80% of developers haven't worked in another field. I used to be an underground miner. I love my job. Every job can suck, but perspective is a powerful thing.
I agree, before that I worked in metal smelting. I'd rather have bad coffee and a boring job in an air-conditioned office than no coffee, extreme heat, burns and shift work with poorer pay
Agreed, I used to work 12-16 hour work days in the navy doing physical labor, 7 days a week when we were out at sea, being paid 1500 a month. I’m very grateful where I am now, 5-8 hour work days, full remote, 140k a year. Sure programming is boring and a headache sometimes but it could be worse!
Worked in construction for 4 years, minimum 10 to 12 hour days. Dislike my current dev job for the same reason I disliked my construction job. You work with people who are inept and you have to follow their leadership. Same applies for alot of talented devs I meet. And yes, it's truly a privilege but one can always hope and strive for improvement.
I worked for many years in jobs that I really hated...retail, factory work, customer service. Then I became a dev...I LOVE it, having perspective really helps. The job is cognitively demanding sure, but its better than having a boss threaten to fire you for not putting a box in the right spot, low pay with little or no insurance, and hard labor in the heat....I'll take dev any day.
Cubicles, ironically, are much better alternative to an open office... Back in the days everybody hated cubicles, now - it seems like not a bad workplace.
Cubicles are heaven if there's no other choice than working from the office. Of course, having your own office is even better, but that's reserved for executives only.
@@errrzarrr yea, separate office is top 1, no questions about it, but I've never been able to get one as a typical engineer. My top 2 choice is a 4-6 people rooms - it's kinda like a separate office, but you still get most of the benefits of open space. If it has good separation between work desks - it could even be my number 1 choice :)
I'll admit that I didn't know enough to be secure enough to want an office. I tapped my cubicle neighbors significantly during crucial failures and they were amazing resources. I think this can get overdone for sure so I made sure NOT to do that, but at times they were eager to help me because they had a chance to play the teacher role and help us all succeed. So, I guess I loved the cubicle world and I do recall there being enough privacy because we had high walls. To me that was the ideal. To a senior developer that may have been too open.
Open office is a stupid idea, tried to squeeze out every single inches of office plan. It's just stupid, no serious knowledge work could be done while in open space.
@@dmitriyobidin6049 I remember visiting my parents at work in the early 90s. Everyone, even customer support staff, had their own office with walls and doors made of opaque materials. The only glass was in the window facing OUTSIDE of the building. The window was not from floor to ceiling, but normal size, and they had curtains and blinds. It's insane how bad we have it at work these days.
What I hate about my fulltime job, is: - It's always too expensive to do things the right way, yet there is enough money to fix the cesspool afterwards. - Everything has to be discussed with management that doesn't understand anything about it, please just let our do our jobs! - Senior developers are often know-it-all's, that refuse to listen to younger developers with less experience - Junior developers are massively frustrated, because they feel disrespected by senior dev's. I'm a medior dev myself, every time I ask: - a junior for input their eyes light up with hope... - a seniors input, their input becomes new indisputable law... - a manager for input, we're stuck with 777 meetings that delay the project with 2 centuries, then conclude that the project would've been to expensive to begin with. Meanwhile the project could've been done in less than 12 hours by an intern, as it's absolutely unimportant and just a proof of concept...
I second what you said, except the part about junior and senior devs. I’ve never encountered this problem. But yeah, the corporate structure doing nothing but preventing you to properly do your job was a pain in my last job. I predicted that they would have massive database problems in two years with all the goddamn proofs in a nice presentation with graphs. I was denied, on the basis of budget and more important priorities by idiots who never touched what I was working on.
@@johnsartain4160 As a medior, I've fixed more issues with senior dev's their code-base than junior dev's. I pointed out large security and architectural problems after 3 weeks on my first job back when I was a junior. In one of those I discovered that te server was saving all entered client passwords in it's log file. Meaning no password hashing of any kind was done between client-server setup. Maybe the senior dev's in the country I live are just bad? The senior at my current workplace didn't even know IOT devices had an IP address, so he cooked up some architecture where the IOT devices where constantly polling our cloud service, instead of using an event based system. Our cloud service costs where as a result through the roof, the IOT battery life down the drain! So they brought me in to fix the cesspool created by a senior that earns three times my wage... So yes, I've actually the feeling that motivated and interested juniors are often more competent than seniors with 20 years of experience. The juniors are eager to learn new stuff, so they spend a lot of time on it outside of work. The seniors have a family to take care of, thus their skill level becomes stuck...
@@xeroxyde3397 I guess the junior / senior issue is more of a problem in the country where I live. I explained it in my comment above to @johnsartain4160 ...
then just go take a nap. And work 7hours over night, take another nap, wake up go to the complimentary kitchen, and start your day again, have a google man go do your laundry at home. Rinse and repeat. After 10 months you can go home for a week vacation to see your wife and new born child.
That tells me you suck at ping pong! Haha, just kidding, I'm totally with you but in our world of BEA we used to really love our jobs and we also loved some ping pong here and there. We would work our asses off and just need a break, but the work was satisfying. Satisfying or not, we are only human and need a little breaky time.
I started with a nice position. Then I got moved with some of my team to clean up nightmare fuel microservice codebases because they let everyone who made those projects go due to poor performance. I'm appreciative to have a job but being a code janitor for subpar developers is soul crushing.
you are contracting yourself... large codebases not matter how bad the techincal debt is will ensure that you never have a dull day... unless you hate programming
@@hardcorecode You clearly are not working on a corpo project or don't care about quality or smart solutions, because in a corpo environment you are basically stacking rushed prototypes until you suffocate from tech debt. That's not fun. What is fun is having more than 2 weeks time to implement a good solution, which you can be proud of.
@@rrraewr I have been working on a stratup for the past 4 years, we rushed and deployed "something" after the first two years. it was an object failure. but we had so much momemtum, so back to the drawing board we went... we never thought about quiting. will we succed? who knows but we are not quiting. My point is technical debt CAN'T be avoided, maybe mitigated nevertheles embrace it. What you want doesn't exist!
@@hardcorecode Oh what I want does exist, worked on some nice projects before without all the agile cr4p. The moment you have dedicated PM, PO roles filled, everything goes down the drain.
As a programmer without a job, I guarantee I hate being broke and jobless a hell of a lot more. I would kill for one of these awful jobs that are so hated.
if we talking about not liking your job, i would say scrum, too many meetings, bad culture and bad management are far more important than if you are using sever components or not
@@errrzarrr To be fair, that counts as work, and should be a valid reason to not get issues outside of the planned sprint. Sucks to get only a complaint when you spend an extra minute fixing an issue from the wrong backlog, though.
As a 37 year old, I still appreciate having a ping pong table in the basement at the office. I don’t have room for one at home and it’s a good place to reset the brain.
@@williehab age cutoff is at 36 years 11 months. It's been 4 years since I've been "allowed to have fun". This age limit stuff really puts a cramp in living life to its fullest!
Nope. The real reason is that people go into the industry, because they think it's easy and cool and pays a lot of money. Then they get hit by reality: you need to stare at the screen for 100-160 hour per month and actually solve actually tech problems that require you to know some math and actually apply it. But they aren't real engineers. I, for example, I love my job. But I am an engineer in my core: I've been disassembling cars and repairing things since I was a kid and I was doing it for myself for free. And when I got a PC, I started doing things for myself and writing programs for myself. I didn't do it because it was considered cool and for money. I did it for myself. And I still do. Doing it for other people for money is just a side gig. I'd do those things for free if government gave me food and other.
The vast majority of devs today work on projects so utterly pointless it's IMPOSSIBLE to be excited about them no matter how much you love the company or the job itself. I've had idiot managers pull out ever more ridiculous money pits, spend a couple quarters on it, shitcan the entire thing, layoff the team, take a bonus or two, rinse and repeat. The reason devs hate their job because it's fucking boring and meaningless. Just the simple knowledge that you're spending your time and energy to build something that may never see the light of day, that's enough to destroy any excitement you could've had.
