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Tell HN: The loneliness of a pretty good developer

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Re: Tell HN: The loneliness of a pretty good developer

#391

Post by travisgriggs »

bfung wrote: post #301
texasbigdata wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: your second paragraph, what does that have to do with OPs ability (regardless of appropriateness to the firm, his career arch, or the story) to perform as a manager. He/she might be great, normal, or terrible. How can you tell apriori from what they wrote?

OP realizes they do a lot of work, and OP realizes they’re single point of failure/authority at the company. But what steps have OP taken to start decentralizing to mitigate those risks? Someone with the management sense would’ve already started thinking and implementing that and not continue to code moar.

I have no idea if I’d be a good manager. But I don’t think this is a fair connection to make. I’m currently in a similar situation of being the built it all does it all go to designer programmer. And I have desperately tried multiple ways to make this not be the case. But if the company doesn’t support your efforts to do so, does it prove I’d make a bad manager, or that that company I work for has some shortcomings?

Re: Tell HN: The loneliness of a pretty good developer

#393

Post by sayrer »

100011_100001 wrote: post #40
ctvo wrote: post #16

I think you're an above average developer working at a below average company. This could be the root of all your problems. Nothing is more frustrating than working with peers you know aren't carrying their weight. Do you want to be an engineering leader? This is what you are, regardless of your official title at your company. Engineering leaders are judged by how much better they make everyone else. You may hear the…

The pivot I have been debating is to become a Lead Development Manager with the express purpose of enabling everyone else, removing obstacles, creating better processes etc. My problem is that I love code much more than talking to people all day. I have been mentoring Jr Devs for a while now in an official capacity which helps. I like the idea of "make systemic changes to help your peers become more effective". So th…

Get a job at a big company, like Google or Microsoft etc. There is always someone smarter.

Re: Tell HN: The loneliness of a pretty good developer

#394

Post by vinay_ys »

It seems you have outgrown your current job. You have two choices – you can choose to stay in the same company but define yourself a different role/responsibility that would be personal growth for you and grow into it or you can leave your current company and try a different place.

Based on some elements in your description – POC, Architectural discussions, code reviews, code stats etc. – I think your organization may not be very bad. They seem to care about reasonably good things and they seem to have recognized your contributions and pull you into discussions and enable you to contribute and expand your influence. You can take a goal for yourself to uplevel the people around you and also help hire better talented/skilled people.

Also, if you simply spoke with your manager about your feeling of having to pull the most weight in the team, you may get more information – it may be as per your perception or you may get a new perspective. Best of luck.

Re: Tell HN: The loneliness of a pretty good developer

#396

Post by dang »

fightme wrote: post #176
throwanem wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Quoted post unavailable.

Could you please not break the site guidelines like this?

In fact, if I'm not mistaken, every comment you've posted over the last 2 years has broken the site guidelines, and that's well over half your posts to HN. Obviously we would normally ban such an account. However, your posts before that were good—so I'd much rather not ban you.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Re: Tell HN: The loneliness of a pretty good developer

#397

Post by greenpeas »

scarface74 wrote: post #300
SamBam wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am confused why you are just taking the least charitable assumption based off OP's short post, and writing these long screeds just taking it as given that your assumptions are true.

My personal assumption is that anyone who thinks of themselves as a “10x developer” using the criteria he is using, probably isn’t. He only has 5 years of industry experience and I’m assuming at only one or two companies.

> I became a Jr Dev at 33 years old...

> I'm now 42 years old...

That's 9-10 years.

Re: Tell HN: The loneliness of a pretty good developer

#398

Post by dang »

throwanem wrote: post #188
fightme wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Okay. I wish you joy of it, I suppose. You seem like you could use some.

Could you also please stop breaking the site guidelines, regardless of how annoying another commenter is or you feel they are?

You unfortunately have a long history of doing this and we've had to ask you many times not to. That's not cool.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24472907 (Sept 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22709407 (March 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22709404 (March 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21522018 (Nov 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15044234 (Aug 2017)

Re: Tell HN: The loneliness of a pretty good developer

#399

Post by n_time »

Have you switched jobs on a while? It sounds a little like you’re also describing being deeply embedded in your organization and having social capital there.

I’d suggest switching jobs. You’ll lose the social capital and have new tech to learn. The stress and work of reaccumulating those should distract you for a hot minute

Re: Tell HN: The loneliness of a pretty good developer

#400

Post by 015a »

100011_100001 wrote: post #61
EddieDante wrote: post #32

I can't help you with the loneliness part, because I'm just a married, middle-aged techie with no friends of his own. I don't claim to be a 10x developer either, but I tend to deliver cleaner code faster than many of my colleagues and have been roped into many of the same discussions/meetings as you. It seems to be a situation where there are a surfeit of apprentices and a plenitude of journeymen, but a relative dear…

> I've dealt with the stress by discreetly working less. I have debated this myself. Some other replies said the same thing. It would definitely help me in other parts of my life. How do you handle people messaging you over slack / teams and not responding for hours?

Precisely; and that's a big reason I would disagree with the OP and say that the method of "do in 2 hours what takes someone else 8 then take the day off" is actually a bad strategy for managing stress.

First; you're gonna become an SME on something. SMEs get Pings. If you're in your "not work" time at 3pm, playing Valorant or whatever, and get a ping; that's going to be annoying. That annoyance isn't justified; its not Right; but that is what you'll feel.

The more important thing is really to set and communicate boundaries. The standard boundary is 9 to 5; so set that, 9am you're on and giving it everything, 5pm you're off and giving it nothing (outside of on-call and whathaveyou, which is a separate problem).

It doesn't matter if you can do in two hours what takes others eight; you can't set a 10 to noon boundary. So; you'd have to lie. And its not just a lie to the company; its a lie to yourself. It'll start with "oh yeah im work from home, I'll still keep slack open and respond to pings but this will be me time". Then that me time turns into personal time, which turns into "yeah I can grab drinks at 2pm on a thursday" time, and it legitimately can spiral.

The weird part for me, and I assume some others is: you can't set boundaries in this environment. Maybe its guilt, I don't know. But if you're only on-on for two hours, then kinda-on for... how long? All day? If the 2pm ping induces the same feeling of annoyance as an 8pm ping would, they're not different; and you may become the person to go to if someone needs help at 8pm. Resentment follows: "I'm out with friends, why are they pinging me this late"; but do you not respond? Do you respond "my working hours are 9 to 5 so expect a response then?" Do you believe that when you say it (that's the ironic part; a part of me would).

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