Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Signs You’re in a Dead-End Job

thedailymuse.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 70 posts

Re: Signs You’re in a Dead-End Job

#61

Post by crpatino »

goodcanadian wrote: post #44
crpatino wrote: post #40

The title says it is about Dead End Jobs, but it is not. It is about People That Cannot Stay Put In a Damned Place. Look at this quote: > "Yes, unfortunately, even good jobs can be dead-end jobs—or positions with little to no room for advancement." This is the massive obsession our culture has developed around growth and progress. The whole premise of this article is that if you are not eager to make it big and shoot…

I agree with you to a point. I do think that society is obsessed over "growth" and "progress." If you are happy where you are, then stay. The trouble is that I am one of those people who feels a drive to keep "moving forward," whatever that means. I have had a job that was by most measures great, but after 5 years, I was still doing exactly the same thing. I was very good at it, and could do it in my sleep, but that…

I think there is a time for everything. Early in your life (professional or otherwise) the heuristic to grow/progress/move forward makes a lot of sense, because you have limited resources. So whatever are your goals, you are better off if you start moving ahead in a somewhat general direction as soon as possible.

But as you make progress, you hopefully gain experience and insight. You learn what it's like out there and what role you want to play in it. Otherwise, the world comes and tell you who you are and who you should be. At this stage, course correction and precision triumph over raw speed. There's a song I like a lot which says: "I don't know which goes faster, the mountain or the crab".

At the end of day, every life form starts with rapid growth. Some of those reach stability, others reach the carrying capacity of their environment.

Re: Signs You’re in a Dead-End Job

#62

Post by crpatino »

verisimilidude wrote: post #52
crpatino wrote: post #40

The title says it is about Dead End Jobs, but it is not. It is about People That Cannot Stay Put In a Damned Place. Look at this quote: > "Yes, unfortunately, even good jobs can be dead-end jobs—or positions with little to no room for advancement." This is the massive obsession our culture has developed around growth and progress. The whole premise of this article is that if you are not eager to make it big and shoot…

If you ever find yourself in a dead-end job that you love, you'll understand. In my case, I had to leave a position I really liked because it simply didn't pay a livable wage, with no raise or promotion in sight. Taking low pay to engage your passion is great when you're single, but the game changes once you get married and/or have kids. For me, leaving had nothing to do with the rat-race and everything to do with me…

I have found myself in that situation too, and I also decided to jump ships.

My original point was that it is a qualitatively different position to be stuck in a job that prevents you from reaching your goals (or even get a paycheck above poverty line), than to be "stuck" in a job that fails to challenge your intellectual curiosity.

Re: Signs You’re in a Dead-End Job

#63

Post by gohrt »

huherto wrote: post #35
ambiate wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was with my CIO the other day. He turned on his monitor and said 'look, is this what you want to really do?' Spreadsheets on time management, project management, and convincing his fellow Chiefs that he was on the right track. He had a damn good point. I love coding and math.

I have never understood why many companies have executive and managers doing administrative tasks. They should get administrative assistants tracking time, projects, resources, etc. It is a waste of their executive and technical talents. There are many great things that a CIO can do without having to spend a lot of their time tracking things.

The admins create the spreadsheets, the CxOs argue with each other about the spreadsheet contents.

Re: Signs You’re in a Dead-End Job

#64

Post by happy_dino »

jbooth wrote: post #39
yummyfajitas wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.scala-lang.org/

A lot of people (myself included) see Scala as being one step forward, two steps back. Some good features, and then a whole bunch of poorly thought out, wankerish features that can only serve to screw up your code base if some developer gets bored and makes the mistake of using them.

> and then a whole bunch of poorly thought out, wankerish features that can only serve to screw up your code base if some developer gets bored and makes the mistake of using them.

I'd love to see an example of that!

Re: Signs You’re in a Dead-End Job

#65

Post by dschiptsov »

mironathetin wrote: post #11
dschiptsov wrote: post #7

Oh, that's simple - you are 9-to-5 coder in a language which name begins with J or ends with #.