Honestly what gets me is the constant shit coming my way: Oh, sombody configured this service in this convoluted way, nobody knows why but now it's part of a critical service, so we can't remove it. Oh we have a "flat corporate structure" which means that I don't have a boss, or a supervisor and the circles of responsibility are completely vague, which means nobody takes responsibility for anything and we have no unifying vision. Oh, you just need to make our api a bit easier to work with, which means I have to go through and fix at least 4-5 layers of coupled garbage I've inherited from people who have already left the company. "Ah, can you make a dashboard for this data?" Oh, can your team take of the maintenance of this monolith? (even though we are a 2 man team, and manage 17 microservices already). I barely do any coding because I'm drowning in the infrastructure or fixing broken stuff, which takes me 3 days to locate and 10 mins to fix.
Oof, I felt that. Left a job in that situation. Ended up being "the guy" for too many people. Responsibilities only increase in that situation, never decrease.
During my Masters in Healthcare Admin and Management, the cost of turnover (TO) is so high, that people should be fired for letting their employees quit. In our case study, a hospital that lost a surgeon, didn't just loose the surgeon that made them revenue, but lost all the revenue that surgeon was about to bring in. To the point, the average surgeon would cost a hospital between $1-3 million a year and a top surgeon would 10x that cost. That is just for losing them. Does not include the long term loss of income for not having them. So for example: lose an average surgeon, that was $2 million you lost for the year, plus the patients they had coming int he pipeline, that was about 50% of that so another $1 million. That is a net lose of $3 million you just lost. All because you wouldn't give the surgeon an extra $100-200k or wouldn't fit to their schedule they requested. That is bad business and it all falls on HR and manager.
@@someinternetguyiguess5068 Well true you have higher unemployement but I have plenty of friends that finished their Master's and struggle to find the job in Engineering in Europe right now.
@@tonnytrumpet734 Nah that's cope. We work with several vendors whose software developers are in Central Europe or the middle east and it's regularly discussed how bad all these developers are.. the only reason we use them at all over local developers is the low salary
A better salary? In this economy? 😂 Location arbitrage sounds like the only escape, but it's such a high risk play that you might just want a different kind of job instead.
@2:10 I absolutely hate the gamification borderlining on infantilization in big Tech Companies/Startups. It's feels fake as s..t, specially when in reality you are nothing but a small and disposable cog in these big machines.
I’m happy coding. Being a coder was my dream my entire life. I got into coding when I was very young and of course I weren’t good at it but it planted a seed in me that has just grown. I love creating stuff with code. Maybe I am delusional but I love being delusional if that’s the case 😌
Serious question, have you talked to programmers? Programmers are without a doubt one of the strangest groups of people. First of all, of all professions and hobbies, name one that even approaches the levels of community, cooperation, and sharing that programmers do. Scientists probably come fairly close. Programmers will actively share their work for no personal gain, maybe in hopes of gain in the form of help, but often not achieved. Programmers actively help eachother wolve problems and work on solutions willingly with no personal incentive. Yet... programmers constantly yell at eachother, put eachother down, refuse to help eachother simply because of strategy differences like language preferences. Programmers will ostracise people for not adhering to their golden rules. However they will all band together to hate on non programmers. Tell me how any of this makes any sense? Of course programmers are ornery, we hate ourselves.
Great point, but I think the opposite is also very true. I think some people (if they have the mental fortitude and that happy external life you mentioned), can voluntarily take on the burden of a pseudo-leadership position and nudge things in the right direction until their work life pretty good (assuming the management isn't actively belligerent or too busy participating in the management butt kissing oraboros).
@@chriss3404 As long as they can handle it. But the gen z wouldnt care for that that anymore bcz the salary doesnt cover their basic needs and respectable lifestyle. Everywhere layoffs. So what give the new gen any motivation in next 5 years to do the same thing. It may have worked for boomer and millennials but it wont with gen z workforce.
RE: treating depression with exercise first - there's a chicken and egg problem. if you don't physically have the energy to exercise/feel so hopeless about your life that you have no motivation to improve it, you're not gonna get up and exercise cause your doctor told you to. of course, a pill isn't going to make you want to exercise either. so you kinda have to try everything at once - therapy, medication, lifestyle changes. and then there's the fact that depression is often a secondary symptom of other mental illnesses. you can't just lift the pain of ptsd away, that requires like, coping mechanisms and shit. i was clinically depressed for years bc of undiagnosed adhd, once the adhd got treated, i got my life together, was able to manage my time to stick to an exercise schedule, etc, now I'm off my depression meds. if my therapist had said 'you should try exercising before i prescribe anything' i would have gotten nowhere lol
Idk, I inherited a code-base and tech stack at my current job so old that we're only now trying to migrate off Access 2003. It's jankey and held together by virtual ductape and chewing gum, but at the same time it's kind of fun because even the "simplest" problems can have strange things about them. It kind of keeps you on your toes.
I have worked on different field, specifically customer service. And I hated it every single day. But I think, devs hating their job is not much about the job itself, but because of poor management, culture, environment. I would choose to work with the people in customer service than people in dev, while I would choose to work fixing and solving than facing customers.
Software is still the best job I have ever had in every aspect. Battle computers and solve problems all with minimal non engineer human contact? Sign me up.
Even when I was in my 20s I thought the "toys at work" thing is bullshit and I much rather work in an awsome team with good energy than a shit team energy + toys (which I sometimes often saw). As I grew older this just got stronger though, but was already existing when this thing was "new and fancy" around my area... Chinese IT idea of having "cheerleader chicks" in office sounds great though xD
I'd like a broader discussion of scaling. There are some entrepreneurs who build enough of a company to engage a few well-paid employees then stabilize. There's one guy who specifically comes to mind. His company may have four employees including himself. They offer two products (around hosting Rails) and one service (tutorial videos). From what I can surmise, he is clearing a million a year and lives in a modest Midwest city. I know of a soloprenuer who makes over a million a year maintaining a few SaaS he built. And a third who has "a few small SaaS apps" that each earns $1000/mo. on top of his paying job.
As someone that lives in Europe, I have to tell you that I had to become a freelancer to be able to afford to rent a house for my family of 4, so yeah, money makes more of a difference than you think. We are really underpaid in Europe and that feels really bad after we spent so much time studying to work such long hours.
I worked at a company where that was literally what they trained the managers to do. No matter what you did they would say you are below expectations for your experience level. The only way you could tell if you were doing poorly was getting pip’d
untangling bad frontend code for 8 hours built by my backend-oriented boss when it would've been easier to follow if I'd have built it from scratch.. makes you insane.. you feel like you're going insane and why am i doing this at all... take away any real progress and the unnaturalness of sitting in front of a screen for that long really starts to hit you .... He may read this.. No hard feelings man
@@matrixInvader I am just a guy with a year of experience fixing a codebase written by a guy with 15 years of experience and 10 years of exp. which they wrote 6 months ago. It’s abomination.
Whenever I'm feeling gloomy, I like to go out to the Lake we have in town, and go walk the trails we are so lucky to have. Getting out, in the fresh air, in the woods, listening to the distant water waves crash against the shore, is an incredible medicine for depression.
Of course, 80% of those engineers had to go through three exhaustive rounds of interviews where algorithm problems were solved in less than 40 minutes. They were hired to do simpler things. After that they have to make another greater effort to be part of the 20% that develops something that makes them happy. 😵
21:30 Your problem is very American: When Americans talk about Europe, they usually mean the UK (England more specifically). When Europeans talk about Europe, we usually exclude the UK (England more specifically). In the context of "The West", obesity is a bigger problem in the Anglosphere (or the Five Eyes). In 2024, the obesity rate in Italy went from 19% in 2016 to 10.4% in 2024, while in the US it went from 42.1% to 42.7%
Also, I don't know where that person found that the UK has a higher degree of obesity than the US nowadays. All the information that I can find points in the opposite direction.
that UK exercise for depression thing is probably just to weed out the people who are just a little sad because they lack dopamine triggers in their lives. Real depression isn't cured with physical activity. I was a national champion. I came 5th at the world championships. I was literally the 5th best at something in the entire world. I cried the day after the world championships. Not even about coming 5th instead of at least getting a medal. it was about something totally different. I was probably the world's fittest sad person.
