
I just don’t want to be a software developer anymore (2017) - croh
https://medium.com/@melissamcewen/i-just-dont-want-to-be-a-software-developer-anymore-a371422069a1
======
fuball63
One thing that the article doesn't touch on is how a passion for software
craftsmanship can be completely undermined by the recklessness of business
decisions.

I love the experience of writing and using rock solid programs, but in the
real world, there are deadlines to meet, flaky requirements, and tech debt.
For people in it for the money, it doesn't affect them. For people that
appreciated good software, it turns them into people just doing it for the
money, except it also affects them.

I always explain it like this: imagine you were a chef, that loved the
complexities of cooking; preparation, presentation, and recipe formulation.
You enjoy preparing food and experiencing food. With this passion, you're
forced to work in fast food, churning out meals as fast as the drive through
will take them.

"Well, you can always cook in your free time!"

~~~
Isinlor
This is how most chefs lives look like. They prepare the same meals from a
menu under time pressure years after years. Maybe it's not flipping burgers in
fast food, but there is little space for artisanship in the food industry. You
have to be really good to do more than prepare the same thing over and over
from a menu.

~~~
fuball63
This is true for brewers too. Beer is endlessly fascinating with the amount of
variables to tweak, but working in a brewery is a fairly routine process of
reading the recipe and executing then same steps over and over.

~~~
batarjal
At a brewery, or a restaurant for that matter, aren't you there to basically
recreate a product based on a recipe someone else formulated? The person
tasked with creating the recipe has the opportunity to practice artistry in
this scenario, but they, too, may be under business related pressure.

~~~
fuball63
You're right, even the recipe makers can't escape business pressure to make
undesirable products. With the hard seltzer craze going on (in the US at
least), a lot of brewers are starting to make it. They didn't get into brewing
to make hard seltzer, but they can't ignore the fact that they will sell well
and are cheap to produce.

------
mcv
I totally agree with her priorities. I too don't want to work on just one tiny
cog of a system where I don't know the big picture, so I try to avoid projects
that sound boring, and look for projects that sound interesting. I want to
keep that passion alive. Now I'm building interesting stuff and we're
responsible for the entire thing. In fact, many companies have moved to
fullstack devops roles, which is basically just new corporate speak for doing
the whole thing as well as deploying it.

> _" Coding for a couple of hours a day in your spare time isn’t the same as
> coding for 8+ hours a day. Over the past decade it has worn me down. I have
> regular painful migraines triggered by working long hours. I have the
> beginnings of arthritis in my neck. I’ve tried standing desks, balance board
> desks, treadmill desks, special diets, exercising more before and after
> work. "_

I don't spend 8 hours per day programming either. And I only work 4 days. No
single desk is ever going to solve your problems; you need regular change.
Pause, get some coffee, take a walk outside. It's great for clearing your head
and making a fresh start.

But I can imagine corporate culture matters a lot. If you're at a company that
expects you to spend 8 hours typing hard behind your desk, that's going to
suck. If your employer doesn't respect your work-life balance, that sucks.
Many Dutch companies do care about those things, but I can imagine that
countries like the US or Japan have a very different culture.

------
grecy
I went through exactly the same thing.

I love the coding aspect. I love using my brain, solving problems, working
with intelligent people. I can't handle sitting inside for 50 hours a week,
and I can't handle business politics and nonsense.

So I quit my Software Engineering job and took 2 years to drive from Alaska to
Argentina, having the time of my life. [1]

Then I worked for a bit again to save money, and quit again and just got back
from 3 years driving all the way around Africa. [2]

I've decided I want to be a travel writer and photographer, because it makes
me happy. I have way less money, but I'm happier than I've ever been. I have
written a couple of books about my adventures, and I write for a slew of
magazines now too.

Do what makes you happy.

[1] The Road Chose Me Volume 1 -
[https://amzn.to/2wkxceX](https://amzn.to/2wkxceX)

[2] 999 Days Around Africa -
[https://amzn.to/2H93IUH](https://amzn.to/2H93IUH)

~~~
wolfgke
> I love the coding aspect. I love using my brain, solving problems, working
> with intelligent people. I can't handle sitting inside for 50 hours a week,
> and I can't handle business politics and nonsense.

A wild consideration: Doesn't the fact that many companies "select" for people
who love solving hard problems (e.g. by using brainteaser coding problems in
the hiring process) cause this problem? This way, the company hires people who
prefer a very different kind of work than what they have to do in their job.

A further thought: How could a hiring process look like that selects for the
kind of work that one actually has to do?

~~~
Aeolun
> A further thought: How could a hiring process look like that selects for the
> kind of work that one actually has to do?

