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Ask HN: Software Developers – Do you like your job?

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91–100 of 107 posts

Re: Ask HN: Software Developers – Do you like your job?

#91

5 Early 30s, spending days staring at computer screens is a nice way to waste your life, the whole RoR to Node.js to Go and React hype cycle made me realize I'm too old for this shit. Finding a job where I'm above of all that madness would be great but middle management is even worse and it's not in me. Maybe self-sufficiency farming would be a better route. Also, when you have a mostly physical demanding job, you ca…

spending days staring at computer screens is a nice way to waste your life

Keep in mind that companies are happy to pay you more than twice as much to do that than they'd pay somebody to do anything else. Than means you can spend less than half your life staring at that screen each year and still come out ahead compared to the average joe.

Save your money and you can take 6 months vacation each year, or a 2 year sabbatical every 4. Certainly that would improve your quality of life a bit, no?

Compare to "self-sufficiency farming" where instead of a screen, you're staring at potato plants all day every day. Plants, I might add, that don't give you the opportunity to take half the year off each year and the money to travel the world while doing so. To an outsider, it would seem that trading one for the other is kind of a silly idea. At least I'm sure you could find no shortage of farm hands who would happily hold on to your seat in front of that screen if you wanted to switch places.

Re: Ask HN: Software Developers – Do you like your job?

#92
post #88

9 Would be a solid 10 as I love the actual work I do but being so busy at the moment means I am basically sat on my ass 12 hours a day - one of the downsides of working at home is not even getting your "Morning stroll to work" - not great for the waistline!

There's nothing wrong with taking that morning stroll to the home office. It may not be the most direct route, but as you say, it's a lot more enjoyable.

I often do mine on a mountain bike. Fortunately, my home office complex has shower facilities.

Re: Ask HN: Software Developers – Do you like your job?

#96
post #88

9 Would be a solid 10 as I love the actual work I do but being so busy at the moment means I am basically sat on my ass 12 hours a day - one of the downsides of working at home is not even getting your "Morning stroll to work" - not great for the waistline!

You might want to consider investing in a treadmill desk.

This is a picture of my office setup. I did it this way, so I could alternate between sitting and walking. It's the best!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/089qqvaa7j5ob77/office_setup.jpg?d...

Re: Ask HN: Software Developers – Do you like your job?

#100
8

Working at a ~20 person startup. Paid a little more than my market value, very flexible work-from-home/time off to do errands, unlimited PTO, interesting and intelligent coworkers, very little bureaucratic BS, nice boss that I'm learning a lot from, 15 minute motorcycle ride from home in a city I love (San Francisco), and I'm working on a product I genuinely believe can make a huge impact in our industry. 2 points off because I wish there were more people in the office, it feels lonely at times. And while my boss the CTO is extremely smart and hard working, we're all in somewhat uncharted territory as far as our code base which he inherited from a less skilled CTO, as well as there not being much devops talent on our team.

Full disclosure: I'm only 24 and have been working as an engineer for only a year, so I'm not as jaded as a lot of people here seem.

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