121–130 of 143 posts
I'm honestly not sure how you can make it past say 10 years in the industry without having the mental skills of a Buddhist Monk. Coding isn't too bad for the most part, but on top of that it's like you have to manage the product owners / managers, coach your team mates, and put up with company politic dribble. While you're doing all that people are constantly changing their minds, making you task switch to jump on fi…
I'm honestly not sure how you can make it past say 10 years in the industry without having the mental skills of a Buddhist Monk. Coding isn't too bad for the most part, but on top of that it's like you have to manage the product owners / managers, coach your team mates, and put up with company politic dribble. While you're doing all that people are constantly changing their minds, making you task switch to jump on fi…
I honestly think this is a natural path, and we should be question a lot more why we work for company Z.
The answer can seem obvious, but even if it’s something like “best money I can get”, having it explicit helps a lot with dealing with the compromises we’re making. And sometimes it’s only after putting it in words that we realize the answer doesn’t make sense.
> make it past 10 years
On one hand I think programmer is not an exception, film industry for instance must be worse 1000 times. On the other hand, that’s probably one of the reason we see people in their forties do startups. Moving on to something else can be a coping mechanism.
The number one thing that got me to senior engineer, and will get me to staff as I improve (though staff has more of a relationship management component) is emotional management. Staying in a long debugging session without ragequitting and getting to the fix. Pushing through when I feel really dumb for not knowing how a react hook works or how to test a particular feature. Not getting bored (or recognising it and pus…
> The number one thing that got me to senior engineer, and will get me to staff as I improve (though staff has more of a relationship management component) I love the little rat race we’ve created for ourselves. When did staff engineer become a thing? I’ve just noticed it but feel like it’s probably been around for a few years. Next question when you get to staff engineer what next? Do you become a lead engineer or s…
I’d love to see a post like this that includes “Pathologically Obsessive Need For Self Aggrandizement” as one of these ~Coder Feelings~ that only the Chosen Folks can experience.
And this is why programming is a horrible job. Once you lose the satisfaction, which happens pretty quickly all that is left is irritation and confusion and anger. Its absolutely miserable work. But I'm completely stuck in it.
I still feel the satisfaction. Not as often as at the beginning, but I still feel it sometimes, even after 35 years.
I'm honestly not sure how you can make it past say 10 years in the industry without having the mental skills of a Buddhist Monk. Coding isn't too bad for the most part, but on top of that it's like you have to manage the product owners / managers, coach your team mates, and put up with company politic dribble. While you're doing all that people are constantly changing their minds, making you task switch to jump on fi…
Software has been commoditised. The number of people making a career out of "selling software" continues to decline.
The Fortune 500 uses free software.1 Software quality is not correlated to price.
People work for (computer) "tech" companies and are ostensibly paid to write software, but fewer and fewer are trying to sell it. The companies are only sustained through sales of advertising services. None can survive by selling the work of programmers.
1. Meanwhile, companies increasingly overpay for web hosting and use of third party data centers.
What is it about programmers that makes them (in general) not expressive, effusive, gregarious, ... I have a deadpan face most of the time, people complain about not being able to read me. When I was younger, I rationalized that I don't want emotions to cloud the logic of a conversation. But I ultimately realized that I was deadpan all the time, whether in work/reasoning discussions or personal interractions. Regardl…
Why do they need to read you? Unless it’s a close friend, family or relationship in which case they need to understand how you communicate.
I had a manager who said I need to get better at presenting etc. and for the first time I though meh… whatever. I’ll only do that once I find intrinsic motivation I won’t do that because it’s expected for a job (I’m not in sales and I rarely present other than internal demos)
Pure dread, when you have signed up for a new gig and open an existing code base for the first time. Starring at hundreds of unknown files and folder with no idea what anything is and how it all works. No going back, you're a new maintainer, so better get to it. Usually after a few days you start getting a grasp, and it's not so bad though :)
This is so odd to me. There seems to be some sort of obsession with making sure everybody knows that programmers “Aren’t Normal People.” It’s just a job, doing it well doesn’t make you some Superhuman Logic Machine. I’d love to see a post like this that includes “Pathologically Obsessive Need For Self Aggrandizement” as one of these ~ Coder Feelings ~ that only the Chosen Folks can experience.
Other than requiring little more than average persistence and curiosity, there is nothing "superior" about it. Anybody can learn "Programming". We are natural born problem solvers and the only thing there is to learn is how to instruct a machine to do the same in a structured manner.