I'm sure HR justifying their own existence is why they like the high turnover of developers. Less need for recruiters if staff stick around for longer.
6:30 The point made at this timestamp over the next minute hits home hard. I'm an infra guy. My home lab brings me so much joy. The shit I deal with at work makes me want to sudoku. Almost all my problems are because of some legacy thing where instead of following best infra practices, we instead need to work around the garbage we're given, implementing things that wouldn't make sense at all in a general scenario. It feels like we're just piling more trash on the existing pile and it's so demoralizing.
Never had toys at work. Closest I had was in a tiny company where I became friends with the boss over years and we would play Command and Conquer 2-3 matches after work to unwind and drink a glass cola rum.
I couldn't care less about pool tables, etc. It's not like you can use them anyway cause the noise is going to p*ss off your colleagues. Just give me a nice, fast laptop and one or two extra HD or better screens and a comfortable chair. That's it. I'm gonna listen to podcasts while I bang out all this quality code for you. If you really wanna spoil me, put an espresso machine and some quality coffee in the kitchen. I'll make my own, it's okay. Oh, and let me go watch my kid play sports or the piano once a week and let me catch up my work in the evening. Mutual respect. That's all I want in a nice job.
I am currently a WP dev and there is.... one project with a stack intended for a shop where you can purchase tickets to events with plenty of self-built customization, yet one lady at the client company did not want automation so during the final stretch of a long and tedious development phase (with plenty of management turnover on the client side) we had to turn it into site that just sends out requests that get manually reviewed and processed. They fill in the data that could be handled by the stack after the old Swiss folks with their phones and spreadsheets finish processing a singld ticket purchase. Another sites runs on a CMS literally built for large online stores that costs a ton and we are now in the process of disabling the cart, wishlist, and rendering user accounts useless, just so we can implement another glorified contact form. It's crazy.
Forum answers are the worst. The people I truly loath the most in this world answer and any all well thought out and thoroughly researched questions with: "why would you even want to do that though, you should just not do that". I would be fine if there was a layer of hell dedicated to people that do that.
An example: "In unity, I am dynamically generating boilerplate code and importing and saving it as an .cs file, that code defines a scriptableobject that can be created as an asset. I would then like to use that boilerplate code to create the instance of the scriptableobject in the project using that newly generated code. I can create the .cs file and import it into the project using an editor script, and I can dynamically create a scriptableobject as well; BUT, during import of the boilerplate code, any attempts at delaying the execution of instantiating the scriptableobject until after the boilerplate code is added/imported into the project causes the scriptableobject to not be created. Is there a way to listen for the import to succeed and in response instantiate that scriptableobject or in any way cause the delay until after the import is successful then run more commands?" And without fail - nobody but one person will respond: "Yeah, but... why would you even want to do that though? You should just not do that, and just do nothing instead" me: (╯ಥ益ಥ)╯︵ ┻━┻ PS: you can thank these people for why all your chatGPT answers are garbage...
I know I'm not a dev yet (going to school for it in the fall) but all these jobs sound amazing. But I also work a hard labor, low paying, unappreciated job that it actively destroying my body. I yearn for the day I can sit in an air conditioned cubicle staring at the screen for 8-12 hours making a livable wage. Low bar, but I have none of that right now.
As a build engineer my take on technical debt is this - a measure of tech debt is the exponential function of the number of non-POSIX libraries and frameworks (L/Fs) used and all of your code that directly uses those L/Fs. Other code might last nearly forever in some environments.
I started out as a Quality Engineer doing manual testing. I feel like every developer needs to work in a testing role once and then they will realize their job well done can tremendously make someone else's day better. Or that introducing stupid bugs will completely ruin their QA team's day.
I have found that I work best with companies that provide lousy coffee, you know the ones that have the bun coffee machine with a pot slowly burning on it. These tend to be boring places to work that make money (like banks). I've worked at places that having elaborate coffee bars, sleep pods, pool tables, ping pong tables, a beer/wine fridge and even a nerf gun battle starting at 4:00pm (actually 3:00pm) everyday. It was impossible to get things done there. I would subtlely collect all of the nerf darts and put them in my desk drawer. There was one job that had it all, including a manager that had a katana that he forged in his office and the guy next to me in the bull pen was smoking (well, vaping all day) at his desk. .
At some point I thought that I would do any job, even a very boring one, for a six figure salary. The Dream. Then I got my six figure salary and I left it within a year to go back to my five figure salary for a much more interesting and rewarding job. At the end of the day, I just need enough money to live and be happy. No amount of money can compensate for suffering 1/3 of the day (or more), half or more of the time I spend awaken. For what? A better house? Why do I need a better house for if I hate my life?
These days companies expect you to simulteneausly be: - a nerd who's obessed with computers and tech - a people person with god-tier leadership skills who doesn't mind spending 80% of workday on meetings and do the manager's job of planning and coordinating work on any feature, BA's job on analysing requirements from 10 different sources and resolving conflicts, QA job of guaranteeing quality, etc.
I liked programming. In fact I loved programing. What I don't like is programming 40+ hours a week, week after week, month after month, constantly being interrupted by meeting, coworkers, and higher-ups, while having to untangle 3 different requirements from several departments that are almost directly contradicting themselves. It's true what they say, don't make your hobby your career, nothing good comes from it. Left the field, making less money, couldn't be happier.
1. A lot of programmers did it for the money when they would be happier doing something else, but the money has sort of golden shackled them. You see it a lot in finance. 2. Not all engineering work is exciting. There is a reason why gaming pays so low, because there is compensation in the form of work enjoyment. Where is the passion for banking software? 3. Not all engineer work should be 40 hours a week. Its not a constant thing like factory work, security guard. Even restaurants and shops have busy hours and slow times. For engineering, the ups and downs are more pronounced. Some days are all nighters, some are snoozers. This is not conducing to some people. 4. If people are new to their jobs, they are usually doing a lot of the bich work. Couple with not really knowing what you are doing. So its not fun for a lot of people. 5. Some of the more experienced people are in a comfortable bubble. There is some disquieting feeling that maybe you'll be obsolete if you don't keep up with the new stuff.
This is why at least for the end goal of after finishing my compsci degree, to find a job I really like after 3-5 years of graduating, is so important. There are areas of code I'm much happier to work on than others, although, getting a job first is far more important. I've worked soul crushing jobs, and returning to that, no thank you
21:40 Actually Ozempic is Danish, and in my experience, at least the lower dosages required to begin treatment are much more available in Europe than in the US, where they have been in backlog for a year and they are expected to stay on backlog for another year.
I work for a small company. I'm the only one that uses revision control. I've been fighting for years to get others to actually use it but FFS, git blame only shows my name for commits or at best "pulled in changes from production" even back though SVN and CVS.
On the subject of toys at work, I have never had the luxury, but at the same time I also definitely see work as work and play as play. I've worked in kitchens for most of my life and there's always a little bit of dicking around, but at the same time I often would prefer to skip lunch and just try and just get through my shift and feel good about what I got done that day. I'm still the same with coding. I like wasting my free time freely, but when I'm working, I want to flip the switch and just work with minimal distractions. Obviously there needs to be a bit of balance, but I've never really understood toys at work. I think it kind of gives off mixed signals as far as "hey we want to look and appear fun and give the illusion of being a cool place, but in the end we're paying you to do a job, so don't actually use it freely." removing the extraneous stuff just breaks the illusion and makes expectations clearer.
2:20 I loved the ping pong tables when I was 25. When I interviewed at 38 years old ans the hiring manager showed me the ping pong tables I rolled my eyes. As we get older we become like Jerry McGuire “Show me the money!!!!”
