Hacker News Reader

Comment by epups | Hacker News Reader

Let me ask you something honestly, where do you find your people? Is there really such a place that operates differently? I find myself in a very similar situation as the GP, but I agree with your sentiment, so I would prefer to taks your advice. In my experience, every work place has the exact same problems as they described. I just want to know whether there are indeed better options, and what to do to find them.

View on HN

As another note: there are times when you on the wave, part of something and there are good things happening. This only lasts so long. Again, applies in work and outside. Form your own view but be aware of cynicism (in others and yourself). This comes from broad experience of humanity. We are in the shit but there really are groups of incredible people that merged together, do amazing things. Find that.

You search. Through experience after experience you realize what are the values that are important to you and you need to be around those that share it (and also an organization that has quality values) It may mean you will move from job to job but work is not life. This also applies in many aspects too. We are tribes.

One option is to work at a place with longer development horizons and where the top priority isn't getting the latest feature into production by end of day Friday. Research institutes and R&D departments at huge companies (possibly even companies outside the software engineering sphere) for example operate very differently than companies/departments that directly ship software. Of course these places have other problems and they may not necessarily be 'better', but it is at least they are different problems in my experience, and personally I've found them preferable.

Getting into these I found pretty difficult for many reasons, and usually you take a significant pay cut.

Getting hired isn't that hard I've found, if you can show passion and interest for the area. The pay point is however correct. Although personally I've found the pay cut worth it in exchange for getting to work on genuinely interesting problems in a much more relaxed environment with a much better work-life balance. YMMV

Well if "much more relaxed" environment also fairly translates to less hours (to compensate for the less payment) then I'd be okay with it but I suspect it does not.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com