Hire anyone that walks in? Kick them out if they mention anything like
passion, only people motivated by money are accepted, but preferably as little
as possible.

------
jdmoreira
I agree with a lot of things in the article and I can relate to the author but
this quote really threw me off

>"some guy who does the same work as me is getting paid 20% more” (the author
being female)

Several times in my career I've found that other male developers (me being
male) that I considered not even good made 50% more than me. Sometimes I found
out that I made 50% more than other younger developers that I considered way
better than me. I understand that women are underpaid compared to men in
general but this specific situation can be explained by so much more than
sexism.

~~~
vonseel
I agree but it's difficult to make any comment on this sort of thing without
being misinterpreted and/or seen as minimizing women's equality and the right
to equal pay.

As far as the rest of her article, I agree with it and I'm a single, white,
straight male. Sure, I like coding, but at the end of the day _a job is a job_
and, in the words of the author herself, _I dream of a world where we all work
less._.

~~~
jdmoreira
I hope people don’t misunderstand my comment to mean that I want to live in a
world where women make less than men just because they are women. I certainly
don’t and yet that’s the world we live in.

On the other hand this particular example from the author is not a very good
one since we all know men make +/\- 20% from each other

~~~
vonseel
_men make + /\- 20% from each other_

It can go a lot more than 20%, and it doesn't always have to do with
bias/minorities/etc.

I think plenty of people just get paid less because they aren't strong
negotiators or don't know _how much_ they should be requesting. Sure, the
latest salary report they saw online said people are getting $150k for similar
jobs, but are they really getting $150k at XYZ company in your town, or are
those numbers inflated by liars/SF|NYC|LA roles? Those are the thoughts that
go through my head, at least, in addition to "Am I really worth that? They
would offer me X if I was worth X, right?".

------
vgoh1
This article makes me feel a little better about my life decisions. I started
programming at age 12, but as my major I chose mechanical engineering because
at the time, there was a lot of talk about the US software industry crashing
and it all going to India.

I'm not going to try to portray mechanical engineering as all roses - the pay
is a bit lower, and the chances of becoming a break-out rock start are much
lower (think of the capital investment needed to build your own business). But
the work weeks are a true 40 hours for at least 90% of weeks in most places,
the work is much more varied (office, shop, lab, travel), and mechanical
engineers with grey hair don't seem to have problems finding a job.

~~~
vonseel
_but as my major I chose mechanical engineering because at the time, there was
a lot of talk about the US software industry crashing and it all going to
India._

I was in college 07-11. When I later asked my dad "WTF why did I not study
CS?" he told me pretty much verbatim what you said... we thought it was going
to India. I wonder if you were a student around the same time period? In
retrospect, things quickly changed around 2012 coming out of the recession,
and I suspect the industry had been picking up steam for a while after a few
generations of iPhones and mobile gaining early traction.

------
esotericn
Ultimately I think it's difficult to find a job with the correct combination
of everything you want. I don't think this is unique to software development.

I've worked in places in London that I really enjoyed. Good colleagues, good
environment, tip top.

But then you're in a place with a hellish cost of living, and it's basically a
requirement to play office politics and earn $BIGNUM, else you'll be in a
pokey flat with a shit commute forever. And that can really eat in to
motivation - because suddenly your work is no longer about the craft, it's
about increasing your personal numbers.

I imagine the same to be true in SV/SF.

You can then have the other extreme, whereby perhaps you have a very low cost
of living, but there's 1 software company and you either work there or not.

Remote work can help to solve this, but there are a whole bunch of unsolved
social issues there.

A lot of the stuff I read on here about burnout I think isn't really linked to
the work itself. It's the whole environment - everything feeds in.

------
pts_
What's 1000x worse than working on small code fragments, is designing programs
by talking in meetings. Management types are drawn to it, not software geeks.

~~~
dboreham
"geeks"?

~~~
pts_
Well someone passionate about thinking and implementing instead of talking and
thinking loudly in a meeting room, and delegating the implementation to a low
paid and low regarded individual.

------
cerberusss
Reading this, I have the feeling she quit her career in programming because of
the long hours.

But why not look for a job with normal hours?

~~~
jacobwilliamroy
If she lives in the U.S. it can be difficult to find an employer who's willing
to cover the cost of living in exchange for labor. Sounds like she's stuck in
a positive feedback loop of medical expenses, and that makes it hard to be
picky about jobs.

~~~
martin_a
> Sounds like she's stuck in a positive feedback loop of medical expenses, and
> that makes it hard to be picky about jobs.

