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How to feel engaged at work: a software engineer's guide

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Re: How to feel engaged at work: a software engineer's guide

#121

Post by corrral »

throw827474737 wrote: post #108
corrral wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar hiding-the-signal tricks: - Set a reminder to go fuck around with your LinkedIn profile for a few minutes every couple months, so at no point are you suddenly active on it (and so, probably thinking about looking for a new job). - If you have a job in an office with a relaxed dress code (like most devs, probably) make a point of dressing interview-nice at least a couple times a month, from the start. That way…

Huh, for what hide that? Would they proactively fire you? Here, it is always joked that intentionally giving those signals is the trick to support getting the desired pay raise.. some years ago even saw one guy pulling that off.

The trouble is if you're just idly searching a bit and aren't in a hurry, you might not want your current employer (or co-workers) to start planning to be rid of you soon. At the very least, it might make things awkward.

Re: How to feel engaged at work: a software engineer's guide

#122

Post by astura »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #33

> make time to be curious. This is kinda dangerous advice, because I've been involved in countless CRUD apps where the developers were bored and made things more interesting for themselves; NoSQL databases, difficult programming languages like Scala, microservices, CQRS, infrastructure-as-code that was never used in practice (it was wishful-thinking-as-code), home-rolled frameworks (one involved the CTO / lead develo…

I had a sudden realization that this is currently the biggest problem in "tech" after reading this hacker news comment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25968087

Somehow we have an industry of people who believe that work needs to be a source of personal entertainment instead of, you know, work.

Expectations need to change. Imagine if other occupations were like this? You hire a plumber to fix a clog and they spend the entire day on fastening some custom device because they felt that using a drain snake was just too boring.

Re: How to feel engaged at work: a software engineer's guide

#123

Post by ornornor »

adamsmith143 wrote: post #37
AlwaysRock wrote: post #22

Eh. These all seem fine. My route? I work less. I have a typical 9-5 but 1-2 days a week I leave a little early and go to do something engaging. Never when I have meetings. Never when I have deadlines. Never when someone is waiting on something from me. But I, and I suspect most engineers, have the capacity to get my work done for a week in less than 40 hours. I used to spend time dicking off on my computer to fill t…

Is your manager just next level laid back? I feel like most places are going to notice and be bothered seeing the yellow circle on your Teams or Slack status consistently for long periods of time.

I worked at a place where they watched the im dot color to decide whether people were working or not, including expecting you to answer voice calls on the first three rings every time. This place was brain dead. I had to teach people not to call me or not to expect me to pick up, and I built a USB hardware mouse emulator that would move th cursor a couple px left and right while perfectly enumerating as the company’s standard issue mouse.

This place was hands down the worst place I’ve worked at. Nothing was ever getting done, everyone was running with their hair on fire constantly, it was hell. But managers paid a lot of attention to the color of the IM dot instead of, you know, fixing actual problems.

Fuck this place. I don’t miss it. I hope it gets run into the ground by the multiple layers of incompetents at the helm. But it’s unlikely, their customers are in a regulated, captive market.

Re: How to feel engaged at work: a software engineer's guide

#124

Post by [deleted] »

nisegami wrote: post #76
adamsmith143 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree but from a SWE perspective on any kind of Agile/Scrum team I think the expectation is usually that you pick up another task if you finish early and there's still time during a sprint for example. This also obviously breeds other bad incentives i.e. the faster you work the more work you get.

>the faster you work the more work you get. It took me about 2 months to learn this after getting my first job. Nowadays I intentionally add minor bugs that turn up during demos so I have stuff to "go back and fix" later.

[deleted]

Re: How to feel engaged at work: a software engineer's guide

#125

Post by sandgiant »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #22

Eh. These all seem fine. My route? I work less. I have a typical 9-5 but 1-2 days a week I leave a little early and go to do something engaging. Never when I have meetings. Never when I have deadlines. Never when someone is waiting on something from me. But I, and I suspect most engineers, have the capacity to get my work done for a week in less than 40 hours. I used to spend time dicking off on my computer to fill t…

I so the same. Except I'm still spending too much time dicking off in front of the computer. I guess partly due to embarrassment about not working "full time".

