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Comment by rplst8 | Hacker News Reader

Generally, this is an easy stance for young, unmarried, and otherwise unattached people to approach their career. A warning to those that think this will enhance their opportunities later in life. It won't. Sure there are a few great employers out there that will reward you with loyalty (or massive sums of money) but that is the exception.

After a life of nothing but work, no matter how much you love it at the time, you fill find yourself middle-aged and burnt out - and possibly regretting your entire career choice. This is coming from a person who was the class computer nerd, who ate, slept, and drank everything computer and software tech related for 25+ years.

I'm not saying tech is bad career choice - it isn't. But once you get burnt out at something, digging ditches out in the sunshine (or rain for that matter) looks much more appealing.

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I think the issue here is when people take that viewpoint as a career.

I code for a career.

I also code for a hobby. I code for fun. They're different. You can eat. sleep. code. repeat. without it being eat. sleep. work. repeat.

And you can mean it lightheartedly/halfheartedly as well. "Eat, sleep, game, repeat." can be the same thing.

Obviously taking it literally is unhealthy, but I don't think anyone is proposing people do that other than employers with an unhealthy obsession of getting as many possible hours out of their employees as they can.

I also feel that way; in the sense that to me at least in this point of my life coding doesn't really feel like work but rather something that is a hobby, a game and a way to create value for others and myself. I do have to make time to work out again though.

I don't know if you're young, obviously, but this is a young, or at least unattached, person's point of view. I taught myself to program in the 80's when I was in my early 20's. In my later 20's and through my early 30's I did it for fun and profit, often working on a project 14 or more hours a day. By the time I got into my early 40's I had a wife, three young children, a house, a couple of pets, etc. to go along with the job. Suddenly, or perhaps not so suddenly, there were a great many demands on my 18 hours per day of waking time. Unless you're different from most people this is how it will likely proceed with you as well. So one way of looking at this mantra is "we want young, unattached people who will throw themselves into their work and not coincidentally do it for less money than a middle-aged person with a family."

I was a gardener until I was 25. I hated it. My father is still a gardener and he loves it. I am 35 now an I eat sleep and live software and I love it. Although I do try to work on l my own projects in my own time. I have 2 young kids and admit I find the balance hard. If you love what you do then it often doesn't feel like work, but like a hobby that you also get paid for. You see this is sports and many other vocations not just software.

Were you a gardener, as in Master Gardener? I imagine that's a bit different of a job than a Landscaper or Yard Maintenance type of position. Having known lawn mowers/maintainers, and landscapers galore (most of whom hated their jobs), but only one Master Gardener (who loved their job), I gotta think they are very distinct positions.

25. I have a wife and kids whom I spend a lot of time with. Most of my free personal time is slacking off.

I often find myself wishing I had more time to collect my thoughts and program things I want to program. I don't have the time to do all the things I want to, while keeping a healthy balance in my life - and that's OK.

But I still connect with the mantra - because that's who I am as a person. I code. I think about coding. I enjoy coding.

I know what it feels like to have a lot of demands on your time when you're combining a family, a job and hobby projects. At one point something ends up always having to give, and typically it's the hobby projects.

I found this passage from the works of Thich Nhat Hanh very helpful to deal with that, YMMV.

“Then Allen said, “I’ve discovered a way to have a lot more time. In the past, I used to look at my time as if it were divided into several parts. One part I reserved for Joey, another part was for Sue, another part to help with Ana, another part for household work. The time left over I considered my own. I could read, write, do research, go for walks. But now I try not to divide time into parts anymore. I consider my time with Joey and Sue as my own time. When I help Joey with his homework, I try to find ways of seeing his time as my own time. I go through his lesson with him, sharing his presence and finding ways to be interested in what we do during that time. The time for him becomes my own time. The same with Sue. The remarkable thing is that now I have unlimited time for myself!”

The other phrases (like rave or game) is fun because it represent a dream as in wishing one could only do that. "Eat, sleep, code, repeat" is very much something you can do while working at Google or any other tech company. In fact you might even be, essentially, forced to do it during "crunch mode". It's not a dream, it's a nightmare.

