4 ms·

I love computers, but I'm tired. I spend all day doing stand-ups and scrum and SAFE and then trying to build microservices that talk to other microservices tha

I love computers, but I'm tired. I spend all day doing stand-ups and scrum and SAFE and then trying to build microservices that talk to other microservices that other teams have built and I just want to get it done with the minimal amount of explosions and call it a day. I can't afford to tinker at my job, and I have no energy at night. I made my hobby my job and it killed it.

throwawaysleep 1y ago
To be candid, even though my jobs have time to tinker, I don’t want to fight with Product or Management to get improvements into prod. Took me half a year to get them to value Sentry, lol. I’ll just collect my check and go do something else.
- whstl 1y ago
  Exactly the situation in pretty much every company I worked at in the last 10 years. Fighting the Product Manager, fighting the Designer, sometimes even fighting some micromanaging stakeholder that won't leave you alone. It's definitely fights I can win, but do I even have the energy anymore? Development work involves more than meets the eye. While there are some folks who understand the technical intricacies, it's tiring having to join discussions you know won't go anywhere. I wish it was 2000-2010 again, when my biggest problems were Sales promising features we don't have and then having fun with the other devs coding it.
downrightmike 1y ago
The larger the environment, the more brain power it takes. Microservices didn't help with that
stalfosknight 1y ago
This right here is how I feel about this too. I used to have a lot more mental bandwidth and energy to be "curious" and to tinker once upon a time. But now the world is so literally and figuratively on fire and every executive is so rabidly frothing at the mouth over AI that now I just want things to "just work" with the least amount of bullshit so I can just go home on time and forget about work until the next business day. I just want this fucked decade to be over already.
- SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
  While I want that too, I have no illusions that the next decade will be better.
  - stalfosknight 1y ago
    While I do agree things can always be worse (and seem to want to continue to be worse), I think there has to be a rock bottom of sorts past which the unwashed masses will simply not tolerate. Maybe that's what's left of my optimism talking.
varispeed 1y ago
If you don't have energy, then you are doing too much. Pace yourself. If you think something can be delivered in 5 days, say it needs 10 days. Otherwise this is just a road to burnout and exploitation. World will not end if project is delayed by few weeks. You get time for your own tinkering (never tinker on company stuff, even if that would improve things, unless you are shareholder).
- skydhash 1y ago
  This so much. When there’s a real urgency, you will know it (aka the whole team will be brought in). A good pace (as in not ruining your mental health) is feasible.
geodel 1y ago
Yes I think your experience sums up about >95% of all dev experience. I am doing about same thing as you for last 8-10 years or so. I guess it is about same time where Agile took hold of IT/Software industry. Apart from may be few core infrastructure primitives at public Cloud providers most of IT stuff today is API calling API calling API and so on. It will be the case until Human is Out Of Loop from most of the IT work.
- pixl97 1y ago
  I mean computerization has always been about automation. There are a massive number of tasks of humanity that have been automated or mechanized away and more will continue to do so in the future.
- izacus 1y ago
  I very much doubt more than a low 10s % of companies do scrum or safe.
  - cybwraith 1y ago
    I have no metrics on this, but I've been seeing/hearing of scrum popping up in all sorts of places, not just in software but in other firms where it doesn't belong. For example, my relative works in a chemical engineering firm and they use scrum. A friend of mine is in another flavor of engineering field and they use scrum as well. The sad truth is agile/scrum has really lost the plot in most places and is mostly used as a way to justify micromanagement of developers (or other roles) and lack of proper long term planning.
  - SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
    I would bet that the majority of companies with more than couple of devs do some sort of "agile" for dev work.
  - AlexandrB 1y ago
    And it's unlikely that more than a low 1s% of companies do agile as originally conceived. "Agile" has become everything it was originally opposed to: tons of process, specialized roles that have nothing to do with development (scrum masters), little to no direct communication with customers (at least in the places where I've worked). The dominant tool for doing "Agile" (Jira) says it all - a slow, heavy, bug tracking system with everything and the kitchen sink in terms of features often imposed on teams from the top down. Very "agile" indeed.
akdev1l 1y ago
Interesting. for me it feels like I have to spend all day fighting with folks who are constantly “holding it wrong” and using libraries and frameworks in really weird/buggy ways who then seem completely uninterested in learning. In my free time I love working on my own projects because I don’t have to deal with this bullshit and I can just craft things finely without any external pressure.
maerF0x0 1y ago
> stand-ups and scrum and SAFE Honestly some of my best jobs were at places that had a nicely balanced practice in place and the backbone to remind execs that if they interrupt makers daily with new shiny asks they will in effect get nothing (because nothing would ever be completed)... But obviously we can both have worked at places with those labels with vastly different implementations and thus experiences :)
epolanski 1y ago
This is a feature, not a bug. Any non-small company has plenty of people that need to justify their salaries. Meetings is one of the most effective ways to actually pretend to be working.
sharts 1y ago
Exactly the same sentiment here.
sherburt3 1y ago
I was at the same place you are for a while until I realized my obsession with doing everything "right" was killing my enjoyment of programming. I read through Let Over Lambda a couple of months ago and was blown away at how deeply unmaintainable some of his code examples are, but I got inspired to start letting myself do weird unmaintainable shit while programming instead of constantly acting like my code has to pass a code review and I've found its a lot more fun.
frollogaston 1y ago
At least you're not sitting there patching Y2K bugs
xyst 1y ago
damn this was me for a few years. I hate corporate work environments so much. Then they hire bottom of the barrel contractors and expect you to get them up to speed in less than a week or so. Final straw for me was RTO. Silently quitting and getting my ticket punched (laid off) was the best thing for me.
- SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
  Did you find an enjoyable job at a less corporate place?