In what kind of mind distortion field are you living? I used to write code in Java and Jython for a big science project. Now I switched (avoid the word advanced) to a new big science project, where we use c, c++ and python. This is a nightmare compared to everything we did before. I always liked to work in Java, but I never realized how powerful it is compared to the other stuff. We as a team are close to switching l…

Here is a glimpse of that reality distortion field on this site: http://talks.golang.org/2013/oscon-dl.slide

And this very site itself is another reality distortion.

Re: Signs You’re in a Dead-End Job

#66

Post by chrisbennet »

_pmf_ wrote: post #53

It's kind of depressing to see that the current mindset seems to be to quit as soon as it gets a little difficult. I have gotten used to taking pride in the fact that I deliver only slightly shitty work under very shitty circumstances.

I think the attitude is more like "quit when it gets too easy".

Re: Signs You’re in a Dead-End Job

#67

Post by jbooth »

happy_dino wrote: post #64
jbooth wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people (myself included) see Scala as being one step forward, two steps back. Some good features, and then a whole bunch of poorly thought out, wankerish features that can only serve to screw up your code base if some developer gets bored and makes the mistake of using them.

> and then a whole bunch of poorly thought out, wankerish features that can only serve to screw up your code base if some developer gets bored and makes the mistake of using them. I'd love to see an example of that!

Sure, the crazy symbolic operator overloading and a bunch of libraries that encourage you do do things like a :=: b and have it mean something.

Also, there's something about the net sum of the type system where it feels like there are a lot of concepts at work and it's easy to get lots with what type something is, exactly, especially if you didn't write the code and you're just skimming it.

Re: Signs You’re in a Dead-End Job

#68

Post by mironathetin »

justinhj wrote: post #36
bowlofpetunias wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved into management not for career purposes (I could make more money being a programmer elsewhere than being a manager at my current employer), but because after 20+ years or programming I felt I was just repeating myself. There was no more challenge in it. I could still learn new tech, but I wasn't learning anything new about myself an my abilities. Even when it came to doing "new" stuff (which as you discover i…

That's a great reason to go into management. I also was in a position where I felt there was nothing else to learn as I could just build the same thing over and over. I moved into a different technical area instead.

justinhj, would you mind to tell what you did and what you do now? Did you prepare the move or was it painless to find a different position?

I also don't want a management position and plan a technological move. Are you happy with what you did?

Re: Signs You’re in a Dead-End Job

#69

Post by happy_dino »

jbooth wrote: post #67
happy_dino wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and then a whole bunch of poorly thought out, wankerish features that can only serve to screw up your code base if some developer gets bored and makes the mistake of using them. I'd love to see an example of that!

Sure, the crazy symbolic operator overloading and a bunch of libraries that encourage you do do things like a :=: b and have it mean something. Also, there's something about the net sum of the type system where it feels like there are a lot of concepts at work and it's easy to get lots with what type something is, exactly, especially if you didn't write the code and you're just skimming it.

Scala has neither operators nor operator overloading and I don't know any library which "encourages" doing those crazy things.

There are a few places where symbolic method names are used, and in pretty much every case, it is well-established prior art: +, -, *, /, etc for math operations, ! for sending actor messages (Erlang), &, | ,^ for bit operations (C and friends).

Regarding the type system ... well, the alternative is stuff like reflection and casting. Both introduce the possibility of runtime failures and make refactoring and reasoning a lot harder.

Sure, sometimes a well-placed I-assume-this-can-never-fail cast is exactly what one needs, but I'm happy that Scala gives developers another, safer option here.

Re: Signs You’re in a Dead-End Job

#70

Post by justinhj »

mironathetin wrote: post #68
justinhj wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great reason to go into management. I also was in a position where I felt there was nothing else to learn as I could just build the same thing over and over. I moved into a different technical area instead.

justinhj, would you mind to tell what you did and what you do now? Did you prepare the move or was it painless to find a different position? I also don't want a management position and plan a technological move. Are you happy with what you did?

I used to write animation, physics and AI code for video games. I got the point where I was just moving company to company and writing the same system. What I moved into was still video game related but server side. This way I had to learn a whole new set of skills and a new knowledge domain, which brought challenge back to the job. But in addition I had been changing as a person, and I fit in better with server guys and execs than game devs.
Post reply on HN