Your comment at "reason 4" is exactly why I left my last job. I didn't mind it but I needed more money. They weren't paying so I had no choice but to leave 🤷♂️
IMO this situation has more to do with the Economy. I'd say that in half of the world being a programmer is the only sure way to earn more money than the majority of other jobs in the region. In my country, for example, average salary used to be around 500 dollars per month (when I last checked). While JuniorAnything pay grade is anywhere from 500 or less up to 1,5k (depends on the company). So you can see the appeal for a lot of people. Becoming a junior programmer is not rocket science. Perhaps quite a lot of 'new fledged' devs go into profession only to afford paying rent and provide for their families. They might not even like programming or find sitting in front of computer all day quite tedious. Hence this dislike of their jobs.
there is a saying. If you are not doing anything, have a meeting!!! A meeting filled with people who do have something to do and are not interested in being in the meeting. And meetings today are filled with people who didn't read the agenda or have no clue about anything about the meeting, so they have to be explained. Then there are those that have prepared who get frustrated and it is visible to everybody else.....and so on and so on!!!!
I've done try, except blocks before where I just did a "raise" in the except part SOMETIMES, because it was easier to just auto-dump the error into the terminal. Ultimately, it should be used for proper error handling obviously, but extremely quick and extremely dirty is, in the end, still quick. And that makes it useful at times.
I am not yet at that moment where more money is not making me happier...but again I also have a family, children and with the inflation this past 3-4 years, I am yet to get back to 2019 level of actual buying power. But I am in 50% where I'm meh, its not great but its not Java 8.
OMG thank you! I’ve been under paid for a few years and love my team so I need to leave to make more. Too bad tech is out is control right now. Pretty much quiet quitting as a result.
I had a job that made me so freaking miserable too. About 75% is just meetings and I barely had time to actually do my job. And somehow my teammates were able to talk for hours about mundane things like fixing a missing semicolon while I could only say a few sentences about full-blown new features that took hours of coding. To the management, I always looked like I'm underperforming no matter what I do. I'm just bad at talking that much and always summarize everything. But apparently that's what they wanted and I wasn't the right fit.
Love my job, love my colleagues, hate my companies piss decisions that are so blindly easy to see as bad that I can predict the quarters when layoffs happen.
You’ve gotta love your job when you illustrate how much others may hate their job. Toys at work won’t get used unless you lead the way and use them. A ping pong table at work sounds like it might be a good place to bounce ideas off another coworker!
I reduced my stress and discontent with my previous Dev job by simply recognizing that random people don't get to assign work over to me and that it's perfectly acceptable to say, "No". Sure to some people you have to justify yourself, to most, you don't.
I've had a lot of complaints about my job but all things considered I'm pretty happy with it. I have a manager that's chill and actually cares about our well-being and coworkers I like which I'm very grateful for. Stable company and $200k+ total comp, I'll be here for a while. Even if it means dealing with a multi-million line python codebase...
Toys at the office are cool if and only if you don't have work to do instead of playing. Like if you have paid time to just relax with the stuff at the company sure. But if I'm overworked already and trying to avoid doing overtime work, why would i spend time with any amenities?
Have you ever been in a competition and you are doing everything you can to win? During the competition all reaction and instinct. No worries, butterflies or anxiety, just the moment. Our bodies are built to let that go through that mechanism, no time to worry about your problems when you are running from a tiger. Sleeping helps you with what you need to remember. Exercise helps you with what you need to forget.
My depression was at my first job out of school. I was in the backend, which consisted of raw Java and Marklogic. I hate my job so much, it would take me days to gather the smallest amount of motivation to do a simple ticket.
I like my job. I work at home, no one is breathing down my neck even though we do scrum. I think I'd call it "scrum light" because have the sprints, have the dailies and refinement Teams calls and whatnot but we aren't treating it like the main thing is some fucking DevOps burndown chart. As long as work gets done, metrics are useless. Otherwise things get gamed and 'you get what you measure'. What I want from a job is three things: Let me do my job, pay me, don't make me work with insufferable assholes. Easy
Most companies actively try to extract as much value out of your skill growth as possible without compensating you for it. This means that you have to job hop constantly to get paid what you’re worth. This is a depressing prospect when you’re abandoning your coworkers and projects you care about. A lot of devs also work insane hours. I’ve averaged 70+ at some companies. A lot of us also have “unlimited PTO” policies and teams that do not have any redundancy. This makes a lot of us afraid to use our PTO, and vacation is kind of critical for mental health. Then you throw in non-technical leadership who often have terrible ideas that ruin the product that you’re forced to implement. Then, there’s office politics, which are a constant headache. And now there is the constant fear of getting laid off regardless of how safe your position should be at many large companies. I’m pretty satisfied with my current job, but these are issues that I’ve ran into that ruined jobs I’ve otherwise enjoyed over more than a decade in this industry.
Before becoming a JavaScript Developer I have been working on construction sites setting up the data network and sometimes even in data centers if the client was bigger. Let me tell you that I am pretty happy as a JS developer, even though I hate the JS ecosystem. It is still much better to deal with spaghetti code VS. spaghetti cable management in freezing winter with numb hands and a choleric coworker!
![[MV] A leap of faith...ความเชื่อใจครั้งสุดท้าย (From "Petrichor the series")](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/U1piZH2CNXA/mqdefault.jpg)
80% of developers haven't worked in another field. I used to be an underground miner. I love my job. Every job can suck, but perspective is a powerful thing.
I agree, before that I worked in metal smelting. I'd rather have bad coffee and a boring job in an air-conditioned office than no coffee, extreme heat, burns and shift work with poorer pay
Agreed, I used to work 12-16 hour work days in the navy doing physical labor, 7 days a week when we were out at sea, being paid 1500 a month. I’m very grateful where I am now, 5-8 hour work days, full remote, 140k a year. Sure programming is boring and a headache sometimes but it could be worse!
98% of people dislike their job.. a job 20% of people don't dislike is pretty good
@@corvus7945 until the coding job makes you mentally ill.
Worked in construction for 4 years, minimum 10 to 12 hour days.
Dislike my current dev job for the same reason I disliked my construction job. You work with people who are inept and you have to follow their leadership.
Same applies for alot of talented devs I meet.
And yes, it's truly a privilege but one can always hope and strive for improvement.
maintaining a gambling company's 15 year old internal accounting system written in java does, in fact, not spark joy
The weirdest thing is I met some people that really enjoy using java and used it for years
@@andreilucasgoncalves1416 Java is a great language if you know how to use it
@@andreilucasgoncalves1416I like typing and getting overpaid 🤷♂️
For me it was a 21 year-old car dealership software that was basically just a spaghetti of C, C++ and C# scripts coupled together
@@andreilucasgoncalves1416 I spent one year in school using Java, and I'm surprised I didn't k- myself.
Primeagen's skill to covert 5mins videos into 25mins video needs to be studied...truly 5X developer😂
He's a proud disciple of philosopher Asmongold.
I prefer it to reaction streamers who have nothing to add
You just need to head off in 5 different tangents and you get your 25 minutes. :)
@@pickledparsleypartyFor few days I thought it's a same person, their videos where appearing in the feed few days apart always
I worked for many years in jobs that I really hated...retail, factory work, customer service. Then I became a dev...I LOVE it, having perspective really helps. The job is cognitively demanding sure, but its better than having a boss threaten to fire you for not putting a box in the right spot, low pay with little or no insurance, and hard labor in the heat....I'll take dev any day.
Cubicles, ironically, are much better alternative to an open office...
Back in the days everybody hated cubicles, now - it seems like not a bad workplace.
Cubicles are heaven if there's no other choice than working from the office. Of course, having your own office is even better, but that's reserved for executives only.
@@errrzarrr yea, separate office is top 1, no questions about it, but I've never been able to get one as a typical engineer. My top 2 choice is a 4-6 people rooms - it's kinda like a separate office, but you still get most of the benefits of open space. If it has good separation between work desks - it could even be my number 1 choice :)
I'll admit that I didn't know enough to be secure enough to want an office. I tapped my cubicle neighbors significantly during crucial failures and they were amazing resources. I think this can get overdone for sure so I made sure NOT to do that, but at times they were eager to help me because they had a chance to play the teacher role and help us all succeed. So, I guess I loved the cubicle world and I do recall there being enough privacy because we had high walls. To me that was the ideal. To a senior developer that may have been too open.
Open office is a stupid idea, tried to squeeze out every single inches of office plan. It's just stupid, no serious knowledge work could be done while in open space.
