5 ms·

I'm 47* and I've been around a bit (dotcom era startups to banking and telecoms) and I'm familiar with the 75% mentioned. There is a type of programmer that wor

I'm 47* and I've been around a bit (dotcom era startups to banking and telecoms) and I'm familiar with the 75% mentioned. There is a type of programmer that works away in blue chips turning up to work on time, doing what's asked of them and then knocking off at half five. Sure they maybe repeat the same one year's experience year after year perhaps with some technology transitioning years from COBOL to VB to VB.NET or C# or maybe Java, that kinda thing. They'll know Oracle or MS SQL or DB2 well enough to make stuff work, or maybe they call into a message switch (with a pre-wrapped library for their language/framework) to read/write their LOB data. They work there for years and years collecting their salary and annual (if there are any) bonuses and many will be the last lucky few to hang on to a decent occupational pension, in return to knocking out code to meet business requirements. But they do it well, they know their line of business apps for their organisation's market sector and "how things are done". These are conservative people working in conservative business environments. The thing is who cares? Many of these folks have interesting lives outside their corporate bunkers which involve travelling the world, renovating houses, flying small aircraft, model trains and enjoying friends and family...and much, much more. It's just a job and I'm sure these folks will have their own measure of job satisfaction which will be different from ours. It might not be as exciting as the seat of your pants local startup but it pays the mortgage and provides reasonable financial security. Sure there are no absolute guarantees about job security, but I live in the UK and we're at a lot less risk of being fired for no reason other than "at will". It takes quite a bit of legal effort and cost to make employees redundant, especially in finance where you're fairly likely to be a member of a union (mass redundancies have to be negotiated and consulted on and redundancy payments agreed etc). It's not depressing, it's just that these folks have different priorities in life. Scott Hanselman described some of these folks as "Dark Matter Developers"[0]. [0]: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/DarkMatterDevelopersTheUnseen99.aspx http://www.hanselman.com/blog/DarkMatterDevelopersTheUnseen9... * To address the Ayende's question, being 47 I'm probably an "older dev" I've worked for the same company since 2003 (ISP/Web Hoster), I like the work, I'm happy there, they treat me well, I work from home, it's (fingers crossed) reasonably secure. It'd take a really seriously good offer to make me change employers. This is not to say that I don't keep abreast of the latest tech and frameworks, the fact that I follow HN should make that abundantly clear; for example we're looking at how we could monetize Docker for our clients - first heard about here.

enraged_camel 12y ago
>> It's just a job I can understand this mentality, but cannot sympathize with it. Personally, I refuse to treat my job as "just a job." I want it to mean something. I want to look forward to coming to work everyday. I want to feel like the work I do makes a difference, as opposed to fizzle out and die in the massive corporate bureaucracy. I hate the idea that I'm just spinning my wheels, looking busy, collecting a paycheck. Doing so is just... soul crushing. That's the best way I can describe it. I'm actually literally 15 minutes away from giving my two-weeks notice. Just waiting for my boss to come in. I'm glad I had the chance to put my feelings in writing somewhere other than my resignation letter because I wanted to get them off my chest but not burn bridges. Thank you teh_klev. :)
- humanrebar 12y ago
  > Personally, I refuse to treat my job as "just a job." I want it to mean something. Well, some people don't build model airplanes after work. They raise families, work at food banks, take care of their elderly parents, sponsor people in AA, and so on. Ideally, every waking minute of your life will make the world a better place, but it's a luxury to expect a career that really means something. Good luck on your career decision. It sounds like you've already made up your mind, but in general it's a good idea to talk to your boss about the soulcrushingness of work well before you want to quit. It's possible that she would be willing to give you more variety, responsibility, or freedom to keep you around.
- bane 12y ago
  I think one way to do this is to get a sense for what are sometimes boring corporate missions that actually do have a huge impact in the world. I remember when I was early in my career I talked with an older engineer who had done lots of time in the insurance business and I said something like "I don't know if I could ever work in something so boring". He replied "making sure that claims are paid out correctly can be the different between somebody having a home or going homeless, or somebody being able to feed their family or not having transportation at all. Keeping in mind the lives of the people you're ultimately serving keeps me motivated even if the day-to-day is boring" It's advice I've always kept at heart and it's been helpful.

enraged_camel 12y ago

>> It's just a job I can understand this mentality, but cannot sympathize with it. Personally, I refuse to treat my job as "just a job." I want it to mean something. I want to look forward to coming to work everyday. I want to feel like the work I do makes a difference, as opposed to fizzle out and die in the massive corporate bureaucracy. I hate the idea that I'm just spinning my wheels, looking busy, collecting a paycheck. Doing so is just... soul crushing. That's the best way I can describe it. I'm actually literally 15 minutes away from giving my two-weeks notice. Just waiting for my boss to come in. I'm glad I had the chance to put my feelings in writing somewhere other than my resignation letter because I wanted to get them off my chest but not burn bridges. Thank you teh_klev. :)

humanrebar 12y ago
> Personally, I refuse to treat my job as "just a job." I want it to mean something. Well, some people don't build model airplanes after work. They raise families, work at food banks, take care of their elderly parents, sponsor people in AA, and so on. Ideally, every waking minute of your life will make the world a better place, but it's a luxury to expect a career that really means something. Good luck on your career decision. It sounds like you've already made up your mind, but in general it's a good idea to talk to your boss about the soulcrushingness of work well before you want to quit. It's possible that she would be willing to give you more variety, responsibility, or freedom to keep you around.
bane 12y ago
I think one way to do this is to get a sense for what are sometimes boring corporate missions that actually do have a huge impact in the world. I remember when I was early in my career I talked with an older engineer who had done lots of time in the insurance business and I said something like "I don't know if I could ever work in something so boring". He replied "making sure that claims are paid out correctly can be the different between somebody having a home or going homeless, or somebody being able to feed their family or not having transportation at all. Keeping in mind the lives of the people you're ultimately serving keeps me motivated even if the day-to-day is boring" It's advice I've always kept at heart and it's been helpful.