6 ms·

Boring work needs tension

140 points by iaziz786 1y ago

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
ian-g 1y ago
Or maybe, sometimes it's just flat out dull work. And it has to get done, you're the one with the capacity to do it, and you just have to grit your teeth and do it.
datadrivenangel 1y ago
Unless you work on a dysfunctional team and any non-tracked work is forbidden, and any work you try and get tracked requires 6 pages of justification and takes 10 weeks to get prioritized enough for someone to work on...
- marcosdumay 1y ago
  You have a funny definition of "dysfunctional".
  - wavemode 1y ago
    How so?
    - tra3 1y ago
      Surely it was in jest. Tons of places are like that.
      - ianbutler 1y ago
        Perhaps tons of places are dysfunctional. Nothing says quantity makes right.
        Apocryphon 1y ago
        And when it's systemic, maybe you could say the industry has dysfunctions.
    - marcosdumay 1y ago
      Wait, is your question serious, and people talking about it being in jest directed at my comment and not the one above it? How often do you think the OP's "functional" team fixes small problems with their code before they become large problems? How often do you think they discover small features that lead to huge gains but need a developer's understanding of sized to discover it's small? And also, how often do you think they get stuck creating nearly impossible features that can be worked around with a small amount of work from the users that they would rather not do? And none of those is the large issue anyway. The large issue is that teams working like that can barely create any software, for much more complex reasons than fits in a comment.
  - datadrivenangel 1y ago
    You can either laugh or cry about it. Laughing is more fun. This is nearly the norm for ENTERPRISE software development, and it's such a tragedy.
- ramon156 1y ago
  My team isnt dysfunctional but I always get hit on the head for doing work and not making a ticket. I don't get it, if I see something bad I'm not going to search which ticket would best fit this issue. Just reviw my PR ! Also, so far most of our projects start simple but end in chaos and deadlines on the minute. I feel like we could always do better.
  - schneems 1y ago
    I’ve been on both sides of this equation. If someone is dinging you for doing extra work, it could be a sign that your priorities are not aligned. Like, if you’ve got a tight deadline coming up, it’s not the time to spend a week making CI slightly faster. On the other hand, if someone is telling you to not do work (right now), then they also need to help be responsible for finding time to do that work and understanding the impacts of that work never gets done. I explain this to people as the tension between important urgent work. Some work is important but never（rarely) urgent. And if you ignore important work (like maintenance) it might become urgent at a very bad time.
    - datadrivenangel 1y ago
      Also there is value in having an audit trail of who did what when and why, both for operations and system evolution, and for all the compliance junk. Not so much value that a tiny bit of cleanup needs a huge amount of overhead though.
      - serial_dev 1y ago
        If you want a trail, there is already the PR. It has description that explains why the change makes sense, code changes, reviewers, if relevant screenshots and videos. If you want small PRs that contain one meaningful, easy to review change, and that change only concerns the development team, there is no reason to create a ticket for the sake of creating a ticket. Also, in some dysfunctional teams creating a ticket means it requires prioritization and you will most likely never work on it and ticket will be deleted five years from today when nobody you know with at the company anymore. Believe me, no sane CFO (or include any person not in the dev team or product team) will look up your Jira ticket explaining why you wanted to refactor the GitHub actions because you had to update 10 files whenever there’s is a new version of a tool used in your pipeline. Also, usually these changes are so small and straightforward, arguing about putting it in a ticket takes longer than reviewing it and merging it.
- fnord77 1y ago
  Disallowing non-tracked work isn't necessarily dysfunctional. Let's say you're working on spaceflight software where lives are at risk.
kbar13 1y ago
who's working at a boring job nowadays as a software dev? everywhere i see devs are wearing like 10 hats bc we have the combination of being capable yet still at the bottom of the totem pole.
- dakiol 1y ago
  I just landed a new job, and I thikn it's a boring one. At my previous job I was fixing Java's memory issues, migrating databases and riding Jira epics. At my new job I'm fixing button's padding/marging, deploying and deploying stuff on Vercel. Paycheck is the same, though; so I couldn't care less.
- tayo42 1y ago
  Those 10 hats can be boring. I do alot, all of it is meaningless and tied up in corporate politics. Another poster got it right, meaningful work isn't boring.
tra3 1y ago
I feel like "tension" has negative connotations. Maybe it's just me. I like "friction" better in this context. There are so many opportunities for improvement, I'm never bored. My aim is to leave this place better than I found it. Even tiny improvements compound over time.
- sfink 1y ago
  It's a callout to the concept of "dramatic tension". See also all the talk of stories, movies, etc. https://fiveable.me/key-terms/introduction-creative-writing/dramatic-tension https://fiveable.me/key-terms/introduction-creative-writing/... is as good a source as any. To me, friction is more negative. It's always there and it only serves to slow things down (by definition!) Tension can be released, and in fact creates anticipation for the release.