Just imagine the US would have some kind of system where your medical
condition does not force you to stick with the job that makes you ill. Wonder
if anyone has tested that before and it works. /sarcasm

In all honesty: I don't understand why the US is not having a public health
care system like Europe which stops stuff like this.

------
yitchelle
After reading this, I felt the she is painting all the industry that software
is applicable to with the same brush.

Software development as a discipline is applicable across many types of
industry (automotive, mobile, communications, aerospace, Internet, etc).

I wonder how much of her wanting to quit software development is due to the
industry that she is in.

~~~
andai
I've been wondering about this. I've heard that it can be preferable for
various reasons to work at a company that does something other than software
as its main thing.

------
theworld572
I agree with most of what she says about being a software dev, expect, for the
long hours - how many companies has she worked in? I have worked in 7
companies over the last few years (mostly as a contractor though a few were
permanent) and in not one of them had employees working more than 40 hours a
week.

------
rajman187
A sad story indeed, but I've never felt any of my work has been "Snow Crashy"
or monotonous or lacking the need for autonomy and creativity. I doubt it's
representative of the entire industry, and it's not even fair to treat the
industry as a monolith to begin with.

~~~
thiago_fm
most of people have jobs like she mentions, but they need money badly to live,
so they have no choice than to accept it.

~~~
jshield
Most of my male colleagues and myself included also hate the industry because
the pay sucks, the hours are long, you are expected to do impossible things in
impossible amounts of time, and we are so removed from the end users that it’s
hard to get an idea of the impact we are having on their day to day grind.

It may have something to do with the local scene as well, as I’m pretty
confident that not all workplaces are like that, it wasn’t at all like that
where I was before.

That being said I find anonymously contributing code to open source projects
rewarding enough to offset the daily grind.

------
kissgyorgy
I don't see this particular story as a problem with the industry itself, but
seems like a terrible employer to work for if you need to hide your pain. Good
companies don't push people this far, and even help employees when needed.
Some have even health-preserving programs.

------
mtw
Inst this more of a rant against corporate, big companies only offering desk
jobs? There are many other types of companies. Smaller ones with flexible
and/or remote work exist out there

~~~
lnsru
Finding right place to work is tricky. My experience in Germany: public
research organizations have funny salaries, but job might be very interesting
and fulfilling. Small owner led companies can be great with great conditions,
but can also be exactly opposite. Big companies pay best, it’s a good argument
to stay there at certain age.

------
elindbe2
IMO a lot of problems with our work culture come down to too many hours. If we
cut down full-time to mean 20 hours a week, I think a lot of the suffering
would disappear. Health conditions would be reduced, ennui from the
meaninglessness of tasks wouldn't seem as stark, balancing work and life would
be a breeze. It just seems so weird to me that employers are willing to pay me
$X for 40-50 hours a week but not $X/2 for 20-25.

------
Synaesthesia
I’d love to be a programmer but it seems that my job would likely consist of
some database programming or nuts and bolts of a internal corporate program.
Not exactly exciting or fulfilling work! Correct me if I’m wrong, I’m not in
the industry but that’s my impression. This blog kinda confirms my concerns.

~~~
dagw
The cool thing about being a programmer is that you can use it in basically
every field of endeavor out there. If you want to work with movies, you can
work with movies. Are you passionate about urban planning, ecology or
archaeology, there are lots of roles for programming in all those fields. Want
to be a journalist, lots of programming and data mining happening within
journalism these days.

There are basically two ways to approach a career as a programmer, one is to
see programming in itself as your passion and solving the programming problem
you're facing at any given moment as an ends in itself. The other is to see
programming as a force multiplier to give yourself 'super powers' for doing
the thing you actually care about.

~~~
zerogvt
That is a naive opinion IMHO. In all but the core SW roles you would merely be
a simple cog being told what to do. If for example you'd be coding for an
archaelogy department you would be the code monkey of the professor heads.
Even worse you would have to battle their ignorant views on SW. My guess is
that you'd hate playing that role and that you would run as fast as you could
back to a SW house doing fragmented work with people that at least understand
a bit of software.

