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When I've been in this situation in the past it's because I've been in the wrong job. When you stop improving (your product, work environment, skill set, whatev

by marrs 12y ago

When I've been in this situation in the past it's because I've been in the wrong job. When you stop improving (your product, work environment, skill set, whatever), you stop caring. Have you changed jobs much, is this a recurring problem? I've worked with a lot of devs who haven't been able to settle because they're never satisfied with the status quo of the environment they land in. 6 months and they're onto the next thing. A lot of devs find their way into contracting that way. I don't think this is an uncommon problem. A lot of (most?) devs suffer from the problem of not being challenged enough, and come up with elaborate ways to complicate projects by many orders of magnitude in order to get some excitement back. For example, when you here a programmer say We need to rewrite this app because it's crap. He means, I want to have a go at writing an app from scratch because the first 20% is always way more fun and creative than the last 80%. We'll do it in node and angular. It will be isomorphic and restful and awesome. I'm bored of PHP and jQuery. I want to play with a new toy. We need to use Riak and EC2 I want to feel like I'm doing big data.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
> Have you changed jobs much, is this a recurring problem? It's my third job so far, and it always is the same story. I quickly lose productivity and get frustrated by it, in a self-perpetuating cycle. I also subcontracted once at another company, four weeks of fixing spaghetti PHP and JavaScript for a company that bought their system for cheap - and this was a very productive (5X+) and refreshing moment. I'm not sure what to attribute it to - the only thing that comes to my mind is clearly-defined and short (few hours tops) tickets to close, and zero personal responsibility for the project (i.e. of course I felt responsible, but it was my personal decision to care). I shouldn't have trouble in changing jobs (I'm an experienced programmer after all), I usually worry only if I won't get fired in the first two weeks after the 0.1X mode kicks in. Anyway, while employed, low output keeps me in not good enough financial position to risk jumping (family to care about). I agree with your sentiment about inventing challenges; I often feel that myself, and whenever I can I use the opportunity to learn something new while doing work tasks.

by marrs 12y ago

TeMPOraL 12y ago

> Have you changed jobs much, is this a recurring problem? It's my third job so far, and it always is the same story. I quickly lose productivity and get frustrated by it, in a self-perpetuating cycle. I also subcontracted once at another company, four weeks of fixing spaghetti PHP and JavaScript for a company that bought their system for cheap - and this was a very productive (5X+) and refreshing moment. I'm not sure what to attribute it to - the only thing that comes to my mind is clearly-defined and short (few hours tops) tickets to close, and zero personal responsibility for the project (i.e. of course I felt responsible, but it was my personal decision to care). I shouldn't have trouble in changing jobs (I'm an experienced programmer after all), I usually worry only if I won't get fired in the first two weeks after the 0.1X mode kicks in. Anyway, while employed, low output keeps me in not good enough financial position to risk jumping (family to care about). I agree with your sentiment about inventing challenges; I often feel that myself, and whenever I can I use the opportunity to learn something new while doing work tasks.