I get that some marketing person thought it would be funny, but work/life balance is and should be a serious subject for developers. This is "real life shit" that decides what relationships you have with your friends, family and colleagues, where you end up living in the future, if you have kids, keep your health, are happy, don't die alone etc.

So is game to video game testers - often even worse off than our industry when it's crunch time - and far less respected.

It's about how you view it. View it as job and it sucks. View it as hobby, and it's fine.

Just like Gaming

I distinctly remember sitting in yet another dull sprint retrospective and thinking, "Boy, I wish I were a firefighter."

Granted, that line of work comes with its own drawbacks and I would certainly get bored of it the same way I get bored of software (or else worn out from the demanding physical aspect), but some days I'm surprised to find myself wishing I could "dig ditches out in the sunshine" or something of the sort for a living.

This combined with the "eat, sleep, code, repeat" mentality I see in others makes me wonder if I'm really cut out for a software development career.

I have had a literal ditch digging job, and I hated that even more. But I still find myself longing for such a thing. Maybe if I could just have 3-4 days per year? xD

My ideal would be a mix. One sprint of code. One sprint of building houses.

Buy a house. I love doing yard work on the weekends after 50+ hours of tech startup bombardment all week.

We call those "reminders."

You might something like Habitat for Humanity.

Do you know somebody with a garden? Or maybe there is a community garden nearby?

I second this. I find nothing more grounding after a caffeinated day of coding than pulling a beet out of the ground. Good food gardens (esp. permaculture ones) are fascinatingly complex systems that appeal to the engineering mindset, but involve neither 1) reading nor 2) looking at a screen.

I have a 30-hour-a week coding gig that is pretty easy stuff (enterprise integrations for WordPress plus a little Rails and a lot of "fix this CSS"). I spend the rest of the week playing music. It's a lot of moving boxes and equipment around and performing isn't super rigorous, but it's on your feet for 4 hours, and can be somewhat physical. I got a blister from a jazz gig on upright last night becasue I am out of practice.

I've had physical labor jobs (refinishing airliners, sanding gym floors, bussing tables), and playing music is about as physical of an occupation as I'd like.

IMO, 40 hours a week for a single thing is a bad job. I get plenty of work done in 30, I have a lower pay and live in the sticks, but I like it a lot.

> Maybe if I could just have 3-4 days per year?

Look for a company that offers VTO (volunteer time off). I worked for one that would organize a group volunteer event once per quarter and gave us a maximum of 8 individual days to volunteer per year. There's a ton of fun, physical volunteering opportunities. I've done habitat builds a few times and there are a bunch of parks in the Bay Area that are always willing to put volunteers to work on trail restoration, habitat restoration and other strenuous outdoor activities. One year I even combined all my VTO with a few days of PTO and volunteered in a national park for a couple weeks.

It might just be particular to here (Australia) but firefighter is actually a very highly sought after and difficult to obtain job.

It is in the States as well. I don't thing the OP was saying it was an easy job to do or get, just a totally different job that would be completely refreshing. I've felt that same feeling too.

Oh man, retros :(

That response sounds like it's something that should be discussed in the retro, :p

It probably depends on the city, but I've heard that since Firemen work in long shifts living at the station a good deal of them also run contracting businesses on their days off from the station. It was explained to me that this was usually construction, but I imagine there are more than a few Fireman-coders out there.

My father was a firefighter for 20+ years (retired a few years back, made it to Captain), and I almost regret not following in his footsteps. It'd be the perfect job for a freelance web developer. 24 hours on, 48 hours off, most of those 24 hours are sitting around the station, so I imagine I could code a good portion of those, not to mention on the other days off.

Plus great retirement.

Key takeaway - Don't do it for an employer.

Do it for you.

As a hobby, or as a business where you're rewarded for hours worked and quality of final product.

If you code for yourself as a business, it's generally horrifically stressful dealing with the money, marketing and contract side of things, all the while still having to churn out the code.

Very few people can do this successfully for long.

In that case keep it as a hobby. Just don't kill yourself for $15/hr when you're creating $1500/hour in value.