@@dmitriyobidin6049 I remember visiting my parents at work in the early 90s. Everyone, even customer support staff, had their own office with walls and doors made of opaque materials. The only glass was in the window facing OUTSIDE of the building. The window was not from floor to ceiling, but normal size, and they had curtains and blinds.
It's insane how bad we have it at work these days.
What I hate about my fulltime job, is:
- It's always too expensive to do things the right way, yet there is enough money to fix the cesspool afterwards.
- Everything has to be discussed with management that doesn't understand anything about it, please just let our do our jobs!
- Senior developers are often know-it-all's, that refuse to listen to younger developers with less experience
- Junior developers are massively frustrated, because they feel disrespected by senior dev's.
I'm a medior dev myself, every time I ask:
- a junior for input their eyes light up with hope...
- a seniors input, their input becomes new indisputable law...
- a manager for input, we're stuck with 777 meetings that delay the project with 2 centuries, then conclude that the project would've been to expensive to begin with. Meanwhile the project could've been done in less than 12 hours by an intern, as it's absolutely unimportant and just a proof of concept...
90% of this is Scrum, 10% is poor leadership
I second what you said, except the part about junior and senior devs. I’ve never encountered this problem. But yeah, the corporate structure doing nothing but preventing you to properly do your job was a pain in my last job. I predicted that they would have massive database problems in two years with all the goddamn proofs in a nice presentation with graphs. I was denied, on the basis of budget and more important priorities by idiots who never touched what I was working on.
I used to think the same way but now that I'm a senior dev I realize just how the juniors don't really know anything
@@johnsartain4160 As a medior, I've fixed more issues with senior dev's their code-base than junior dev's.
I pointed out large security and architectural problems after 3 weeks on my first job back when I was a junior. In one of those I discovered that te server was saving all entered client passwords in it's log file. Meaning no password hashing of any kind was done between client-server setup. Maybe the senior dev's in the country I live are just bad?
The senior at my current workplace didn't even know IOT devices had an IP address, so he cooked up some architecture where the IOT devices where constantly polling our cloud service, instead of using an event based system. Our cloud service costs where as a result through the roof, the IOT battery life down the drain! So they brought me in to fix the cesspool created by a senior that earns three times my wage...
So yes, I've actually the feeling that motivated and interested juniors are often more competent than seniors with 20 years of experience. The juniors are eager to learn new stuff, so they spend a lot of time on it outside of work. The seniors have a family to take care of, thus their skill level becomes stuck...
@@xeroxyde3397 I guess the junior / senior issue is more of a problem in the country where I live.
I explained it in my comment above to @johnsartain4160 ...
If I spend 30 minutes a day playing Ping Pong, I still have to go back and spend 7 hours doing a job i hate.
No amount of toys can make a job where Scrum leads a bearable job.
then just go take a nap. And work 7hours over night, take another nap, wake up go to the complimentary kitchen, and start your day again, have a google man go do your laundry at home. Rinse and repeat. After 10 months you can go home for a week vacation to see your wife and new born child.
That tells me you suck at ping pong! Haha, just kidding, I'm totally with you but in our world of BEA we used to really love our jobs and we also loved some ping pong here and there. We would work our asses off and just need a break, but the work was satisfying. Satisfying or not, we are only human and need a little breaky time.
20% of Developers actively somewhat dont dislike their job
I work from home, only have to do about 8 hours real work per week, make over 200k, and have good colleagues. No better job in the world
@@ZM-dm3jgcan you refer me😢
@@ZM-dm3jg You hiring? 😀
@@ZM-dm3jg looking for a front end dev? 😉
Nope, I negotiated my salary 4 times over 3 years and made myself indispensable to my company to get to where I'm at now
I started with a nice position. Then I got moved with some of my team to clean up nightmare fuel microservice codebases because they let everyone who made those projects go due to poor performance.
I'm appreciative to have a job but being a code janitor for subpar developers is soul crushing.
Apologies in advance to anyone who has to look at my code in the future
@@SrKinko Same but also Including myself lmao
And then your team becomes unproductive as well because the code is shit, it's a vicious cycle
Totally agree, I hate my job
Code-janitor is actually a surprisingly apt description of most dev-ops jobs.
Programming things is amazing, consistently having to deal with corpos and their large orders of spaghetti isn't.
you are contracting yourself... large codebases not matter how bad the techincal debt is will ensure that you never have a dull day... unless you hate programming
@@hardcorecode You clearly are not working on a corpo project or don't care about quality or smart solutions, because in a corpo environment you are basically stacking rushed prototypes until you suffocate from tech debt. That's not fun. What is fun is having more than 2 weeks time to implement a good solution, which you can be proud of.
@@rrraewr I have been working on a stratup for the past 4 years, we rushed and deployed "something" after the first two years. it was an object failure. but we had so much momemtum, so back to the drawing board we went... we never thought about quiting. will we succed? who knows but we are not quiting. My point is technical debt CAN'T be avoided, maybe mitigated nevertheles embrace it. What you want doesn't exist!
@@hardcorecode Oh what I want does exist, worked on some nice projects before without all the agile cr4p. The moment you have dedicated PM, PO roles filled, everything goes down the drain.
@@rrraewr before agile ... when was that, 1990s ?
As a programmer without a job, I guarantee I hate being broke and jobless a hell of a lot more. I would kill for one of these awful jobs that are so hated.
classic developer moment - problem solving is great, it's everything else around it
if we talking about not liking your job, i would say scrum, too many meetings, bad culture and bad management are far more important than if you are using sever components or not
Or the fact that lots of Devs want to be the hero and don't have it...
What you mean! 🧐 Scrum allows us to publicly report "what you did yesterday, what must do today", you know, it is _EmPoWerinnGg_
@@errrzarrr To be fair, that counts as work, and should be a valid reason to not get issues outside of the planned sprint. Sucks to get only a complaint when you spend an extra minute fixing an issue from the wrong backlog, though.
@@errrzarrr I guess dailies are fine, what botters me are the endless meetings( retro, review, 1:1, planning, refining) ... these all are a joke
@@zeustechdev honestly, dailies are not fine, there is a reason other professions dont do it. Just a waste of time.
As a 37 year old, I still appreciate having a ping pong table in the basement at the office. I don’t have room for one at home and it’s a good place to reset the brain.
37 year old still playing ping pong? really?
@@hardcorecode ?? What's the problem with that? Is there an age limit on table tennis?
@@williehab age cutoff is at 36 years 11 months. It's been 4 years since I've been "allowed to have fun". This age limit stuff really puts a cramp in living life to its fullest!
@@hardcorecodebro what
@@hardcorecodenigga whats your problem i see 70 yr olds playing pingpong
I think the real reason is because most of complexity these days comes from fighting against all those frameworks rather than solving real problems.
Nope. The real reason is that people go into the industry, because they think it's easy and cool and pays a lot of money. Then they get hit by reality: you need to stare at the screen for 100-160 hour per month and actually solve actually tech problems that require you to know some math and actually apply it. But they aren't real engineers. I, for example, I love my job. But I am an engineer in my core: I've been disassembling cars and repairing things since I was a kid and I was doing it for myself for free. And when I got a PC, I started doing things for myself and writing programs for myself. I didn't do it because it was considered cool and for money. I did it for myself. And I still do. Doing it for other people for money is just a side gig. I'd do those things for free if government gave me food and other.
The vast majority of devs today work on projects so utterly pointless it's IMPOSSIBLE to be excited about them no matter how much you love the company or the job itself. I've had idiot managers pull out ever more ridiculous money pits, spend a couple quarters on it, shitcan the entire thing, layoff the team, take a bonus or two, rinse and repeat. The reason devs hate their job because it's fucking boring and meaningless. Just the simple knowledge that you're spending your time and energy to build something that may never see the light of day, that's enough to destroy any excitement you could've had.
At least they aren't bombs like in Der Fuehrer's Face.
