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

jasont.co

131–140 of 183 posts

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

#131

It's not your job to feel engaged. It's your employers job, your bosses. You can feel how you want to about it.

While objectively true, it's silly for employers not to exploit the psychology of the engaged employee for the employer's gain.

I disagree. It's exploitive for people in a position of power to exploit the psychology of the folks that are in their care. You use the word exploit, exploiting folks isn't good or moral, in any case. It's never ok to exploit folks.

If we say we are aligning the interests of the employer and employee that's different. If we are saying a rising tide raises all ships, we all do well when we all do well, etc. That's different. None of that is exploitive, it's inspiring. There is a difference between inspiring and aligning people in powerful ways, and exploiting them. One is ok, one is not. One leads to true long term success and prosperity, one leads to short term success but long term failure, a flash in the pan.

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

#132

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…

If I ever become a manager I was hoping to actually institute a rule like this as a policy for people I manage. Obviously an emergency or deadline would take precedence. But I thought it would generate a lot of good will and respect if you actually gave people dedicated hours out of their week (and ideally funding or access to learning materials) specifically to work on a project of their choosing or take a class / learn material of their choosing. Would not have to be work related at all (although of course it could be) and there would be no expectation of return what so ever.

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

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sound can work well on the web[1], as long as it isn't over the top, there's no reason it couldn't be used more. I've been considering adding some sounds[2] to the project I'm working on. 1: https://www.joshwcomeau.com/react/announcing-use-sound-react... 2: https://github.com/snd-lib/snd-lib

If you add sounds to anything on the web, please, please , make a top-level, easily identifiable mute button.

And mute the sound by default!

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

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While objectively true, it's silly for employers not to exploit the psychology of the engaged employee for the employer's gain.

I disagree. It's exploitive for people in a position of power to exploit the psychology of the folks that are in their care. You use the word exploit, exploiting folks isn't good or moral, in any case. It's never ok to exploit folks. If we say we are aligning the interests of the employer and employee that's different. If we are saying a rising tide raises all ships, we all do well when we all do well, etc. That's di…

I was admittedly being facetious, but my point is that those who push the "work is for working, not for having fun" line are neither doing the employers nor the employees any favours.

The other side of the coin is that what employers do to try to improve engagement is usually ineffective and often quite demeaning. What Erik Dietrich calls "carnival cash". You just can't fake the sense of producing something useful for the customers and in return getting your fair share of the proceeds.

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

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If managers are spending their days watching the color of the circles next to their team member's names, maybe the managers need more work to do in order to "stay engaged" at work. Of all the bad heuristics for trying to determine whether someone is being productive, this has to be near the bottom of the list. It's the digital equivalent of measuring engineer productivity by looking around the room and seeing who is…

I had a manager like this. I eventually got some software to keep my computer awake/active from 7am-7pm. It was stupid.

A long Youtube video should do the “trick”

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

#137

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.

I’d be careful with this. You dont want to build a reputation of building buggy software and have sloppy work.

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

#138

I found this to be an incredibly depressing article. It boiled down to, "think about pleasant things that aren't work." For example, > Pick an activity that you've always wanted to try. Don't have ideas? Try Wikipedia for a good list of hobbies I already have plenty of hobbies, and I'd rather work on any of them than be at work! I've always been very self-motivated. I want to work on what I want to work on. Being for…

In the beginning of a career, I can respect some of the choices mentioned in the article. But to be able to stick around in the biz you must work with something that feels meaningful.

I wish I realized earlier that changing job is no big thing. Even though one should do it for the right reasons. Once you feel like you are dying inside at a workplace it is not like a hobby will fix that.

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

#140
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've left these "time to lean, time to clean" jobs in the dustbin of my teens where they belong. It's a seller's market for us geeks right now; we should take advantage of it while it lasts and find good conditions for ourselves to work in.

How do you filter for that in your job search? Questions during the interview help but it's easy to misunderstand.

Yeah, fair point. I think the best way is using your connections -- i.e. going to work with people you already know and whose opinion you trust.
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