throwawaysleep 1y ago

To be candid, even though my jobs have time to tinker, I don’t want to fight with Product or Management to get improvements into prod. Took me half a year to get them to value Sentry, lol. I’ll just collect my check and go do something else.

whstl 1y ago
Exactly the situation in pretty much every company I worked at in the last 10 years. Fighting the Product Manager, fighting the Designer, sometimes even fighting some micromanaging stakeholder that won't leave you alone. It's definitely fights I can win, but do I even have the energy anymore? Development work involves more than meets the eye. While there are some folks who understand the technical intricacies, it's tiring having to join discussions you know won't go anywhere. I wish it was 2000-2010 again, when my biggest problems were Sales promising features we don't have and then having fun with the other devs coding it.

downrightmike 1y ago

The larger the environment, the more brain power it takes. Microservices didn't help with that

stalfosknight 1y ago

This right here is how I feel about this too. I used to have a lot more mental bandwidth and energy to be "curious" and to tinker once upon a time. But now the world is so literally and figuratively on fire and every executive is so rabidly frothing at the mouth over AI that now I just want things to "just work" with the least amount of bullshit so I can just go home on time and forget about work until the next business day. I just want this fucked decade to be over already.

SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
While I want that too, I have no illusions that the next decade will be better.
- stalfosknight 1y ago
  While I do agree things can always be worse (and seem to want to continue to be worse), I think there has to be a rock bottom of sorts past which the unwashed masses will simply not tolerate. Maybe that's what's left of my optimism talking.

varispeed 1y ago

If you don't have energy, then you are doing too much. Pace yourself. If you think something can be delivered in 5 days, say it needs 10 days. Otherwise this is just a road to burnout and exploitation. World will not end if project is delayed by few weeks. You get time for your own tinkering (never tinker on company stuff, even if that would improve things, unless you are shareholder).

skydhash 1y ago
This so much. When there’s a real urgency, you will know it (aka the whole team will be brought in). A good pace (as in not ruining your mental health) is feasible.

geodel 1y ago

Yes I think your experience sums up about >95% of all dev experience. I am doing about same thing as you for last 8-10 years or so. I guess it is about same time where Agile took hold of IT/Software industry. Apart from may be few core infrastructure primitives at public Cloud providers most of IT stuff today is API calling API calling API and so on. It will be the case until Human is Out Of Loop from most of the IT work.

pixl97 1y ago
I mean computerization has always been about automation. There are a massive number of tasks of humanity that have been automated or mechanized away and more will continue to do so in the future.
izacus 1y ago
I very much doubt more than a low 10s % of companies do scrum or safe.
- cybwraith 1y ago
  I have no metrics on this, but I've been seeing/hearing of scrum popping up in all sorts of places, not just in software but in other firms where it doesn't belong. For example, my relative works in a chemical engineering firm and they use scrum. A friend of mine is in another flavor of engineering field and they use scrum as well. The sad truth is agile/scrum has really lost the plot in most places and is mostly used as a way to justify micromanagement of developers (or other roles) and lack of proper long term planning.
- SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
  I would bet that the majority of companies with more than couple of devs do some sort of "agile" for dev work.
- AlexandrB 1y ago
  And it's unlikely that more than a low 1s% of companies do agile as originally conceived. "Agile" has become everything it was originally opposed to: tons of process, specialized roles that have nothing to do with development (scrum masters), little to no direct communication with customers (at least in the places where I've worked). The dominant tool for doing "Agile" (Jira) says it all - a slow, heavy, bug tracking system with everything and the kitchen sink in terms of features often imposed on teams from the top down. Very "agile" indeed.

akdev1l 1y ago

Interesting. for me it feels like I have to spend all day fighting with folks who are constantly “holding it wrong” and using libraries and frameworks in really weird/buggy ways who then seem completely uninterested in learning. In my free time I love working on my own projects because I don’t have to deal with this bullshit and I can just craft things finely without any external pressure.

maerF0x0 1y ago

> stand-ups and scrum and SAFE Honestly some of my best jobs were at places that had a nicely balanced practice in place and the backbone to remind execs that if they interrupt makers daily with new shiny asks they will in effect get nothing (because nothing would ever be completed)... But obviously we can both have worked at places with those labels with vastly different implementations and thus experiences :)

epolanski 1y ago

This is a feature, not a bug. Any non-small company has plenty of people that need to justify their salaries. Meetings is one of the most effective ways to actually pretend to be working.

sharts 1y ago

Exactly the same sentiment here.

sherburt3 1y ago

I was at the same place you are for a while until I realized my obsession with doing everything "right" was killing my enjoyment of programming. I read through Let Over Lambda a couple of months ago and was blown away at how deeply unmaintainable some of his code examples are, but I got inspired to start letting myself do weird unmaintainable shit while programming instead of constantly acting like my code has to pass a code review and I've found its a lot more fun.

frollogaston 1y ago

At least you're not sitting there patching Y2K bugs

xyst 1y ago

damn this was me for a few years. I hate corporate work environments so much. Then they hire bottom of the barrel contractors and expect you to get them up to speed in less than a week or so. Final straw for me was RTO. Silently quitting and getting my ticket punched (laid off) was the best thing for me.

SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
Did you find an enjoyable job at a less corporate place?