eschneider 1y ago
> Your CI/CD takes a huge amount of time because you forgot to leverage caching. The bane of my existence are CI/CD systems that get caching 99% right. Chasing down the problems from that last 1% of strangely busted...well, lets just say that if you want TENSION at work, good way to get it. :/
- arccy 1y ago
  with github actions... often caching is slow as well
truelson 1y ago
I disagree. Boring work needs meaning, not tension. Some times boring, done consistently, is where the truly great things come from. Tension is, imo, ephemeral. If you keep chasing it, you are chasing dopamine loops. Little good comes from this. But meaning is different. When you can remind yourself a truly great "why" you are doing something, can re-frame it, it can help. Most importantly, boredom, irritation, and anxiety are temporary. They are emotions. They do not define us or the work. It was a joy when I realized that all these emotions will pass. They really do. You can sit with it. You really can. You can't make it go away, but it will pass.
- treve 1y ago
  Different people are motivated differently. My work is meaningful but it's not enough to feel like I'm having fun every day. Some dopamine is basically critical for me to function. It's always a bit wild when people feel they can generalize their own experience and assume it must be the case for everyone else. This needs more I statements.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - cestith 1y ago
    > This needs more I statements. This is one statement that’s true of an overwhelming number of stories.
- patates 1y ago
  > Some times boring, done consistently, is where the truly great things come from. I used to tell myself the same thing. Then one day, a customer misconfigured their NetScaler, and all hell broke loose. We had half-delivered CSS files, misfiring form handlers, random blank screens of death, and a buggy front-end library that would bombard the backend with requests if it received the wrong status code with no back-off logic! There were hundreds of bug reports. You name it, we had it. Debugging everything was just wild, especially with the constant tension of "What if it's our fault?" In the end, it wasn't! We got paid for our time, and we were able to close a massive number of tickets. It was one of the best weeks of my professional life.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
pflenker 1y ago
Find joy in the craft, don’t rely on the outside world to feed you excitement. A well-crafted wooden box can spark as much joy as a well-crafted piece of software or a well-written document. Taxes are boring, no kid at kindergarten states they are going to be tax advisors when they grow up, yet tax advisors exist and they do not all despise their jobs, because doing your job well can be intrinsically motivating.
- masijo 1y ago
  I used to feel this way until management made AI tools mandatory.
AfterHIA 1y ago
In the 1950s through the beginning of the 1970's the government (ARPA) was paying young scientists and innovators to do their PhD thesis' in computer design to create the next generation of human oriented computer interfaces. Now we have articles talking about how shit it is to work with computers. What the fuck man. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sketchpad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sketchpad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLS_(computer_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLS_(computer_system)
65 1y ago
Good luck convincing your PMs you need to refactor code for two weeks.
josephjrobison 1y ago
I always find fun and comfort in imaging my work as part of the lore of a medieval saga. Think of being a character in Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones - no matter how big or small - and the role your actions play in the larger story. Side quests are welcome.
wiseowise 1y ago
OP hasn’t been in the industry for long.
shreddit 1y ago
I don’t even need tension in movies, more than that i even hate made up (illogical) tension just for the movie to happen in the first place.
daxfohl 1y ago
In 2025, if you're bored at work then you're probably expendable, so there's your tension. Boring work needs automation, not tension. Free up time to work on things more valuable and rewarding. Don't assume that just because you were hired to own service X that it means you can't peek out of your box. If you get it to the point where it's self-managing, look around at other people's needs before adding artificial requirements. You'll learn more, work with more people, get more recognition, and likely be more energized by the work.
mhuffman 1y ago
Ah yes, what most jobs these days lack is tension! Too bored? Get yourself worked up over some other task! What an insight!!! >If you can’t tackle these at work, do it in your personal projects. Just gold analysis. Most people in SWE have plenty of personal projects supported by their work managers and encouraged to implement work tasks into personal projects.
incompatible 1y ago
"Watching [movies] is fun because you can imagine yourself resonating with a character." Perhaps I'm just an unusual type of person, but there are very few movie characters that I "resonate" with. Far more common is thinking "why are you doing that, you idiot?" or "what a jerk! Just tell them the truth."
nickpinkston 1y ago
I initially thought this was about boring holes on a lathe where you want constant tension on the boring bar. I'll see myself out...
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
j45 1y ago
Maybe the perception of boredom is the tension.

