[HN Gopher] Another burnout post
___________________________________________________________________
Another burnout post
Author : gushogg-blake
Score : 59 points
Date : 2024-10-18 15:21 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gushogg-blake.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gushogg-blake.com)
| david-gpu wrote:
| Good luck. Burnout drains your soul. It gets better, but it takes
| time. Exercising outdoors helps, even if it is just taking long
| walks.
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| Long walks are honestly underrated.
|
| Especially if you make them a consistent thing and start upping
| the distance over time and varying the routes.
|
| It becomes incredibly enjoyable to just get out and fucking
| walk around, look at things, listen to music maybe, and explore
| a bit.
|
| Something I've been looking to write for a while is some kind
| of thing that I can input a distance, my location, and have it
| plot unique and somewhat random loop routes. Ideally optimising
| for exploring novel areas of where I live, with some kind of
| "route tracking".
|
| The point is largely the journey.
| adbmal wrote:
| Meaningful jobs do exist and more can be created. You are a
| probably high-paid, skilled professional and, contrary to popular
| belief, you _do_ have agency.
|
| Quit your job and start doing something meaningful. Start a
| company or join one that makes a difference.
|
| Take risks, it's really rewarding.
| gushogg-blake wrote:
| I think for me at least, the difference between "programming
| for fun/own projects" and "programming for work" goes deeper
| than the difference between say a company with neutral/bad
| values and a company you might be passionate about mission-
| wise. At the end of the day, as the software guy, your job
| still consists of:
|
| 1) taking instructions from someone else on exactly what to
| build, and how (choice of framework etc)
|
| 2) working backwards from someone else's code to figure out
| what they were thinking and how to modify it to the
| requirements/add a new feature/whatever
|
| I got into programming because it was a great form of self-
| expression. I've had some great jobs that related to my
| interests, e.g. adding variants to Chess.com, but at the end of
| the day that was still someone else's project and I was just
| the guy they were getting to build it for them. The inherent
| satisfaction wasn't there. YMMV though obviously, but I like to
| use an art analogy: if you're a painter, you'll always be
| frustrated and demotivated painting portraits of people's pets
| -- even if it's for charity, or you like the person, or
| whatever.
| bbkane wrote:
| Another way personal projects are different is the fact that
| there's not usually someone depending on you- whether that's
| in the form of timelines, API stability, tech choice, etc.
|
| I'm working on a large breaking change to a personal codebase
| right now, and its taken almost 3 years of procrastination,
| lazy research when I feel like it, and the API changing and
| changing again due to rewrites. I'd like to finish by 2025,
| but if I don't, nothing happens!
|
| The whole thing has felt fun due to the lack of pressure and
| just... not working on it when I feel like doing something
| else.
|
| Very different from work projects, even the interesting ones
| with great bosses and teammates.
| tornadofart wrote:
| 1/ SWE jobs where you have some agency on what to build and
| the tooling choice do exist. Try working as an employee for
| an engineer-driven company.
|
| 2/ that can be rewarding. I have found nuggets of genius in
| other people's code. Being able to think like someone else is
| a valuable intellectual exercise.
|
| On self-expression: the most highly trained musicians at the
| best orchestras spend their time refining the interpretation
| of music they didn't write. The more constraints are written
| into the sheet music, the more creative you have to get.
|
| I'm not saying your perspective is wrong. I'm just saying
| someone could have your job and come to completely different
| conclusions.
|
| Maybe you have to change your perspective or find an
| occupation which matches your perspective on life and work.
| Or you could keep your job and rant on your blog from time to
| time if that's what you need. Ranting is sometimes necessary
| for mental hygiene.
|
| Out of curiosity: What exactly kept you from working on a pet
| project instead of adding variants to Chess.com? Fear of
| failure? Fear of rejection from your audience? Something else
| entirely? Sometimes a little courage is all it takes to bring
| more happiness into your life.
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| His response of switching to "ancestral" food and jawline
| modification is ... interesting.
| dandigangi wrote:
| Definitely not the left turn I expected either.
| gushogg-blake wrote:
| Haha, that's actually something I've been doing for years as
| well. Had jaw issues from underdevelopment and premolar
| extractions since 2011. Only discovered that it was a known
| thing and started getting treatment in 2023 though.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Good analogy presented here, except some situations can be far
| worse - what he's describing is _best_ case scenario. You can
| very easily end up in toxic teams /situations or with a toxic
| boss that makes every day miserable for absolutely no reason.
| Plus all that other stuff.
|
| Burnout is real and if I get a whiff for it I immediately seek
| other options. Having experienced it before, it took about 6
| months to recover. There are a lot of warning signs I had ignored
| when it happened.
|
| Unlike the author, I don't find any particular joy in programming
| for the sake of it. It is difficult though, sometimes you can
| have an extraordinarily complex task that requires a flash of
| inspiration to solve. The kind of rumination that leads to these
| flashes typically comes to me in non-working hours, so I feel
| like I am never "off." You can't just force that kind of thing.
| If you're burnt out, that dynamic is even worse.
| gushogg-blake wrote:
| Yeah, true. I learnt to avoid those pretty quickly thanks to my
| fairly disagreeable and risk-tolerant nature. Still had some
| not very good experiences though.
| Threadbare wrote:
| I like my job (I think..) and am on my third burnout. There's
| no worse feeling than being barely able to muster pinky finger
| strength equivalent brain processing power over an 8 hour
| working day, on high viz projects with tight time lines and
| daily stand up reporting on progress. Today I literally noped
| to bed with the laptop, looked at the problem a few times and
| concluded it can wait until Monday.
| stefanos82 wrote:
| The problem with programmers is that the mind works non-stop
| while the body is completely still, which goes against its
| nature, in all respects. When the body is tired, at most a week
| of rest it recovers nicely and is full of energy! This
| unfortunately does not apply to the mind, I have tried it and
| unfortunately I suffer from long-term mental burnout. If I could
| find another job that wasn't so mentally demanding and easy to
| do, then yes I would quit this field yesterday!
| gushogg-blake wrote:
| I've often thought we're doing something fundamentally wrong by
| treating programming like any other office job, or even like a
| "production" type job like manufacturing. It's of course
| nothing like that - as you say, the mind doesn't have the same
| recharging characteristics as the body. I get the feeling
| people maybe compensate for it by having a lot of downtime in
| the day where they're kind of pretending to work, but I would
| find that maddening. I'm either working or I'm not, in which
| case I want to be free to do what I want without someone
| looking over my shoulder.
| stefanos82 wrote:
| I wholeheartedly agree with you, especially on the shoulder
| part.
