Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tell HN: The loneliness of a pretty good developer

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 519 posts

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

#441

Post by Dave3of5 »

phphphphp wrote: post #89
MauranKilom wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People didn’t challenge them because it was exhausting, because they knew best, despite their constant churning out of garbage code that the business didn’t have the guts to address. That doesn't square with how people are going out of their way to query OP though, no? If people drag you into meetings tangential to your work, it seems unlikely that they hate working with you...

Difficult to say without knowing the OP personally, but in my experience, all of this can square. There’s complex dynamics at play that are a product of the genius developer mythology: someone produces a lot of code, the system becomes an extension of that person, everyone becomes dependent upon that person regardless of whether the person is good or bad, enjoyable to work with or not, because they’re the genius syst…

Your experience is the same as mine x several.

This has happened to me in I think almost every company I've worked at. The person at the top really has no business being there and has produced a terribly bad system. Often they think very highly of themselves and have 0 self reflection. They'll be called into meetings as a subject matter expert on things they have no clue about.

The speed thing is also a clue often these dev rattled code out at a high pace without self reflecting on the code either.

Code being perfect and bug free is highly unlikely. I've worked with some very talented devs and there code always had something wrong with it. The type of dev that the OP fit into would argue about something being a bug to make it seem like their code is perfect. So rather than a bug all their bug would become new features. A perfect cop out when something they write is less than perfect.

Doing 79% of the story points is a big red flag. You're hogging all the work when you do this and not letting anyone else in the team learn about what it is your building. It's a bad PO / SM that doesn't notice that one person in a team of 10 is doing almost all the work.

FYI this never ended well for the devs I've seen like this in the past. Either through M & A or change or leadership something will happen that knocks them off the top and their ego will take a massive beating once the new top dev comes in and takes over.

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

#442

Post by taytus »

mellavora wrote: post #438
exdsq wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire thing reads like copypasta - the lack of humility from a fairly junior developer (9 years? I have 8 years experience in tech and still feel like a beginner) is just crazy. It's either satire or written by someone with the EQ of a pigeon.

20-30 years in tech (depending how you count), and still a "beginner" at a large number of things. That feeling shouldn't go away. 8-14 years is not junior, it is mid-level. The author has established a strong reputation in their current company. Again, mid-level, looking at jumping to senior level. Post struck me as self-reflective and referring to observable metrics, also phrased as benchmarking their interpretatio…

>The author has established a strong reputation in their current company.

Oh please, it's a random post. You have no clue if the author is remotely saying the truth. Why people has to believe everything they read is besides me.

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

#443

Post by jollybean »

Congratulations, you're a 'senior developer'.

It's a bit 'isolating' whatever industry or 'job' you do, once you mature to a certain point.

That's definitely not the same things as '10x developer' - I'd recommend never using that term again. Maybe there is 'such a thing' (doubtful), but even if there was, nobody should ever say that about themselves. Past the 10 year mark, one should start to develop an intuition for all the things one does not know, in which case in all humility, it becomes harder to refer to oneself as '10x' ergo, more likely a sign of possibly a hint of lack of self awareness.

What you are experiencing is normal, common.

If you have serious malaise you can change jobs but also respect that companies need senior people, it's one of many roles that need to be fulfilled.

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

#444

Post by krageon »

lowercased wrote: post #326
wreath wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've debated working one hour less than I'm supposed to just so that I can exercise daily, but I find myself worrying that without me things will fall apart. So be it. This may be harmful to your team/company in the short term but it will make it clear that there is a gap in output and productivity within the team that must be addressed. Go lift heavy weights (im talking about iron).

Came here to say something similar, as I feel the OP's "fall apart" comment too. However, my bigger anxiety is not that it'll "fall apart", but that things will "fall apart" and then it'll be my role to fix it. If I died, I don't care. If I left the project entirely, I don't care. I've moved on many times over my career. I can live with that. But... if you leave early for a bit, then things "fall apart" and you have…

Timebox your contributions and ensure you work less hours according to everyone. Even it it falls apart, you work for those hours to fix it. Then you leave. Who cares if it breaks more than you have time to fix? Nobody will die (probably) and everyone at that company gets paid to pull their weight. Time for them to do so.

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

#446

Post by simonebrunozzi »

Random thoughts trying to answer your beautiful, passionate post - which I really liked.

1) As others have said, it might be that the company you work at is below average, and you are above average. This might be frustrating in the long term, and cause most of the issues you have listed.

2) I'm 45, you're 42; I sense that you might be going through a period similar to the one I have experienced, where I suddenly didn't have a manager/boss who inspired me, or someone I wanted to be when I got older. Perhaps you need someone to challenge you, either/or your boss, or your co-workers.

3) It might be that you want to stay at this company, and moving to another one is not an option for you. In that case, see that as a powerful, maybe useful, constraint, and work around it. How can you make your job AMAZING, despite you cannot change company, or other things happening in your current role?

4) You write wonderfully, and I would love to read more and more. Maybe you could start a newsletter focused on developers, and that could be a way to find some of the exchange, the challenge, the smartness that you seem to lack now.

5) Want to chat? Ping me on email, we'll chat. Sometimes a stranger can be a little helpful, because he doesn't have any vested interest in influencing the direction of your career.

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

#447

Post by [deleted] »

taytus wrote: post #442
mellavora wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20-30 years in tech (depending how you count), and still a "beginner" at a large number of things. That feeling shouldn't go away. 8-14 years is not junior, it is mid-level. The author has established a strong reputation in their current company. Again, mid-level, looking at jumping to senior level. Post struck me as self-reflective and referring to observable metrics, also phrased as benchmarking their interpretatio…

>The author has established a strong reputation in their current company. Oh please, it's a random post. You have no clue if the author is remotely saying the truth. Why people has to believe everything they read is besides me.

[deleted]

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

#448

Post by thrwouybgt »

User23 wrote: post #360
xpe wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” > I know saying this is easier than doing it, but; seek upward movement until you no longer feel like you're the smartest person in the room. Since there are many dimensions of intelligence, the above is very underspecified. Once you disabuse yourself of the fallacy that there is a single dimension of intelligence, it opens up a whole new world…

Spoken like a true midwit. Having had the extreme privilege of actually working with some really exceptionally smart people I can assure you that intelligence is a general trait without any significant extradimensionality. The best possible outcome for any organization that has such a person is not the crab bucket ideology you propose, but rather celebrating that exceptional person and benefiting from that person.

Spoken like someone with low eq.

Intelligence has many forms, athletically gifted, musical, emotional, the list goes on.

Your classical & narrow definition of intelligence is outdated.

To be a true polymath - as is hinted throughout this entire discussion, there's a need to nurture more than ones intellectual prowess.

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

#449

Post by Thomassgrey1 »

ptr wrote: post #104
tsss wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or he just bangs out a ton of crappy code in the name of "pragmatism", while everyone else has to clean up after him and thus takes longer. I've seen this many times.

You can be fast while also writing great code.

No post body was provided.

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

#450

Post by leaflets2 »

biosed wrote: post #445

I think others have pointed this out but this is a small company problem. I was a rockstar in a previous company and then went to a FAANG and lets just say, I am not a rockstar there.

Small company? Can also be an enterprise company problem
Post reply on HN