31–40 of 53 posts
Here is a hint: Stop working so fucking hard on apps/websites/digital junk that helps no one, except by making your boss rich (be it manager, VC, or otherwise). If you engage in meaningful work, then it is impossible to get burned out for too long. Stop being a drone. Take a step back and look at the big picture and ask yourself: what am I coding for? Who is going to use this? Will it help anyone in any meaningful wa…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meaningful work isn't a guarantee that burnout won't happen. My first small business I owned hit every bullet point in my career wants and desires and I burned out pretty hard on it. The constant state of being turned on, dangling the career carrot in front of myself wasn't healthy. I had a bad relationship with my own business. Even though I enjoyed the work, the compensation was good, and I used my hands creatively…
I like to post hyperbole because it elicits interesting and insightful counterpoints like this one. Thank you sir. Also, to others: stop burning out from working on stupid shit.
Here is a hint: Stop working so fucking hard on apps/websites/digital junk that helps no one, except by making your boss rich (be it manager, VC, or otherwise). If you engage in meaningful work, then it is impossible to get burned out for too long. Stop being a drone. Take a step back and look at the big picture and ask yourself: what am I coding for? Who is going to use this? Will it help anyone in any meaningful wa…
Here is a hint: Stop working so fucking hard on apps/websites/digital junk that helps no one, except by making your boss rich (be it manager, VC, or otherwise). If you engage in meaningful work, then it is impossible to get burned out for too long. Stop being a drone. Take a step back and look at the big picture and ask yourself: what am I coding for? Who is going to use this? Will it help anyone in any meaningful wa…
I've been a developer for about three years now but before that I worked in food service for about eight years. One habit I've had to break is the constant looking for something to do attitude that you absolutely need to keep an orderly kitchen. The pool of tasks to complete doesn't replenish in software like it does in food service. When you've suitably completed a task and the next task lacks the definition needed…
That's an interesting take, because my experience has generally been that there's an inexhaustible pool of tasks -- bugs that could be fixed, minor but nice-to-have features, little refactorings and code cleanups, closing stale bug reports -- in any largish codebase. Mostly these don't get done because major feature work or fixing bugs users complain about takes priority, but I've pretty much never found myself on a…
I used to refactor and try and improve every file I needed to work in, but more and more I've been trying to make as little changes as possible in order to complete my goals. Leaving the code just a bit cleaner in each commit.
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I like to post hyperbole because it elicits interesting and insightful counterpoints like this one. Thank you sir. Also, to others: stop burning out from working on stupid shit.
congrats, you are an internet troll
You can find a counterexample to just about anything. But in the end, you're left to make up your fucking mind about something.
So why bother addressing every possible edge case and "what if"?
This is why software engineers are so good at being mindless drones. They focus on the meaningless details without seeing the big picture. You know, the one where you've spent the best years of your life working on an app called Sploink that's used by teens to send hook up nudes, and otherwise exists to rape users' privacy. You didn't think about it because you were too busy arguing about the merits of type safety in JavaScript. Who needs to argue when your fancy ML approach increased CTR by 2.2%?
And hey, on top of everything else, your dumb ass app was featured on PH.
Here is a hint: Stop working so fucking hard on apps/websites/digital junk that helps no one, except by making your boss rich (be it manager, VC, or otherwise). If you engage in meaningful work, then it is impossible to get burned out for too long. Stop being a drone. Take a step back and look at the big picture and ask yourself: what am I coding for? Who is going to use this? Will it help anyone in any meaningful wa…
Meaningful work isn't a guarantee that burnout won't happen. My first small business I owned hit every bullet point in my career wants and desires and I burned out pretty hard on it. The constant state of being turned on, dangling the career carrot in front of myself wasn't healthy. I had a bad relationship with my own business. Even though I enjoyed the work, the compensation was good, and I used my hands creatively…
Exactly. I'm a public school teacher, which is something many would consider 'meaningful', and which is, in a lot of ways. I'm burnt-out of it, and actively looking for something different. The kids are little shits most the times, and we've basically just become glorified baby sitters to their parents (I'm in the rural Southern US, in a place with next-to-no culture of education) and rarely pay attention. Too busy trying to sneak their next glance on Snapchat...And then trying to teach them math or science when they don't have the proper requisite knowledge because they've been passed along...Definitely burnout waiting to happen. And it's not just me. It's hit two of my other science teachers this year too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like to post hyperbole because it elicits interesting and insightful counterpoints like this one. Thank you sir. Also, to others: stop burning out from working on stupid shit.
Posting something wrong and waiting for people to correct it to claim how you drove the conversation to an interesting place is mostly wasting everyone's time.
I would argue that although this behavior might be considered on the "trolling" spectrum, it's on the benign side of the spectrum, close to the Socratic approach.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meaningful work isn't a guarantee that burnout won't happen. My first small business I owned hit every bullet point in my career wants and desires and I burned out pretty hard on it. The constant state of being turned on, dangling the career carrot in front of myself wasn't healthy. I had a bad relationship with my own business. Even though I enjoyed the work, the compensation was good, and I used my hands creatively…
> Meaningful work isn't a guarantee that burnout won't happen. Exactly. I'm a public school teacher, which is something many would consider 'meaningful', and which is, in a lot of ways. I'm burnt-out of it, and actively looking for something different. The kids are little shits most the times, and we've basically just become glorified baby sitters to their parents (I'm in the rural Southern US, in a place with next-t…
Here is a hint: Stop working so fucking hard on apps/websites/digital junk that helps no one, except by making your boss rich (be it manager, VC, or otherwise). If you engage in meaningful work, then it is impossible to get burned out for too long. Stop being a drone. Take a step back and look at the big picture and ask yourself: what am I coding for? Who is going to use this? Will it help anyone in any meaningful wa…
In the end, I get paid far more to work on "junk" (cloud infrastructure) and it's orders of magnitude more easy to walk away from it at the end of the day and sleep peacefully over. Maybe it makes my boss far richer than I'll ever be, but I'm happier, my family's happier, and overall I enjoy my life more. So for me, I'm gonna keep being a "drone" (and happily continue to serve my customers that do seem to need these things for whatever reasons they have) because it's easy and sometimes it just beats suffering ever day--even if it's for something you believe in. Maybe I'll find some meaningful "work" in my free time but at that point is it even really work?