|
| The reason I regretted dealing with programming from a
| professional standpoint is that I have realized I like it
| more as a hobby, not as a profession!
|
| When it's your hobby, no one is telling you what to do,
| whether you are doing something wrong or not, nor to follow
| the latest trend with <X> framework or this new <Z>
| programming language; quite frankly, you simply don't care
| what others say to you, because you have found your rhythm,
| your pace if you will, with the tech stack of your choice;
| you know, the one that clicked with you immediately!
|
| This is my personal experience up until I switch my hobby to
| professional career; that's when it went downhill and have
| stopped loving it ever since...I feel trapped, like millions
| of others than cannot escape this category.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yea, I got into programming because I love Lone Wolf
| Programming. Programming as part of a team is a completely
| different endeavor and liking one doesn't necessarily mean
| you'll like the other.
| stefanos82 wrote:
| Lone Wolf Programming...I love that! LOL :D For some
| reason I was thinking of it more as "My Hermit Life" type
| of Programming, but yours is more accurate!
| nradov wrote:
| Come on. The majority of programming work isn't particularly
| mentally demanding, at least not any more so than other
| professional office jobs. It's not like lawyers or mechanical
| engineers have it any easier.
| stefanos82 wrote:
| Allow me to disagree with you here.
|
| When your boss would like you to be a DevOps and a full-stack
| developer, while following all the latest trends, their ins
| and outs, the countless JS / TS frameworks out there, we can
| have a chat on who's having it worse or easier than the
| other.
| nradov wrote:
| Some HN users have a really skewed sense of how software
| development works in most of the industry. Only a small
| minority of jobs involve full-stack web development with JS
| / TS frameworks. If you want a slower pace of change then
| go get a job writing embedded missile avionics software for
| Raytheon or something. This is a serious suggestion, I'm
| not being sarcastic. Jobs like that are a good option for a
| lot of developers.
|
| The grass always looks greener on the other side.
| stefanos82 wrote:
| Thank you for the suggestion, but I doubt I would work as
| a foreigner for a US defense contractor company that
| produces military weapons; that's the last thing I would
| want to do.
| realusername wrote:
| Depends for what, the energy you are required to spend to
| keep updated on new stuff coming up is greater than any other
| job I'm aware of.
|
| Most other mental jobs change at a much slower rate than in
| tech.
| naming_the_user wrote:
| > It's hard to explain to people who aren't programmers just how
| soul-destroying it is to work for someone else in this industry.
| Maddeningly hard, in fact.
|
| It's hard for me to understand this _as a programmer_. I've been
| through burnouts and every single time it's been a matter of me
| pushing myself too hard, the external pressure was never actually
| real.
|
| From your blog post it sounds as if realistically you're 40k in
| debt due to jaw surgery which really has nothing to do with
| programming at all?
|
| I dunno man, with the greatest of respect (I appreciate that this
| is a serious health issue for you) the blog comes across as if
| you like mushrooms a bit too much.
|
| > My sense is that the constricting effect of modern narrow
| footwear inhibits proper tongue posture via this connection.
|
| Seriously? 99% of people wear shoes, have a mouth and have no
| issues at all with... tongue posture? I don't even know what my
| tongue posture is.
| gushogg-blake wrote:
| Haha, yeah I can see why it would sound like that if you
| haven't experienced similar issues. I would disagree on 99% of
| people not having tongue posture issues though. If you look at
| the structure of a lot of modern people's faces, we have an
| "adenoid" face - narrow, long midface, lack of pronounced
| cheekbones and eye support. The hypothesis is that chewing is
| an essential part of proper jaw development, and modern soft
| diets don't make us do enough of it.
| gushogg-blake wrote:
| (The relationship with tongue posture is possibly two-way -
| lack of chewing and/or proper tongue posture causes the upper
| jaw to develop narrower, which eventually prevents the tongue
| from adopting its ideal position suctioned to the roof of the
| mouth. The tongue not being there causes further narrowing
| and downswing.)
| ZacharyPitts wrote:
| Maybe this is reference to the tongue of a shoe? IDK, still odd
| eweise wrote:
| Work is named "work" for a reason. Its a lot not fun. I've been
| slinging code for 35 years. It pays the bills, sends my kids to
| college etc. Of course i'm burned out but I would be tired of
| anything after this long. Trick for me is to not to make work my
| purpose. Instead I bike, hike, make music, raise my kids, etc. I
| also don't work overtime or weekends even though almost everyone
| else on my team does. They will not make it for the long run like
| that.
| parpfish wrote:
| in addition to not doing overtime/weekends, when you're doing
| work during the day you should monotask as much as possible.
| just focus on one thing at a time, preferrable until you're
| done with it.
|
| the cost of constantly shifting attention to multitask made
| everything seem frantic and you never got the sense to
| appreciate that a thing was 'done' because there was always ten
| other things cooking in the background.
|
| you'll be surprised how much this _doesn 't_ kill your overall
| productivity while also preserving mental health. slow is
| smooth, smooth is fast.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I'm seeing folks like you get laid off with the current
| climate. Your trick is to not play the game, which may not be
| feasible right now.
| r2_pilot wrote:
| > I'm seeing folks like you get laid off with the current
| climate.
|
| Who cares? At this stage in my life (and a distant second my
| career too), if that's the kind of attitude your work demands
| of you, there's plenty of other validating things to do that
| also provide a living. And I always hear that people don't
| quit their jobs, they quit their bosses. But yeah, I would
| never fire someone for setting appropriate life/work
| boundaries and sticking to them.
| piva00 wrote:
| It's entirely feasible if you live in places that don't
| follow American-esque systems of labour relationship.
| eweise wrote:
| I do worry about that and that's why the most important thing
| is to work for the right manager. Keep on their good side,
| make them feel like you're an asset even if not sprinting
| every sprint, and I've found that they'll go to bat for you
| at review time.
| lurking_swe wrote:
| not at my workplace, people usually work 8 hours on average
| and that's it. Find a better employer, they exist. Yes even
| ones that pay $200k+.
|
| I realize not everyone is so fortunate. I had to start at
| some not so great companies in my career, but over time if
| you're picky enough, you can find a great employer. I
| encourage everyone to know their worth. Don't settle.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| Sounds more like you managed to avoid burning out.
| djbusby wrote:
| Right. Work being "not fun" is a long way from Burnout (which
| looks a lot like, and maybe is, depression).
|
| The difference between a Grind and Hopeless.