Your comment inspired me to get out and do something instead. Thanks for that.

Re: How to feel engaged at work: a software engineer's guide

#126

Post by jowdones »

There was an article on HN a while ago saying that basically the secret to productivity is ... slack. In other words, excess capacity.

I used to have a tight schedule switching from tasks to learning to meetings to more tasks and more learning, 50 minutes work, 10 minutes break, relentlessly, like a robot.

Then I realized I'm not a fucking robot. Now I work 2 hours per day at most. Complete my tasks and can do this shit in a sustainable way as opposed to burning myself for what?

I'm super engaged. For two hours tops :D

Re: How to feel engaged at work: a software engineer's guide

#127

Post by SoftTalker »

digisign wrote: post #84
nisegami wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the faster you work the more work you get. It took me about 2 months to learn this after getting my first job. Nowadays I intentionally add minor bugs that turn up during demos so I have stuff to "go back and fix" later.

That sounds... unnecessary. There is always stuff to refactor, and tests to add, folks showing up at the last minute with new requirements. Or you can just wait a day to push commits, etc. More honest, I think.

The point is, that if you demo something and it's perfect, someone in the room is more than likely going to opine about a way it could be even better. Likely not another dev, but a product or biz person. Even if you deflect by saying "that wasn't in the story, but we'll add it to the backlog" that still takes time and unnecessary discussion.

If you leave or introduce some trivially fixable but noticable flaw in the demo, that will (hopefully) get noticed and everyone can feel that they are doing their jobs without needing to make up something.

Re: How to feel engaged at work: a software engineer's guide

#128

Post by AlwaysRock »

danielvaughn wrote: post #120
AlwaysRock wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very similar to my schedule right now. Everything gets done. I don't feel burnt out. I'm actually able to feel healthy because I can workout during the day. It's great and no one gives a shit as long as I'm doing well. In fact, it's much better for the company in the long run because I'm likely to stay for more than a few years because I actually enjoy my wlb.

This happened with me, and I thought to myself "how does this work? How am I still as productive as before?" And I tried to recall what life was like in the office. Turns out a lot of my time was spent trying to look busy, rather than actually being busy. It's not like I was Peter Gibbons from Office Space, I wasn't lazy or jaded. But sometimes my brain just wouldn't do what I needed it to do . And instead of doing t…

Yup. It's incredible how often I step away and when I come back the solution is obvious to me.

Re: How to feel engaged at work: a software engineer's guide

#129

Post by AlwaysRock »

fileeditview wrote: post #119
AlwaysRock wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha. I refuse to play the game. I set my slack to away the day I start and never turn it back to green. I've done this at every job during the pandemic. The stupid green bubble vs gray or yellow or whatever is a form of always being at your desk micro management and it isnt productive. I'll happily explain that to anyone who asks but I've only had a few people ask. Again, if you get your work done most people dont giv…

Yep. After a while I disabled notifications, so Slack just doesn't disturb me when working. Sometimes I just quit it completely for an hour or two so I don't look at it because it usually sits on screen 3(the laptop) and I see stuff moving in the corner of my eye. If someone would question my work ethic or similar because of my Slack status I would explain to them that this is bogus. If they insist, I would complain…

Yup. Shutting off slack notifications and setting status to away is day one things for me.

Re: How to feel engaged at work: a software engineer's guide

#130

Post by AlwaysRock »

fruit2020 wrote: post #94
adamsmith143 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your manager just next level laid back? I feel like most places are going to notice and be bothered seeing the yellow circle on your Teams or Slack status consistently for long periods of time.

Wait. Does slack show idleness? Maybe it’s disabled in my org. Never seen it on any of my colleagues. We are either green or gray

I think there is a yellow state. But yellow and gray are both "bad" since they are not green.
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