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Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?

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Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?

#141

Post by rendall »

kretaceous wrote: post #121

I'm curious about the following line you said. > I can't bare the devs that go out of their way to work weekends without being asked What is wrong with the devs who work on weekends? (if they aren't bothering you, of course)

Not OP, but, not only is this style of working unhealthy, it promotes this unhealthy style in the rest of the company. It promotes burn-out, work inefficiency, unrealistic standards, among other problems.

Whenever I have the say-so, I will flat-out forbid anyone from doing this.

Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?

#142

Post by ornornor »

intelijstupide wrote: post #112
ornornor wrote: post #50

I feel exactly the same. Programming professionally for a decade sucked all the joy out of it. My personal hypothesis is that we’re increasingly being treated like assembly line workers. We’re not paid to think but to implement the poorly thought out hare brained schemes from the higher ups who have no clue about programming. This externalizes all the cost of poor quality software onto the developers (unmaintainable…

Switch into ecommerce or marketing. Product companies suck. Product companies: selling your software as a product means you're always going to feel like you're on an assembly line. Except you're not the assembly line worker, you're the assembly line. Ecommerce and marketing companies: you build software that enables the company to sell some product. You're not the assembly line, you're not even working on the assembl…

Interesting. By joining an e-commerce or marketing company, doesn’t it also mean that software is seen as a cost center since it’s not directly the product being sold?

Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?

#143

Post by theshrike79 »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #125
xnorswap wrote: post #18

There's a difference between Programming and Software Development and I think it's important to recognise that difference when looking at your career. Programming is one small aspect of software development. It's an absolutely essential part, and it's the part you probably enjoy the most. But despite being an essential core part, it's also a part which only occupies maybe 20% of your time. Some software developers de…

In my 2+ decades at Apple, I think I enjoyed working on frameworks more than I enjoyed working on applications for many of the reasons you mention. Your "customer" for a framework is a fellow dev. That can make all the difference in the world. Design and marketing generally take a back seat.

I've spent a good part of my career doing tooling for developers and customer service. The amount of "customers" is a lot smaller and they tend to be technically proficient and know what they want and need.

Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?

#144

Post by jesse__ »

I can definitely relate to all of this. In recent history I've tried very hard during interview processes to find shops that have "programmer-first" cultures. In interviews I am clear and direct about my distaste of micromanagement and bureaucracy. I've noticed that about 10%-20% of folks I talk with instantly relate and tell me about how their company has few meetings and high levels of autonomy. I pass on the rest.

I've found companies that tend to focus on lower level products (compilers, graphics, systems programming, etc) tend to have a much better chance of letting engineers do what they do best and staying out of the way. In some sense the work I do kind of chose me, because that's where I've gravitated.

Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?

#145

Post by alexpotato »

DonnyV wrote: post #96
Apreche wrote: post #68

I highly recommend doing what I have done most of my career. Get a job at smaller to medium sized non-tech company. Every company, in any industry, has computers. They need you. You don't have to work with a bunch of tech or finance people. You can get a job working with chill people in some other industry with a better culture. When it comes time to negotiate, negotiate HARD. And not just for money, but especially t…

I wouldn't worry about no code software. They usually can only get you a quarter of the way. Then the requests start coming in and then the client wants their custom workflow in the app and no code can't do it. It usually doesn't take much for the client to realize they need something more custom. I work in the GIS industry and its a great mix of always learning something new but not only working with tech people.

Every time I hear about no code, I think about the code written by PROFESSIONALS that leads to list like Dan Luu's "Everything is broken": https://danluu.com/everything-is-broken/

If professional at top quality firms with the best tools can't write code that works, how is "no code" written by people that don't understand going to work better?

Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?

#146

Post by scrapheap »

One of the things that it's easy to forget as more senior developer is that we're always setting examples for our more junior colleagues, whether we intend to or not.

Now that I'm a more senior developer I try to go out of my way to make these good examples. Not just in how I code and how I review their code, but in how handle my work life balance.

