
The Pyramid of Software Developer Job Satisfaction - colinbartlett
https://nimbleindustries.io/2018/05/26/pyramid-of-software-developer-job-satisfaction/
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Scalanchilis
Although this may very well explain the author's major motivations and source
of job satisfaction, can two categories really explain software developer job
satisfaction for everyone?

It makes sense that someone would be more satisfied working on their own ideas
than someone else's. The problems being solved are more personally relevant,
and they have more control over the execution, for better or worse. The
business end of things may be why proportionally few developers go this route.

In this article, an idea or project's success seems to be equated with its
profitability and applies to business ventures in general. What about other
measures of success: meeting performance and reliability requirements, being
widely used, fixing some societal ill, or scratching the itch of curiosity?

How the idea is executed too may greatly affect job satisfaction. Many
developers prefer working on greenfield projects over maintaining legacy
systems. What is the pace of work like? The quality of the coworkers?

There are numerous variables at play.

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iforgotpassword
Yeah that's black and white. I'm currently working on a product that's 100%
someone else's idea, but I'm pretty much in charge of everything, so design
decisions, architecture, roadmap etc. are pretty much all my ideas, which I
feel should definitely be higher up in that pyramid.

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Buttons840
As a though experiment, consider the ratio of ideas you can or cannot pursue?
You're thinking of lots of ideas, in order to implement someone else higher
level idea. It sounds like you get to pursue all your ideas. Sounds
satisfying.

Now consider a developer who is constantly told "sounds good, but that's not
our priority right now", "no", "we'll maybe get to that later", etc. They
don't get to pursue any of their own ideas. Sounds very dissatisfying.

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kabes
I would put 'my own idea, miserable failure' under 'someone else's idea, huge
success'.

And it's not all black and white. You can build a product for someone else and
still have a lot of say in the product. Maybe a feeling of ownership is good
enough.

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wernsey
Agreed.

I'm currently working on someone else's idea but all the technical decisions
are up to me.

There is a nice trade-off in that I don't have to worry about negotiating with
customers and other aspects of a project that don't interest me.

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sonnyblarney
"The hierarchy of satisfying jobs for me, and I suspect for legions of
creative, entrepreneurial software developer everywhere looks something like
this:"

Is this Scientific?

When you take into consideration, risk, stress, anxiety, loss of direct
revenues, loss of freebies, loss of nice brand on your resume etc?

I think we all want to work on something _we_ find passionate, but there's
also something about working on a team of people that _other_ people, i.e.
_customers_ find valuable.

Would be nice to see some data points because this is incredibly interesting.

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jkoudys
This is a good concept for anyone who has to manage people. I don't think it
only applies to a binary split between 100% ownership and none. Letting
developers guide the project to some degree, instead of slogging through
sprint after sprint based purely on sales team goals, will get you a happier
team and hopefully higher quality product.

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jhiesey
Is the site down? I get an infinite redirect loop.

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genericid
archive.org has a copy.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20180718181856/https://nimbleindu...](http://web.archive.org/web/20180718181856/https://nimbleindustries.io/2018/05/26/pyramid-
of-software-developer-job-satisfaction/)

~~~
alibby45
Sorry about this. I'm a nimble teammate and I'm seeing the same thing. It's
due to our CDN. Please hang in there we're working on it!.

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alibby45
I think we've got it sorted, thanks for the patience and feedback.

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Aaargh20318
Still doesn’t work here.

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0x262d
this is pretty close to understanding a marxist criticism of the alienation of
people from the fruits of their labor under capitalism - which most people
can’t opt out of

