41–50 of 83 posts
I 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.
Interesting question. About 5 years into my career I was asking myself the same thing. At the time I must have gone through 10 - 15 full time gigs, either quitting or getting fired so I knew something was not right. I could do the work but definitely never saw myself in there for the long run so quickly lost the passion for it. Co workers were always friendly and sociable, but with very different interests, I'd also…
By your question I suspect what you really want to know is how to be a happy senior developer. I'm not in the "web world" so it might not be applicable but here is an approach that has worked for me:
1) Work for small or tiny companies. A tiny company doesn't have many "dark surfaces" for incompetent/lazy/"political climber" types to grow in. When there are only 4 people rowing the boat you can tell pretty quick if someone isn't pulling their oar. Large enough to have an HR department? Probably too big.
2) Work on new code. I've almost never worked on code older than a year that I didn't write. You know who needs developers to write green field code? New, tiny companies, that's who. Startups are small but you they aren't the only small companies.
3) Work with nice people that are smarter than you. Working with people smarter than I am has always been a given for me...
4) Try contracting, direct if possible.
[1] I've been doing this for 30+ years.
[2] Not sure if this applies to women. :-( My wife is also a developer and it kills me how much harder working life is for her simply because she's female.
I love mine. I've been here for two years and I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop; it continues not to. I'm a senior backend engineer in a healthcare startup, but I think the single biggest determining factor to why this place is so awesome is that my coworkers genuinely, complete respect each other. That manifests in lots of ways: - Arguing and infighting is nonexistent. When Joe proposes something and Jane…
The best job I've ever had is about 10% interesting and 90% horrible grind. I've come to believe the secret to getting something out of a career is learning to love the grind. Incidentally, that 10/90 ratio happens to dominate everything else worth pursuing also. Sports in particular. You get that initial ramp up high and then when you hit the part with smaller and smaller gains, that's where "learning to love the gr…
I've never been able to achieve this, which is probably one of the reasons I've burnt out more times than I can count. I'd probably be retired by now if only I could have loved the grind. Instead, I'm now probably never going to be able to retire in my lifetime.
I have 19 managers, none of them understanding the job at hand and a family I can't see because of 3h/day commutation. Else the job is fine. Ho! And I inherited a fork of 500k slocc using 5 languages and so much frameworks I can't count them anymore. I am the janitor of a huge codebase with a management under acid, but it pays enough for me to not sleep under the bridge, so I guess I am happy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I try to put in at least four hours of work every day, including weekends, and balance that with four hours of year-round kayaking, hiking, house-work, seasonal snow-sports, or some other physical activity." Well done for achieving work-life balance.
Appreciate the sentiment, but gotta admit that I feel like I am still pretty far from this achievement. I suspect that balance is a goal that will remain perpetually just out of reach, and I am fine with continuing to work on it! To that point, I started skateboarding last week in an effort to improve balance. Rodney Mullen is my new hero.
I love mine. I've been here for two years and I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop; it continues not to. I'm a senior backend engineer in a healthcare startup, but I think the single biggest determining factor to why this place is so awesome is that my coworkers genuinely, complete respect each other. That manifests in lots of ways: - Arguing and infighting is nonexistent. When Joe proposes something and Jane…
If 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?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I try to put in at least four hours of work every day, including weekends, and balance that with four hours of year-round kayaking, hiking, house-work, seasonal snow-sports, or some other physical activity." Well done for achieving work-life balance.
Appreciate the sentiment, but gotta admit that I feel like I am still pretty far from this achievement. I suspect that balance is a goal that will remain perpetually just out of reach, and I am fine with continuing to work on it! To that point, I started skateboarding last week in an effort to improve balance. Rodney Mullen is my new hero.