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I just don’t want to be a software developer anymore (2017)

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Re: I just don’t want to be a software developer anymore (2017)

#81

Post by mrkeen »

pts_ wrote: post #27

What's 1000x worse than working on small code fragments, is designing programs by talking in meetings. Management types are drawn to it, not software geeks.

We had this at a previous job. At a meeting there would be 1 tester, 2 (!) non-tech product owners, and 3-4 devs.

The designs were as bad as expected, but worse than that was the scheduling. I.e. "complete this feature", then "complete that feature", with little opportunity to work on their common parts or refactor anything.

Thankfully there was enough of an agile culture for us devs to tell them to stop. We started to split meetings, so that the non-devs could dump all their information on us in the first part of the meeting, then they'd leave. Then the devs would spend the rest of the meeting scribbling designs on the whiteboard.

Re: I just don’t want to be a software developer anymore (2017)

#82

Post by batarjal »

fuball63 wrote: post #62
Isinlor wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how most chefs lives look like. They prepare the same meals from a menu under time pressure years after years. Maybe it's not flipping burgers in fast food, but there is little space for artisanship in the food industry. You have to be really good to do more than prepare the same thing over and over from a menu.

This is true for brewers too. Beer is endlessly fascinating with the amount of variables to tweak, but working in a brewery is a fairly routine process of reading the recipe and executing then same steps over and over.

At a brewery, or a restaurant for that matter, aren't you there to basically recreate a product based on a recipe someone else formulated? The person tasked with creating the recipe has the opportunity to practice artistry in this scenario, but they, too, may be under business related pressure.

Re: I just don’t want to be a software developer anymore (2017)

#83

Post by Invictus0 »

human20190310 wrote: post #54
durnygbur wrote: post #42

> It’s really hard to celebrate “women’s day” with free feminist speakers when I just found out some guy who does the same work as me is getting paid 20% more. Please stop this. STOP. If "a man" is paid 20% less, they're expected to change job and ask 20% more at the new one. This is what is expected of "men".

There's so little transparency as to what employees get paid that "outsiders", i.e. those who don't have an informal network of pals providing them confidential salary information on-the-side, don't have a way to determine what numbers to shoot for. Someone well-connected would have avoided the company with the salary discrepancy before they accepted a job; those less well-connected incur the costly overhead of a job…

> There's so little transparency as to what employees get paid that "outsiders", i.e. those who don't have an informal network of pals providing them confidential salary information on-the-side, don't have a way to determine what numbers to shoot for.

Glassdoor? levels.fyi? Why would anyone need a "network of pals" to get average salary information? Who even cares what the average is? Just shoot for whatever number you want and then stop comparing yourself to everyone else.

Re: I just don’t want to be a software developer anymore (2017)

#84

Post by bluedevil2k »

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #47
martin_a wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sounds like she's stuck in a positive feedback loop of medical expenses, and that makes it hard to be picky about jobs. Just imagine the US would have some kind of system where your medical condition does not force you to stick with the job that makes you ill. Wonder if anyone has tested that before and it works. /sarcasm In all honesty: I don't understand why the US is not having a public health care system like E…

[flagged]

Looking back at your comment history, they're all harsh, negative comments usually with a massive hyperbole. Anything positive to add?

Re: I just don’t want to be a software developer anymore (2017)

#85

Post by jimcsharp »

zerogvt wrote: post #69
dagw wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cool thing about being a programmer is that you can use it in basically every field of endeavor out there. If you want to work with movies, you can work with movies. Are you passionate about urban planning, ecology or archaeology, there are lots of roles for programming in all those fields. Want to be a journalist, lots of programming and data mining happening within journalism these days. There are basically two…

That is a naive opinion IMHO. In all but the core SW roles you would merely be a simple cog being told what to do. If for example you'd be coding for an archaelogy department you would be the code monkey of the professor heads. Even worse you would have to battle their ignorant views on SW. My guess is that you'd hate playing that role and that you would run as fast as you could back to a SW house doing fragmented wo…

From my experience, with a bit of back and forth I'm helping these non-SW departments systemize things in ways they might not have thought of. Through the power of my business ignorance and having conversations, I'm rubber ducking these people to good systems.

Re: I just don’t want to be a software developer anymore (2017)

#86

Post by winternett »

fuball63 wrote: post #21

One thing that the article doesn't touch on is how a passion for software craftsmanship can be completely undermined by the recklessness of business decisions. I love the experience of writing and using rock solid programs, but in the real world, there are deadlines to meet, flaky requirements, and tech debt. For people in it for the money, it doesn't affect them. For people that appreciated good software, it turns t…

The most important thing they don't teach you in school is that you don't get paid well for whatever your passion is. Most ppl that succeed in life are born to already rich families, that can pad them until they get up and running.

It's not terrible, it's just reality. Some people never even get the opportunities that we do as highly-paid "IT people"...

If you're on a paper boat in a gravy stream, don't poke holes in it or you'll drown. If you're on a meatloaf mountain and you need to chew your way down to the gravy lake, don't just jump off, because then you'll drown in gravy too... We're all miserable souls looking for mashed potatoes, but sometimes there's only meatloaf, so plant potatoes and then hope it all works out.

It still pays more and beats working at Cracker Barrel. ಠ_ಠ

Re: I just don’t want to be a software developer anymore (2017)

#87

Post by fuball63 »

batarjal wrote: post #82
fuball63 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true for brewers too. Beer is endlessly fascinating with the amount of variables to tweak, but working in a brewery is a fairly routine process of reading the recipe and executing then same steps over and over.

At a brewery, or a restaurant for that matter, aren't you there to basically recreate a product based on a recipe someone else formulated? The person tasked with creating the recipe has the opportunity to practice artistry in this scenario, but they, too, may be under business related pressure.

You're right, even the recipe makers can't escape business pressure to make undesirable products. With the hard seltzer craze going on (in the US at least), a lot of brewers are starting to make it. They didn't get into brewing to make hard seltzer, but they can't ignore the fact that they will sell well and are cheap to produce.

Re: I just don’t want to be a software developer anymore (2017)

#88

Post by Aeolun »

wolfgke wrote: post #77
grecy wrote: post #49

I went through exactly the same thing. I love the coding aspect. I love using my brain, solving problems, working with intelligent people. I can't handle sitting inside for 50 hours a week, and I can't handle business politics and nonsense. So I quit my Software Engineering job and took 2 years to drive from Alaska to Argentina, having the time of my life. [1] Then I worked for a bit again to save money, and quit aga…

> I love the coding aspect. I love using my brain, solving problems, working with intelligent people. I can't handle sitting inside for 50 hours a week, and I can't handle business politics and nonsense. A wild consideration: Doesn't the fact that many companies "select" for people who love solving hard problems (e.g. by using brainteaser coding problems in the hiring process) cause this problem? This way, the compan…

> A further thought: How could a hiring process look like that selects for the kind of work that one actually has to do?

Hire anyone that walks in? Kick them out if they mention anything like passion, only people motivated by money are accepted, but preferably as little as possible.

Re: I just don’t want to be a software developer anymore (2017)

#89

Post by jdmoreira »

I agree with a lot of things in the article and I can relate to the author but this quote really threw me off

>"some guy who does the same work as me is getting paid 20% more” (the author being female)

Several times in my career I've found that other male developers (me being male) that I considered not even good made 50% more than me. Sometimes I found out that I made 50% more than other younger developers that I considered way better than me. I understand that women are underpaid compared to men in general but this specific situation can be explained by so much more than sexism.

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