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Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work

truzzi.me

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Re: Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work

#341

Post by madog »

gbear0 wrote: post #228
blentz wrote: post #55

I’ve been on the receiving end of similar requests before. “I’ll work for free or nothing if you let me do what I love under the umbrella of your organization because I love it so much.” I did one or two agreements like this and then stopped altogether. The individual would start their work, others would start to depend on its existence and the individual would leave in a matter or weeks or months because something e…

I'd also suggest people making these requests to try and expand their interests to make themselves more rounded and valuable. For example I'm totally the kind of person that likes to jump from one thing to another cause I like the challenge and I get bored quick otherwise. But instead of jumping ship cause the challenge is gone I try to find a different closely related challenge. Here's a couple of techniques for any…

I don't have anything to add to this, only to say thanks - that's decent advice. If you do X, you can learn about Y, and apply it to Z.

If you have a broad interest there's like a million different ways to pivot and branch off to learn different things.

Re: Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work

#343

Post by brightball »

jascii wrote: post #329
brightball wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a developer on my team at my last company who was like this. Avoid at all cost.

What do you mean by "like this" and why in particular should that be avoided at all cost?

I can’t talk about it in detail yet.

Short version, the rest of the team had to pick up all of the things that he wasn’t willing to do. It shifted more burden to everyone else for his benefit and created a terrible team environment.

Re: Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work

#344

Post by AlwaysRock »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #289
AlwaysRock wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know... Have you ever done manual QA as a full time job?

Some mechanical menial jobs can be satisfying. At least when you can get in the zone, and see what you've accomplished at the end of the day. I grew up on a farm. There was a lot of that. It took mental discipline, which most folks may not have an opportunity to develop in this hypercharged media world.

I didnt grow up on a farm but grew up on a good bit of land with a lot of yard work that needed to be done. I agree that some jobs like that can be satisfying but its very different from a computer based role.

At the end of the day when you have taken a large tree branch and turned it into a stacked pile of chopped wood you feel a sense of accomplishment. It doesnt feel quite the same when you've cleared 4 QA UI tickets.

Re: Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work

#346

Post by ipaddr »

gtowey wrote: post #198
ketzo wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your overall sentiment, but: > If you see those things as "the boring bits" that you don't want to do then you're not a developer. Don't we already have enough gatekeeping in software development? I don't particularly enjoy writing documentation, despite how important I know it to be. That doesn't make me "not a developer." If I were lazy and simply chose not to do the things that bored me (despite their…

> Don't we already have enough gatekeeping in software development? No. In fact I hope anyone who's actually worked in the software industry would see that we don't have nearly enough! Look I'll agree with you about the evils of gatekeeping if we're talking about who gets to call themselves an artist or a writer. Those kinds of distinctions rarely create life or death consequences. But software can. Not all the time,…

As important as those things feel after 20 years you must remember you are hired to write code. As easy as code is to write without none of the other processes are required.

If they wanted someone to just write documentation you wouldn't be hired. A technical writer would be.

If they wanted someone to just test you wouldn't be hired. A QA person would.

Same for whatever processes you create. They would hire a process specialist.

Same for project management. They would hire a pmp certified person first.

Same for business analysis and business requirement gathering.

As a developer there are better people to do all of those jobs at better rates. None of them can code. That's why you are hired. If you couldn't do that than your qa abilities don't matter.

Things have changed over 20 years. Not every company has a qa team or bas or support team. So these tasks end up being picked up by the developer. Often if this slows development teams are created of non-developer specialists. Some developers end up doing very little coding because your job is to go to meetings about projects that never start. But you are still hired to code they just need you on standby.

Anyone cannot hack together something that works. Only a developer can. A hacker would find ways to use an existing system in an unintended ways.

Gatekeeping over this makes you more management than developer.

The tao of programming has a different understanding of what a developer is and isn't

https://www.mit.edu/~xela/tao.html

Re: Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work

#347

Post by AlwaysRock »

username90 wrote: post #296
AlwaysRock wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take a boring stable 40 hour a week job over a fun job that somewhat frequently requires 50+ hours. Time is the only thing I cant get back. Money really is just a number after a certain point.

Why do you still work for others if money is just a number at this point? I worked for Google for a while and quit to do my own projects once I had enough money that I felt it didn't matter any more.

I'm not exactly at that level yet. I couldnt stop working forever. But I realized that making money isnt all that difficult and its really a make believe number after a certain point.

Re: Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work

#349

Post by jka »

ftruzzi wrote: post #261
wpietri wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't read this as a signal he won't do the work. From his talk about the stuff he enjoys doing, I don't doubt it includes things that feel work-like. He just wants the work to be meaningful. That seems reasonable to me, and that's how I am. As long as there's some point to the work, I'm happy to do the tedious stuff all day long. I recently user-tested a job posting for a high-meaning job. [1] Some people were ver…

Thank you. Writing tests and documentation or diving deep into debugging hard issues is what I consider part of "good work" (and that I have also enjoyed doing), and I can't wait to do good work. It just has to be compatible with the rest of life. It's mostly the way we work that has to change rather than the content of the work.

Thank you for the thought provoking article and discussion.

I like to imagine that there is a virtual priority queue of software tasks out there, waiting to be done.

Some of it is feature development, some of it is detailed bug investigation, some of it is documentation, and some of it is user interface work.

What might be incredible would be to declare your interests and skills and start picking from the priority queue, with appropriate rewards as you progress, and at your own pace, knowing that you're contributing back to important tasks of the day. Ideally with a social safety net to allow people to enjoy life and adapt to changing circumstances.

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