50 karma · joined July 19, 2016
For one, it's boring, monotonous, and soul-sucking. Which might be manageable, except with commuting and such you're looking at 9 hours/day wasted, and the bulk of your mental energy drained. Add in cooking, errands, gym, showering, and decompression time, and you have very little productive free time to do anything else. (Most people are ok with this because they have little ambition outside their jobs)
Most software engineering jobs are boring and unfulfilling. Very few of us are actually working on groundbreaking, interesting stuff (eg. augmented reality, blockchain), and the harsh reality is that the more interesting the work - the worse the compensation and working conditions tend to be because everyone wants those jobs (see videogame industry). Most of us are doing menial work for for-profit businesses. Developers these days debate endlessly over programming languages and frameworks rather than the actual problems that are being solved because they're all working on the same boring shit.
Corporations are the worst because you're literally a cog in the machine and completely replaceable (unless you're a highly valued expert). I prefer startups because at least I feel more valuable, even if at the end of the day I'm still replaceable and my stock options are pathetically low. I hate the authoritarian, hierarchical power structure of companies though. Funny how we claim to value democracy and say "don't tread on me", yet the bulk of our lives are spent working under tyrannical power structures within companies.
Software engineering itself has become a commodity, and going forward this is only going to be more and more the case as every college graduate realizing that there are no good jobs in their major start flooding into the industry, driving down compensation and increasing employer demands. The interview process in this industry is downright obnoxious and absurd, and is a reflection of the oversupply of job seekers relative to jobs (contrary to tech industry propaganda, where Google only hires the top 2% based on esoteric algorithms trivia questions and then turns around and claims there's a developer shortage).
The whole "butt in seat" 10-5pm obsession is stupid and ridiculous. We're not manual laborers - productive mind work doesn't necessarily follow a 10-5pm schedule. If I can get all my work done by 2pm, why can't I just leave? (Sure there are a few companies that claim to allow that, but in my experience, perceptions tends to matter at these companies more than your actual contribution)
It's sad that labor had to fight so hard and literally shed blood for the 40 hour work week that we now take for granted, yet we're now so complacent that we put up with it or don't even realize that we're wage slaves.
If there's one thing I'd like to dedicate my life to, it's to ending wage slavery. I see universal basic income as the first step. (Sorry I kind of got carried away in this response)
I was burned out, not only from the work, but from spending my entire life following orders - from school to the workplace. So I quit my job after 5 months despite the fact that that's considered sacrilege, with maybe $13k in my bank account.
I spent the next 3 months pursuing nothing but my hobby at the time (music production). The first month was possibly the best month of my entire life. It was the first time I truly felt free - no homework, no stress of finding a job, no having to be in an office from 9:30-5:30 M-F.
Then I ran out of money, so I had to start applying for jobs again. Ended up getting a much better job (both pay-wise and quality-wise), so it worked out.
Now I'm burned out again and completely sick of working in this industry. The day-to-day work is boring as hell, and I couldn't care less about Javascript frameworks. I hate having to spend the bulk of my waking hours in the prison of an office.
But I continue working because I'm saving a lot of money every month. Currently have almost $100k in the bank. After this job, I'm going to take at least a good year off to do what I want to do, not what the labor markets force me to. I have a lot of passion in certain areas that I'm not able to devote full attention to due to work. I want to have a much greater positive impact on the world than being some menial code monkey working on proprietary software or a corporate Kool-Aid drinking cock sucker.
I've realized that I will never be happy in a traditional job. Being subservient and following orders is not in my nature.
Just started a remote job, so now nobody cares about my hours, just my results. Too early to say what the typical day is.