Honestly what gets me is the constant shit coming my way: Oh, sombody configured this service in this convoluted way, nobody knows why but now it's part of a critical service, so we can't remove it. Oh we have a "flat corporate structure" which means that I don't have a boss, or a supervisor and the circles of responsibility are completely vague, which means nobody takes responsibility for anything and we have no unifying vision. Oh, you just need to make our api a bit easier to work with, which means I have to go through and fix at least 4-5 layers of coupled garbage I've inherited from people who have already left the company. "Ah, can you make a dashboard for this data?" Oh, can your team take of the maintenance of this monolith? (even though we are a 2 man team, and manage 17 microservices already).
I barely do any coding because I'm drowning in the infrastructure or fixing broken stuff, which takes me 3 days to locate and 10 mins to fix.
this is like every job at a smaller company lol
Oof, I felt that. Left a job in that situation. Ended up being "the guy" for too many people. Responsibilities only increase in that situation, never decrease.
During my Masters in Healthcare Admin and Management, the cost of turnover (TO) is so high, that people should be fired for letting their employees quit. In our case study, a hospital that lost a surgeon, didn't just loose the surgeon that made them revenue, but lost all the revenue that surgeon was about to bring in. To the point, the average surgeon would cost a hospital between $1-3 million a year and a top surgeon would 10x that cost. That is just for losing them. Does not include the long term loss of income for not having them. So for example: lose an average surgeon, that was $2 million you lost for the year, plus the patients they had coming int he pipeline, that was about 50% of that so another $1 million. That is a net lose of $3 million you just lost. All because you wouldn't give the surgeon an extra $100-200k or wouldn't fit to their schedule they requested.
That is bad business and it all falls on HR and manager.
I'm sick of my shitty salary.
Same, medior position for US company in Central Europe for 30K a year :) Doing pretty much same work and having calls with US people making 100-140k
@tonnytrumpet734 you're neglecting to include the fact that a shitload developers in the USA also... aren't even employed as developers...
@@someinternetguyiguess5068 Well true you have higher unemployement but I have plenty of friends that finished their Master's and struggle to find the job in Engineering in Europe right now.
@@tonnytrumpet734 Nah that's cope. We work with several vendors whose software developers are in Central Europe or the middle east and it's regularly discussed how bad all these developers are.. the only reason we use them at all over local developers is the low salary
A better salary? In this economy? 😂
Location arbitrage sounds like the only escape, but it's such a high risk play that you might just want a different kind of job instead.
@2:10 I absolutely hate the gamification borderlining on infantilization in big Tech Companies/Startups. It's feels fake as s..t, specially when in reality you are nothing but a small and disposable cog in these big machines.
I’m happy coding. Being a coder was my dream my entire life. I got into coding when I was very young and of course I weren’t good at it but it planted a seed in me that has just grown. I love creating stuff with code. Maybe I am delusional but I love being delusional if that’s the case 😌
Your not delusional the others are just winers.
Serious question, have you talked to programmers?
Programmers are without a doubt one of the strangest groups of people.
First of all, of all professions and hobbies, name one that even approaches the levels of community, cooperation, and sharing that programmers do.
Scientists probably come fairly close.
Programmers will actively share their work for no personal gain, maybe in hopes of gain in the form of help, but often not achieved.
Programmers actively help eachother wolve problems and work on solutions willingly with no personal incentive.
Yet... programmers constantly yell at eachother, put eachother down, refuse to help eachother simply because of strategy differences like language preferences.
Programmers will ostracise people for not adhering to their golden rules.
However they will all band together to hate on non programmers.
Tell me how any of this makes any sense?
Of course programmers are ornery, we hate ourselves.
Most of the Happy people are the ones who settled with shitty management and trying to play cool with it and living their life outside of work.
Isn't that how you surivive the rat race? this applies for any copoerate job/career
Great point, but I think the opposite is also very true.
I think some people (if they have the mental fortitude and that happy external life you mentioned), can voluntarily take on the burden of a pseudo-leadership position and nudge things in the right direction until their work life pretty good (assuming the management isn't actively belligerent or too busy participating in the management butt kissing oraboros).
@@chriss3404 As long as they can handle it. But the gen z wouldnt care for that that anymore bcz the salary doesnt cover their basic needs and respectable lifestyle. Everywhere layoffs. So what give the new gen any motivation in next 5 years to do the same thing. It may have worked for boomer and millennials but it wont with gen z workforce.
RE: treating depression with exercise first - there's a chicken and egg problem. if you don't physically have the energy to exercise/feel so hopeless about your life that you have no motivation to improve it, you're not gonna get up and exercise cause your doctor told you to. of course, a pill isn't going to make you want to exercise either. so you kinda have to try everything at once - therapy, medication, lifestyle changes. and then there's the fact that depression is often a secondary symptom of other mental illnesses. you can't just lift the pain of ptsd away, that requires like, coping mechanisms and shit. i was clinically depressed for years bc of undiagnosed adhd, once the adhd got treated, i got my life together, was able to manage my time to stick to an exercise schedule, etc, now I'm off my depression meds. if my therapist had said 'you should try exercising before i prescribe anything' i would have gotten nowhere lol
The UK is an exception. You should have seen me hiking the other day. A swiss guy in his 70s passed me running on the way up like it was nothing.
I'll go to bed at 6 am before I wake up at 6 am
Idk, I inherited a code-base and tech stack at my current job so old that we're only now trying to migrate off Access 2003.
It's jankey and held together by virtual ductape and chewing gum, but at the same time it's kind of fun because even the "simplest" problems can have strange things about them. It kind of keeps you on your toes.
I have worked on different field, specifically customer service. And I hated it every single day. But I think, devs hating their job is not much about the job itself, but because of poor management, culture, environment. I would choose to work with the people in customer service than people in dev, while I would choose to work fixing and solving than facing customers.
Software is still the best job I have ever had in every aspect. Battle computers and solve problems all with minimal non engineer human contact? Sign me up.
(Paraphrasing Prime) "all code is, at some point, someone's technical debt"
Even when I was in my 20s I thought the "toys at work" thing is bullshit and I much rather work in an awsome team with good energy than a shit team energy + toys (which I sometimes often saw).
As I grew older this just got stronger though, but was already existing when this thing was "new and fancy" around my area...
Chinese IT idea of having "cheerleader chicks" in office sounds great though xD
I'd like a broader discussion of scaling. There are some entrepreneurs who build enough of a company to engage a few well-paid employees then stabilize. There's one guy who specifically comes to mind. His company may have four employees including himself. They offer two products (around hosting Rails) and one service (tutorial videos). From what I can surmise, he is clearing a million a year and lives in a modest Midwest city.
I know of a soloprenuer who makes over a million a year maintaining a few SaaS he built. And a third who has "a few small SaaS apps" that each earns $1000/mo. on top of his paying job.
80% of people dislike their job
As someone that lives in Europe, I have to tell you that I had to become a freelancer to be able to afford to rent a house for my family of 4, so yeah, money makes more of a difference than you think. We are really underpaid in Europe and that feels really bad after we spent so much time studying to work such long hours.
No matter how hard you work your manager will tell you that you are not good and need to step it up.
I worked at a company where that was literally what they trained the managers to do. No matter what you did they would say you are below expectations for your experience level. The only way you could tell if you were doing poorly was getting pip’d
untangling bad frontend code for 8 hours built by my backend-oriented boss when it would've been easier to follow if I'd have built it from scratch.. makes you insane.. you feel like you're going insane and why am i doing this at all... take away any real progress and the unnaturalness of sitting in front of a screen for that long really starts to hit you ....
He may read this.. No hard feelings man
feeling this right now
Spyware on corporate PCs is real.
When those who scoff at the frontend as a field manage you, RIP
@@matrixInvader I am just a guy with a year of experience fixing a codebase written by a guy with 15 years of experience and 10 years of exp. which they wrote 6 months ago. It’s abomination.
Damn, this is literally me. Dude made it's own SPA with a bunch of global Scripts and a custom Java compiler tô wrap it all.
Whenever I'm feeling gloomy, I like to go out to the Lake we have in town, and go walk the trails we are so lucky to have. Getting out, in the fresh air, in the woods, listening to the distant water waves crash against the shore, is an incredible medicine for depression.
Of course, 80% of those engineers had to go through three exhaustive rounds of interviews where algorithm problems were solved in less than 40 minutes. They were hired to do simpler things.
