Ask HN: Please help a frustrated Mid-Career (?) Developer! • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Please help a frustrated Mid-Career (?) Developer!

#31

Post by CyberFonic » Thu, Jul 15, 2010, 12:39 AM UTC

ionrock wrote: post #13

Sorry, but that is the majority of softare development. While you may believe all your previous accomplishments were really great, there is most likely someone looking at your code thinking how frustrating it is to work on the codebase. I think it is way easier to start from scratch than take an existing project and move it forward. When you start over, you can build a ton of momentum. You can hold all the complexiti…

The bigger the company, the more software development is turd polishing and brown nosing managers. You have to ask yourself whether the status and money of working for XXXX Corp is what you want or whether you want to respect yourself for the great work you do. If it is the latter, then find a new job with a small, dynamic, with-it company that values your abilities and motivation. If it is the former, then suck it up.

If you can't make up your mind, then take a holiday to recharge your batteries and get away from the day to day battles.

Re: Ask HN: Please help a frustrated Mid-Career (?) Developer!

#32

Post by CyberFonic » Thu, Jul 15, 2010, 12:41 AM UTC

terra_t wrote: post #15

niyazpk wrote: post #6

>> My last few jobs have been weighted towards maintenance. There is your problem. I had the exact same frustrations in my previous job. Now I am with a team doing development projects and it feels a lot different now. Maintenance projects are good in a sense that you get to learn a lot by looking at other people code, but that in itself is not a good argument to stick with those type of projects. Every new developme…

I did a stint as a maintenance programmer. I was proud of it, then. I'd worked on code written by McArthur geniuses and the worst PHP monkeys -- no matter how complex the code was, no matter what language it was written in, no matter which backend database, I took pride in being able to figure it out, re-architect it if necessary, and fix it. I didn't feel like I was going to seed; I was learning new (old) languages…

Sounds like you take pride in doing a great job. But unfortunately PHBs are too caught up in watching the P&L to even understand the value of you efforts. I did my share of clean-up jobs, but eventually no money would compensate for the pain endured.

Re: Ask HN: Please help a frustrated Mid-Career (?) Developer!

#33

Post by dasil003 » Thu, Jul 15, 2010, 5:53 AM UTC

niyazpk wrote: post #6

>> My last few jobs have been weighted towards maintenance. There is your problem. I had the exact same frustrations in my previous job. Now I am with a team doing development projects and it feels a lot different now. Maintenance projects are good in a sense that you get to learn a lot by looking at other people code, but that in itself is not a good argument to stick with those type of projects. Every new developme…

Maintenance is an important and necessary job. However if you are a talented developer than you shouldn't accept a job that is only maintenance. Sure there are some exceptions like if you really believe in and want to help the organization, and if you're really appreciated it goes a long way.

But generally if you are good at what you do then you shouldn't have to suffer this. There are simply too many opportunities out there to relegate yourself to a stagnant role. There are plenty of borderline incompetent programmers out there who will do a lot better debugging and maintaining an existing codebase than writing new systems from scratch.

Any self-respecting programmer with a passion for their craft owes it to themselves to at least try to find a job where they are learning and progressing even if it's not perfect.