This isn’t /r/antiwork.
Ask HN: Is it just me or do 99% of SWE jobs offers seem completely pointless?
121–130 of 214 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or do 99% of SWE jobs offers seem completely pointless?
#122As the comments already reflect, HN is biased. My advice: get a second opinion somewhere else. It's not just you, in fact a lot of people are having the same thoughts inside and outside of software engineering. I'm one of them, as I just quit a SWE role to pursue literally anything else. We only have so much time on this Earth. Don't let anyone try to convince you that "the economy" is worth working for. Your happine…
The economy is worth working for. The life you enjoy working towards self fulfillment is only possible because of people who work hard to sell things that you and others want to buy.
Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or do 99% of SWE jobs offers seem completely pointless?
#123Perhaps you are choosing shitty companies and are being approached by shitty companies as well. Work satisfaction is an important component of happiness, because we spend a large percentage of our waking hours at work.
Here are some suggestions for transitioning to a better job in software development:
1. Look for a workplace with smart colleagues, even if the product is a bit workaday. You will become a better engineer by working with people who are better than you.
2. Software development is done in many domains. If you are bored, it may be because you are bored of the domain. Change it up and go to someplace that's very different. For example, if you work in banking, you could move to a bio company.
3. Spend time on your own learning skills, whether they be programming languages, databases, web dev frameworks, or cloud native stacks. Doing small projects or even just reading and playing around with small examples while reading books can be a thing that you do every day or week to add some variety to your work.
4. Interview and change jobs more often. Always having options lined up is useful because you can move to another job. Nowadays the average tenure is barely more than two years. If you take 6 months to make the move and 6 months to settle into a job, you will be spending perhaps a year in productive, sometimes boring mode. It's terrible for the quality of the software that's produced, but you will solve your problem.
If you move away to another line of work, chances are you will be compensated way less. As you grow older and accrue responsibilities such as kids, you will care more about providing for them, and being in software development is still a great way to provide for your family while securing your retirement etc. I'd think a lot before moving away from software dev, because it pays quite well. Even doing part-time work in a different area while doing software development (e.g., as a consultant) is better than moving away completely from software development.
Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or do 99% of SWE jobs offers seem completely pointless?
#124> I've been working the bare minimum (or less)to live, 3 months there, 6 months there, 2 months there
Call yourself a contractor or consultant and embrace that. Do not try to look for meaning in a 'job' someplace. As nice and as enticing as some of those may seem at time, that is probably not where you should look to draw identity and meaning from (at least not primarily).
Going from project to project every 3-6-9-12 months or so - you'll be able to focus more on yourself, your skills, etc, and have less ties to 'company X'. This will force you to realize that your identity isn't tied to company X.
Disclosure - I've never worked full time for any one company for more than 22 months. I don't really quite 'get' how other people do it long term either. I mean... I understand how it happens, but have not felt compelled.
Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or do 99% of SWE jobs offers seem completely pointless?
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who lived through communism - this kind of phrasing is really dangerous. What people complain about on /r/antiwork is problems that people from my country would kill to have. Capitalism has it's faults, but just complaining, without a constructive alternative can lead to way worse outcomes.
> Capitalism has it's faults, but just complaining, without a constructive alternative Classic "mudding the waters" line, it could be written by a plugin these days. The fact that you don't agree with the alternatives doesn't mean they aren't out there and people "just complain".
The person who is complaining isn’t offering an alternative, and none of the alternatives have been implemented successfully anywhere.
Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or do 99% of SWE jobs offers seem completely pointless?
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't be so quick to call it depression. This person is seeing a truth about the state of affairs in the corporate world and hasn't yet figured out how to integrate that truth and become functional in our broken system.
doing mostly 'cog in a machine' type of work in order to make enough money to be safe and have some extra for fun and future planning is a core part of nearly every human life on the planet and most people get on fine with it, without wanting to kill themselves. in fact for most people the situation is significantly worse, OP is in a privileged position in a relatively well paid industry with relatively non-menial wo…
Cows and chickens rarely kill themselves even in industrial farms, that doesn't mean they have a good life.
>imo being a privileged baby having way too high expectations of what life is supposed to give you is all explanation necessary in this case. imo OP needs to stop being a baby and grow up.
I have a ton of debts and I've spent about 90% of my life living in poverty, I've spent my first year of college sleeping on the floor of a storage room with no shower or toilet. Does that look like privilege to you?
Maybe you're too simple minded to realize that just because you have it a bit better than some people doesn't mean you're in a good situation. What's the point of being safe if most of your life is spent making some rich guy's life better? The fun I got after work was never nearly enough to outweigh the stress and the waste of time at work.
According to your way of thinking a fed homeless man should be happy because he is fed. A hungry homeless should be happy because he is not handicapped. A blind homeless starving man should be happy because he's not also deaf and an amputee. Where does it stop exactly? At death? Everyone who did not yet die of torture should be happy, otherwise it just mean they're a privileged baby who is expecting too much of life?
Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or do 99% of SWE jobs offers seem completely pointless?
#127This post reminds me of a job description I saw on LinkedIn, an excerpt of which went something like:
"We will not be engaging in discussions around architecture and design. You will be expected to complete the assignments given to you on the schedule dictated."
Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or do 99% of SWE jobs offers seem completely pointless?
#128Don’t agree with most of these comments. Not wanting to work at a company that makes some uninteresting business product just a little more profitable does not mean that you are depressed. Working at a place like that can certainly make you depressed though! To the OP, I think you have a few options. On one hand you can keep taking short jobs / consulting or try to build some sort of simple SaaS business that you can…
Basing your happiness from your work life is a recipe for unhappiness. You will always find something to nitpick about
Only if you fail. It is entirely possibly to seek out and find a meaningful job that gives you satisfaction.
Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or do 99% of SWE jobs offers seem completely pointless?
#129You say you’re unmotivated by 99% of the job offers you see. I would encourage you to flip the question around and ask yourself: What would you actually be motivated to spend your time on?
Once you figure out what you would want to do, you can actively search for a job doing exactly that instead of passively evaluating job offers that you come across. Or, if such a job doesn’t exist, you can look for a job that pays well enough to enable you to do what you want.
It’s great that you’re thinking about what would make your life more fulfilling. The flexibility to choose what to work on is a great stepping stone in that direction.
Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or do 99% of SWE jobs offers seem completely pointless?
#130That does not matter much if most businesses make no sense, since at the end of the day you work for only one.
I maintain a (short) list of companies that I find interesting, either because I had a good contact with one of their employee or because I'm interested in that particular field they happen to be in. When I look for a job I contact them directly (regardless of any job ad they might have posted or not).
I believe the worse companies are the ones hunting harder for employees (that's probably true on the other way round too), which might biases perception towards "all jobs are dull". Hunt for them instead of being hunted.
If nothing else works then maybe what you really want inside is to build your own business?