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jameshart

So his ‘downsides’ amount to:

1) you’ll learn more in the first six months than you learned in four years of college

2) you’ll be trusted to contribute to large complex important systems

3) you’ll be measured on your results

4) real ability will help you stand out and succeed

5) you’ll get to collaborate with loads of different people

6) your work will have direct business impact and visibility to senior management

7) you’ll spend most of your time solving hard puzzles

8) you’ll have tons of freedom to define your own path and role and find how to contribute

9) your work will be so compelling your mind will keep working on it after hours

10) the role balances technical and people skills and rewards those who can combine those aspects.

> Conclusion

> Software development is not a dream job.

Speak for yourself. I’m having a blast.

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Really good reframing and perspective. I think all this absolutely can be spot on. I have personally experienced this kind of work a few times in my career, and yeah, I agree that when I'm in one of these environments, it's almost certainly a better job than anything else anyone else I know is doing.

But I also think the ability to flip the script into this positive experience really does vary between organizations and even within organizations. And it's basically impossible to evaluate it accurately before taking the job and doing the first three to six months of work there. And then if you do conclude it's not a conducive environment to do great work in, it's easy to feel stuck, or to very reasonably feel like you might just go through the exact same thing at the next organization after putting a bunch of energy into getting unstuck.

I don't really have advice here I guess... I think there's a lot of luck involved.

I guess maybe my advice would be that I think this is one of the good reasons to start out at a "big tech" company if you can. They have all these difference that exist across companies, but they have them across teams or divisions within a single company, and it's both a bit easier to figure out what the good teams are, and a bit easier to switch teams than companies.

I think software development “is not a dream job” as people outside think it is.

Most of the time people think you get paid for sitting behind the screen. Which is also true and might be hard for some types of people on its own.

But a lot of people don’t want to be measured on results, don’t want to deal with learning new stuff on the job, having responsibility for something complex that might break at any time quite often for reasons totally not in their control.

I like my software dev job and I also would not switch but I can see how it is not a dream job.

> as people outside think it is.

> don’t want to deal with learning new stuff on the job

I think this might be the big one. A few years ago I got small window into someone going from no programming experience to getting a job (completely self-directed, not through school or a bootcamp) and he thought he had to learn everything before getting the job. I had to reassure him that no, that's really not how it works in tech - even if you could learn all of ___ right now, there's stuff continually being added so you'll have to keep learning anyway. Basically that typically you'd get the basics down then learn new stuff as you needed it.

His previous experience mostly came from a mix of skilled and unskilled laborer jobs, where even the skilled laborer ones you could learn everything in like 6 months and from there onwards it's just refining skill (as he described it, at least).

> But a lot of people don’t want to be measured on results, don’t want to deal with learning new stuff on the job, having responsibility for something complex that might break at any time quite often for reasons totally not in their control.

See the blog's paragraph on incompetent colleagues. :D :D

What is the measure for results though? Is your manager competent? Is your team leadership's golden boy or the black sheep?

I'm with you but it depends on the company - I was responsible to keep it running for the customers and my boss thought it's better to let me churn out useless work that he can bill instead of fixing the issues or simplify the process (at least internally). I even proposed that he can just bill the same or more hours for the customers for me but I need to automate that shit or I'll go insane. Didn't happen. As soon as I realized that I quit but I burned out pretty badly trying to make it work because I liked the team and the product. Be careful and watch out where you spend your energy and time.

You're having a blast because you have a great attitude towards your work and feel empowered. This isn't always true for everyone, particularly if you're in a situation where the organization around you isn't healthy.

I love software engineering too but being a "key contributor" golden handcuffed to an organization that's "optimizing costs" has made me appreciate why some people might not enjoy this line of work.

The thing about ‘jobs’ is they pretty much all involve working for companies.

So ‘dream jobs’ and ‘nightmare jobs’ alike are going to share all the downsides of that: clueless management, misaligned incentives, layoffs, etc.

But my point is, if you’re going to have to work for a company anyway, software engineering isn’t a bad profession to choose.

Additionally, if you decide you would rather work for yourself than put up with corporate life there are few jobs that pivot as easily into starting your own business or becoming a consultant.

You're just furthering my point that your good attitude is a major component of your success. I agree with you 100% and I'm always grateful I get to work in this career, bad parts and all.

For the record, you sound like exactly the kind of person I like working on my teams.

Might be an age thing. This is a positive spin, and I agree.

But the stress does eat away at health. It can be fun, but it is not 'comfortable'.

Maybe it is different if you are writing some mission critical code. It can be fun when you are dabbling with web sites, but not so fun if a bug will cause someone to die. So stress levels, and having a blast levels, can very a lot.

And thus the stress levels over time, can cause health problems.

An ‘age thing’?

Curious how old you think I would have to be to have this noncynical perspective.

Like, young enough to still be enjoying things. Sure, I felt the same way for first decade. This is all fun.

But later. Not old enough yet to have done 24x7 support for a few decades, sleepless nights, 80 hour weeks, working on Christmas Morning, to be ground down by angry and demanding users. ( no fault of their own because of their own turnover. ).

Lack of sleep and stress takes a toll on health. So 'age' becomes a factor, because the body gets ground down. Seems like the 'optimistic' takes remind me of just starting out.

But, it is probably more of which industry you are in. Results vary.

Flattered that I apparently come across as still in the full flush of youthful naïveté.

I’m 25 years in to my software development career and still finding joy.

eg video games sound like such fun to work on, but every report I've heard of from people who actually work in that industry make me run away screaming that I've never had a programming job in that sector.

> your work will be so compelling your mind will keep working on it after hours

Do you think for most people, fixing little bugs is very compelling, or do you think it could be that people are stressed and don't want to get fired.

I appreciate this positive spin on the list. There is usually a silver lining.

Indeed, reading these hard-to-swallow truths actually restored some excitement about being a dev for me!

Love this reframing.

Well said. I think misanthropy and pessimism are endemic with people who spend 14 hours a day talking to computers and don't have healthy social lives or many reasons to touch grass.

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