After that they have to make another greater effort to be part of the 20% that develops something that makes them happy. 😵
More money doesn't buy you happiness, but enough money sure does give you the springboard to it
21:30 Your problem is very American: When Americans talk about Europe, they usually mean the UK (England more specifically).
When Europeans talk about Europe, we usually exclude the UK (England more specifically).
In the context of "The West", obesity is a bigger problem in the Anglosphere (or the Five Eyes).
In 2024, the obesity rate in Italy went from 19% in 2016 to 10.4% in 2024, while in the US it went from 42.1% to 42.7%
Also, I don't know where that person found that the UK has a higher degree of obesity than the US nowadays. All the information that I can find points in the opposite direction.
that UK exercise for depression thing is probably just to weed out the people who are just a little sad because they lack dopamine triggers in their lives. Real depression isn't cured with physical activity. I was a national champion. I came 5th at the world championships. I was literally the 5th best at something in the entire world. I cried the day after the world championships. Not even about coming 5th instead of at least getting a medal. it was about something totally different. I was probably the world's fittest sad person.
I'm sure HR justifying their own existence is why they like the high turnover of developers. Less need for recruiters if staff stick around for longer.
6:30 The point made at this timestamp over the next minute hits home hard. I'm an infra guy. My home lab brings me so much joy. The shit I deal with at work makes me want to sudoku. Almost all my problems are because of some legacy thing where instead of following best infra practices, we instead need to work around the garbage we're given, implementing things that wouldn't make sense at all in a general scenario. It feels like we're just piling more trash on the existing pile and it's so demoralizing.
Never had toys at work. Closest I had was in a tiny company where I became friends with the boss over years and we would play Command and Conquer 2-3 matches after work to unwind and drink a glass cola rum.
I couldn't care less about pool tables, etc. It's not like you can use them anyway cause the noise is going to p*ss off your colleagues. Just give me a nice, fast laptop and one or two extra HD or better screens and a comfortable chair. That's it. I'm gonna listen to podcasts while I bang out all this quality code for you. If you really wanna spoil me, put an espresso machine and some quality coffee in the kitchen. I'll make my own, it's okay. Oh, and let me go watch my kid play sports or the piano once a week and let me catch up my work in the evening. Mutual respect. That's all I want in a nice job.
You had some great takes which were notably missing from your original review of the survey.
I am currently a WP dev and there is....
one project with a stack intended for a shop where you can purchase tickets to events with plenty of self-built customization, yet one lady at the client company did not want automation so during the final stretch of a long and tedious development phase (with plenty of management turnover on the client side) we had to turn it into site that just sends out requests that get manually reviewed and processed. They fill in the data that could be handled by the stack after the old Swiss folks with their phones and spreadsheets finish processing a singld ticket purchase.
Another sites runs on a CMS literally built for large online stores that costs a ton and we are now in the process of disabling the cart, wishlist, and rendering user accounts useless, just so we can implement another glorified contact form.
It's crazy.
Forum answers are the worst. The people I truly loath the most in this world answer and any all well thought out and thoroughly researched questions with: "why would you even want to do that though, you should just not do that".
I would be fine if there was a layer of hell dedicated to people that do that.
An example: "In unity, I am dynamically generating boilerplate code and importing and saving it as an .cs file, that code defines a scriptableobject that can be created as an asset. I would then like to use that boilerplate code to create the instance of the scriptableobject in the project using that newly generated code. I can create the .cs file and import it into the project using an editor script, and I can dynamically create a scriptableobject as well; BUT, during import of the boilerplate code, any attempts at delaying the execution of instantiating the scriptableobject until after the boilerplate code is added/imported into the project causes the scriptableobject to not be created. Is there a way to listen for the import to succeed and in response instantiate that scriptableobject or in any way cause the delay until after the import is successful then run more commands?"
And without fail - nobody but one person will respond: "Yeah, but... why would you even want to do that though? You should just not do that, and just do nothing instead"
me: (╯ಥ益ಥ)╯︵ ┻━┻
PS: you can thank these people for why all your chatGPT answers are garbage...
I love my job but hate interviewing for it
I know I'm not a dev yet (going to school for it in the fall) but all these jobs sound amazing. But I also work a hard labor, low paying, unappreciated job that it actively destroying my body. I yearn for the day I can sit in an air conditioned cubicle staring at the screen for 8-12 hours making a livable wage. Low bar, but I have none of that right now.
As a build engineer my take on technical debt is this - a measure of tech debt is the exponential function of the number of non-POSIX libraries and frameworks (L/Fs) used and all of your code that directly uses those L/Fs. Other code might last nearly forever in some environments.
I started out as a Quality Engineer doing manual testing. I feel like every developer needs to work in a testing role once and then they will realize their job well done can tremendously make someone else's day better. Or that introducing stupid bugs will completely ruin their QA team's day.
I have found that I work best with companies that provide lousy coffee, you know the ones that have the bun coffee machine with a pot slowly burning on it. These tend to be boring places to work that make money (like banks).
I've worked at places that having elaborate coffee bars, sleep pods, pool tables, ping pong tables, a beer/wine fridge and even a nerf gun battle starting at 4:00pm (actually 3:00pm) everyday. It was impossible to get things done there. I would subtlely collect all of the nerf darts and put them in my desk drawer. There was one job that had it all, including a manager that had a katana that he forged in his office and the guy next to me in the bull pen was smoking (well, vaping all day) at his desk. .
At some point I thought that I would do any job, even a very boring one, for a six figure salary. The Dream.
Then I got my six figure salary and I left it within a year to go back to my five figure salary for a much more interesting and rewarding job.
At the end of the day, I just need enough money to live and be happy.
No amount of money can compensate for suffering 1/3 of the day (or more), half or more of the time I spend awaken.
For what? A better house? Why do I need a better house for if I hate my life?
For me the unhappiness comes from the constant push to take more leadership, no i don’t want to be the tech lead, am i the only one?
No troll I think a lot of programmers just dont like programming or computers or are actually nerds.
These days companies expect you to simulteneausly be:
- a nerd who's obessed with computers and tech
- a people person with god-tier leadership skills who doesn't mind spending 80% of workday on meetings and do the manager's job of planning and coordinating work on any feature, BA's job on analysing requirements from 10 different sources and resolving conflicts, QA job of guaranteeing quality, etc.
I liked programming. In fact I loved programing. What I don't like is programming 40+ hours a week, week after week, month after month, constantly being interrupted by meeting, coworkers, and higher-ups, while having to untangle 3 different requirements from several departments that are almost directly contradicting themselves. It's true what they say, don't make your hobby your career, nothing good comes from it. Left the field, making less money, couldn't be happier.
Count me in to one of those who love programming, but hate their company, culture, environment and people I work with making me hate my job.
My old job had a basketball court and volleyball court with semi organized play and that did legit make my job better.
1. A lot of programmers did it for the money when they would be happier doing something else, but the money has sort of golden shackled them. You see it a lot in finance.
2. Not all engineering work is exciting. There is a reason why gaming pays so low, because there is compensation in the form of work enjoyment. Where is the passion for banking software?
3. Not all engineer work should be 40 hours a week. Its not a constant thing like factory work, security guard. Even restaurants and shops have busy hours and slow times. For engineering, the ups and downs are more pronounced. Some days are all nighters, some are snoozers. This is not conducing to some people.
4. If people are new to their jobs, they are usually doing a lot of the bich work. Couple with not really knowing what you are doing. So its not fun for a lot of people.
5. Some of the more experienced people are in a comfortable bubble. There is some disquieting feeling that maybe you'll be obsolete if you don't keep up with the new stuff.
Sounds like you all need to work a real job, like pouring concrete or roofing
This is why at least for the end goal of after finishing my compsci degree, to find a job I really like after 3-5 years of graduating, is so important. There are areas of code I'm much happier to work on than others, although, getting a job first is far more important. I've worked soul crushing jobs, and returning to that, no thank you
21:40 Actually Ozempic is Danish, and in my experience, at least the lower dosages required to begin treatment are much more available in Europe than in the US, where they have been in backlog for a year and they are expected to stay on backlog for another year.