| gushogg-blake wrote:
| Yeah, it's probably a personality thing in large part. I find
| that the sense of my creative energy being wasted on something
| pointless disagrees with me so much that I'd rather do almost
| anything else (I actually find jobs to be a great source of
| inspiration in that way - ideas for better things to do keep
| springing to mind - although not great for productivity on the
| job).
|
| I do think there are different types of "work" though, and the
| worse programming jobs have some of the worst combinations of
| attributes - inherently pointless but require intense mental
| effort.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > I also don't work overtime or weekends even though almost
| everyone else on my team does. They will not make it for the
| long run like that.
|
| Not only will they not make it for long, but they're actually
| devaluing their own work. You're paid a salary for a standard
| work week. If you're working nights and weekends, you're giving
| away that portion of your work for free. I learned and
| appreciated this fact too late in my career.
|
| IMO a business that can only function/succeed if employees give
| away their time for free is not a viable business and probably
| just shouldn't exist. Don't Do Crunch Time.
| Arainach wrote:
| Burnout is awful, but this post seems preachy and out of touch.
|
| >It's hard to explain to people who aren't programmers just how
| soul-destroying it is to work for someone else in this industry.
| Maddeningly hard, in fact. Your profession involves hard mental
| work. You work at the limit of your creative, analytical and
| problem-solving abilities. You think and read outside of sessions
| to improve your craft. You bring your entire self to the task of
| healing someone's trauma, figuring out what's holding them back,
| or whatever. Now imagine it was all completely pointless.
|
| What part of this doesn't apply to every other discipline? Plenty
| of people feel that everything they do is pointless. Plenty of
| people spend their entire mental effort at work.
|
| The Hacker News crowd has a higher than average fraction of
| people who think they have to never turn off and always be doing
| computer science work even when not at work. That correlates
| strongly with burnout, but that's not a programming thing, that's
| a personality type. Go outside and get some fresh air. Every day.
| Stop staring at screens 24/7. That can't entirely prevent burnout
| but it helps a lot.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I think IT being exempt from overtime is part of the problem.
| Nurses for example see a direct increase in wage when they work
| extra, and many lawyers bill by the minute.
|
| But I think the biggest thing is that programming is a craft,
| and many programmers think of themselves as artists. As an
| artist it is heartbreaking to see your creations tainted and
| then discarded by corporate politics.
|
| In my experience, devs who take more pride in closing tickets
| than coming up with elegant solutions are less susceptible to
| burn out. I don't know exactly how they do it, but they do tend
| to have many hobbies. They don't lose sleep over shipping some
| spaghetti code they copied from stack overflow without
| understanding. They just treat it as something to get out of
| their way so they can get to the things they actually enjoy.
| gushogg-blake wrote:
| I think it applies to an extreme degree in programming - but
| probably in eng. & STEM fields generally as well. Something
| about having to care a lot about very small details, and
| especially when the big picture is not something you
| particularly care about. But yeah, I don't have any experience
| in other fields so maybe it's not that unique - I guess it was
| driven mostly by the experiences I've had with people not
| getting it, and being frustrated with me that I wouldn't "just
| work a well-paid coding job for 5 years".
| tra3 wrote:
| Does burn out exist in other professions? I recall seeing
| something about doctors/lawyers.
|
| I know (distantly) some folks in the medical profession and it
| sounds way worse than what we go through. Not trying to diminish
| the real stress that we go through in this industry. Wondering if
| we can learn something from other industries in a similar (or
| indeed more difficult) position.
| mholm wrote:
| Doctors can be exploited further because they're typically in
| far deeper. More medical debt, more education, more of their
| life has been given to the medical world. To leave that would
| be to throw it all away. Maybe they'd be happier that way
| anyway. On the flip side, they know they're making a genuine
| difference in people's lives. Doctors do incredibly important
| work, and if they just don't show up, people can die. If a
| programmer doesn't show up for work, In many cases, an ad
| tragically goes unclicked, or a feature doesn't get released
| for a few extra days.
|
| There are absolutely more meaningful jobs for programmers,
| where they have more impact on the product, get to actually
| influence lives, or work with challenging and fulfilling
| technical problems. But most of them aren't doing that.
| riiii wrote:
| Burnout very much exists in other professions.
| avensec wrote:
| Given that burnout is a physiological state of
| emotional|physical|mental|... exhaustion, yes, other
| professions experience burnout. However, which subtype of
| burnout is more prevalent in different career fields, or at
| different stages of life.
|
| When someone says they are experiencing burnout, my first
| question is, what type of burnout is it? Have they broken down
| the problem yet?
|
| Is it Overload? Their pace of work could be more sustainable,
| work/live commitments are imbalanced, or there is a mismatch in
| where they spend time vs. where they wish they were spending
| time?
|
| Is it Under Challenged? Do they not feel stimulated by the
| work, are their abilities not being developed, or are they
| wasted in their current role? Are they more interested in what
| comes next?
|
| Is it Neglect? They don't feel recognized for their efforts,
| they don't have a good mentor or sponsor, they give up on
| themselves when faced with challenges, or they abuse themselves
| through unhealthy habits (neglect can be self-neglect)?
| freeplay wrote:
| I feel this very deeply. At the same time, I feel shame for
| feeling this way. I have a very high paying job, excellent
| flexibility, and I work from home. It doesn't get much better.
| Except that when I sit down at the computer, the actual work and
| meetings to talk about the work are unbelievably draining.
|
| The shame is because I know others would love to be in my
| position and there is an almost endless list of jobs that are
| worse than this, but it's brutal sometimes. I workout daily and
| spend the vast majority of my time away from the keyboard,
| outside.
|
| The worst part is, it's not just a matter of embrace the suck and
| push on. In a physical labor job, you can just command the body
| to move and push through it. In this line of work, you don't
| really have that option. You can't just command the brain to
| solve difficult problems and design complex systems.
| gushogg-blake wrote:
| Yeah, I think there's this idea of programming as something you
| 1) know how to do and then 2) can just sit at a computer and do
| some typing, and it happens. It's hard for outsiders to
| understand just how dependent it is on being engaged and in a
| position to direct your full mental attention to abstract
| problems for long periods.
| uptownfunk wrote:
| I love how out there this guy seems and kudos to his courage for
| sharing his thoughts and feelings and being able to go and do
| something to the beat of his own drum.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| I think very few software engineering jobs are set up to be
| enjoyable (or even tolerable) to a large fraction of the people
| who are drawn to such jobs.
|
| I'm self taught[0]. I was drawn to computers at an early age, and
| I was hacking little projects together in a couple of different
| languages by the time I was in middle school. This was a very
| solitary activity for a very introverted boy, and I loved it. I
| still love it. Nothing compares to sitting down at a computer and
| just letting the logic flow through me unimpeded and onto the
| screen.
