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Bored People Quit

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Re: Bored People Quit

#141

Post by i386 »

enjo wrote: post #91
nhashem wrote: post #6

I think another key point is that boredom is inevitable, at least at any company bigger than a startup. Software engineering is about solving problems. You get hired, and solve problems. Time passes and you get better at solving these problems, so they give you harder problems in the same domain space. Eventually you get so good at solving these problems in this domain space that you become The Guy. "Oh you have a qu…

I've fought through MUCH more boredom during my startup career than at any other point. Startups are great fun while you're building the product. Then you release it, and while you'd love to be implementing new features you're really stuck maintaining the beast you've unleashed onto the world. In a startup there is no one else to give you a hand when things break. There is no one else to share the load of those borin…

Just have to say that your assessment of things was refreshingly unromantic and honest - founding a startup won't solve your boredom issue. There's still work to be done.

Re: Bored People Quit

#143

Post by paulbaumgart »

rcfox wrote: post #117
paulbaumgart wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoops. Too late to edit, but a correction: growlnotify -m "Success! " (the space tells bash to treat the exclamation point as text)

Or just use \!

Good call. Though for multi-word messages, you'd have to do something like:

  growlnotify -m "$(echo Great\! Success\!)"

Re: Bored People Quit

#144

Post by Tsagadai »

zackattack wrote: post #136
Tsagadai wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, personally, find it very difficult to sustain eye contact while I talk to people. The "I know your lying because you won't look me in the eye" myth was 90% of the reason I was always in trouble at school. It's a myth.

This is interesting. Is it possible it's a truth and actually you're lying to yourself?

I also, often, externally display a different emotion to what I am experiencing. For example, I often seem angry when I am actually happy as a pig in mud. I've done a polygraph before in university and the results were mixed (lots of false-positives and false-negatives). I'm an outlying variable but it is important to remember there are plenty of other outlying variables who will throw a wrench into every system or maxim.

Re: Bored People Quit

#145

Post by mahmud »

edw519 wrote: post #5

Axiom: Boring work can never compete with Hacker News. Axiom: Hacker News can never compete with interesting work. Theorem: The interestingness of my work is inversely related to my Hacker News participation. Supporting data: Today I'm regression testing. I'll be here all day, folks. Idea: Employers, monitor your logs for Hacker News. Occasional spikes probably indicate boring, but necessary tasks. Chronic use probab…

Fuck Hacker News.

Yours truly, CiteSeer & Google Scholar

Re: Bored People Quit

#146

Post by zackattack »

Tsagadai wrote: post #144
zackattack wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is interesting. Is it possible it's a truth and actually you're lying to yourself?

I also, often, externally display a different emotion to what I am experiencing. For example, I often seem angry when I am actually happy as a pig in mud. I've done a polygraph before in university and the results were mixed (lots of false-positives and false-negatives). I'm an outlying variable but it is important to remember there are plenty of other outlying variables who will throw a wrench into every system or m…

Thank you for the feedback. I forget about this.

Re: Bored People Quit

#147

Post by raghava »

Where I work, the original post is actually blocked by websense; and I believe that says a lot about the firm. And not just that, there is also a strict auditing of browsing habits. They have already incorporated edw519's suggestion of monitoring logs for accessing HN/proggit etc. More than a hundred hits per day and I need to get an approval from four levels above.(SO was completely websensed and I had to fight for 10 days to get it off the blacklist).

It's not that people just quit bad managers. Many a times, they quit firms with ridiculous policies and rules, even though their immediate managers/peers are good enough.

Re: Bored People Quit

#148

Post by keithnoizu »

Sukotto wrote: post #64
edw519 wrote: post #5

Axiom: Boring work can never compete with Hacker News. Axiom: Hacker News can never compete with interesting work. Theorem: The interestingness of my work is inversely related to my Hacker News participation. Supporting data: Today I'm regression testing. I'll be here all day, folks. Idea: Employers, monitor your logs for Hacker News. Occasional spikes probably indicate boring, but necessary tasks. Chronic use probab…

It works the other way too. According to rescuetime, I've been spending a LOT of time lately on HN and links to articles. It kind of crept up on me and I didn't realize just how bored I've been at work lately. Definitely time to figure out why and how best to return to a happy-nonbored state. (Quitting isn't really a viable option right now)

  Quitting no, switching is always an option though. I.e put feelers out, silently pick up a second more interesting offer and give notice. If you have a large amount waiting to vest you may be able to get a match from another employer.

Re: Bored People Quit

#149

Post by palish »

jayx wrote: post #105

I am a college student who is currently doing my summer internship at a megacorp as a .NET MVC developer and I would not say the internship was what I was looking for. I am OK with the technologies they are using, it's just the boredom caused by endless waiting between each process that frustrates me. I got hired because I had spent a lot of my spare time working on my own RoR projects and my web development skills m…

This isn't the attitude you should have.

It's not that bad. It's like school. Work on your own stuff on the downtime.

Re: Bored People Quit

#150

Post by eropple »

munin wrote: post #134
eropple wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Project managers manage projects, not engineers. In many cases, project managers are stakeholders in the project. They have conflicted interests. Being able to tell your project manager "no" is important, because it allows engineers to arrest function and scope creep without fearing for their jobs by saying "no" to the wrong person. . Where I am right now, we report instead to technical managers, and are allotted to…

you have bigger problems if you can't say "no" to the guy who could fire you, in my opinion

I can. And I have. That doesn't make it a good dilemma to create in the first place: do the right thing, or protect your job?

With due respect, I think your notion of how interpersonal relationships work in this sort of situation is rather flawed.

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