Fair. I’ve been there too. Exploitation is our industry standard unfortunately. Like everybody (I suppose) in that position, I’ve been trying to understand the root cause of the problem. IMHO the root cause is in the structure of “teams” and related responsibilities/positiins. I’ve written “teams” in quotation makrs, cause most of them are simoly a group of people without any real shared goal. Real teams are structured in a way that enables real cross-dependence of their members. In a group each member is accountable individually, and individual accountability stands in opposition to team work. If we structure teams to work as teams (together, not alone), and enable collaborative processes and architecture (structure, process and architecture all have to work together) - we enable many ways of support among individuals, and thats where the team gains powers to form a self-awareness and heal itself. Without an intervention of HR, organizing coffee breaks over Zoom half an hour each week, or other nonsense.
Mental health in software engineering
351–360 of 440 posts
Re: Mental health in software engineering
#352I'm not terribly convinced that software engineering is harder on someone mental health than being a doctor, lawyer, sales, engineer, professional athlete, teacher, or any other white collar profession is. All of these have their specific stressors, all of these professions have loads of articles about how people are leaving these professions due to how hard they are. All of these jobs tend to lead to them consuming…
> >You cannot take a sick day by telling your team, “I have mental issues and need a day off.”
> This hurt me to read on behalf of the OP.
> I'm now 20 years into my career and never once have I come across this attitude. People take sick days all the time for mental health. I feel terribly for this person that they felt like they couldn't but this is far and away the exception rather than the rule.
> Has any company come out against mental health in the past 20 years?
I'd say this is a cultural thing. For example, I have never heard of anyone taking a mental health day off. You just take vacation time and hope you come back normal.
Technically, you can take a sick day and the employer doesn't need a reason but if you work in an office environment, especially a small one, everyone knows everything. People know when you're sick and wonder if you're okay. They care and they ask.
Re: Mental health in software engineering
#353In almost 30 years of software engineering, I came to the conclusion years ago that most deadlines were entirely arbitrary. The business isn't going to fail if you slip a week, or frequently even six months and if it does its probably not the fault of engineering unless its so dysfunctional as to repeatably blow through its own delivery estimates. Sure there are regulatory deadlines, customer POC or delivery deadline…
Businesses aren’t that bothered about deadlines - provided they have sufficient notice that a deadline is going to be missed.
What frustrates business is when there is no warning and engineering suddenly announces out of the blue that an imminent deadline can’t be hit.
Or even worse, the constant drip of, it’s almost done - just one more sprint…
The knee jerk current reaction of “we’re just not going to do estimates anymore” and “it’s done when it’s done” really don’t help in any way.
Re: Mental health in software engineering
#354I'm not terribly convinced that software engineering is harder on someone mental health than being a doctor, lawyer, sales, engineer, professional athlete, teacher, or any other white collar profession is. All of these have their specific stressors, all of these professions have loads of articles about how people are leaving these professions due to how hard they are. All of these jobs tend to lead to them consuming…
We used to call these “duvet days”. Sometimes you just don’t want to get out of bed. If you’re not feeling well (mentally or physically) take the day off and get better.
Re: Mental health in software engineering
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is just your perspective and, IMO, it's pretty warped. Software engineering is not a low-status position, even compared to doctors and lawyers. You aren't lacking in status or not having sex because you're a software engineer getting paid $200k/year instead of a doctor paid $200k/year. I find that it definitely points to a time period when someone entered maybe not workforce, but the "IT world" let's say. Ther…
As it turns out, the massive money generated by software produces quite a lot of status. But the IT world is meaningfully different from software engineering. IT infrastructure (as distinct from creating software) pays less, generally, and is also regarded as much lower-status. IT is like auto mechanics to software engineering's automobile design. It's the blue collar equivalent, especially at the low level. At the h…
The massive amounts of money is, largely, a post-2010 thing too.