|
| My job is not like that. I have 2 - 5 meetings a day. I am
| constantly coordinating and brainstorming and just plain dealing
| with other people. That is more draining than the coding.
| Sometimes I have a decent chunk of time at the end of the day,
| but I can't even bring myself to code because I am so drained by
| all of the non-coding stuff I had to do earlier in the day.
|
| I love my job. I do impactful work for an impactful company that
| I think is doing actual good in the world. I work on an
| interesting project, and they pay and treat me well. But in my
| heart of hearts what I really want to be is not a software
| engineer but instead some kind of self-directed code hermit.
|
| [0] By which I mean I learned from books and examples and
| experimentation. I did eventually get a computer science degree
| also, but I had been coding for years before I took my first
| class in it.
| gushogg-blake wrote:
| Yeah this sounds a lot like me. I find it hard to imagine what
| kind of personality _could_ tolerate a software job. Maybe some
| people are more amenable to accepting the company's mission as
| part of their identity, and can therefore find the inherent
| satisfaction of doing a good job. But yeah, I always found the
| meetings and coordination aspect to be quite taxing.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| I have known a lot of people at work who don't really care
| about computers at all. (Not at my current job, more at
| previous jobs.) They don't go home and do more computer stuff
| for fun. They don't geek out over the new things coming in
| C++23 or get nerd sniped by computer science problems. If you
| ask them why they became a software engineer, they'll say
| it's because the pay is good.
|
| A lot of us are just drawn to computers and couldn't imagine
| not tinkering with them constantly, but for some people this
| is just, like, an office job. No different from being an
| accountant or an insurance claims adjuster or something.
| piva00 wrote:
| One can also go through the phase of programming being the
| most fun hobby, getting into a career related to it, and
| phase out programming as a hobby.
|
| It was one of the most fun hobbies I had earlier in life,
| now after 20+ years of career, and even longer from
| starting to program, it's just not that fun anymore.
|
| I still tinker with it in fun ways I could never try as a
| career, like electronics projects with microcontrollers,
| but since my free time and energy dwindled with age I
| allocate my hobbies' time to other more personally
| fulfilling endeavours than keeping up with languages'
| updates, compsci problems, etc. It's just not that
| interesting anymore.
|
| I stumbled upon this career, at the time I never even
| considered or had known it was a very well paid one so I've
| been extremely lucky for that but I don't hold that much
| more interest in it as a hobby, for that I believe the time
| has passed. It's now, to me, a very well paid office job.
| stefanos82 wrote:
| So far, from the majority of comments here, yours included, I
| have concluded that we somehow got tricked to "upgrade" our
| hobby to a career, with one major cost: sacrificing our
| creative freedoms that companies demand us to give up on in
| place of daily meetings.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| The allure of "get paid well to do something I was going to
| do for free anyway" is strong.
| stefanos82 wrote:
| Yeah...my thinking was more like "if I already love doing
| this as a hobby, why not do it and get paid for it?"; that
| was my biggest mistake -_-
| orev wrote:
| Getting paid for doing something you love (or at least
| _like_ when it comes to work tasks) is far better than
| having to spend 40 hours a week doing something you hate
| (in what is likely a much lower paid job), and then still
| getting home with no energy left to do that thing you
| love for maybe 1 hour.
| dougb5 wrote:
| > "You don't care about the goal to begin with"
|
| This seems key. Are there options in your area for work with
| goals you do care about?
| tombert wrote:
| My life got much better when I realized that I actually don't
| like "programming".
|
| I like solving problems _using_ programming languages, and like
| designing large systems with computers, but I don 't actually
| enjoy the programming itself. Programming without the designing
| part just feels like data entry to me. There's nothing clever, or
| creative, or interesting about it.
|
| For years I've dealt with severe burnout because I had been lying
| to myself and taking jobs that where I didn't really have to
| "think", and I had no fun doing it, leading to me feeling like I
| had really chosen the wrong career path and that I was stuck
| feeling bored for the rest of my life.
|
| Once I realized that programming for the sake of programming
| isn't fun, I started putting my attention to jobs where I made it
| clear that I'm going to be involved in the design and decision-
| making process, and almost immediately I actually enjoyed working
| again, after many years of not.
|
| I'm not saying this is universal, if you like writing Java for
| the sake of writing Java, don't let me take that away from you,
| it's just not something I enjoy. Figuring out what you _actually_
| enjoy doing is deceptively hard, but a worthwhile goal.
| lylejantzi3rd wrote:
| > I'm not saying this is universal
|
| It's probably not universal, but I bet it's more common than
| most people want to admit.
| tombert wrote:
| Yeah, I think you're right.
|
| It's embarrassing how long it took me to realize that; for
| years I wondered why I enjoyed working on my personal
| projects but not my paid work, despite them being nominally
| the same thing, and eventually I realized it was because _I_
| made the decisions on my personal projects.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Ditto. I don't like making decisions at work. I like the
| tech; not politics.
|
| Not to deride things too much. I'm trying to get better
| about it, surrounded by good suggestions... I'm just
| categorically exhausted
| whatarethembits wrote:
| I find that making design decisions about the class/feature
| you're writing or how data is going to flow through your
| little corner of the software scratches similar itch to
| "big picture" architecture. What sucks is standups,
| deadlines, constant having to give updates and being
| measured on output. Take all that away and programming is a
| _joy_
| hello_moto wrote:
| I was lucky (and blessed) that I also realized this early on.
|
| I was an idealist, following best practices, learning the
| language to the dot until I stumbled upon a different enjoyment
| in work: mentoring, guiding, helping, cheering co-workers to be
| on the same page, same direction, and to eventually deliver the
| software/feature/product.
|
| Once the clock hits 5.30PM, I checked out and ride my bike.
| foco_tubi wrote:
| I'm convinced bicycle commuting is what's going to make my
| 8:30-5:30 bearable. Hope I'm right.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Same here, I stepped away from actual software writing as a
| career and moved into Product management and then later Project
| management, where I fit better. These kinds of roles give you a
| bigger picture view, and put you in the position to help
| prevent big planning or design mistakes from happening. Having
| an actual software-writing background also helps immensely
| since you need to interface with engineering daily and need to
| speak their language. Too bad the compensation is a faction of
| what it is in software development, but I happily made the
| tradeoff.
|
| I write code as a hobby now, and am much more satisfied with
| that because I make all the decisions on my own personal
| projects.
| tombert wrote:
| I'm still very much in the "engineering" space, but I do a
| lot more stuff with the whiteboard, and even spend some time
| doing TLA+/Pluscal before writing any code.