140 points by iaziz786 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

Or maybe, sometimes it's just flat out dull work. And it has to get done, you're the one with the capacity to do it, and you just have to grit your teeth and do it.

datadrivenangel 1y ago

Unless you work on a dysfunctional team and any non-tracked work is forbidden, and any work you try and get tracked requires 6 pages of justification and takes 10 weeks to get prioritized enough for someone to work on...

marcosdumay 1y ago
You have a funny definition of "dysfunctional".
- wavemode 1y ago
  How so?
  - tra3 1y ago
    Surely it was in jest. Tons of places are like that.
    - ianbutler 1y ago
      Perhaps tons of places are dysfunctional. Nothing says quantity makes right.
      - Apocryphon 1y ago
        And when it's systemic, maybe you could say the industry has dysfunctions.
  - marcosdumay 1y ago
    Wait, is your question serious, and people talking about it being in jest directed at my comment and not the one above it? How often do you think the OP's "functional" team fixes small problems with their code before they become large problems? How often do you think they discover small features that lead to huge gains but need a developer's understanding of sized to discover it's small? And also, how often do you think they get stuck creating nearly impossible features that can be worked around with a small amount of work from the users that they would rather not do? And none of those is the large issue anyway. The large issue is that teams working like that can barely create any software, for much more complex reasons than fits in a comment.
- datadrivenangel 1y ago
  You can either laugh or cry about it. Laughing is more fun. This is nearly the norm for ENTERPRISE software development, and it's such a tragedy.
ramon156 1y ago
My team isnt dysfunctional but I always get hit on the head for doing work and not making a ticket. I don't get it, if I see something bad I'm not going to search which ticket would best fit this issue. Just reviw my PR ! Also, so far most of our projects start simple but end in chaos and deadlines on the minute. I feel like we could always do better.
- schneems 1y ago
  I’ve been on both sides of this equation. If someone is dinging you for doing extra work, it could be a sign that your priorities are not aligned. Like, if you’ve got a tight deadline coming up, it’s not the time to spend a week making CI slightly faster. On the other hand, if someone is telling you to not do work (right now), then they also need to help be responsible for finding time to do that work and understanding the impacts of that work never gets done. I explain this to people as the tension between important urgent work. Some work is important but never（rarely) urgent. And if you ignore important work (like maintenance) it might become urgent at a very bad time.
  - datadrivenangel 1y ago
    Also there is value in having an audit trail of who did what when and why, both for operations and system evolution, and for all the compliance junk. Not so much value that a tiny bit of cleanup needs a huge amount of overhead though.
    - serial_dev 1y ago
      If you want a trail, there is already the PR. It has description that explains why the change makes sense, code changes, reviewers, if relevant screenshots and videos. If you want small PRs that contain one meaningful, easy to review change, and that change only concerns the development team, there is no reason to create a ticket for the sake of creating a ticket. Also, in some dysfunctional teams creating a ticket means it requires prioritization and you will most likely never work on it and ticket will be deleted five years from today when nobody you know with at the company anymore. Believe me, no sane CFO (or include any person not in the dev team or product team) will look up your Jira ticket explaining why you wanted to refactor the GitHub actions because you had to update 10 files whenever there’s is a new version of a tool used in your pipeline. Also, usually these changes are so small and straightforward, arguing about putting it in a ticket takes longer than reviewing it and merging it.
fnord77 1y ago
Disallowing non-tracked work isn't necessarily dysfunctional. Let's say you're working on spaceflight software where lives are at risk.

kbar13 1y ago

who's working at a boring job nowadays as a software dev? everywhere i see devs are wearing like 10 hats bc we have the combination of being capable yet still at the bottom of the totem pole.

dakiol 1y ago
I just landed a new job, and I thikn it's a boring one. At my previous job I was fixing Java's memory issues, migrating databases and riding Jira epics. At my new job I'm fixing button's padding/marging, deploying and deploying stuff on Vercel. Paycheck is the same, though; so I couldn't care less.
tayo42 1y ago
Those 10 hats can be boring. I do alot, all of it is meaningless and tied up in corporate politics. Another poster got it right, meaningful work isn't boring.

tra3 1y ago

I feel like "tension" has negative connotations. Maybe it's just me. I like "friction" better in this context. There are so many opportunities for improvement, I'm never bored. My aim is to leave this place better than I found it. Even tiny improvements compound over time.

