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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

#151

Post by sgerenser »

SoftTalker wrote: post #127
digisign wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

“That looks great. Just one thing – get rid of the duck.“

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

#152

Post by ransom1538 »

alkonaut wrote: post #27

My motto is: I don't want to work on a CRUD app. I want computer science to actually be part of what I do. Not parsing and validation and deployments and migrations. But finding these jobs where actual "what you do with the data" is the majority work, and the fluff around it is a minority, is HARD and such jobs seem to be more far between. Perhaps because the software jobs that used to be difficult algorithmic proble…

There are tons ways to escape: security, sre, engineering sales, etc etc.

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

#153

Post by rhodysurf »

alkonaut wrote: post #27

My motto is: I don't want to work on a CRUD app. I want computer science to actually be part of what I do. Not parsing and validation and deployments and migrations. But finding these jobs where actual "what you do with the data" is the majority work, and the fluff around it is a minority, is HARD and such jobs seem to be more far between. Perhaps because the software jobs that used to be difficult algorithmic proble…

I am the same way. This is where smaller companies thrive because you get exposure to more of the stack. Just have to find the right domains with interesting problems. For me that’s building analytics and visualization tools for scientific and engineering modeling data

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

#154

Post by digisign »

SoftTalker wrote: post #127
digisign wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

Software is never perfect though, especially for an agile product. The reason agile the method is chosen is because they are exploring the space.

But you do touch on a real phenomenon, the Iceberg secret. The solution of which is typically to do mockups with wireframing software:

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/02/13/the-iceberg-secret...

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

#155

Post by catmanjan »

ransom1538 wrote: post #152
alkonaut wrote: post #27

My motto is: I don't want to work on a CRUD app. I want computer science to actually be part of what I do. Not parsing and validation and deployments and migrations. But finding these jobs where actual "what you do with the data" is the majority work, and the fluff around it is a minority, is HARD and such jobs seem to be more far between. Perhaps because the software jobs that used to be difficult algorithmic proble…

There are tons ways to escape: security, sre, engineering sales, etc etc.

Those are all just CRUD with a different title

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

#158

Post by redisman »

ransom1538 wrote: post #152
alkonaut wrote: post #27

My motto is: I don't want to work on a CRUD app. I want computer science to actually be part of what I do. Not parsing and validation and deployments and migrations. But finding these jobs where actual "what you do with the data" is the majority work, and the fluff around it is a minority, is HARD and such jobs seem to be more far between. Perhaps because the software jobs that used to be difficult algorithmic proble…

There are tons ways to escape: security, sre, engineering sales, etc etc.

These are just as tedious as web programming. SRE even worse. Security might have a few research roles if you’re really lucky but most are boring jobs where you nag people to do things they don’t care about

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

#159

Post by redisman »

afarrell wrote: post #156

> Imagine you are the CEO Warning: If you take this farther than idle speculation, it is a good way to burn yourself out trying ineffective strategies to drive organizational change.

Practicing your “circle of control” is one of the best things I’ve done for my mental health. I’m not going to worry about a VPs problem. That’s the whole point of not being a VP

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

#160

Post by redisman »

nunez wrote: post #149

This article means well but these tips are mostly platitudes. What I want to read is how people who do not care about work (i.e. people who are borderline anti-work) find work that is meaningful. I do not believe that people aspire to not have purpose. I do believe that many people's work life is misaligned with their true purpose OR they don't know what their purpose is. I'd love to read more articles like that. (I…

99% of jobs are not interesting or fulfilling.
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