Before that, some hugely successful people in software outside of "nerd" circles were discussed often in terms disconnected with tech and more as just other (if wildly successful, like Bill Gates) business people.
Re: Mental health in software engineering
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doctor, lawyer, and athlete are "jock" professions, while software engineering is very much a "nerd" profession. These words represent status and general level of attractiveness and therefore access to attention and sex. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, and professional athletes all experience social reward and/or social contexts to their work. Software engineering is interfacing with an unthinking, unfeeling machine for…
> Doctor, lawyer, and athlete are "jock" professions, while software engineering is very much a "nerd" profession. These words represent status and general level of attractiveness and therefore access to attention and sex. This is just your perspective and, IMO, it's pretty warped. Software engineering is not a low-status position, even compared to doctors and lawyers. You aren't lacking in status or not having sex b…
Software developers usually have managers of various sorts of supervisors.
This is classical division of worker / manager in the Taylorist sense, as in the managers are mostly not developers themselves.
This is what makes software developers a low status profession, i.e. many developers are glorified assembly line workers with little agency over their work (they do not make decisions).
Doctors and lawyers might have some form of management layer, but this is mostly a support function.
Re: Mental health in software engineering
#357I'm not terribly convinced that software engineering is harder on someone mental health than being a doctor, lawyer, sales, engineer, professional athlete, teacher, or any other white collar profession is. All of these have their specific stressors, all of these professions have loads of articles about how people are leaving these professions due to how hard they are. All of these jobs tend to lead to them consuming…
Doctor, lawyer, and athlete are "jock" professions, while software engineering is very much a "nerd" profession. These words represent status and general level of attractiveness and therefore access to attention and sex. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, and professional athletes all experience social reward and/or social contexts to their work. Software engineering is interfacing with an unthinking, unfeeling machine for…
Well said. I mean, I'd like to see a graph of "wizard" rate per profession, maybe even per country for curiosity matters. I'd bet my arm that programmers have it pretty bad on that front.
Re: Mental health in software engineering
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
It depends on the industry. Video games are still sold at retails stores (Target, Best Buy, ...). Those stores have to coordinate what is going to be on their shelves months in advance (6+)? So you promise your game will be ready and in a package and at their loading dock by November 15th. If you miss the deadline their shelf is empty of product since its spot was reserved for you. Other customer electronics have sim…
What do you think about the other side of the video game industry where games are distributed digitally? Most PC games nowadays are distributed this way and even consoles are moving in this direction too. There is so much more to it than just aligning marketing and distribution with the development cycle. Time and time again, news breaks out about terrible working conditions and crunch culture being so ingrained and…
For video games there are also holiday seasons that you may not want to miss. So even if you are using digital stores, there are deadlines that might matter
Re: Mental health in software engineering
#359> I was now in charge of a small team of developers, and our startup has made many promises to many partners
This was the problem. I saw it myself in one place. The sales guys go out and promise the moon on a stick. After all, they're incentivised to sell, and the won't be one ones stressing to get the job done. They probably have no clue that that one feature they've just agreed to is massively complicated and probably not that important anyway.
Unless a decision is made with the CTO/an architect in the loop, forget it.
If it was and is unreasonable just tell them and then forget it.
You only get stressed if you accept other peoples' made up deadlines. They probably get you to do this with the promise of a meagre bonus or something. Just don't buy into any of that nonsense.
The other source of stress for a founder is the illusion of control. Just do what you can and keep shipping. It's a marathon. Be kind on yourself.
Re: Mental health in software engineering
#360"An example of uncertainty in business is when your CEO tells you they promised a feature to your biggest client and it needs to be built ASAP as highest priority, so all hands on deck. Then a day later they tell you another feature, completely contradictory to the first one, needs to be built as well and is also highest priority. When you tell them they both can't be highest priority, the answer is: make it happen."…
One of the strongest skills as a business facing developer is being able to say no.
And people tend to trust you for it since they admire your honesty. Often pretty rare in companies full of people sucking up for promotion.