This where you learn to hire a CEO and let them run the business while you turn put the value. Team effort

I wouldn't wear this to "enhance my opportunities". I love coding, that's why I chose this career. Coding at home as a hobby is quite different from coding at work. I love both.

Why shouldn't I embrace my hobby and my job? Because somewhere some people might feel offended, like in this thread? I don't care. I had to giggle reading the shirt, I like that shirt, I wear that shirt. It's as simple as that.

I can relate. After doing this for over 15 years and many of those in the "Eat, sleep, code, repeat" mode, I sometimes lay in bed at night and imagine what it would be like being a gardener. I picture landscaping plans I would design and it feels like heaven being outside all day making those plans come to life.

But as they say, the grass is always greener on the other side.

“Eat, sleep, code, repeat” is a path to burnout but it's also path to freedom which may make it worth the cost.

Never before have the tools to turn ideas into code into money been so easily at our disposal.

So while coding for the love of coding may lead to dissatisfaction after X years, coding a service/business has a good upside if at the end of it you've turned an idea into something with a revenue stream.

That said, a path fraught with failure and an easier choice for those who are either young or have few responsibilities.

> But once you get burnt out at something, digging ditches out in the sunshine (or rain for that matter) looks much more appealing.

Spoken like a person that's never dug a ditch.

I've done both, and honestly if I could get paid 6 figures to work outside with my hands I'd probably switch back and forth between the 2 every 3-4 years. Sure manual labor is hard but it has some rewards to. Sadly one of those rewards is not a decent living.

> I've done both

Me too.

Even at its worst, the flexibility of a programming job outweighs everything else. I'd still rather set my own 60 hour schedule than have a set-in-stone 40 hour one.

> Sadly one of those rewards is not a decent living.

You must not know any plumbers, garbage haulers, streets employees, masons, finish carpenters, or electricians.

I have friends and family in each of those categories, and they all do well. They live better than every single one of my friends who graduated college with non-engineering degrees.

You can make a decent living with manual labor if you choose wisely, and most of that work will never disappear - people will always have toilets, for example.

That's all well and good but we were talking about ditch digging not being a skilled laborer. Of course a plumber or electrician can make good money, especially if they own their own business and manage it well. That is a far cry from operating a shovel though isn't it? You'll also notice I mentioned 6 figures specifically, and while I do know ONE plumber who makes that much, it is because he has a rather large multi-employee business and is more of a manager at this point than a plumber. The benefits I was talking about was the ability to sort of mindlessly put your muscles to work. You can do that with a shovel. Mindlessly working with electricity, water mains, or finishing touches on someones house is likely to at best get you fired and at worst get you injured fairly severely.

I don't know why anyone would do that for loyalty unless you were really sure about the people.

For monetary gain/prestige to retire earlier? Sure. Unless we get very unlucky with the tech industry in the next 20 years.

Digging ditches is great until you ruin your bones/joints.

Fuckin' A, man.

Go to war. You will have lot of experience and memories. It is easiest way to escape the cycle.

You'll also realize that civvies have it pretty easy and that you can put up with almost any amount of bullsh*t.

Can you translate to simple English, please? I cannot understand that.

'civvies' == 'civilian', as opposed to a soldier.

> You'll also realize that civvies have it pretty easy ??

> you can put up with almost any amount of bullsh*t.

It is not true. Good people are good, bad are bad, even at war. War just proves who is who.

Yep, thinking is changing from libertarian to utilitarian style, because you cannot help to all, and will need to chose what to protect, which lives to save, etc.

Maybe I wasn't clear in my comment. Being in the military is onerous, boring, soul sucking and awful. Being a civilian is much easier. Once you've been in such a crummy situation, nothing can faze you.

To anonymous cowards: I did not said to "participate in war" or "go to army". Every war has lot of victims, which need help, and lot of other tasks. Just go to war and you will see lot of places where you can help if you have money and free time. I am single and have 25+ years of experience in programming, and I was in same cycle as above. I participated in revolution in Ukraine, then I was volunteer at war. I also met volunteers from Italy, Azerbaijan, Canada, USA, Israel. I have true memories about that and it definitely changed my life.

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