
Ask HN: Software Developers – Do you like your job? - allfou
On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your happiness level at work? 1=horrible and 10=awesome.<p>How would you explain your level in one&#x2F;two sentences max?
======
PedroBatista
5

Early 30s, spending days staring at computer screens is a nice way to waste
your life, the whole RoR to Node.js to Go and React hype cycle made me realize
I'm too old for this shit.

Finding a job where I'm above of all that madness would be great but middle
management is even worse and it's not in me. Maybe self-sufficiency farming
would be a better route.

Also, when you have a mostly physical demanding job, you can easily socialize
with your friends afterwards, with dev work you're brain dead by the end of
the day.

~~~
grx
> Maybe self-sufficiency farming would be a better route.

Wow, are you me? When people ask me if I feel like programming is what I want
to do the rest of my life I often reply with "No, I think one day I'll just
drop it all and move on the country side". Nice to know I am not the only one
:)

~~~
Isamu
I grew up on a farm, and that's why I'm a programmer! (I kid! Actually it was
the summers working construction that drove me to programming.)

Farming is not such fun, but rural living is pretty cool.

~~~
marktangotango
As a former poor rural farm kid myself, I recommend raising your family
before, or have enough in reserve so they don't have to go without. Also go
through a winter with heat from wood you cut yourself. That's a good indicator
if the life is for you or not :)

~~~
punchingpeople
Former poor rural farm kid here as well. I have to admit I wouldn't go back to
the corn fields, corn harvesting is hard and painful (sharp leaves). But
working with the animals is something I always miss, waking up early enough to
see the sunrise on the fields, the smell of fresh manure...

------
Jemaclus
Director of Engineering, 12 years professional experience.

Tech side: 10. I love programming, I love the language and framework we use,
and I love having the ability to make the decisions we need to make without
too much interference from above. I'm able to give back to the community in my
spare time, which is great.

Product side: 6ish. The problem space isn't particularly fascinating, but some
of the issues we run into I can get pretty fired up about. All in all, I'd
rather work on my own projects than my company projects, but them's the
breaks.

Office: 8. We're a 100% remote company. The flexibility is incredible and all
my friends are jealous, but the main downside is that I've learned that I'm a
fairly social creature, and I get really, really lonely working from home all
the time. I got a new puppy a month ago, which seems to make things better.
We'll see how it goes from here on out.

~~~
grx
> I love the language and framework we use

And what's that if you don't mind me asking?

Also,

> and I get really, really lonely working from home all the time.

look up co-working spaces in your area! If you find a good one with private
booths you might be able to stay productive but also have the benefit of
having people to chat with if you want to. (and a good mix of startup people
with seniors also does not hurt I guess..)

------
marktangotango
It ebbs and flows. Currently about an 8. Some places and projects have been
hardly bearable, others have been great. Right now I'm leading a project to
modernize an old Internet explorer 6 app. This thing has all the MS specific
stuff; activex controls, dhtml behaviors, .htc files, I couldn't be happier. I
never worked with that stuff so it's all new to me. No one in the org thinks
it can be done, bring it on, I say!

------
xabotage
5 I get the feeling that every job requires me to exaggerate how passionate I
am about what I'm doing and how strongly I believe in the company's "mission"
(I missed several job opportunities before I learned how this game is played).
The truth is I would rather work to live than live to work, but I still want
to learn and grow where I do work (i.e. work at an innovative company with
smart people). Are these mutually exclusive?

My current company is good, but I have no idea what I'll do when I realize I
can't pretend I like what I do anymore and quit or get fired.

------
AncoraImparo
1 - I hate my life. Plan is to get the money together to start a non tech
business. Tech is boring these days.

~~~
grx
What's your alternative? Do you already have a plan for this new business?

~~~
AncoraImparo
Yep. Work hard for 5 more years, go back to my home country and open a café
where I can meet people who are less predictable than the people I am
surrounded by in tech. I am studying as much as I can in my free time on the
topic of coffee, and my counterpart involved is doing the same regarding
cuisine :)

------
aoeu345
6

I'm a junior, so my dev work is very mentally draining. However I am well
supported and respected by all.