I always make sure I take my holiday throughout the year, so they realize that taking two weeks off is fine.

While I start work early in the morning, I always finish early as well. Showing them that they don't need to work crazy hours, and also giving some of those with less confidence implied permission to leave for the day.

While I'm not their line manager, and so can't stop others from trying to micromanage them, I have certainly interrupted people trying to do so and picked apart their attempts (micromanagers very rarely understand the full repercussions of what they're telling someone to do).

Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?

#147

Post by sim7c00 »

Can't really relate, as i don't have similar experience. But I do know a lot of my programmer friends, are not programmer by trade. A lot of things like chefs, forklift drivers etc... They enjoy their personal projects, but also did not enjoy professionally doing it.

Myself i started programming recently in a somewhat professional context, but I chose it carefully not to run into the soul-destroying machine, hopefully. I program at a research institute, so the projects aren't products, and hence there's less pressure on the programmer. Perhaps a similar context would also be a more happy place for you. programming on things which are not sellable products. (some automation jobs, some research jobs and other things might require extensive programming, yet have no direct sales of the programs themselves.)

Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?

#148

Post by unforeseen9991 »

saiya-jin wrote: post #128
Apreche wrote: post #68

I highly recommend doing what I have done most of my career. Get a job at smaller to medium sized non-tech company. Every company, in any industry, has computers. They need you. You don't have to work with a bunch of tech or finance people. You can get a job working with chill people in some other industry with a better culture. When it comes time to negotiate, negotiate HARD. And not just for money, but especially t…

> Increasingly, the only engineers that non-tech companies need are people to manage their data, people to glue the SaaS APIs together, and maybe some frontend people to put a custom interface on it. I presume you didn't see much industry yet. In reality, every existing company that is around for 10+ years have already tons of legacy apps or apps nearing that threshold, a lot of times tightly integrated in the rest o…

I see this too as an independent. As a company brings on more SAAS stuff it gets more complicated to manage, and integration to legacy will always exist, in fact often enough it can entrench the legacy even more as more and more integrations are piled on to each other.

The other thing is that things that were possibly not handled by technology before, are now handled by technology - so while they leverage it, it creates increasing demand for IT.

Sort of a shift from regular staff - purchasers, AP, etc and more IT staff.

Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?

#149

Post by DanUKs »

dolmen wrote: post #123
DanUKs wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very, very good points here. You're right, the stress part is 100% a personal and perspective issue. I do try to convince myself that "no-one is dying" but the sad reality is that if I don't constantly meet deadliness, prove myself, and go above and beyond for the company (over-time and over-work); as "over the top" as it may sound, it's my kids that "die" when I lose my job and cannot provide.

If you have to work on weekends to meet deadlines, have you considered that the problem is not about yourself but about the deadline?

It's not necessarily "working weekends" that's the issue. You can have a job that requires you to work 2 hours per day and still work 6-7 days a week.

It's more the constant backlog of stuff that needed to be done yesterday, more than a deadline for a specific feature(s).

I have zero control over that, which inevitably leads to the stress of work spilling into my personal life, weekends etc.

I'll feel the need to do some work at 10pm on a Sunday night every other week, just to keep things afloat.

Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?

#150

Post by DanUKs »

Waterluvian wrote: post #100

Yeah. I work at a (really competent, adult managed) startup but I can’t stop #%^*ing on Silicon Valley startup culture. I also feel like I’m daring them to fire me given I literally cannot be reached outside 9-5. They don’t even have my correct phone number on file. And I have to bite my tongue when thinking about some coworkers who basically work for less money given they put in 60+ hours. It’s weird. I believe, alm…

I guess it's a really foolish way to think but whenever I think about those who suck up to their bosses and work weekends for no reward, I just think about the story of the CEO that pulls up in the expensive car. He tells his employee, "if you keep working hard, I'll be able to buy another one."
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