At least that's my experience of venturing into a non-hardcore SW field
(health sector).

~~~
dagw
I've worked both ends of this 'spectrum' several times in my career and your
experience doesn't match mine at all. I've rarely had the problem of domain
experts treating me as a cog, and certainly not more so that in a 'normal' SW
house. If you come in humble, ask a lot of questions and listen to people
you'll quickly become a respected member of the team.

The important part is to understand, enjoy and respect the domain you are
working in. Then working with domain experts to use software to solve problems
you both care about can be both fun and rewarding. And

You are right that you will have to 'battle' their ignorant views of SW
development. But those battles are rarely hard to win if you're a bit
diplomatic, because people don't care to much. They might not have any version
control in place when you start and might not see the need for it, but I've
never experienced anyone forbidding me from using version control. Most of the
time they even come around to it as being pretty good idea.

------
hsbaut76
Work culture in the western world is broken.

We face so many issues because when it comes down to it, humans spend most of
their time in very cold, disconnected working environments that are designed
to break your soul and turn you into a drone.

I think what should be remembered is that swdev is a high demand job, and you
should have high demands and standards of yourself and your needs.

The author admits to hiding away her flaws as to not show weakness, this is
the wrong approach. Admit your weaknesses, be honest with yourself, your
colleagues and your boss. If they don't understand or reciprocate, tell them
to go get fucked.

Become a freelancer or consultant.

------
netfl0
There are good workplaces out there and you have to really seek them out!

------
stanski
It sounds like what she's discovered that 40+ hours a week sitting in a
cubicle is not the most physically or mentally fulfilling task to be had in
life.

Seems pretty straight-forward to me!

------
dctoedt
By no means should we ever stop trying to improve working conditions for all,
but we should also keep in mind that throughout history, most workers haven't
had the luxury of being able to feed their families by doing fun- or
personally-fulfilling work. At least we don't have to wrestle a heavy plow
behind a balky ox or mule for hours on end in hot, humid weather (to give just
one example).

------
writehappycode
If you don’t like most of the software development lifecycle and are not
willing to learn new strategies, you probably shouldn’t “write code” for a
living, and that’s ok. You are more than just a requirement to code
translator. Learn to grow a little task into something special. There is
always a way to make it better. Spend more time designing and less typing.
That’s my 2 cents

------
deaps
That did spiral quickly into a rant about women in the tech field.

But maybe all that ranting explains the lack of women in the field.

~~~
nkrisc
Can you elaborate please?

~~~
deaps
Maybe her concerns are shared amongst _a majority_ of her female peers - thus
leading to women either not wanting to join the field or leaving shortly after
entering it.

I mean men and women are different. We _tend_ to excel at different things,
have different thought processes, process things differently, different
strengths and weaknesses (generally, right? - there is obviously overlap).

Maybe her complaints help explain the lack of women in the field.

~~~
nkrisc
> We tend to excel at different things, have different thought processes,
> process things differently, different strengths and weaknesses (generally,
> right? - there is obviously overlap).

This could also be said of all individuals, sex aside.

Either way, I don't buy it. Nurses tend to mostly be women and yet the job is
far harder than any software development job. It's more grueling hours,
physically demanding, and mentally challenging. I think it's absurd to suggest
that women as a whole can't handle the hours and demands of software
development.

~~~
dqv
But being a nurse is more _social_ than software is. And that aligns with what
we know about the differences between where women tend to excel and where men
tend to excel.[1]

And of course you can then argue that parts of software are more social and my
argument would be that there are more women in those parts of software.

[1] [https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rabble-
rouser/201707...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rabble-
rouser/201707/why-brilliant-girls-tend-favor-non-stem-careers)

------
vonseel
Is it common for people under ~35 to have so much back pain and medical
issues? I thought back pain in young people is usually related to something
like a bad injury.

I get back pain when I'm working at the desk _a lot_ , but that's at the end
of 14+ hour days sitting around with minimal movement.

------
martin_a
If she earns 20% less, she probably just negotiated not that good. Not
everything is some structural problem.

~~~
kakwa_
Well... the pay gap between men and women is a well documented structural
problem.

You see it both relatively (equal competence, seniority and position) and
absolutely across the whole work force (women tend to have an harder time
getting top positions).