~~~
akulbe
What kind of dev work are you doing? What languages/frameworks?

~~~
aoeu345
The usual suspects, ROR and JS/react. It's great fun.

------
a-real-dinosaur
4

Part of it is golden handcuffs, okay income, okay workload. Everything is
fine.

Fine isn't interesting though.

~~~
PhilipA
Seems like you might just be bored with your current work - perhaps a change
of scenery might help?

------
Fonzarelli
6 - I quit my $80K job over a year ago, haven't been looking since. I enjoy
web dev, but I can't find a good company to work for. Mostly due to
unqualified mgmt and avg. devs who think they are rockstars.

------
slyzmud
4 - Semi-senior. I love programming, but sadly at my work is hard to do a good
job. Management is always requiring fast solutions, doing meetings frequently
and expecting to use JIRA as if it was the solution for every problem.

Keeping that aside, I am working with node, React and Redux because my boss
loves those new things. It is really annoying to use technologies that don't
last a few months and break in every minor update.

------
jacobwg
Currently an 8.

Worked at an 8 or 9 a few years ago, architecting large parts of a startup's
backend and really enjoyed the creative freedom. Then changed jobs and hopped
on the new technology hype train and burned myself out down to probably a 2 or
3. As other people are mentioning, that can be a quick way to kill happiness.
I'm all for learning new things, but in balance with productive, creative
work, not as my primary job.

Just recently changed jobs and the new company has gone above and beyond to
make me feel welcome, which _really_ contributes to job happiness. And it's a
better blend of established and newer tech, so less turmoil.

For context, I'm a senior web engineer.

------
_tulpa
1

OK company but underpaid, pretty good team, and the technical bits are really
interesting.

The project is a 10 year boondoggle (still dogglin' strong), I've been here
for four and there's been basically no progress since my first year when the
only good manager left and nobody else would sign off on anything big enough
to actually make a difference. It's incredibly frustrating to spend so much
time and energy to go nowhere.

Also the team is distributed over four locations, we work weird hours because
of the nature of the project, and we travel reasonably often but flexible
hours or working from home are disallowed "to make management easier".

T minus three weeks till I'm out.

------
mythrwy
8.36233828377721

The explanation is that I haven't figured when to use the rounding function.

But seriously, I love what I do. Hope I can keep doing it forever.

------
enzolovesbacon
5, being an employee

I'm in my late 20's, working for the same company for the past 5 years (worked
on 3-5 projects in total, though), C, C++, Qt, VTK, ITK... it's very
interesting and also my preferred stack to work with, I also learn(ed) a lot
here, so no complains. But currently I'm bored and also the financial
situation on the company isn't helping. So yeah... 5.

10, starting my own business

After my 9-5 work and at weekends, I work on my own company (mobile security
consulting). I'm full steam on this because everything non-technical is new to
me, and I'm very excited to see where this is going.

------
bluedevil2k
9 - I tend to love the first 95% of each project, where you are flying through
code, learning new things, seeing nothing become a polished product. The last
5%, the obscure bug fixes, the silly "features" that the client wants added
that don't add anything tends to get boring.

------
sigi45
I enjoy writing code somehow but i think the big issue is, that as a software
engineere you don't have the feeling that it is a proper job (at least for
me).

What i'm doing, i enjoy enough, i have somewhat enough freedom but often
enough you bump into your cage wall out of glass. Than you realize, that what
you are doing is just a job and the only reason you are doing it, is because
of the money.

Of course you could have a job in a factory with low wage, standing and
working all day long instead of having a high payed job sitting in front of a
computer and doing what you enjoy doing somehow.

But after all it is a job. It is a non fulfilling thing. Something to spend
your time with, something the society approved of and appreciated it enough
thru good money.

But one day you realize that and still go to work because why would you write
code all day long for some software which doesn't solve a problem?

