Ask HN: How can I enjoy my job?

The projects that I work on at these jobs aren't intellectually challenging to me. In addition to that, I seem to be stuck as a front end engineer. When I joined my current company, I made it clear that I want to do backend work, but I haven't done anything but frontend since I started.

There are certain problems that are definitely my fault; the least of which is my inability to deal with other people. Discussions about which design is better are pointless to me. Why don't we just try both and let the data decide? Meetings that are announced at the last second are irritating at best, because they distract me from my work, but I'm required to join anyways.

I want to work with people that are a lot better than me, but (at the risk of sounding arrogant) each time I move to a new company, my team seems to get worse. I'm looking for a place where there is a high level of rigour involved in the software development process.

How can I figure out why I can't enjoy any job that I take? How can I tell if I am the problem? How can I stop doing front end work? How can I identify a good team before accepting the job? Is it bad that I'm moving through jobs so quickly?

Any advice or thoughts are appreciated.

I get into work at 7:00 AM every morning to an empty office. Others join me around three hours later, but I understand that since nobody sees me come in there is a misconception about the hours that I work. I leave at 7:00 PM.

I would like to write a Python interpreter in Python, though. That sounds like a lot of fun. :)

If you are skilled enough then start doing a "freelancing", don't need to waste your time in a "job" thing.

Act like a businessman and extract more value of your time !!

As far as " inability to deal with other people " problem is concerned, you will have to train yourself to deal with them.

This world is full of people who are dumbass and still they have better social and economical positions than the people who deserve one !

Life is a not fair game ! Be flexible, your time would come.

Design patterns are nice but choosing the right one can have a long term positive or negative effect on the project, I would recommend learning them more in detail and when a conversation comes up about them you provide constructive criticism if needed if you have found better use of another design pattern. Sometimes it is best to sit back and see things through the eyes of other members of the team to get a better view of why they have chosen what they have suggested. If something comes up don't treat them as pointless but possible improvements to the project. It is similar to using algorithms to solve problems, one that is chosen may work fine now but as your data set grows you may need to choose or create a new one to meet your needs and improve efficiency of your algorithm (Big example are the regular changes in the Google Search Algorithms).

If you are seeing the teams get worse start making a log of what you have noticed going down in quality in the teams you have been on. This will help you pinpoint anything that keeps happening. Somethings could be skill gaps, problems too advanced for the current teams, no senior developers on the team only juniors or intermediate developers, no out of the box type thinkers, etc. Make a log of it and analyze the reoccurring points to come up with a few hypothesis on resolving the reoccurring issues.

Meetings at the last minute should be rare but you should be prepared for them as they are a way of business life either internally at the company or externally with clients. Until you rise the ladder or start your own company there will be nothing you can do to change this as it would be the standard unfortunately. Yes, these unannounced required meeting do pull us out of the Matrix at critical points while fighting the agents and building our neural network but the secret to these is to learn to start back up and get going without taking it too personally. Use the meetings as mental time to solve the problem mentally that you were working on while taking notes of the meeting.

If you want to stop doing front end work apply for backend jobs but insure you meet the the desired qualifications for doing them and have some system administration qualifications. If you do not have any work experience doing backend work start created web applications and putting up code on GitHub. If you do but are not getting any bites back when applying for the backend jobs make your projects more advanced and solve real world problems. Eventually someone will reach out to you to help them solve their problems after seeing your methods of solving problems.

Main thing to remember is don't give up looking for the job you want, keep pushing forward and don't give up. Work on being more positive in team environments when at work, and when your at home work on strengthening your weaknesses and fine-tuning your strengths.

The same logic can be applied to those who (like myself) don't think they can ever learn enough. Perhaps I know more than I think I do, or perhaps I don't, but I will always have a deep, insatiable hunger for more knowledge.