If there are to be awards for the best entertainer programmer of the year, it should go to Primeagen.
I am so grateful I found programming. The fact I can provide value from using a laptop and potentially not talk to anybody ever is amazing
Can confirm
80% of me dislikes my job
The other 20% hates it
I think a lot of this revolves around *who* you work with. If you have colleagues who are good people things tend to work out
Im with you. I dont need a bunch of distractions at work.
-He says as he works from home.
I work for a small company. I'm the only one that uses revision control. I've been fighting for years to get others to actually use it but FFS, git blame only shows my name for commits or at best "pulled in changes from production" even back though SVN and CVS.
On the subject of toys at work, I have never had the luxury, but at the same time I also definitely see work as work and play as play. I've worked in kitchens for most of my life and there's always a little bit of dicking around, but at the same time I often would prefer to skip lunch and just try and just get through my shift and feel good about what I got done that day. I'm still the same with coding. I like wasting my free time freely, but when I'm working, I want to flip the switch and just work with minimal distractions. Obviously there needs to be a bit of balance, but I've never really understood toys at work. I think it kind of gives off mixed signals as far as "hey we want to look and appear fun and give the illusion of being a cool place, but in the end we're paying you to do a job, so don't actually use it freely." removing the extraneous stuff just breaks the illusion and makes expectations clearer.
fasterthanlime talks about this topic in "work is not your friend", great video
It's definitely corporate America that makes everyone miserable in every profession. Its not even just programming
Been doing software for 20+ years. I fall into the complacent category.
2:20 I loved the ping pong tables when I was 25. When I interviewed at 38 years old ans the hiring manager showed me the ping pong tables I rolled my eyes. As we get older we become like Jerry McGuire “Show me the money!!!!”
Your comment at "reason 4" is exactly why I left my last job. I didn't mind it but I needed more money. They weren't paying so I had no choice but to leave 🤷♂️
IMO this situation has more to do with the Economy. I'd say that in half of the world being a programmer is the only sure way to earn more money than the majority of other jobs in the region. In my country, for example, average salary used to be around 500 dollars per month (when I last checked). While JuniorAnything pay grade is anywhere from 500 or less up to 1,5k (depends on the company).
So you can see the appeal for a lot of people. Becoming a junior programmer is not rocket science. Perhaps quite a lot of 'new fledged' devs go into profession only to afford paying rent and provide for their families. They might not even like programming or find sitting in front of computer all day quite tedious. Hence this dislike of their jobs.
there is a saying. If you are not doing anything, have a meeting!!! A meeting filled with people who do have something to do and are not interested in being in the meeting. And meetings today are filled with people who didn't read the agenda or have no clue about anything about the meeting, so they have to be explained. Then there are those that have prepared who get frustrated and it is visible to everybody else.....and so on and so on!!!!
I've done try, except blocks before where I just did a "raise" in the except part SOMETIMES, because it was easier to just auto-dump the error into the terminal. Ultimately, it should be used for proper error handling obviously, but extremely quick and extremely dirty is, in the end, still quick. And that makes it useful at times.
I wonder what the stats were like before SCRUM was introduced as the standard method.
We already know the answer
@@errrzarrr Do share. Personally, I loved coming up with improvements myself instead of being bound to random irrelevant tasks and rituals.
The ball pits, sleeping pods, and other crap are only there for organic marketing.
Organic marketing, as in people actually enjoy those enough to invite friends?
I am not yet at that moment where more money is not making me happier...but again I also have a family, children and with the inflation this past 3-4 years, I am yet to get back to 2019 level of actual buying power. But I am in 50% where I'm meh, its not great but its not Java 8.
This is my fav Primeagen Video!
OMG thank you! I’ve been under paid for a few years and love my team so I need to leave to make more. Too bad tech is out is control right now. Pretty much quiet quitting as a result.
I had a job that made me so freaking miserable too. About 75% is just meetings and I barely had time to actually do my job. And somehow my teammates were able to talk for hours about mundane things like fixing a missing semicolon while I could only say a few sentences about full-blown new features that took hours of coding. To the management, I always looked like I'm underperforming no matter what I do. I'm just bad at talking that much and always summarize everything. But apparently that's what they wanted and I wasn't the right fit.
Primeagens ability to turn a 4 minute fireship video into an almost half an hours worth of content will never cease to amaze me lol
I love my job, I hate everyone I work with
That is sad, i love my jobb and really like my colleagues. Makes the days so much better.
Love my job, love my colleagues, hate my companies piss decisions that are so blindly easy to see as bad that I can predict the quarters when layoffs happen.
Thank you, I needed to hear this.
You’ve gotta love your job when you illustrate how much others may hate their job. Toys at work won’t get used unless you lead the way and use them. A ping pong table at work sounds like it might be a good place to bounce ideas off another coworker!
I reduced my stress and discontent with my previous Dev job by simply recognizing that random people don't get to assign work over to me and that it's perfectly acceptable to say, "No". Sure to some people you have to justify yourself, to most, you don't.
I've had a lot of complaints about my job but all things considered I'm pretty happy with it.
I have a manager that's chill and actually cares about our well-being and coworkers I like which I'm very grateful for.
Stable company and $200k+ total comp, I'll be here for a while.
Even if it means dealing with a multi-million line python codebase...
I love my job. I love developing software. What i hate is me working on code written by unpassionate people with no coding principle or standards.
14:38 is spot on so thankful there are people who get it
Toys at the office are cool if and only if you don't have work to do instead of playing.
Like if you have paid time to just relax with the stuff at the company sure. But if I'm overworked already and trying to avoid doing overtime work, why would i spend time with any amenities?
In a few days am turning 60, I am still developing code and managing an application infrastructure team for a global multinational corporation.
Have you ever been in a competition and you are doing everything you can to win? During the competition all reaction and instinct. No worries, butterflies or anxiety, just the moment.
Our bodies are built to let that go through that mechanism, no time to worry about your problems when you are running from a tiger.
Sleeping helps you with what you need to remember.
Exercise helps you with what you need to forget.
Hey man
You're completly right.
The modern programming facilities makes us want it in all jobs.
You're funcking right
Didn't expect Big Dentistry to immediately come after Primeagen like that
My depression was at my first job out of school. I was in the backend, which consisted of raw Java and Marklogic. I hate my job so much, it would take me days to gather the smallest amount of motivation to do a simple ticket.
I like my job. I work at home, no one is breathing down my neck even though we do scrum. I think I'd call it "scrum light" because have the sprints, have the dailies and refinement Teams calls and whatnot but we aren't treating it like the main thing is some fucking DevOps burndown chart. As long as work gets done, metrics are useless. Otherwise things get gamed and 'you get what you measure'.
What I want from a job is three things: Let me do my job, pay me, don't make me work with insufferable assholes. Easy
3 wishes too many, at least one is never true
@@Asto508 True, I might not be perfectly happy with the pay :D
Don't let him leave if he has a huge amount of passion!!!
Most companies actively try to extract as much value out of your skill growth as possible without compensating you for it. This means that you have to job hop constantly to get paid what you’re worth. This is a depressing prospect when you’re abandoning your coworkers and projects you care about. A lot of devs also work insane hours. I’ve averaged 70+ at some companies. A lot of us also have “unlimited PTO” policies and teams that do not have any redundancy. This makes a lot of us afraid to use our PTO, and vacation is kind of critical for mental health. Then you throw in non-technical leadership who often have terrible ideas that ruin the product that you’re forced to implement. Then, there’s office politics, which are a constant headache. And now there is the constant fear of getting laid off regardless of how safe your position should be at many large companies. I’m pretty satisfied with my current job, but these are issues that I’ve ran into that ruined jobs I’ve otherwise enjoyed over more than a decade in this industry.
I like that Prime spent the last 5 mins telling Flip to fix the video and Flip just goes: ah... I will put every thing in the video
Before becoming a JavaScript Developer I have been working on construction sites setting up the data network and sometimes even in data centers if the client was bigger. Let me tell you that I am pretty happy as a JS developer, even though I hate the JS ecosystem. It is still much better to deal with spaghetti code VS. spaghetti cable management in freezing winter with numb hands and a choleric coworker!