11–20 of 179 posts
> Develop a routine to keep drudgery away and the romance of technology close
Funnily lots of this has helped at work. Current job hired me in large part to push them towards new technologies.
I struggle with this and I am only two years into my career. I look back on my CS education and miss it so much. About three months ago, I started a ritual where I would spend 60 minutes before work every morning reading books about the internals of popular software or programming languages, histories of technology, etc. It rekindles my love for computing that brought me to CS in the first place. Instead of constantl…
The current one I'm reading which I really like is The Art of Doing Science and Engineering by Richard Hamming.
You can find it on Stripe Press: https://press.stripe.com/
Right before that I read The Making of The Prince of Persia (also stripe press and also good).
Pick anything creative at all and this will hold true - the more expressive the more challenging it is to find the work not be draining as it competes with business requirements.
There's no real suggestion here other than simply recognizing that only a lucky few in life get to actually just do the fun part while also making a living at it - in fact I can only count on one hand people who I know are doing that.
> Develop a routine to keep drudgery away and the romance of technology close
If you'd started to programm something that you like + would make you money you'd be back programming in no time rather than pivoting to otherstuff.
Eg most people go into game-dev because they want to make a game but then get stuck programming some shit backend interfacing system for ads and they have zero creative decisions. Obviously they will start to hate their job. But you cannot just stop programming if this is the case: you'd most likely still want to make your own game.
This is a tale as old as time. You get into something because you're passionate about it, and lo and behold doing it for work saps all the fun out. Pick anything creative at all and this will hold true - the more expressive the more challenging it is to find the work not be draining as it competes with business requirements. There's no real suggestion here other than simply recognizing that only a lucky few in life g…
> I've met many engineers with extraordinary talent who decided to stop making software. They wanted to program computers all their lives. They were born for it. After spending six, eight, ten years in the industry, they quit for good. Now they're running breweries and hydroponic farms, with no desire to ever again touch a compiler, let alone get back into the fray. Are these people who also made a ton of money via R…
Compare that to a lot of technology jobs. I think my friends and family will be fine if the schedule at Netflix slips and they have to wait a few years to watch sitcoms in 8K. (Edit: I don't mean to disparage anyone working on this type of problem, but I personally would find it hard to motivate myself to care deeply about that)
>I've met many engineers with extraordinary talent who decided to stop making software. They wanted to program computers all their lives. They were born for it. After spending six, eight, ten years in the industry, they quit for good. [...] Something had to have gone wrong for them to abandon their first love. >But sitting at a mandated retrospective or mindlessly gluing APIs together doesn't put me over the moon. It…
I remember discovering HN around 2008 when I was a teenager. I hardly understood anything on the front page. I knew how to program a little bit, but only at a superficial level. Now, it's rare for me to come across something I don't understand unless it is very specialized or about some scientific topic. But I think Slava is right that if you want to stay motivated and stay interested you have to find a way to remind yourself of the bigger picture. Otherwise you get bored no matter how interesting the work is. I know a guy who left a job working on rocket guidance systems because after a few years it got boring to him.
I found this in bad taste. Believe it or not, you're allowed to enjoy something more than engineering.
>I've met many engineers with extraordinary talent who decided to stop making software. They wanted to program computers all their lives. They were born for it. After spending six, eight, ten years in the industry, they quit for good. [...] Something had to have gone wrong for them to abandon their first love. >But sitting at a mandated retrospective or mindlessly gluing APIs together doesn't put me over the moon. It…
> I've met many engineers with extraordinary talent who decided to stop making software. They wanted to program computers all their lives. They were born for it. After spending six, eight, ten years in the industry, they quit for good. Now they're running breweries and hydroponic farms, with no desire to ever again touch a compiler, let alone get back into the fray. Are these people who also made a ton of money via R…
Would they though? I think that's a shallow outlook, the importance of saving lives doesn't lessen once you become wealthy. Everyone has to watch their friends and family get old and sick eventually. Compare that to a lot of technology jobs. I think my friends and family will be fine if the schedule at Netflix slips and they have to wait a few years to watch sitcoms in 8K. (Edit: I don't mean to disparage anyone work…
The engineer gets to see some metric move by a tenth of a percent.