The statistics may vary from country to country, but just as an example here
in France, the overall gap is at ~25% while the gap even when considering
equal positions and responsibilities is at ~12%.

~~~
martin_a
For Germany it's something like 22% with "uncleaned" data and somewhat like 6%
(some statisticians even calculate it as low as 2%) for cleaned data.
According to Wikipedia [0] the US seems to have something like 6-7%, too for
cleaned data.

Based on that her 30% sound like real bad negotiation and not asking for a
raise regularly. But the article lacks detail information on this. Also,
nobody knows that, maybe she is just not very good at her job and did not get
a raise for that reason.

She also only changed her job once since college, too. While her medical
condition might make it harder to change jobs, I wonder how long this
condition exists and whether this always was the reason not to look for a
better paying job.

All in all: Lots of reasons why she earns not as much as her colleagues, but
probably no structural reasons.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap_in_the_United_S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap_in_the_United_States)

------
JSavageReal
> But for a long time I pretended it was fun. That I loved it. Because there
> is a lot of social pressure to portray yourself that way in the industry.
> People hiring you will run the other way as soon as they see a crack in that
> facade.

Yes, having to put up this facade is one of my least favorite things about
this industry. It's all a load of bullsh*t, I'm only in my technical area
because there are jobs and money - if money weren't an issue I'd be working on
my own FOSS projects that are way more interesting and meaningful to me.

> Because it’s not really “passion” they are looking for, but people who are
> merely willing to endure long hours. They aren’t really looking for the
> person who spends a few hours on the weekend on an open-source project, they
> are looking for the person who comes home from work and spends all night on
> it.

Yup, it's a tough pill to swallow when one realizes the exploitative nature of
wage labor, and the lie we've been fed our whole lives about employers being
benevolent and treating employees like family. The reality is sociopathic
managers who won't hesitate to stab you in the back to cover their asses
and/or get that promotion.

> It’s really hard to celebrate “women’s day” with free feminist speakers when
> I just found out some guy who does the same work as me is getting paid 20%
> more.

I agree with most of the sentiment of the article so I don't want to be
arguing here, but getting underpaid isn't an issue exclusive to women. Just
because you're underpaid doesn't mean that it's because of your gender.

Ultimately, this article is the perspective of a wage laborer waking up to the
bullshit of the system, and the meaninglessness of 8 hours/day of mandated
"ass in seat" time doing boring work for a boss and having to put a smile on
your face and pretend like it's your passion.

Everything she writes, all of us but the most brainwashed lemmings already
know, but we're not allowed to say it for fear of being blacklisted from the
industry. I appreciate her having the courage to speak out what everyone
secretly wants to say, and wish her success in her new endeavors.

------
durnygbur
> It’s really hard to celebrate “women’s day” with free feminist speakers when
> I just found out some guy who does the same work as me is getting paid 20%
> more.

Please stop this. STOP. If "a man" is paid 20% less, they're expected to
change job and ask 20% more at the new one. This is what is expected of "men".

~~~
human20190310
There's so little transparency as to what employees get paid that "outsiders",
i.e. those who don't have an informal network of pals providing them
confidential salary information on-the-side, don't have a way to determine
what numbers to shoot for.

Someone well-connected would have avoided the company with the salary
discrepancy before they accepted a job; those less well-connected incur the
costly overhead of a job search when they finally find out the real deal.

~~~
Invictus0
> There's so little transparency as to what employees get paid that
> "outsiders", i.e. those who don't have an informal network of pals providing
> them confidential salary information on-the-side, don't have a way to
> determine what numbers to shoot for.

Glassdoor? levels.fyi? Why would anyone need a "network of pals" to get
average salary information? Who even cares what the average is? Just shoot for
whatever number you want and then stop comparing yourself to everyone else.

------
draw_down
I'll agree that the job is not fun, but it's still a decent job overall I
think. I have definitely been miserable at many points, on the other hand. The
real problem is that a lot of other jobs seem worse, not that coding is so
great. I definitely do not have any sort of passion for it, that left long
ago. Just a job.

------
rvz
The OP needs to place (2017) in the title.

> I still love coding, but I hate this industry

This essentially can be summarised by only doing software development as a
hobby rather than as a profession. But again, this industry isn't for
everyone.

While its always unfortunate that people who once enter this industry have now
quit due to the 'long hours', 'deadlines' or 'burnout', perhaps they should
have looked twice at the job requirements or questioned the number of hours
before applying in the first place, rather than finding out the hard way.

This industry is unforgiving for those who cannot handle it or have no passion
in the trade and only do it for the money. If you think a job as a SWE or a
SDET is 'bad', wait until you go for a software engineering interview at a
FAANG or FTSE 100 company.

If this sounds too 'hard' I have heard many vacancies for easier roles in the
circus though who are willing to hire what they call 'clowns' and 'idiots'...

~~~
precisioncoder
Do you have any idea how hard it can be to get a job in any decent circus?
Most of them require decades of training and education and pay less than most
manual labour jobs. Honestly working as a software developer (which I do)
required far less investment of time and money then circus. (Where I am now a
Partner Acrobatics trainer)

~~~
wslh
Clearly accepted Cirque du Soleil performers are scarcer than Google
developers. This can also be applied to top performers in classical music as
well.

~~~
precisioncoder
The thing that shocked me is it isn't just the best. Even the worst usually
have massive amounts of time and effort invested and the pay is normally
awful. It's the hobby effect, similar to art and music, however the top
performers make vastly less. Cirque du Soleil performers who are some of the
best in the world still mostly make < 100k/year.