And with problem i mean something meaningful. But it doesn't help. Our society
could be perfect but it doesn't want to be and you only look at it from a
distance while walking home from your job and feeling more or less entertained
from what you did 8-10 hours long.

I don't hate my job, its easy enough, enjoyable enough but that is basically
it. And that is with all whats happening in a lifetime anyway.

------
malux85
10

Early 30s. I love deep learning. Every day I'm challenged by my work, and
inspired by the papers I read.

I love helping people bring this tech into their business, and making sure
real problems get solved

The only thing that would change if I won the lottery would be I would have a
larger GPU cluster

------
morgante
10

I'm the founder of my own startup. I love being able to work on interesting
technical challenges while solving tangible problems for companies.

~~~
grx
Are you the developer in the founder team or are you also filling the role for
CEO and the like?

~~~
morgante
I'm the CEO. Everyone working on it is a developer.

~~~
smarinov
In my experience, this is usually the best way to go for a tech company.

------
grigjd3
4 - I get projects where I spend two or three months getting something really
noteworthy accomplished only to see my efforts wasted as leadership changes
their minds on what they want. My most important contributions lately have
been ways to reduce long term maintenance, which is fine, but I have the
leadership's attention and they don't seem to care about that stuff.

------
mgolawala
9

Mid 30s, Senior, Independent consultant, Generalist. Take on projects I find
fun. Took 1 point off simply because income isn't steady and predictable.

------
raisedadead
Have two jobs, CAD and 3D R&D by Day, Open Source (maintainer) by Night. Love
both. Happiness level: Day = 9, Night = 10. The work environment in R&D is
pretty much cool, co-workers are awesome, pay is not way too great by works
for me for now. And the Open Source work is what brings me peace. So yeah I f
__*ing love my jobs! Thanks for asking BTW.

------
nicolashahn
8

Working at a ~20 person startup. Paid a little more than my market value, very
flexible work-from-home/time off to do errands, unlimited PTO, interesting and
intelligent coworkers, very little bureaucratic BS, nice boss that I'm
learning a lot from, 15 minute motorcycle ride from home in a city I love (San
Francisco), and I'm working on a product I genuinely believe can make a huge
impact in our industry. 2 points off because I wish there were more people in
the office, it feels lonely at times. And while my boss the CTO is extremely
smart and hard working, we're all in somewhat uncharted territory as far as
our code base which he inherited from a less skilled CTO, as well as there not
being much devops talent on our team.

Full disclosure: I'm only 24 and have been working as an engineer for only a
year, so I'm not as jaded as a lot of people here seem.

------
stinos
8

Senior level, parttime independent. I'd give a 10 because when not working for
a couple of weeks I really start to miss programming, but -2 because working
with other developers and working with users is not always sunshine&happiness
and because I mostly like to do lower level detailed stuff, debugging nasty
stuff, ... but I cannot do that all of the time.

------
lj3
5\. Senior Dev. 15 years of experience in web dev.

Most of what I do is pumping out new features and tracking down and fixing
bugs that never should have been there in the first place. As a domain, Web
Development just isn't hard enough to challenge me anymore. My focus for the
last 5 years has been figuring out ways to increase new feature throughput on
whatever the latest framework is. That's largely because that's what my
employer has valued.

I had a brief stint (3 years) in video game development as well. I find the
problems in game dev to be challenging, but I also like personal time and
sleep, so I went back to web dev.

I'm working on a few more ambitious side projects that aren't related to web
dev and have me excited, but I don't have enough experience with it to jump
fields. Also, it's slow going because I can only sit in a chair for so many
hours a day and paid work takes priority.

------
madmax108
8

I work at a mid-sized startup operating in the eCommerce space. We're well
funded (Series D, recently acquired another company) and have lots of clients
so it's a good place to be at. Honestly, since we got bigger, I miss the joys
of being able to code more engg driven features, and actually innovate, as
opposed to be driven by what the clients want ( _which are usually fancier
dashboards or more reliability_ ).

But being at a good work place at a stable time means I have time to take it
easy at work and actually work on stuff that I'm more passionate about outside
of work while not having to worry about financial stability.Currently doing a
deep dive on Deep learning/LSTMs etc., reading like crazy, planning travel as
well.

I have good work-life balance, and I'm making sure I grow as an
individual/developer while also contributing to the company so I'm in a pretty
good place! :)

------
morinted
7\. I do love what I do, but I think a few things would push me over into
ideal territory:

\- A high pay

\- Working with open source

\- Option to work less: either 4 day weeks or <8 hour days

The only downside to always working with my brain is that I get less enjoyment
out of puzzle games and critical thinking in my free time. I'd rather have it
this way than the other way around, though.

------
tbrownaw
8

I have coworkers and a boss I like, a (mostly informal) project that I own,
and usually get asked rather than told if there's another project someone
wants to borrow me for.

OTOH anything relating to HR borders on the kafkaesque, and the processes
around any project that's formal enough to be "on the radar" are almost as
bad.

------
foobazzy
6 While I respect the fact that the overall critical thinking bar is high, I
absolutely hate the fact that most of us have a hobby/timepass activity that
involves coding. I think we should work on hobbies that are less brainy and
more physically challenging(I'm thinking general fitness here).

------
sagivo
tech 8 - working on cool things

office 4 - open office is the worst thing ever invented

people 7 - mostly good people, few bad

general happiness 6 - i need to stop working for others and choose my own path

------
jotato
Programming/Tech: 9. I really enjoy working in the field. My dissatisfaction
comes from

Employment: 5. I am in consulting...I don't think it is for me. My opinion is
often ignored. I don't get to explore what I want, and am often considered
"staff aug". I have nearly a decade in start-ups. I miss that.

I think my next gig will be a remote one - start-up or not. I was on a
contract where I was able to work remote for a year. It was the best schedule
for me. Being able to eat lunch with my family, start/finish early, __no
traffic __. It was great.

Did I mention there was no traffic! :)

------
lando2319
10 - working independently I take on clients I want, work when and where I
want. Freedom is fun.

------
voycey
9

Would be a solid 10 as I love the actual work I do but being so busy at the
moment means I am basically sat on my ass 12 hours a day - one of the
downsides of working at home is not even getting your "Morning stroll to work"
\- not great for the waistline!

