Is your job stressful?

Elessar

Do you find your job as a dev stressful in general? Is development generally a stressful industry?

I ask because I'm at a crossroads. I'm in a job in which I am chronically underpaid (circa ~€20k to market rate) and have few opportunities advance technically. However it is pretty much stress free and the commute is 10 minutes. I'm home by 5 every evening. I value this a lot, but the money and opportunities issue is getting to me.

I know I'll likely have to leave to get what I'm worth, but I don't deal well with stress. I'm asking here to see what the consensus is about how stressful development is - don't get me wrong I understand SOME level of stress occurs sometimes in any job but I would not cope well in a much more stressful role.

Any input greatly appreciated.

jester77

I find that it is only as stressful as you make it.

Once there is a good process in place and everyone is on the same page then it is usually fine. Be honest with yourself when estimating tickets, don't assume something without understanding it and most of the time you will be accomplish your tasks which will lead to a relatively stress free environment.

If you realise you've dug yourself into a hole, then be honest with those around you asap. Let the PO know early so that he doesn't get put in a stressful situation. This will create a good working relationship where you can trust each other.

Aswerty

Nobody deals well with stress - it's stressful. Some people can deal with pressure without getting stressed - though it sounds like that's not your forté. Pressure environments occur either when you're behind schedule (i.e. your fault) or when somebody sets an unreasonable schedule (i.e. not your fault). Unreasonable schedules occur due to customers making demands that your employer can't (or won't) say no to or your management has a toxic approach to work or is incompetent at what they do.

So for situations where it's your fault that the schedule is not going to be hit - communication, as jester77 says, is key. Flag things early and make sure everyone is on the same page. After you're done you need to look back at what the issue was and how it can be avoided in future.

For situations where a customer is making demands the company has to meet; there isn't much to be done but suck it up. To avoid these types of situations you should avoid the services industry (e.g. working for someone like Accenture) since they are at the beck and call of customers. Instead either work for a department that works on internal tools or work on building a product. Internal customers generally don't have the clout to force your manager to bend over backwards. Product companies are different in that they sell work that's already been done (i.e. the product) rather than future work (i.e. a service) so the customer doesn't get to set the schedule. The exception to this is if a product company has an integration/services department who essentially operate as a services company.

Finally the toxic/incompetent manager. If you have one the only real option is to leave or make an internal move. The interview stage is where you should be sussing out who it is you'll be directly reporting to and what the company culture is like. Some manager can buck a toxic culture and can make work enjoyable for their team. And some managers can turn their team into a hellhole in an otherwise healthy company.

So if you pick product companies and do your due diligence in the interview you should be able to find something that suits what you're looking for.

14ned

Elessar wrote: »

Do you find your job as a dev stressful in general? Is development generally a stressful industry?

It varies. Back when I graduated one of my classmates went straight into a role where he would be paged 24/7 and had to be at Heathrow within six hours to fly to anywhere in the world for unspecified duration with his team to troubleshoot whatever the problem there was. Whilst there, time was money, so you worked whatever hours you could until the problem was fixed. They partied very hard, it was a very stressful lifestyle, nobody on the team was over thirty.

On the other hand, he was paid £100k sterling salary and had a limitless expense account. And I really do mean limitless, they were put into Madrid when I was living there and I went out with them one night, and they started off by ordering 500 euro bottles of wine after a 14 hour work day and the night proceeded down a very messy route thereafter. I bailed out about 4am when they all booked taxis to a high end whorehouse - and I should add, the team was approx half women because it was a mixed tech/management/PR troubleshooting team, so that will you some idea of how wasted on drugs and booze everyone was.

And I was told that was pretty much normal every night wherever they were in the world. Too rich for my blood. Anyway, my classmate ended up buying a house for cash outside London aged 30 and is now completely mortgage free and lives the most boring life you could imagine. But I definitely couldn't have coped with that sort of workplace environment. It was about as toxic and as dysfunctional and stressful as is possible in software dev. He had one of those unflappable, tedious personalities, well suited for that kind of environment. But as he said, unless you want to die young, you wouldn't choose that job except to be mortgage free for the rest of your life.

Elessar wrote: »

I ask because I'm at a crossroads. I'm in a job in which I am chronically underpaid (circa ~€20k to market rate) and have few opportunities advance technically. However it is pretty much stress free and the commute is 10 minutes. I'm home by 5 every evening. I value this a lot, but the money and opportunities issue is getting to me.

I know I'll likely have to leave to get what I'm worth, but I don't deal well with stress. I'm asking here to see what the consensus is about how stressful development is - don't get me wrong I understand SOME level of stress occurs sometimes in any job but I would not cope well in a much more stressful role.

Me personally, I always think of how much spare capacity a job leaves me with after I'm done for the day. For every hour I get to work on my own stuff outside of work, I "pay" myself €100.

In that sense, a job where you have a long commute by train is worth far more than a job where the commute is by bus or car because you can get your own stuff done in the train.

Niall

DefinitelyMarc

Mine isn't, but the company has a really good culture for taking care of employees, despite being a services company as Aswerty mentioned. I genuinely think mine is an exception to the rule though.

Honestly, the first thing I'd look for in a job now is how happy are employees on glassdoor, and for what reasons. It's pretty easy to suss out ones that think they have it good against the ones that genuinely have it good. Mine has an awesome rating, and while others may have similarly great scores sometimes, you can tell the difference in the reviews based on how/what they praise the company for. It's also really easy to see what reviews are faked, so avoid companies that fake reviews.

LincolnHawk

The older I get, the better I get at handling stress. Mainly due to increased experience and competence. But fighting against that, I now have a family to support and more responsibility.
I'm working in a fairly toxic environment now and need to move on. But I have to suck it up until I get the right move. C'est la vie