|
| I think I'd be a pretty bad manager, I'm flaky in a way that
| doesn't lend itself to that, but I think I'm ok at the more
| "architectey" roles.
| gushogg-blake wrote:
| I had a similar-ish realisation recently when writing a
| business plan - having the ability to program felt like a
| massive advantage (for e.g. writing a dynamic cashflow
| forecast) but programming wasn't the main goal.
| ToddWBurgess wrote:
| I had the opposite experience. I actually left the industry and
| then suffered a workplace injury in the new job(PTSD). Trust me
| when I say this, PTSD really messes you up. One of the biggest
| injuries was my brain's ability to logically reason.
|
| So with lots of free time due to medical leave I got got back
| into coding. Picking it up after having not done it for some
| time was not too bad. After a while I was ready to start
| learning new stuff. As I got better at coding a lot of my PTSD
| symptoms started to subside. I had an easier time organizing my
| thoughts.
|
| Eventually my PTSD symptoms subsided and I knew enough code to
| get a job writing code. So while yes, I have burned out on
| coding it was also the old friend that dug me out of the hole.
| KronisLV wrote:
| > My life got much better when I realized that I actually don't
| like "programming".
|
| I like programming, but hate most things around it.
|
| Under-documented code with odd patterns, no comments and bad
| discoverability, like the code doesn't _want_ you to explore it
| and work with it, but you instead have to dig in a whole bunch
| to understand what you 're looking at, while you're already
| juggling the problem domain in your head.
|
| Same extends to working with projects themselves, like having a
| placeholder README, no ADRs, no information about why certain
| choices have been made, no investment into tooling or automated
| linting etc., especially if some things are expected to be done
| manually by the developers ("order the variables this way",
| "format the code this way", "you must manually create these N
| layers of abstraction to make the code consistent"), also
| things like having no examples of how to use some of the
| abstractions and if it's a front end project, no examples of
| the components in isolation, separate from where they're used
| in the main codebase, no gallery of sorts. Maybe things like
| manual deploys, or environments with no monitoring/APM/uptime
| alerting and other bits of tooling that are pretty much
| essential, no clear information about how things are run on the
| servers etc., where working feels like some form of archaeology
| and detective work.
|
| Also things like bike shedding, yak shaving, cargo culting,
| taking practices as gospel (DRY/SOLID come to mind, though they
| have their place), infrastructure aspects like not having your
| local DB that's safe to break, slow compilation, flaky tests,
| bad tooling, outdated packages and dependencies. Throw in
| conflicts of interest and opinion that aren't managed well and
| you have a recipe for burnout, the kinds of situation where
| people are pretty much "against" you and what you're trying to
| do, e.g. holding up a release over unrelated, non-blocking
| concerns, or having drawn out discussions about how to write
| code, when it doesn't feel like you're working "together" to
| make things better for everyone. Even when there are
| disagreements, it's possible to get to that better place, but
| often time egos go unchecked, instead I actively try to be kind
| to others in code review etc. nowadays.
|
| Although humorous, posts like this still ring true in many
| respects: https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks
|
| But honestly, a lot of working in the industry also sucks due
| to technical concerns. This might be a more personal example,
| but I was trying to write some load tests in K6 for a web API.
| The API uses STOMP on top of SockJS (using WebSockets when
| available). K6 has support for WebSockets, except there's two
| packages, one of which is experimental. I quickly realized that
| SockJS wouldn't work, so I had to get rid of it in the project
| (since IE doesn't need to be supported anyways), but even then
| I realized that STOMP isn't supported out of the box, in part
| due to the protocol never really taking off:
| https://stomp.github.io/ I could find an extension, but getting
| it working also proved to be a bit of work:
| https://github.com/walterwanderley/xk6-stomp What sucked in
| particular was not only not having that much documentation
| about how to manage multiple subscriptions at the same time,
| but also the fact that reads were blocking instead of Promise
| based, though that might be due to how everything integrates
| with K6, it's not like I can shoot off a background thread.
| Eventually I got some jank implementation working that's based
| on blocking until a short timeout (like 2 seconds) after which
| the next subscription is done and data from it read, but it
| feels like if the industry was a bit more coherent we'd have
| like 2-3 solutions for similar use cases all of which would
| work well, instead of the current disjointed mess. This also
| applies to everything from OSes, to back end languages, front
| end libraries/frameworks etc., though I guess the variety is
| needed even if painful, so the better ideas survive the test of
| time. Until someone does some CV driven development and adopts
| a technology that's not ready.
|
| That said, a lot of those things can be made better, as long as
| you care enough (and hopefully are rewarded for making the work
| not miserable).
| codingwagie wrote:
| The big problem with programming is its usually divorced from
| big picture thinking. Businesses keep you away from business
| conversations
| bdangubic wrote:
| I think 8hr/day is a bigger issue... I feel EXACTLY the same
| way as you but after 25-ish years in the industry I also
| realized that there is nothing I like enough to enjoy doing for
| 8hrs per day, 1920 hrs per year...
| piafraus wrote:
| I felt the same until I found python.
|
| Just in case you haven't tried it - perhaps it might ignite the
| love to programming (if you want that). Python made the
| programming fun to me again. Especially without the boilerplate
| code.
|
| Try to ignore the community strong push to use typing
| everywhere and just write some clean small code and it feels
| amazing. Designs and ideas in simple implementations.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| Isn't it the other way around? Java (in enterprise) is just
| exceptionally able to suck the fun out of programming? It's
| not even the fault of the language per se, it's just home to
| a lot of "best practices" that ultimately end with
| productivity coming to a grinding halt.
| djyaz1200 wrote:
| This says to me these people are working on projects that are not
| challenging/interesting enough with people who don't respect
| their intellect. That's a solvable problem.
|
| Anecdote... I function as a product manager, and I have a lot of
| fun with the developers I work with (and have a lot of respect
| for), and they enjoy working with me. I come to them with
| complex, interesting problems and my framework for potential
| solutions, and we talk through whether they think it's the right
| direction and, if so, what I've missed... or they propose
| alternatives. It's like a chess game where we can both win.
|
| I hope the OP and anyone feeling this way tries working with
| other projects and people.
| gushogg-blake wrote:
| That has certainly been a major aspect of it in the past -
| feeling like I don't have enough autonomy to decide on the best
| approaches etc - but I think now I probably have too much of a
| high-level "what are we actually doing here?" kind of
| uninterestedness for even that to make it work.
|
| Maybe if we could go right to the bottom and start getting
| everyone to be a bit more computer literate, so the software
| didn't have to be so complicated, or something... I don't know.