~~~
akulbe
You might want to consider investing in a treadmill desk.

This is a picture of my office setup. I did it this way, so I could alternate
between sitting and walking. It's the best!

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/089qqvaa7j5ob77/office_setup.jpg?d...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/089qqvaa7j5ob77/office_setup.jpg?dl=0)

~~~
voycey
I have honestly looked at all of these but I really dont think you can get any
meaningful "brain work" done on these, maybe others can - I just definitely
can't!

------
aroc
10\. Technology is incredibly interesting. But I base my number off the fact
that I'm always pretty involved in product/growth/strategy at companies where
I do software engineering and I'm 90% of the time working on an interesting
side project. I swap back and forth between working for a company (always a
10-50 person startup) and working on my own company. I think to truly get the
most out of engineering positions, you want to be really involved in the
crafting of the overall solution to the problem, rather than being told
precisely what it is and then immediately starting on the engineering work
that needs to meet a handed over "spec".

------
punchingpeople
1

Already working on making an small goat cheese operation. Goats are amazingly
cost efficient and reliable.

To all the other jaded developers: I intend to create an small haven of
freedom, but need smart people to do it. Something self-organized, self-
sustainable and anarchic.

Who is up for it?

~~~
ld00d
do you have a ping pong table?

------
bas_ta
8 - I'm a junior developer working mostly with Angular.js and (previously)
RoR. I love doing low-level things like solving a tiny problem, but I
sometimes wish I was doing something more science-y than front-end
development.

