Is any senior dev reasonably happy with their job (as opposed to it being a tedious grind for money)? If so, what do you do and what are your working conditions?
Ask HN: Is any senior dev reasonably happy with their job?
1–10 of 83 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is any senior dev reasonably happy with their job?
#2I am a contractor who has a few startup exits under my belt. I hack and work to help and further man. I don't need the cash and don't have a family.
Re: Ask HN: Is any senior dev reasonably happy with their job?
#3Well, I dunno what "senior" is, but we do agency-style work for clients and my boss bills me that way.
I'm on a very small team where I'm the technical lead and I code every day. I make whatever tech decisions I want.
I have a salary that's not large, but I also work a 30 hour week. 100% remote and nobody cares when those 30-ish hours are as long as I get stuff done and make some rare client meetings.
I trust my boss, who does the sales for the company, and generally she sells these really great projects with a lot of padding so there is always plenty of slack (praise bob).
Sometimes the projects are kind of dumb, but I'm still learning new things and they are large enough in scope that I can dive into some fun stuff.
So with all that, working is not a bad deal for me at all... it's something that I spend a whole lot of time doing, but it's also fun and pays well and I still have time for my 16-year-old, a girlfriend, and playing some music with friends.
Re: Ask HN: Is any senior dev reasonably happy with their job?
#4If you're not happy, and your job feels like a grind... it's probably time to get out. Life's too short to hate what you do for 8 hours a day. You should identify what motivates you, and try to pursue that. For example, I found I was not really motivated by technical challenges anymore. I found I was more interested in the business. I cared about the problem my code solved, why the code was needed, and who it helped. At the time I was a "Lead", but the path I was on only lead to me being pigeoned holed into more "technical" positions. They let me pick how to build it, but I was never exposed to the why we're building it (more than the context required to build it). I found consulting as a way to expose myself more to the business. Fortunately, I had built a great network, and that gave me a start. I've only been doing it for about 8 months, but I'm far happier with this than when I was just another "senior engineer".
Re: Ask HN: Is any senior dev reasonably happy with their job?
#5All the senior devs I've worked with who seemed truly happy at work were that way because they spent plenty of time with their family, volunteering, and just doing stuff outside of work that was meaningful to them. None of them poured everything they had in their job, tying it with their identity.
People in that latter category tended to be more brilliant in general (for example a problem comes up and they immediately know of 3 different ways to solve it, half a day later they tested all 3 for that particular problem, half a day later a first implementation is up and running, while it'd take most other people a full week to reach the first step), but they seemed to have way more up and downs with their mood and happiness and general.
Obviously this is a generalization from my ~10 years or so in professional dev environments.
As a senior dev who tends to identify more with the second category in terms of happiness fluctuations, I've been trying to be more like people I've known in the first category.
Re: Ask HN: Is any senior dev reasonably happy with their job?
#6Yes, but mostly because I co-founded a company working in an area I was interested in and enthusiastic about (VR). I work remote from home (the company is currently fully remote) and we all have pretty flexible working conditions.
Re: Ask HN: Is any senior dev reasonably happy with their job?
#7Not really. Not enough challenging/interesting work to go around it seems. My current job doesn't even really involve 'developing' anything. Mostly going to meetings and writing documentation.
I've tried hunting for a new job, but there's definitely a glut of senior software engineers these days. This current job, whilst boring as hell, pays well and doesn't demand overly long hours from me. And since I have my side project(s) to serve as a creative outlet to satisfy my 'coding' urges, I've stopped caring about finding other work for the time being.
Re: Ask HN: Is any senior dev reasonably happy with their job?
#8If you're not happy, and your job feels like a grind... it's probably time to get out. Life's too short to hate what you do for 8 hours a day. You should identify what motivates you, and try to pursue that. For example, I found I was not really motivated by technical challenges anymore. I found I was more interested in the business. I cared about the problem my code solved, why the code was needed, and who it helped.…
Isn't consulting still working on the how and not the why, just a different way to be paid?
Re: Ask HN: Is any senior dev reasonably happy with their job?
#9I don't find my job to be a tedious grind at all. I enjoy working as part of a team (specifically my current one) and helping to make everyone around me and the business successful.
I have had to shift around the day-to-day tasks I work on occasionally, but finding and working on high leverage parts of our technology and business is pretty rewarding.
Re: Ask HN: Is any senior dev reasonably happy with their job?
#10I'm not sure exactly what you mean by senior, but my title says I'm senior (6 years exp, 3 in this job). I would say I'm beyond reasonably happy. I found a good company with senior management I can believe in and co-workers who are strong technically and easy to work with. Although the industry, advertising, is no one's favorite, our mission is to make it suck less while supporting people who create real journalistic value which I can get behind.