Another interesting question if I may:
Why does one feel the need to be successful?
Or maybe one needs to simply be satisfied?
How successful are you?
11–20 of 46 posts
Re: How successful are you?
#12I've got four healthy kids and a loving wife (for almost 27 years). We live comfortably and feel incredibly blessed ... what more could I ask for out of life?
Agree
Re: How successful are you?
#13If getting home by 5.30 is important, you should look into moving to Sweden, 6 hour work day ? Also free health care and blondes!
Not for Software Engineers. Never for software engineers.
In Austria and Germany ~40h/week work weeks are common even for developers (lived more than 8 years in both combined and worked as a programmer in several companies almost this entire time). Usually If you work more than 40h in one week you can compensate by working fewer hours in the next one.
I think this is common to all EU countries, save for maybe the UK (don't know, but they seem to be a bit less socialist than continental western europe).
Re: How successful are you?
#14This is a really difficult question to answer as what you consider success will change as you age. I am not a success if I consider what I thought this meant at 20, but I am now pretty happy with what I have done. I have a fantastic wife, three great boys, a business I enjoy working in that allows me to support and enjoy my family, and I am healthy. This feels like success to me right now :)
Totally agree. I didn't get the success I thought I wanted in my 20s (some sort of tech mogul). I did get a different kind of success (small business ownership, flexible with direct customer relationships). Now that I have a family, I love the success I ended up with, but I would have been disappointed with it in my 20s. It is very hard to anticipate what you are really going to want.
Re: How successful are you?
#15Another interesting question if I may: Why does one feel the need to be successful? Or maybe one needs to simply be satisfied?
I think there is some deep rooted competitive drive in most folks. Most people are constantly comparing themselves to others as the article explains. It takes a fair amount of self awareness and restraint to stop doing this.. The benefit though is that you feel much more free to be happy with your life. Envy is a terrible disease
Re: How successful are you?
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not for Software Engineers. Never for software engineers.
In Austria and Germany ~40h/week work weeks are common even for developers (lived more than 8 years in both combined and worked as a programmer in several companies almost this entire time). Usually If you work more than 40h in one week you can compensate by working fewer hours in the next one. I think this is common to all EU countries, save for maybe the UK (don't know, but they seem to be a bit less socialist than…
The EU's Working Time Directive provides a right to work no more than 48hrs per week. In my experience, while I agree that here in the UK it's a little less socialist, I believe it's rare to see excessive hours. Most (anecdotally) office workers work around 40hrs/week; including developers and engineers.
Re: How successful are you?
#17In some ways, I could say I'm successful. I have a stable source of income, a wife and I can afford to go on holidays.
But, I feel that I'm an NPC. If I didn't exist, the world would be the exact same. When I think back on my twenties, I had a lot of dreams, now all of them have been broken and I settle for less...
Sometimes I feel that I just need to pick myself up together and decide what to do with my life. Find some new dreams I can achieve but instead I just stay in my own mediocrity doing nothing and wondering why nothing changes...
I don't think success necessarily correlates with the amount of wealth you have but it correlates with the amount of self worth you feel and how proud you are of what you did at the end of the day. It's way too easy though to enter a vicious circle where because you failed at something you just stop really trying. Like the author, I tried, I created a business, it failed spectacularly last year due to my own incompetence at managing people and now I'm just there regretting all that I did wrong and thinking that maybe I shouldn't even have tried.
I'm sorry for rambling, I'm probably writing this more for myself than for anyone else. I need to get up, stop pitying myself and find some new dreams to follow instead of just settling for mediocrity.
Re: How successful are you?
#18If getting home by 5.30 is important, you should look into moving to Sweden, 6 hour work day ? Also free health care and blondes!
Not for Software Engineers. Never for software engineers.
Most European software teams have a strict "no over time" policy that's both respected and enforced. Some company's even turn off the Astrix and e-mail servers at night.
We all know what kind of shit code you produce after working to long, it's not helping anyone if you do that every week.
Engineering should be striving towards excellence, not creating more shit and more work for everyone.
Re: How successful are you?
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Austria and Germany ~40h/week work weeks are common even for developers (lived more than 8 years in both combined and worked as a programmer in several companies almost this entire time). Usually If you work more than 40h in one week you can compensate by working fewer hours in the next one. I think this is common to all EU countries, save for maybe the UK (don't know, but they seem to be a bit less socialist than…
The EU's Working Time Directive provides a right to work no more than 48hrs per week. In my experience, while I agree that here in the UK it's a little less socialist, I believe it's rare to see excessive hours. Most (anecdotally) office workers work around 40hrs/week; including developers and engineers.
I'm in the UK, do 37 hours, home by 4.45 each day, don't let anyone tell you you need to work every hour in the day to succeed.
Re: How successful are you?
#20What definition of success do you use?