sfink 1y ago
It's a callout to the concept of "dramatic tension". See also all the talk of stories, movies, etc. https://fiveable.me/key-terms/introduction-creative-writing/dramatic-tension https://fiveable.me/key-terms/introduction-creative-writing/... is as good a source as any. To me, friction is more negative. It's always there and it only serves to slow things down (by definition!) Tension can be released, and in fact creates anticipation for the release.

eschneider 1y ago

> Your CI/CD takes a huge amount of time because you forgot to leverage caching. The bane of my existence are CI/CD systems that get caching 99% right. Chasing down the problems from that last 1% of strangely busted...well, lets just say that if you want TENSION at work, good way to get it. :/

arccy 1y ago
with github actions... often caching is slow as well

truelson 1y ago

I disagree. Boring work needs meaning, not tension. Some times boring, done consistently, is where the truly great things come from. Tension is, imo, ephemeral. If you keep chasing it, you are chasing dopamine loops. Little good comes from this. But meaning is different. When you can remind yourself a truly great "why" you are doing something, can re-frame it, it can help. Most importantly, boredom, irritation, and anxiety are temporary. They are emotions. They do not define us or the work. It was a joy when I realized that all these emotions will pass. They really do. You can sit with it. You really can. You can't make it go away, but it will pass.

treve 1y ago
Different people are motivated differently. My work is meaningful but it's not enough to feel like I'm having fun every day. Some dopamine is basically critical for me to function. It's always a bit wild when people feel they can generalize their own experience and assume it must be the case for everyone else. This needs more I statements.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- cestith 1y ago
  > This needs more I statements. This is one statement that’s true of an overwhelming number of stories.
patates 1y ago
> Some times boring, done consistently, is where the truly great things come from. I used to tell myself the same thing. Then one day, a customer misconfigured their NetScaler, and all hell broke loose. We had half-delivered CSS files, misfiring form handlers, random blank screens of death, and a buggy front-end library that would bombard the backend with requests if it received the wrong status code with no back-off logic! There were hundreds of bug reports. You name it, we had it. Debugging everything was just wild, especially with the constant tension of "What if it's our fault?" In the end, it wasn't! We got paid for our time, and we were able to close a massive number of tickets. It was one of the best weeks of my professional life.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

pflenker 1y ago

Find joy in the craft, don’t rely on the outside world to feed you excitement. A well-crafted wooden box can spark as much joy as a well-crafted piece of software or a well-written document. Taxes are boring, no kid at kindergarten states they are going to be tax advisors when they grow up, yet tax advisors exist and they do not all despise their jobs, because doing your job well can be intrinsically motivating.

masijo 1y ago
I used to feel this way until management made AI tools mandatory.

AfterHIA 1y ago

In the 1950s through the beginning of the 1970's the government (ARPA) was paying young scientists and innovators to do their PhD thesis' in computer design to create the next generation of human oriented computer interfaces. Now we have articles talking about how shit it is to work with computers. What the fuck man. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sketchpad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sketchpad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLS_(computer_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLS_(computer_system)

65 1y ago

Good luck convincing your PMs you need to refactor code for two weeks.

josephjrobison 1y ago

I always find fun and comfort in imaging my work as part of the lore of a medieval saga. Think of being a character in Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones - no matter how big or small - and the role your actions play in the larger story. Side quests are welcome.

wiseowise 1y ago

OP hasn’t been in the industry for long.

shreddit 1y ago

I don’t even need tension in movies, more than that i even hate made up (illogical) tension just for the movie to happen in the first place.

daxfohl 1y ago

In 2025, if you're bored at work then you're probably expendable, so there's your tension. Boring work needs automation, not tension. Free up time to work on things more valuable and rewarding. Don't assume that just because you were hired to own service X that it means you can't peek out of your box. If you get it to the point where it's self-managing, look around at other people's needs before adding artificial requirements. You'll learn more, work with more people, get more recognition, and likely be more energized by the work.

mhuffman 1y ago

Ah yes, what most jobs these days lack is tension! Too bored? Get yourself worked up over some other task! What an insight!!! >If you can’t tackle these at work, do it in your personal projects. Just gold analysis. Most people in SWE have plenty of personal projects supported by their work managers and encouraged to implement work tasks into personal projects.

incompatible 1y ago

"Watching [movies] is fun because you can imagine yourself resonating with a character." Perhaps I'm just an unusual type of person, but there are very few movie characters that I "resonate" with. Far more common is thinking "why are you doing that, you idiot?" or "what a jerk! Just tell them the truth."

nickpinkston 1y ago

I initially thought this was about boring holes on a lathe where you want constant tension on the boring bar. I'll see myself out...

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

j45 1y ago

Maybe the perception of boredom is the tension.