I also miss my artistic side (I don't do web design as part of my job) and I
would easily switch jobs if I could work for a more art-oriented or creative
tech startup. The reason I often doubt whether software development is my true
calling is because I don't like concentrating on just one thing in my life.
Work-life balance could be better, for that matter :)

------
dylanha
6/10 Total. Rationale:

3/4points Pay feels fair

1/3points surrounding people are funny, interesting, or mentors

1.5/2points difficulty of work is matched to me

0.5/0.5points purpose of work is meaningful

0/0.5points I exercise creativity

I wish I did more than just sit in my chair all day and look at incorrect
printf statements and compiler errors. I want to try fun things that I have to
be creative about, like marketing or sales or video editing. I don't want to
be a programmer my whole life. But I don't even know where to start. It would
be nice to be paid to learn at other places too.

------
anotherevan
6 to 7

I've been working with the same company for about 11 out of the last 17 years.
Obviously there's a long history there and there's been a lot of ups and downs
along the way. It is a small company and these days I am the only software
developer in the company.

Currently I would say the job is fine. Neither overly exciting nor overly
vexing, not quite boring. But at this stage in my life this is perfect for me.
I currently am working part-time (three days per week) and entirely remotely
from home.

The part-time started about five years ago by mutual agreement (they suggested
it, I agreed to it, wife went back to work full-time which she had wanted to
do for ages) working one day a week in the office. About a year later it
became entirely remote as my daughter had increasing issues with anxiety and
being unable to go to school.

So yes, nothing exciting with the job, which has been a godsend given the huge
amount of stress there has been at home with a kid who didn't go to school for
two years. Who some days couldn't get outside her bedroom. With myriad
appointments with medical professionals and with many days where you get up in
the morning and walk on eggshells wondering what you're going to face that
day.

We've been fortunate that my work situation was flexible enough to allow me to
do what needed to be done. But whenever someone asks, "How's work?" I always
give a shrug and say, "Work's there, it's ticking along." Which, at this
stage, is exactly what I need it to be.

Paradoxically, I love working remotely, but miss working with other
developers. We had a contractor in working on a project for us last year and I
realised how much I miss the techie discussions. I'm hoping for the next job
to be working with a 100% remote company.

But for now, we've got daughter in a much healthier place, and back at school
and just starting Year 11 (which has been a rough transition but we're getting
there). I'm hoping work will just be there, ticking along for the next few
years, as that's what we need right now.

