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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

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jedberg

It's funny you should ask this. When I started out, 30 years ago, here were the answers you'd get from most people:

> Am I supposed to want to code all the time?

Yes.

> When can I pursue hobbies,

Your hobby should be coding fun apps for yourself

> a social life, etc.

You social life should be hanging out with other engineers talking about engineering things.

And the most successful people I know basically did exactly that.

I'm not saying y'all should be doing that now, I'm just saying, that is in fact how it used to be.

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Not my experience at all. The very notable engineers I know didn't do their most notable work because of engineering or coding skills. Instead it was finding interesting problems and making a start or thinking a bit differently about something and doing something about it and being approachable and available all along that made a difference.

If all they did was code all the time, write code for fun and interacted mostly with other similar people, they probably wouldn't be the first choice for these projects.

That's not true at all.

The ones who ace their careers are for the most people that are fun, driven, or psychos, all social traits that make you good in a political game.

Spending lots of time with other socially awkward types talking about hard math problems or whatever will get you nowhere outside of some SF fantasy startup movie.

I'd say it's especially important for the more nerdy (myself included) to be more outgoing, and do other stuff like sales or presentations, design/marketing og workshops - that will make you exceptional because you then got the "whole package" and undestand the process and other people.

> And the most successful people I know basically did exactly that.

Well that depends heavily on how you define successful. Successful in life? I would tend to disagree, unless you believe that career is the only thing that counts. But even when career is concerned: the most successful people I know went on from being developer to some high end management role. The skills that brought them there definitely did not come from hanging out with other engineers talking about engineering things.

> You social life should be hanging out with other engineers talking about engineering things.

Fuck. That.

I worked at a faang, successful people weren't people that did engineering, it was people who did politics.

The most successful people were the ones that joined at the same time as the current VP.

Your hobbies need to be fun, to you. Not support your career. If its just there to support your career, its unpaid career development, not a hobby. Should people not code in their free time? thats not for me to decide. If they enjoy it, and its not hurting anyone, then be my guest.

Engineers are generally useless at understanding whats going on in the real world, they are also quite bad at communicating.

do. fun. things.

You just sound very angry your career isn't fun to you. I'm sorry.

I never worked “for fun”. My job for 30 years is just a means to support my addiction to food and shelter. I don’t hate my job especially my last 3 since 2020 when I started working remotely. But it is just something I do.

Yes, that's the answer that sounds utterly miserable. Spending 30 years toiling for a third of your day at something you don't like.

I'm sorry for you as well.

Out of all the things I consider “toiling” waking up, rolling out of bed, and walking over to the room next door is not one of them.

I’m more concerned that it is the highlight of someone’s life being in front of a computer all day.

Thats an odd assertion.

My career has been fun, thats why I still do the thing I'm doing. I've worked with the very best in their respective fields for ~20 years.

I have done many and varied fun things through work, and continue to do so.

But.

Work stops at contracted time. After that it's me time.

I love your last point. I asked this question because I used to be the person that would spend 4+ hours after work every day trying to keep up with new tech and working on side projects. But now, I've gotten into art and it's really changed my perspective on things like this. I've spent many hours doing, as you call it, unpaid career development instead of pursuing hobbies, building up my friendships, and in general just having fun. It feels like I've taken life so seriously and I don't have much to show for it.

I also started 30 years ago - mid 1996.

I did not do side projects. I really enjoyed most of my 20s as a single person. I was a part time fitness instructor, I dated, hung out with friends, did some traveling.

The other developers at my job also had plenty of outside hobbies.

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