| bdndndndbve wrote:
| Anyone in any profession can have burnout. Set money aside, set
| boundaries, have a life outside of work. It's not exclusive to
| computer programmers, and there's lots of worse burnout-inducing
| jobs that pay less.
| skrebbel wrote:
| Is this supposed to be some art piece?
|
| > _That is what professional programming is like. You don't care
| about the goal to begin with, it doesn't have any noticeable
| effect on the world once each Jira ticket moves over to the Done
| column, and you don't have any ownership over the finished
| product. You just wait for the next Jira ticket._
|
| Sure, there are jobs like this, but it's super weird to claim
| that all programming jobs are like this.
|
| Just.. don't work those jobs! Find real jobs at real companies
| making real products for real people. Don't stay at a job where
| all your work ends up in a black hole of nothingness until you
| burn out. The burnout means you quit too late.
|
| I'm not saying it's easy to find programming jobs that cure
| cancer, fix climate change or cause world peace, but it's really
| not that hard to find programming jobs where what you make is
| used by real people and if you make the thing you make better,
| these real people will tell you that they're happy that it's now
| better (and, immediately after, what else needs fixing). This can
| be all the way from super challenging computer sciency shit to
| line-of-business CRUD app coding at a small shop in a mid size
| provincial town for regional customers. It exists everywhere.
|
| ps. Personal context: Articles like these mildly offend me
| because I run a company and we try _very_ hard to make everybody
| 's time at the company worth their while. The suggestion that
| business owners like me do not exist hits hard. In fact, we are
| many. There's plenty bosses and entrepreneurs and managers out
| there who realize that the more motivated and involved and happy
| team members are, the better their work will be. Also being the
| boss of stressed out burned-out programmers sounds like hell to
| me. I'd much rather run a team of enthusiastic self-starters!
| Incentives are, actually, pretty aligned (happy people = great
| results) and companies where they're not are just, in my humble
| opinion, badly run companies. Don't work there.
| gushogg-blake wrote:
| To be honest I've just never really liked programming for work,
| and have felt kind of trapped in it as my only source of good
| money for a few years. So there's probably some bitterness
| there that I don't mean to offend anyone with. Even at what on
| paper seemed to be a great job - fully remote, annual retreats,
| great teammates, etc - I just couldn't resist the desire to
| work on something that was actually mine, in some fundamental
| way. So maybe "has no effect on the world" isn't the right way
| to put it - but that's how it feels. I guess it's in the sense
| of, if it wasn't me doing it, it would get done anyway, or
| something. And at all the companies I've worked at at least, my
| job as a programmer has been totally interchangeable with other
| people. I think my main skill as a programmer is writing really
| clear, solid code - line managers/clients have said this so
| it's not just my own bias - and you get a little kick of
| dopamine whenever you check some code in and someone goes
| "great!". But then they go "OK, now do that again, forever".
| The Jira tickets never end. You never get a big payout. That's
| been my experience anyway. Maybe having equity would
| significantly change the calculus.
| skrebbel wrote:
| This holds for psychotherapists too. Quit being a
| psychotherapist and people will find another psychotherapist.
|
| If this here is really how you feel then IMO your article is
| misrepresenting things. Feeling like you want to work on
| something that is your own makes a lot more sense to me than
| suggesting that every programming job out there doesn't
| affect anybody anywhere ever. I mean, I recognize this one
| completely - it's why I started my own business in the first
| place!
| smokedetector1 wrote:
| > It doesn't require the full engagement of your entire person,
| like psychotherapy or software engineering. A long career would
| be soul-destroying, for sure, but a day of driving can be
| ploughed through much more easily by physical brute force than
| can a day of software engineering.
|
| I think this post comes across as unpleasant because it is so
| dismissive of other peoples struggles. If you just said, yeah
| software engineering isn't for me, that's one thing. But you're
| saying software engineering is objectively the most difficult,
| soul-destroying, draining job, and other people have it easier in
| this respect. Im sorry but that's just objectively not true.
|
| I would push you to consider that, maybe, something else is going
| on for you individually, rather than write off the entire
| endeavor due to an objective analysis. I worked for years at a
| cancer center and while there were many times that the work was
| dry, lonely, alienating, at the end of the day I still felt I was
| doing something good for the world and that felt really good.
|
| There's a lot of ways to apply software, and, maybe more to the
| point, a lot of ways to integrate it into your life with balance.
| What about part-time work, so you have more space for other parts
| of your life you find satisfying? You may find that, with more
| balance, you enjoy what the work _does_ have to offer, such as
| being part of a team, being needed, being well-compensated, using
| your whole intellect, etc.
|
| Best wishes
| JohnMakin wrote:
| > I would push you to consider that, maybe, something else is
| going on for you individually, rather than write off the entire
| endeavor due to an objective analysis. I worked for years at a
| cancer center and while there were many times that the work was
| dry, lonely, alienating, at the end of the day I still felt I
| was doing something good for the world and that felt really
| good.
|
| The difference being that the majority of software jobs are not
| doing anything remotely good for the world, or if you are, you
| are a infinitesimally small part of it to where you couldn't
| possibly derive this same rewarding feeling. I would push you
| to consider that maybe, your situation is one of privilege that
| people in the OP's spot are not often in.
|
| > There's a lot of ways to apply software, and, maybe more to
| the point, a lot of ways to integrate it into your life with
| balance. What about part-time work, so you have more space for
| other parts of your life you find satisfying? You may find
| that, with more balance, you enjoy what the work does have to
| offer, such as being part of a team, being needed, being well-
| compensated, using your whole intellect, etc.
|
| Again, not everyone is afforded an extraordinary privilege of
| just arbitrarily deciding to work part time. I certainly
| couldn't. If I could, burnout would be less of an existential
| risk. It's like telling someone with clinical depression "have
| you tried cheering up?"
| smokedetector1 wrote:
| > The majority of software jobs are not doing anything
| remotely good for the world
|
| Firstly, this isn't true except in the narrowest sense where
| only people working on cancer are doing anything good for the
| world. Contributing to the economy in a non-destructive non-
| evil way is still good, people need goods and services to
| live a good life and almost every part of the economy plays
| some positive role in that.
|
| Secondly, my point is that one could find a non-sexy job in
| tech at a hospital, or in an academic institution, that don't
| necessarily pay top FAANG salary but, if fulfillment is more
| important (as it seems to be for the OP), this would be a
| good option.
|
| > Not everyone is afforded an extraordinary privilege of just
| arbitrarily deciding to work part time.
