyphean at times I suppose, in a way that making a physical product and then seeing someone use it or eat it really doesn't. An ex-manager had a phrase that stuck with me, that we are building the factories. Ultimately software gets used to do something, there are lots little "products" being emitted each time it is used. If you are looking at physical products on the shelf, people don't normally think "who fixes the factory that built this when something goes wrong? who makes the factory more efficient so the producer doesn't go bankrupt? who changes the factory when a new design needs to be produced?". This kind of work is rather ephemeral and Sisyphean by nature, so sometimes I like to remind myself that there are these tangible products people rely on but they are just a layer removed. (Nowadays I'm two layers removed - I build a factory to build factories, i.e. compilers and platforms and such). (This particular business line essentially processed data - it was much more complicated than that but fundamentally was remote-sensing -> data-in -> data-out, so the "data factory" metaphore kinda made sense in that setting).
- piotrpdev 2y ago
  Thanks for sharing, I've never thought of it that way.

racl101 2y ago

> It feels very Sisyphean at times I suppose I feel this every time I touch CSS. Sometimes I spend hours just fiddling with it, and my code commit is a few characters. And what's worse, it's the thing I stumbled on in the first 10 minutes of debugging, but that, for some reason, never worked that I tried again out of desperation, after not getting anything else to work (an hour later) and that I'm now trying again for some reason. Yet, for some reason, it works this time. CSS makes me feel stupid.

andyferris 2y ago

> It feels very Sisyphean at times I suppose, in a way that making a physical product and then seeing someone use it or eat it really doesn't. An ex-manager had a phrase that stuck with me, that we are building the factories. Ultimately software gets used to do something, there are lots little "products" being emitted each time it is used. If you are looking at physical products on the shelf, people don't normally think "who fixes the factory that built this when something goes wrong? who makes the factory more efficient so the producer doesn't go bankrupt? who changes the factory when a new design needs to be produced?". This kind of work is rather ephemeral and Sisyphean by nature, so sometimes I like to remind myself that there are these tangible products people rely on but they are just a layer removed. (Nowadays I'm two layers removed - I build a factory to build factories, i.e. compilers and platforms and such). (This particular business line essentially processed data - it was much more complicated than that but fundamentally was remote-sensing -> data-in -> data-out, so the "data factory" metaphore kinda made sense in that setting).

piotrpdev 2y ago
Thanks for sharing, I've never thought of it that way.