
Are other software engineering jobs more fun? - thedevil
I just completely changed careers to software, following my passion and gift for solving problems and writing code.<p>While I don&#x27;t regret the move, I&#x27;ve been a little disappointed.<p>Things get done so slowly at my job.  I feel like my natural talent and passion get wasted.  I also get to do very limited interesting work.  I&#x27;m not a fresh college grad - I&#x27;m used to the corporate world and expected some frustrations and I didn&#x27;t expect to always be doing something cool. But I was hoping for a little more excitement.<p>To make matters worse, the tools we use are excessively complex and clunky and in the short time I&#x27;ve been here, we&#x27;ve had several outages of our version control and issue tracking systems.<p>And a lesser, but still important point is that my talent will never mean much.  Being new means I&#x27;m not as fast as I&#x27;d like to be.  But half of my work is process so the best I can do is really a 2x improvement.<p>I wonder, is it just the company I work for?  Is it because we use Java or because we manage our processes so poorly?<p>Are other companies better?<p>Is consulting any better?<p>Edit: What about startups?  I have family obligations but I have substantial savings and can stomach some risk.
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kohanz
Consider taking the initiative to try and improve the processes and/or tools
that are causing you frustration. I realize that in some organizations this
will be prevented by too much bureaucracy, but in many (even big orgs) your
actions will improve your life and those of your co-workers and you'll find
such work rewarding (even if it's not necessarily coding). Remember, nobody
set out to create procedures just to slow people down or to sap the fun out of
your work. Unfortunately, many end up doing that or being perceived that way,
but they were created for a very valid reason. See if you can streamline
rather than avoid or be frustrated by them.

The other comment I have, unrelated to the above, is that your repeated
reference to "talent" is somewhat of a red flag to me. There is nothing wrong
with being confident in your skills, but often the idea of "talent" can be
conflated with ideas of "if only I didn't have all these procedures, I could
write code SO FAST", the consequences of which are generally the reason those
procedures exist today. Personally, there is a very small percentage of
developers that I have met over my career that I would call "talented" (< 5%)
and they would certainly never say it about themselves (and I don't consider
myself among them). Talent was in how they thought about solving problems
(that maximized quality and minimized work) rather than their ability to "bang
out" a solution really fast. The ones that openly refer to themselves as
"talented" are often personalities that need to be managed.

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thedevil
Thanks for the feedback, I'll definitely cut back on words like talent. I do
have a natural tendency to be arrogant (although I hide it better in person).

Sadly, I think the bureaucracy here will be tough to beat. I've already seen a
few people try to tackle bureaucratic issues and fail.

And I definitely see the value in testing, issue tracking, etc. and even some
of the tools I hate. The things that get me are the excessive meetings,
keeping in house (and regularly breaking) issue tracking and version control
rather than paying a few thousand to outsource, mediocre choice of frameworks
and tools, not firing completely unproductive (often senior) devs, etc.

Edit: Right now is a good example of my complaints: I've been told not to
start something without permission from the product manager or guidance from
the team lead because I'm new and might waste time on low priorities (which
sounds reasonable). But both of those people are in an unnecessary 90 minute
meeting (which they complained about but couldn't prevent). I would have asked
for backup work during planning this morning just in case this happened, but
our issue tracking system was down so the planning meeting was canceled (we
keep this on our servers to save a few dollars but end up costing ourselves
huge amounts of time with frequent downtime). I've gotten unhappy looks before
for admitting that have nothing to do or for trying to learn stuff not
immediately useful. So I'm staring at my computer screen trying to look busy
because that's my only idea that will keep everyone happy with me.

~~~
ChuckMcM

       > Sadly, I think the bureaucracy here will be tough 
       > to beat. I've already seen a few people try to 
       > tackle bureaucratic issues and fail.
    

They weren't you right? The point being that don't limit yourself to setting
goals that you are sure you can achieve, set goals that you have no idea how
you will achieve and work to get there. It is much more satisfying.

Bureaucracies have a weak point, self preservation. They will do almost
anything to protect their own existence, even change. So the trick to
"defeating" one is to put it into an existential crisis and use the
uncertainty to drive it into a better place. If you set it up as a game and
take notes, you may find it just as much fun as programming (but with people
rather than computers)

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icedchai
Sounds normal. You probably spend 40% of your time browsing the web right?
I've worked at a half dozen different companies, from small startups to large
mega corps. The only thing that makes it tolerable is changing jobs every 2-3
years to keep things fresh.

~~~
NumberCruncher
There are always more than two options:

[https://sivers.org/options](https://sivers.org/options)

~~~
icedchai
Nice article. And, yes, I am well aware.

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lujim
I switched careers into software development almost a decade ago. I have found
that

a) Yes. Much of the software development you will do in the plain vanilla
business world is not very analytical, interesting, or exciting. Many
companies are very slow moving and your ability to influence that is going to
be nil if you're just writing their software.

b) I have much less talent and passion than I thought I did when I started. :)

Don't let that deter you. Software development as a job is still better
(compensation, hours, opportunity to solve problems on a daily basis, ability
to find jobs) than virtually anything else out there.

~~~
omouse
>* Much of the software development you will do in the plain vanilla business
world is not very analytical, interesting, or exciting. Many companies are
very slow moving*

From what I've seen this is mostly because these companies are run by non-
technical people or technical people who lost their technical skills. They're
slow moving because they're conservative and scared.

> _your ability to influence that is going to be nil if you 're just writing
> their software._

This. Very much this. If you aren't into building larger systems and systems
thinking you're going to get commoditized and shoved into a pure developer
role with little influence.

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theaccordance
I bounced around 4 different companies after changing careers into software
development before I found my ideal match; don't be afraid to get back out
there and find something more satisfying.

~~~
thedevil
Thanks. That's encouraging.

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a15971
I regret to inform you that this is a normal situation. In economy, you have
to do what's useful for other people and not neccessarily what's fun.

Of course there are jobs at the intersection of those sets, but also there is
much competition for them. It's harder to find them and you might have to
accept lower pay for them.

You also mention "corporate world": larger teams impose their tax on
participants. "The Mythical Man-Month" book (by Frederick Brooks) says that
for a team of size n you have n(n−1)/2 possible communication paths between
participants, which means that the communication and coordination overhead
rises much faster than the team size. This accounts for half of your time
being taken by "process".

So small companies migth be more interesting, but also riskier (because small
companies are tipically start-ups which haven't yet confirmed the validity of
their business model). Of course there are exceptions, but on average this
also means you get paid less.

One case study for fun job is id Software at the beginning - the guys who
developed Doom, the first significant 1st person shooter game. In early
1990ties it was the most installed software on computers by one Microsoft
study (googling for details left as an exercise for the reader). The game was
technological breaktrough, something new, it had massive impact and was
financially successful. And you bet they had a lot of fun doing it.

Edit: corrected the group intercommunication formula

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thedevil
I'd like to know how to find jobs that do intersect between fun and pay. I'm
okay getting paid less, actually, as long as I can pay my bills. I took a 50%
pay cut to change to software engineering.

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onlyrealcuzzo
Never take a salary cut to work at a startup. Are you an angel investor? No.

There probably are better jobs. But unless you live in a major city, it will
probably be hard to find one. And even still, it's not exactly easy to get a
job at a good place to work. Everyone wants that job!

~~~
theaccordance
Taking a firm stance on salary cuts is bad advice.

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chrisbennet
If you want to work on interesting, challenging stuff, work for a small
company* that depends on software for their success. The last company I worked
for had 3 employees - all engineers.

* Not necessarily a startup, just a small company.

