I Knew a Programmer Who Went Completely Insane

Right on, motherfucker !

Agree with what you said. But please don't make it sound like an axis with two extremes: "the maker/hacker" and "the profit maximizer". There's a third sweet spot, the "making your client happy" spot, sometimes at the expense of your hacker spirit and sometimes at the expense of a little more short term profit ("ripping them off"). The people who find this 3rd mode of thinking, who believe in "making stuff that helps others make stuff" make the company work and stay afloat and keep it a warm and nourishing environment for both themselves and the "pure hackers" and the "profit psychos".

Totally agreed. And I'd add a fourth point in: - never ever try to please everyone.

As @jaimebuelta pointed out in another comment[1], your bosses will see your kind disposability just as a capability to do more work for less charge.

It happened to me when I was younger: I started working in a small company, only three employers, and I often was (secretly) asked to fix what other two coworkers made wrong. One thing led to another and one day, after 8 weeks that I was working there, the boss fired my two co-workers since I unknowingly proved him to be capable of doing alone a three-person job.

Although in the very first place I was kind of proud of myself — I was showing evidence to be a reliable software developer and it was nice — after a while I realized that things just couldn't work out that way: tripled efforts and responsiblities for same amount of money and same deadlines, I had to work afterhours and in weekends, and I had no more time for social life and hobbies, feeling more and more depressed, it was just driving me crazy.

At that point I thought to myself: "Why the hell people should see me as a sort of super hero? For whom or what am I doing this? I'm only in it for the money, this job pays my bills, I am not this job".

Next morning I talked to my boss and my amount of work came back to what I applied for, and that was one of my best decisions ever.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5575761

"I have never had a problem about the volume or difficulty of work in any job I've ever had. In fact, some of my favorite memories of work have been sprints to finish something, whether in software, retail/distribution, or food service."

I'm sure if I put you on a 120 hour week for a few months you'd change your opinion about that, even if you were to ship something at the end of it.

I don't think it's a good idea nor particularly ethical given the situation under discussion to boast about how you've never had a problem with overwork.

>I think the answer lies in how you direct that feeling - either as hate for your job; or to drive a passion to control your own destiny by getting out and doing something yourself.

It's not that simple. Seriously, people who work for me fight with me about exactly the same things I fought with my boss about back when I was really frustrated by working for other people. Working for yourself does not save you from dealing with these problems. It makes you see these problems from another angle, sure, but that doesn't always help.

there are so many compromises you have to make when you own the company, too. I mean, it's different, in that you own it, and ultimately, you have lines you won't cross even if it destroys the company; but god damn it's harder when you can't just walk. (I mean, some people feel like they can't walk away from their jobs. I /never/ felt that way until I had my own company, with customers and contracts. Right now? I can't walk, not without corporate and personal bankruptcy. There's no serious debt, but leases act exactly like debt when you stop paying them; I'm on the hook for leases that total well north of a third of a million in datacenter space alone... of course, that's payable over the next five years or so.) But yeah. I remember when I could decide I was tired of my job, and just go get another one. That was nice.

I mean, I talk a lot about the waste that salespeople are; the value subtracted by this negotiation process... that was actually a large part of the reason I went into business myself. It was clearly an irrational reason, as where I stand now, I spend a lot of time playing emotional games to see who gets the surplus value out of a deal, as the asking prices are set for companies that have margins at least an order of magnitude better than mine. And I still think it's a waste... but I'm doing it anyhow, because otherwise I can't afford jack. I mean, seriously, it is not unusual for the final price to be 20% of the asking price. what the hell?

The real problem is that negotiation is supposed to find the things that are important to me that are not important to you, and vis-a-vis. You want to work out a deal where both parties benefit maximally, by changing the deal. (this, actually, I think is why small businesses can often compete with businesses that are much larger with giant economies of scale. I can negotiate (in the positive way) with an employee "I can't give you as much as that other company, but I can let you set your own hours and work from home." - or if the employee wants something else, I can change my company around to accommodate that in ways a large company could not.)

Problem is? that is /hard/ - the people negotiating, first, have to understand the product, and generally speaking, salesmen selling technical stuff do not. Then, they have to have the authority to change the deal in non-standard ways (which I understand is hard because it means that five years from now, you've gotta keep supporting that one-off configuration. I'm moving co-lo, and all the one-off deals I made are now coming back to bite me in the ass. And I'm small enough that it can still all mostly be in my head.) It's way easier to make the "what you get" standard, then just figure out what the surplus value is in dollars, and play emotional games to see who gets the lions share of that surplus value.

Worse, now /you/ are the guy that's gotta kill the project that your employee worked so hard on, because /you/ planned poorly. I mean, at least you can honestly take responsibility for it and apologize, but meh. Now you are the one taking advantage of that hard worker who never really gets all that much extra money. (not having a lot of money is a good excuse here, and yeah, a lot of people want recognition as much as they want money... but even that is hard to do correctly.) Now /you/ are the guy that has to put the kibosh on a promising new hire because your supplier decided to increase prices, or your revenue took a dive.

It's easy to say 'I can do better' - actually doing better? harder than it looks. A lot harder, certainly, than just switching jobs.