I know I went over the one/two sentences max stipulation, but sometimes you
can't measure the happiness level at work in isolation to the rest of your
life. Given my life at the moment, I'm very happy with work.

~~~
raihansaputra
Agree with you on needing context. Glad everything worked out in the end.

------
FLUX-YOU
4

I do a lot of junk outside of actual coding, so coding skills have suffered
because I write very little code (I do help desk, server maintenance,
troubleshooting software outside of our code bases, project planning, tech.
documentation, unnecessary meetings). Uncertainly about the technical
direction of projects we may be doing and the company itself, so it's
difficult to figure out what new skills would be needed and to invest in or
whether I should stick around.

------
philippeback
I like my job. Because I am my own boss. New tech is fine. Lots can be
leveraged through APIs and one has to accept to let go of some control in
order to get results that are up to the expectations of today bleeding edge
solutions. I have seen quite a couple of hype cycles and one shouldn't jump on
all bandwagons. But money falls on the parade so it is important to be able to
join it in some way.

------
ld00d
At the moment, 8, but pretty soon they'll want me to help out with Delphi
again, and it'll be hell (1). I'll probably start searching for a new job
then.

I wish I could just make my own sw and make money that way, but 1) I don't
know what my product would be and 2) it's risky with kids and all. It'd be
great to pick the technologies and environment and tools that I prefer.

------
ollysb
10

Greenfield project, techs of my choosing(Elm + Elixir), work from home (in
different country), lots of say in direction of product, so yeah, pretty darn
good.

------
gaara87
10

I'm an Android Developer. 2 years in this job. Absolutely love it as over time
I've expanded from just core coding all the way to being the bridge between
design teams, business interests and server/backend/api teams.

I think biggest contribution to my happiness of the job are the people i'm
working with. They make it a place to go with a smile in the morning.

------
yigitozkavci
Junior software developer & cs student here. I love programming so much that
my part-time job sometimes gets ahead of school. With a big rails codebase,
there are so much to learn for a junior and that's exciting. It's been 6
months since I started, and I still feel awesome at work, so it's 10/10.

------
dagw
7 on average.

70% of my time is doing the same data analysis tasks I've already done a dozen
time using models that are pretty much 'done', and that stuff is a 5-6.

The other 30% is developing and improving new models and techniques and that
's an 8-10.

------
acidus
9 - I love it, it's my passion. Programmer by day, programmer by night. Not a
10 because I struggle trying to enjoy life in alternative ways. Not that I
haven't found other ways to enjoy life but it's harder to me to get out and
make friends out of nothing vs staying in front of the computer.

------
Traubenfuchs
I love programming and thinking about architecture.

I hate bad requirements, trade offs that lead to even more unmaintainable code
written by me, outdated... everything and design choice that make me throw up.

Thus I will rate with 6/10 and part of that mediocre score comes from the
relatively high income and benefits.

------
g051051
Tech 8 - It's a Java shop, and I get to try out a lot of new things when we're
evaluating them.

Office 10 - Full-time WFH for over 3 years.

People 8 - Generally a lot of good, smart people.

General Happiness 9 - Good job, well respected, good pay, no crunch time,
educational assistance, it's really a great gig.

------
zachsnow
10\. Run the engineering side of a company that I cofounded. I work on fun
problems, help real people run their businesses (which ended up being more
important to me than I expected), and keep track of the so-called work/life
balance. I still get to write code, too.

------
mgmt_wannabe
3.

I work mid-management part time, software part time (lead a team of ~5). The
management part is awful, not managing my team but interfacing with other
teams is unbearable. The egos of other managers are sickening.

Currently trying to figure out a way to give up the management part without
being fired.

------
nunez
About a 6. I enjoy writing code and troubleshooting but there is a ceiling on
how much i can make doing this and I'm pretty close it. I'd rather go into
sales or management so i can lead teams and make more money.

------
jkmcf
6 mostly-love my job, but hate my company and its disorganization and poor
communication.

------
sidcool
I absolutely love it. Been a programmer for long time, but love it. Only
concern is that with age, your programming skills matter less and management
skills matter more. I am not a very good Manager. But I love what I do.

------
fernandotakai
8

Late 20s, working remotely for an american company. work is not that
stressful, i earn good money, i have unlimited vacation time (that i 100% use.
just spent a week in london with my wife because we found cheap tickets).

all in all, would recommend :)

------
bluejekyll
10\. writing software is like entering a virtual world, going behind the
screen and controlling everything about that world. You get to be master of
the universe, and there is no end to learning or creating new things.

------
Pfhreak
8 - I have a huge amount of latitude in solving complex problems, I work with
people who are way smarter than me so I'm learning all the time. Workload and
office noise are higher than I'd prefer.

------
yoloswagins
8 Software Engineer

I get to look for interesting patterns in real estate data. I can do some
interesting tech(to me), so I'm pleased with my job.

------
sparrish
10 - I'm so blessed to have a job with interesting work, co-workers I enjoy,
working from home so I get to hang with my wife and kids, and a nice paycheck
to boot! What's not to love!

------
jetti
2

I was misled to think this was a .net developer role when in fact it is ETL
with SSIS. The only reason I have 2 instead of 1 is that the people I work
with are friendly

------
cyphar
10.

I'm <20, working as a free software developer from home, and contributing to
the future of container runtimes. What isn't there to love about that?

------
k__
Points: 7

10 years experience, freelancing as a front-end dev. Working remote for a
start-up, it pays well and I don't have to meet people on a daily basis.

------
etblg
7 or an 8.

Isn't my dream job, but it pays the bills, has interesting enough work, and I
don't feel like shit going in to work each day.

------
zippy786
Early 30s. Was 8 when I was writing ruby, 7 when using Rails, now Node.js it
is 1.

------
eecks
9

Only because I would like a few more benefits with my job (health insurance,
free gym)

------
jazoom
No. That's why I develop software.

