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Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?

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Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?

#331

Post by oblio »

drunkenmagician wrote: post #95
xnorswap wrote: post #18

There's a difference between Programming and Software Development and I think it's important to recognise that difference when looking at your career. Programming is one small aspect of software development. It's an absolutely essential part, and it's the part you probably enjoy the most. But despite being an essential core part, it's also a part which only occupies maybe 20% of your time. Some software developers de…

I have to say, any tech organization that has its engineers only coding 20% of the time is doing it wrong. Yes there's much more to software development than pure coding, but 20% would suggest serious organizational structure and process issues.

No, he's right and you're probably wrong. Depending on what you count as coding.

Stuff you need to do:

1. Write docs.

2. Update docs.

3. Run test suites.

4. Check test suite reports.

5. Fix tests or code if they fail.

6. Design work for code.

7. Requirements gathering/refinement.

8. Estimating work.

9. Investigating production issues.

10. Fixing production issues.

11. Deploying to various environments.

12. Investigating deployment failures.

13. Teaching and mentoring less experienced team mates.

14. Reading up on both tech you use and tech that you plan to use.

15. Syncing with other teams about new features or products you're working on.

16. Design work for test suites.

...

Most of those things are not "coding".

Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?

#332

Post by akudha »

In my job, we are supposed to completely finish our sprint tasks, no exceptions. This has led to the team being ultra conservative in picking up tasks, to the point that our productivity is down the drain. But if you see our numbers, they’re fantastic, as we finish everything we pick up in a sprint!

Artificial numbers. Grand sounding words like spike, velocity, scrum, bandwidth etc which don’t mean anything to anyone, other than middle management. Using 10 different fancy tools/products when a 100 line script would do the same thing. Endless meetings (I can’t get a 4 hour block to concentrate on a task). These are the things that suck the joy out of actually creating something, to help users do their jobs better.

Above all else, dudes (mostly dudes) that work 14 hour days without being asked, without being requested. I remember doing that myself as a young man. Now that I am old and a bit less stupid, I can see how this is the most negative thing in a team.

I don’t know what the solution is. Maybe freelancing? I dunno, it has its own problems. Maybe ask in interviews how much time is spent on meetings, before accepting an offer? That might not work either, interviewers aren’t obligated to be honest.

Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?

#333

Post by maximus-decimus »

cehrlich wrote: post #175
maximus-decimus wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I see it, it's just an IQ test in disguise, which do have empirical evidence they predict your future performance at intellectual work.

It's not though, it's a test of how hard you've studied for algo problems. Relevant for some programming jobs, but not for most.

IQ's whole point is it was supposed to predict how fast kids are gonna learn at school. I would argue testing for people's ability to learn irrelevant stuff in their limited free time is going to rate people's ability to learn which is the very definition of an IQ test (at least what it was meant to be).

Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?

#334

Post by cehrlich »

maximus-decimus wrote: post #333
cehrlich wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not though, it's a test of how hard you've studied for algo problems. Relevant for some programming jobs, but not for most.

IQ's whole point is it was supposed to predict how fast kids are gonna learn at school. I would argue testing for people's ability to learn irrelevant stuff in their limited free time is going to rate people's ability to learn which is the very definition of an IQ test (at least what it was meant to be).

Testing people's ability to learn irrelevant stuff in their free time mostly tests how much free time they have and whether or not they're willing to sacrifice it to learn irrelevant stuff.

Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?

#335

Post by brooksmtownsend »

I relate 100%. Everyone at my current job is sick of the soul-crushing work as a software developer that people just accept as part of the job. The side projects are so fun, we just want to do that for our real job.

We call it "Write the Right Code", and I'll shamelessly drop the post since I'm curious if this is the same pain you feel. https://cosmonic.com/blog/write_the_right_code/.

Maybe software engineering can be better if more people speak up to the culture that many engineers just get used to.

Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?

#336

Post by Elves »

yes, I'm writing my experience of working in business transformation.

It's about my strongly held belief that companies, certainly smaller companies, don't need the Taylorist command and control structure to thrive.

Happy to keep you up to date. I started as a hardware engineer then a programmer and and architect now work as a scrum master. So that might devalue my advice.

Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?

#337

Post by rudyrigot »

Not all tech jobs are like that. Also, different tech jobs will appeal to different people, which is fine. Maybe this one job is not the best fit for you, and there may be another one out there that is.

If I were you, I’d try a job as different as you can in a company as different as you can, for the sake of making sure the situation will be different. You might still land in a situation that’s not for you, of course, but that should mitigate the risk that you’d land on the exact same problems.

Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?

#338

Post by philbrown »

The good news is, there's lots of possibilities. The bad news is, you have to look hard to find the ones that will make you happy. For example: startups are legendary for giving high self-value feelings, but crushing work hours. But I got lucky, and managed to join a (tech!) startup that has regular business hours... yet is still working on Cool Stuff. (it's very well funded, by very experienced board members,etc) (I joined in their 4th year though.)

there also exist satisfying opportunities at small to midsized companies. It all comes down to management.

So... keep looking!

Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?

#339

Post by aprdm »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #215
CornCobs wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter-anecdote: I'm working at a non-tech company (we build the in-house technical software that everyone else in the company uses) and the experience has been great. We deliver real and immediate value, our clients are our colleagues and there's a great emphasis on UX, user testing and what not as a result. Yes, there are loads of other problems, especially on the technical side, because tech isn't the company's s…

I would love to get a job building internal tools that my company needs and uses but I haven't had any luck actually finding those kinds of jobs, so I always wind up building products. Any advice on how to find those kinds of positions?

Vfx industry

Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?

#340

Post by GoblinSlayer »

mxuribe wrote: post #299
GoblinSlayer wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our team complained about frequent meetings, and managers reduced meetings to one daily meeting (our managers are competent though).

> ...our managers are competent though... So....um, it sounds like you work at almost-a-unicorn! ;-) Seriously, good for you!

Yep, I wonder how it ended up like that. Is it an economically sound plan to run a company with incompetent people?
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