|
| Of course that's true, but I was directing my comment at OP,
| who said in the blog post that "I quit my last contracting
| gig in August with PS40k in debt, no other income, and only a
| business idea (it failed). It was still the right decision."
| gushogg-blake wrote:
| It certainly wasn't meant to be dismissive, can see how it
| would come across like that though. I kind of rushed this post
| out, and really should have stopped to think more about what I
| wanted to say and how - wasn't expecting it to get on the front
| page. I don't even think "burnout" is the right topic for it,
| it probably just seemed like the closest title that would get
| some interest.
| bitfilped wrote:
| Software and more broadly IT are soul crushing jobs though,
| practitioners seem to get upset when that's pointed out but
| it's still true. Very few other jobs require the always on
| mentality that comes with IT work. Other folks typically show
| up, do their jobs, and leave. Very few folks in software/IT are
| able to have that type of relationship with their work. Maybe
| it isn't personally draining for you, but it is a very mentally
| taxing career path overall. This seems to get lost in the
| broader perspective because a lot of IT practitioners like this
| type of lifestyle, it doesn't change the fact that it's
| demanding and I think we can do better in regards to
| recognizing that as an industry. This also doesn't come across
| as dismissive to me either, every job has its inherent
| challenges and we should take time to reflect and recognize the
| ones present in our own careers.
| smokedetector1 wrote:
| It is very demanding and that needs to be said, but I don't
| like positioning it as more demanding than other careers.
| People do a lot more for a lot less money. And people do a
| lot more for the same amount of money. Every individual
| should decide what trade off is best for them, but if someone
| enjoys programming and are good at it, it could potentially
| be better that they find a way to balance it in their lives
| rather than writing it off completely.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| I grew up as an introvert who liked solving puzzles and problems,
| so I gravitated towards computer programming. I retired a few
| years ago after a career of 30 years with seven different
| companies. I still have a personal project (a data management
| system) that I think about often and write code for new features.
|
| Over my career, I had jobs that were interesting and I looked
| forward to each day (well...most days). I also had some that were
| soul crushing and I dreaded.
|
| Looking back, I realized that the ones where I felt I was in
| control of my work product were the most fulfilling. I got to
| decide what to work on and how much effort and time to spend on
| each task. I wanted the product to succeed in the marketplace and
| I gave it my best effort.
|
| The jobs where it didn't feel like my ideas were valued or my
| work appreciated were the worst. Burnout happened very quickly
| and I moved on.
|
| Interestingly, the ones that I controlled turned out to also be
| the most profitable for the companies.
| kaffekaka wrote:
| It seems to me that many people dislike their software developer
| job not because they don't like programming but because the
| programming they get to do at work is not like the ideal world of
| an interesting hobby project where you alone decide scope, stack,
| deadline etc.
|
| Meetings can suck. Design by committee. Scope creap. Crunch time.
| Lack of respect. Constant distractions. All this sucks but is
| part of many jobs, many workplaces. Expecting work to feel like a
| hobby is admirable but sets you up for some disappointments.
|
| I see my job not as the programming part, but the part of making
| myself and my team experience the hobby project state as much as
| possible, against all odds. The job _is_ the struggle.
|
| Edit: I realize I might come off as insensitive. Burnout is a
| real thing. However at most jobs that sweet hobby project feeling
| is basically unattainable. I try to manage my energy so that I
| have some left after work to do stuff purely for my own
| enjoyment. I still enjoy my office job more than a I would a
| similar job outside tech
| gushogg-blake wrote:
| Thanks for the comments. I wasn't expecting this to get on the
| front page (although that is why I posted it, obviously) and kind
| of wish I'd spent more time thinking about what I actually wanted
| to say first. If I'm 100% honest I was mostly trying to get
| clicks, which is always a bad motivation and I am generally
| deliberate about this kind of thing, sorry about that... I don't
| actually feel bitter, or particularly burnt out, with software
| specifically, it just feels like it's not the career for me at
| the moment. The general point about it often being misunderstood
| is something I've wanted to articulate at various times though.
| SirMaster wrote:
| It's hard for me as a software developer to understand how soul-
| destroying it is to work for someone else in this industry.
|
| I have worked as a developer for someone else's company since
| college, for 15 years now, and I don't know how else to describe
| it other than I like what I do and find it fun and stimulating.
|
| I don't think it's strictly the profession. I think either the
| person doesn't really like it as much as they think they do, or
| they work for a company that pushes them too hard and doesn't
| treat them well.
|
| I guess that's obvious, but in my experience at least it doesn't
| have to be that way.
| ThalesX wrote:
| Disclaimer: nothing substantial, just a bit of trauma dump
|
| I've been a developer for more than a decade. Body-shops.
| Founding engineer. Chief Technology Officer. After every job in
| my life I took 6 - 12 months off.
|
| Usually my desire for programming comes back somewhere around the
| 5th month mark. I'm in such a 'holiday' now, and just passed the
| 12 month mark. I don't feel that desire coming back anymore.
|
| I've been blessed to have a friend that had a gig where I can do
| some ETL and cover my monthly expenses, but whenever I start
| looking for new jobs, reading the ads, all those keywords, all
| those bullshit descriptions of what they expect, I'm starting to
| develop a physical repulsion.
|
| I've done a couple of interviews, and the HR discussions and then
| the technical interviews have left me with a bitter taste in my
| mouth. I'm afraid I'll hiss in the next zoom call. And it's not
| even for not getting accepted, as I got an offer from all the
| talks. But the whole industry gives me a bad taste right now.
| Everything just feels futile and fluffed up. My last interview
| was for a hair & beauty appointment app start-up where they acted
| like they cure cancer.
|
| I'd like to be my old self, but I'm afraid I might not get that
| part back. I took a look at 'regular' jobs and the idea of being
| a truck driver lit up something in me that programming hasn't in
| a very long time. Even being a shop clerk makes me dream more
| than wrangling code.
|
| I realize this is childish, and that the grass is always greener
| on the other side. I know that there are challenges in every
| profession and that I have a comfortable home office and get paid
| a shit ton of money for what I do and this is better than 99% of
| the planet.
|
| I just hope to be able to get back on track mentally and not feel
| like this.
| doodaddy wrote:
| I always suspected I had a doppelganger but this proves it.
| Aside from the 6-12 breaks between each job I could have sworn
| this post was my own. I'm on the tail end of a sabbatical that
| is running far into overtime for the same reason - for the past
| year+ I've waited for the energy and desire to return as I
| expected it surely would.
|
| But no. Nothing. Reading a job req still induces a wince.
| Reading the fluff from and about companies sends me recoiling.
