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Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career

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Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career

#91

Post by hef19898 »

guhcampos wrote: post #10

I don't want to sound an asshole, but I will sound an assholle nevertheless. I was damn happy as one can be at 3.5 years in my career. 10 years in, I feel like my happiness and awesomeness has been slowly consumed by corporate politics, unfair promotions and layoffs, bad work ethics and the such. I still like my work. I really really enjoy it when it's productive, and I still feel amazed to see the green checkmark on…

Same here, not in the tech industry but it is everywhere the same to a certain degree. Now, also ten and something years in, I try to push myself into the direction of NOT looking at the career ladder anymore. Shocking how haed that is actually.

The thing I relized that is helping a lot is doing stuff that a) builds on my interests and experience and b) is a intellectual stretch.

Otherwise I run the risk of being bored and running out of patience with the politics around me. Lucky me for now this working out okish to fine sometimes.

Ah, and having colleagues that a fun to work with!

Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career

#92

Post by hef19898 »

kilroy123 wrote: post #46
guhcampos wrote: post #10

I don't want to sound an asshole, but I will sound an assholle nevertheless. I was damn happy as one can be at 3.5 years in my career. 10 years in, I feel like my happiness and awesomeness has been slowly consumed by corporate politics, unfair promotions and layoffs, bad work ethics and the such. I still like my work. I really really enjoy it when it's productive, and I still feel amazed to see the green checkmark on…

I feel exactly the same way and also just hit the 10-year mark. I'm literally working at the worst place I have ever worked at in my career. Next Friday will be my last day. I'm seriously considering trying to get out of tech forever after this last gig. I'm moving to Asia in a few weeks to try to work on bootstrapping a small company.

Sounds like a good plan. No sure if it helps, but I thought about changing domain as well after a horrible gig (actually two in a row...). Following a short sabbatical / studies break I just changed industry. Turned out I love logistics simply too much to do anything else.

And yeah, there is no need to waste time for a job that is only driving one crazy. Enjoy Asia!

Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career

#93

Post by StavrosK »

hef19898 wrote: post #91
guhcampos wrote: post #10

I don't want to sound an asshole, but I will sound an assholle nevertheless. I was damn happy as one can be at 3.5 years in my career. 10 years in, I feel like my happiness and awesomeness has been slowly consumed by corporate politics, unfair promotions and layoffs, bad work ethics and the such. I still like my work. I really really enjoy it when it's productive, and I still feel amazed to see the green checkmark on…

Same here, not in the tech industry but it is everywhere the same to a certain degree. Now, also ten and something years in, I try to push myself into the direction of NOT looking at the career ladder anymore. Shocking how haed that is actually. The thing I relized that is helping a lot is doing stuff that a) builds on my interests and experience and b) is a intellectual stretch. Otherwise I run the risk of being bor…

> I try to push myself into the direction of NOT looking at the career ladder anymore

I had the opposite thought. I never used to look at the career ladder, when recently I realized that I might need to, in order to get a more satisfying/challenging job.

I entertained that thought for a bit, but then realized that I enjoy my personal life and projects more, and that it would probably make me enjoy my work less if I were career-focused. Plus, I like my current team and job enough as it is, so it wouldn't be worth it. Now I just try to be mindful of doing things that will advance my career (basically being a valuable employee), but not at the expense of my personal life.

Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career

#94

Post by ramchip »

gpm wrote: post #31
diminoten wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't get a chance to see the comment before he edited it out, but in some countries (Canada I think?) "engineer" is actually a protected title, requiring licensure. I don't know what his point was, but as a "software engineer", I sometimes wonder if I should be called a "developer" and let my PE friend keep the "engineer" title, just for clarity's sake.

Canadian here - I'm pretty sure it's only the term "professional engineer" that's protected here, we definitely have tons of people being called "software engineers" who aren't licensed engineers.

In Quebec and Ontario, "engineer" is also protected. Microsoft has been fined in the past because of their usage of "Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer."

https://www.canadianconsultingengineer.com/engineering/quebe...

Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career

#95

Post by Cthulhu_ »

guhcampos wrote: post #10

I don't want to sound an asshole, but I will sound an assholle nevertheless. I was damn happy as one can be at 3.5 years in my career. 10 years in, I feel like my happiness and awesomeness has been slowly consumed by corporate politics, unfair promotions and layoffs, bad work ethics and the such. I still like my work. I really really enjoy it when it's productive, and I still feel amazed to see the green checkmark on…

~10 years here too, it's not so much corporate politics that bugs me, but the apparent futility of what I've done. I've had a number of assignments but it's all roughly the same - rebuild this existing thing over the span of two years, but this time in $technology.

It's often rebuild projects for rebuild's sake, and not because the old one is bad, but because the old one's developers are gone and nobody wants to invest the time and effort it takes to get to know the codebase.

