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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

#21

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

Burning Man taught me an important lesson about expectations and satisfaction. You can't go to Burning Man and expect everybody else to give you a good time all the time, or you can end up bored, bummed out, and alone in a crowd. If you want a fun time, bring it with you. Don't spectate, participate.

Give yourself a small purpose and spend some of your work day on it. Make it something that feels rewarding. Remember, 1/3 of your life is spent at work.

Maybe you only want to focus on the technical. That doesn't mean only becoming an expert in one domain, but also pulling in knowledge from other domains for perspective and inspiration. Maybe you learn how the operating system works, or embedded design. Maybe learn how car ECUs work. Maybe in learning about cars you notice different companies make different designs, decisions, priorities, leading to different outcomes. Maybe you learn about NUMMI and the Toyota Production System. Then maybe you hear tech buzzwords that come from Toyota and find out how they're related. Then maybe you take all those non-technical ideas back into your technical work.

If you like to solve problems, you don't have to stop at technical ones. You can work on organizational problems, financial problems, logistical problems, communication problems, architectural problems. There's a million problems outside your domain of expertise, and you can learn about all of them. Your biggest problem is an overabundance of choice.

If you like to help people, you don't have to help just your immediate team. You can look at other teams and see if they need help. Maybe not even business help, but personal help. Maybe you'd like to join an employee resource group, or organize one; or a charity bake sale, or a hackathon. Or work on convincing your job to have a donation matching program, or finding a local charity to reinvest some percentage of profit into, or convincing execs to give everyone the day off on election day.

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

#22

Post by AlwaysRock »

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 the time. Now I don't. I go do something I want to do.

I find that I'm much more engaged in my work because I am actually using all my time to get things done. I'm not watching the clock till its time to leave for the day.

I'll probably get hate for this but its incredibly sustainable since I'm not working at a start up anymore. I suspect whenever I take on another job search I'll only consider 4 day work weeks since that's similar to what I'm doing now.

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

#23

Post by jebarker »

VyseofArcadia wrote: post #8

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…

I thought point 2 addressed engagement well. If you can get behind the purpose of the whole company, then understanding why your particular cog is important to the machine will help keep you engaged.

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

#24

Post by rmah »

In my experience, one of the key factors of being engaged with one's work is feeling a sense of progress or accomplishment. Few things sap motivation more than the feeling that you're just spinning your wheels and nothing is getting done.

I realize that if you're not a team lead or manager, this is difficult to implement. However, sometimes physical manifestations of progress can make progress feel more tangible. For example, if you have to churn through tickets, make a little card for each one. And push them from a pending pile into the done pile as you go. This makes your progress more visible and tangible than a number on a website. Of course, a big "to do" pile may demotivate some folks. YMMV.

Just a bit of food for thought.

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

#25

Post by dairylee »

tstrimple wrote: post #19

I know that this wasn't the point of the article, but please don't ever do this. > Why do web applications have no sound? Why can't we make boring internal tools come to life with sound, in the same way that UI on a Nintendo Switch pops and clicks and whistles?

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

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

#26

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

yaysyu wrote: post #7
imwillofficial wrote: post #3

I won’t spoil the article, but the advice is great. I’ll give number 4 a try. But the hobbies page of Wikipedia is too long and unorganized for my tastes. Anyone have any cool hobbies?

Bouldering seems to be really popular amongst Software Engineers I know. Taps into many things that Software Engineers typically like. Walls often require problem solving as well as physical ability. Walls are shorter than rock climbing walls (fast iteration cycles/“dev loop”) Lots of different difficulties for a clear sense of progression. Indoors (usually). Can be done solo.

Bouldering has to be the nerdiest sport. You spend most of your time sitting and problem-solving with intermittent short bursts of work, you can do it at any level of fitness, and there's no competition. I'm kind of surprised nobody has combined a math game with it yet, where as you climb you uncover numbers that tell you where the next hold is so you can't pre-plan your route.

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

#27

Post by alkonaut »

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 problems are now so specialised (Data scientist, Game engines, AI, ...). And that's a bit sad. For those of us who get a kick out of not making a Todo app in an ever cooler JS framework but instead like to write the synth/raytracer/fluid sim/game/, the job market has become pretty boring. Luckily I have a job that ticks the boxes, but it's hard to find another.

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

#28

Post by [deleted] »

VyseofArcadia wrote: post #8

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…

[deleted]

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

#30

Post by dominotw »

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…

agree with this 100%. I am considering going into management purely because i cannot get myself to write another screen to db crud app. Just the thought makes me depressed.
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