| These things were never pleasant but they were tolerable. Now,
| the limbo bar has been set too low and it's getting harder to
| compel my body to contort enough to slip under.
|
| I'm pretty sure there is an eventual return somewhere ahead and
| the scariest thought is that I'll get back and swirl back down
| to life as it was before. The past year+ becomes a puff of a
| memory. The good news (!) is that knowing you feel this way is
| critical knowledge. With that understanding we can rearrange
| our values and tackle the feeling constructively.
| chairmansteve wrote:
| When I was younger, I always had 6 months of living expenses in
| the bank, a cheap life style, and a willingness to work (and a
| lot of experience of) menial jobs.
|
| That meant that going in to work every day was a choice, not an
| obligation. More than once, I quit a job and took a break.
|
| These days, with mortgage, kids etc, I still maintain the escape
| hatch.
| purple-leafy wrote:
| I think I've found the remedy to my experience of burnout.
|
| I burnt out hard last year and earlier this year (frontend dev).
| Mental exhaustion, dissatisfaction with work and colleagues, and
| especially the boss at the time.
|
| I made several major changes to fix this.
|
| - Dropped to 32 hours in my contract (with pay cut)
|
| - Requested to move teams (request fulfilled)
|
| - Deep dived into my weak areas that were causing work stress
|
| - A short holiday
|
| Now I'm happy as can be. Sure I earn 20% less now, but it's just
| money. I now have a 50% longer weekend (2 days -> 3 days) AND a
| 20% shorter work week (5 days -> 4 days)
|
| This is the best move I have ever made.
|
| Working 5 days a week is a grind, no matter which way you slice
| the pie. It's a marathon that never ends. I think it's okay for
| most jobs, but in dev jobs you can't be on autopilot. So often
| I'm solving bugs that haven't been seen before.
|
| A 4 day week doesn't seem much different on the surface, but it's
| a major change. It no longer feels like a marathon. I actually
| get more work done comparatively, as I'm more focused and less
| stressed.
|
| Furthermore, I've stopped doing projects that relate to my normal
| stack in my spare time.
|
| In my ample spare time, I deep dive C programming and graphics.
| abnercoimbre wrote:
| > In my ample spare time, I deep dive C programming and
| graphics.
|
| Noice. Join the Handmade Network [0] and/or Handmade Cities
| [1]. You'll be in great company.
|
| [0] https://handmade.network
|
| [1] https://handmadecities.com
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I try to keep perspective, anyway.
|
| My first real job while living away from my parents was being a
| performer at Disneyland. It was actually fun as fuck, but they
| scaled back the entertainment department after 9/11, laid off a
| bunch of people, and that included me. In a relatively low-paying
| job with no savings, I couldn't make rent and had to live out of
| my car for a month and rely completely on the kindness and
| generosity of others to get back on my feet.
|
| Right after college, I managed a bar for a while. Again, very
| fun, but it's hard not to drink too much, especially when very
| young and very stupid. I woke up one morning blacked out with a
| dent in my car and still have no idea what happened. I got to
| witness women I hired being pressured into shooting for a
| swimsuit calendar I could tell they didn't want to do. Rich kid
| assholes utterly ruin people's lives out of pure spite. The owner
| made me fire a woman for theft when I knew she was innocent.
|
| I eventually joined the Army. Again, quite a bit of fun charging
| around on top of tanks, firing a .50 caliber machine gun and
| standing on top of a cannon, in a vehicle that can go right
| through 6-foot diameter trees like they aren't even there. But my
| buddy's gunner got hit by a rocket and he had to spend two days
| cleaning barely differentiated guts off of everything in the
| conex. Guy in my platoon shot himself on the last day of
| deployment because his wife was leaving him and he didn't want to
| go home. I was in the last unit to leave Iraq, and seeing what
| happened after, and then adding Afghanistan on top of that. Man,
| if you feel like you suffered for nothing, this was just next
| level 'what the fuck did we do all this for?' 20-hour shifts with
| 30 minutes of sleep a night if you got lucky. Zero days off for
| months on end. Marriages ruined left and right. I even got my own
| thankfully amicable, no kids at least divorce out of it.
|
| I ended up with pretty horrible chronic spine problems that led
| to multiple interbody fusions, a whole lot of titanium hardware,
| and years being barely able to walk, often in enough pain that my
| entire personality palpably changed and I felt powerless to stop
| it. When the Army tried to treat me, they put me in traction to
| the point that it herniated worse, I passed out on the machine,
| and fell so hard onto the hospital floor that I got a TBI bad
| enough that I wasn't allowed to drive for two months until I
| could prove I was able to stand straight and touch my hand to a
| moving pencil. I went back to my hometown and totally forgot
| entire people existed who had apparently been huge parts of my
| life. I have no idea how many memory holes I have as I
| continually discover them talking to my family. Got 0% from the
| VA for that one.
|
| I'm not here for the pain Olympics or anything and don't want to
| downplay the struggles of others, but being in software is the
| cushiest, easiest shit I could ever have imagined. I'm paid more
| than I ever would have thought possible without running my own
| business or being a surgeon when I was a kid. I work from home
| with all the free time in the world but still travel enough that
| I'm not just sitting in the same room every day forever. I very
| rarely work more than a 40 hour week or 8 hour day. The vast
| majority of what I work on goes nowhere and ends up abandoned or
| canceled, but every now and then, something makes it to fruition
| and I get to see it used and feel legitimate pride knowing I made
| it happen. People nominally above me in an org chart are
| deferent, polite, constantly asking if they can do anything for
| me. People just believe me when I say something.
|
| Contrast this with the Army where it's legal, in-line with normal
| culture, and all but expected that bosses will publicly humiliate
| you, yell at you in front of your coworkers, you're constantly
| under a spotlight, stack ranked annually against your entire
| battalion by people who don't even know you. You'll get fired if
| you can't run fast enough or get fat. I got yelled at and
| censured once for not returning a call from my commander within
| five minutes when I was mowing my damn lawn and didn't hear the
| phone ring. You have literally no time off, whether or not you're
| home or out of town. Continuous mandatory recall. I was called in
| to bail guys out of prison at 3 AM on a Sunday morning. You
| rotate through 24-hour shifts called "staff duty" once a month
| because someone has to always be present in the headquarters. You
| don't get a day off the next day.
|
| Software developers have absolutely no appreciation of how good
| they have it.
| jpcookie wrote:
| You know what? If you don't like your job I'll take it. Seriously
| that's what I wanted to do since I was a teenager. Now I spend my
| time counting other people's money. That's an even worse life.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-10-18 23:01 UTC)