~5 years ago I was probably at my most productive, churning out something like 5000 commits a year or thereabouts; thinking back, I realize that nobody in their right mind would even try to understand everything that I've built during that time.

Last year we were asked back to that customer again, this time to rebuild the application but in $new_tech_of_the_month. That really gave me a sinking feeling - like, I and my colleagues spent over 2.5 years on that application, and now it's just getting thrown away (we're talking >100 application screens here) because someone higher up decided Angular was no longer cool and everything had to be done in Polymer?

I mean if they had only properly maintained the application since I left. But nope, bumble along for 3 years and just toss the lot.

TL;DR, a lot of software is throwaway and effort is wasted.

Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career

#96

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #95
guhcampos wrote: post #10

I don't want to sound an asshole, but I will sound an assholle nevertheless. I was damn happy as one can be at 3.5 years in my career. 10 years in, I feel like my happiness and awesomeness has been slowly consumed by corporate politics, unfair promotions and layoffs, bad work ethics and the such. I still like my work. I really really enjoy it when it's productive, and I still feel amazed to see the green checkmark on…

~10 years here too, it's not so much corporate politics that bugs me, but the apparent futility of what I've done. I've had a number of assignments but it's all roughly the same - rebuild this existing thing over the span of two years, but this time in $technology. It's often rebuild projects for rebuild's sake, and not because the old one is bad, but because the old one's developers are gone and nobody wants to inve…

No code lasts forever. 2.5 years is a pretty good run for anything. If the company grew in that time, then they need to revisit all their processes including all those application screens. This sounds pretty normal.

Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career

#97

Post by JoeAltmaier »

geforce wrote: post #16
guhcampos wrote: post #10

I don't want to sound an asshole, but I will sound an assholle nevertheless. I was damn happy as one can be at 3.5 years in my career. 10 years in, I feel like my happiness and awesomeness has been slowly consumed by corporate politics, unfair promotions and layoffs, bad work ethics and the such. I still like my work. I really really enjoy it when it's productive, and I still feel amazed to see the green checkmark on…

Yeah, I feel the same way. What hurts is when you decide to switch to another company, which has good rep, and finally find out: it's the same. Everywhere. After the big bosses do stupid shit, they get promoted elsewhere, leaves you fix the broken plates, rince and repeat until a merger, bankruptcy, or major reorg. Meanwhile middle management gets bigger and everything gets slower. Good employees leave, bad one get p…

That's why I'm a private contractor.

Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career

#98

Post by YinglingLight »

fallingfrog wrote: post #41
mikekchar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have it the other way around. People for whom work is dead, lost time really need to get their work/life balance sorted out. If you view work as part of your life, then it's a much less binary view of prioritisation. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't prioritise. It just means that the prioritisation is more nuanced than: do what I don't like for 8 hours and then do what I do like for the rest of the da…

Well I think my point is that it feels completely different when it's self directed. I built a shed this summer with my brothers- and it didn't feel anything like work does- it felt joyful, playful. I get some of the same feelings when I'm working on my own programming projects. But at work? No, I'm creating something for someone else, to make someone else richer, and if I left tomorrow nobody would care. You might b…

"The more responsibility you take on, the more meaning your life has."

As a developer, you would do well to seek out the feedback from users/the impact your work has. Allow yourself to feel responsible for that impact. Taking ownership will make you feel more engaged than the dopamine hits of 'closing JIRA tickets'.

Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career

#99

Post by YinglingLight »

projektir wrote: post #56
nomel wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With unemployment, happiness is very directly related to your your bank account balance, or the willingness for others to provide for you. With employment, there's usually a lower limit since there's a reasonable change you're able to eat and stay out of the rain.

Which shows that happiness is not contingent on employment, but on bank account balance, which is not the philosophy a lot of people push when they say lack of work will ruin people.

If you're not feeling productive in a some facet of your life, the Netflix binge-ing goes numb reeeeeeal quick.

Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career

#100

Post by hhmc »

strken wrote: post #27
fukuwata wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still surprised that there'd be an element of uncertainty. Wouldn't you want to be sure that your code would pass before pushing it out for others to see? What if you pushed and the CI gave you a red X, wouldn't you then feel bad when your coworkers see that and think you are a poor coder? Seems to me it'd be best to be absolutely sure everything would pass before letting anyone else read the code...

"Absolutely sure" isn't an achievable level of surety, because everything has a chance of failure, however small. You could go for "NASA sure", which is when you spent 100x the effort of the average tech company making sure only some of your spacecraft explode on launch, or you could go for "Github sure", which is when you spend a large chunk of your $200+ million ARR to ensure your core product only has a couple of…

It's worth noting that you can absolutely apply every level of "sureness" within the same company - and such gradation can be very effective if applied smartly.
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