Have I just had a string of bad jobs or am I an awful developer?

ThrowTheseAway

Throwaway for obvious reason.

I'm about to leave a dev job for a bank that's offshored the team I'm on, aside from myself (All Indian except for me. I have no idea why they'd hire someone in the Irish office to work with people on the other side of the planet). I'm basically working remote, which hasn't been a problem in the past. It was extremely stressful and I've lasted a year before decided that this job really wasn't for me (I am doing very badly anyway). I am however, quite worried that this is just an indicator that bad at programming.

There was a lot of stuff like people shouting, swearing a lot which is normally fine, but some of them looked and sounded like they're either going to have a stroke/heart attack someday soon or shoot up the office. They weren't just mad, they were LIVID with the person they were talking to/about. There was also plenty of pressure to fix bugs in a day or less for their ****ty legacy codebase (15+ years, riddled with really bad code from offshore like stuff that skips authentication for a particular user because the developer didn't want to keep resetting their password, or if X do Y else do Y anyway logic).

The offshore and onsite teams seemed to hate each other too, and I couldn't get any response from people on my team 90% of the time. It really seems like a "**** rolls downhill and it sucks to be you" kind of place, which made me have a lot of empathy for another dude offshore who's new too and clearly struggling (Lot's of overtime. My manager told me that for at least the first six months, that was going to be the case. He'd be cute about asking for overtime though "Only if you think it will help, but I'm going to keep bringing this up until you can fix bugs fast enough").

My other major problem is that I've had performance issues like this before in other jobs, early on it was honestly my attitude, I thought that overtime wasn't really a thing I had to do and that I could learn the tech stack on company time (Oh boy was I wrong). I fully own up to that, but the CEO honestly was a bit of a dickhead and the guys were kinda backbitey towards each other. One of them was a real SJW and would attack me behind closed doors for thinking a Family Guy joke that wasn't particularly PC was funny. I didn't enjoy working there because I wasn't getting the right experience either (No major dev work, largely testing and maintenance).

But when I became a better dev and really took an interest in my career, it was the marketability of the languages being used that made me not want to learn everything about internal and proprietary tools. I had a few short stints at places that used proprietary tech that I didn't see the point in mastering when I could just focus on building up my portfolio and reading books instead of learning how to be as useful as my co-workers. All my jobs so far have had very high turnover, but I'm not sure how good of an indicator that is as to whether the problem is me or my jobs. It seems like everywhere in Ireland is an absolute pile of crap to work for in at least one major way (Though my current job definitely does take the biscuit at the top of the pile).

I've also had managers strongly imply in the past, but never outright state, that I'm just stupid. I did really well in college, and thought I started my current job pretty well (I just dived straight in using tech and tools I'd never used before to fix issues, felt like I was making lots of progress), but my current manager kept giving me bad feedback and eventually put me on a coaching program. At this point I could barely look at the screen because I was so depressed and anxious all the time. I couldn't even get in the mood to keep reading books after work or going to the gym, I'd just go home and stay indoors every day after work playing videogames and eating ****ty food, feeling like I'm in a hole. I just can't progress with work when I feel like that and can barely motivate myself to do takehome tests and interview effectively at other companies. I spiral pretty badly to the point that I'm not even worried about work anymore and think I'm going to die of cancer because a mole got a little bigger, or think I'll die of a heart attack/stroke soon because I get chest pains from stress.

I really just want to be able to work and not have to deal with all the crap that other people seem completely determined to inflict on this industry, but it seems inescapable. One of the directors at my current company thinks that the high turnover is because of the lack of onboarding, and I wanted to stick a post-it note to his forehead that said "stop being ****ty to each other or I'll fire you" in an effort to improve morale.

I know this isn't much to go on, but most of my experience has been in more traditional big/medium company "boring" industries. I saw an advertisement for a company that makes hairdresser software and thought it'd be an amazing place to work, but I'm really doubting myself at this point. I've gotten bad feedback at all of my jobs so far, albeit having spent over three years at one. They were really big though, so I figured I was just "getting away with being ****" and flying under the radar. I'm not sure if this industry is something that I'm just not smart enough for, but I've sunk an enormous amount of time, money and energy into it. I definitely work a lot better if I've been jogging and taking care of my diet, but it just looks like everywhere REALLY wants their pound of flesh from you, and if you aren't going to give it up, then you can **** off out the door. I'm worried what this could mean for me when I eventually want a family and house of my own and job security doesn't seem to exist. Having to do overtime makes me feel like a stupid failure that barely counts as a man.

Please give me your honest to god feedback, because if the next 40 years are going to be like 2019 for me, I think I'll just give up on this industry. I just don't have the energy to be this stressed out 24/7. That or I'll just have to become a job-hopping leech that only leaves companies after soaking up 6 months pay.

ARGINITE

My last job was in finance also same sort of situation where lots of teams were being off shored and the culture in the company sucked.

From your post it's impossible to say weather your a bad developer or not. The only way to be certain is to get a dev job with a decent company (yes these do exist in Ireland) and see how you feel after a year there.

antix80

Op, when a company decides to invest in new software they're positively giddy. They have a big budget and a clean slate and they're making stuff that works (or have enough of a headcount to make it look like it works).
Over time companies become better at something else: cutting costs.
Everything is offshored or outsourced. Off-shored usually to people LIKE you with less experience - often a few shades darker. Offshore teams usually have huge staff turnover as those countries have a lot of opportunities and staff are willing to relocate long distances for a better job. Outsourcing means crap tech support and service levels agreements such that jobs are reduced to pushing a button but many of the workers have no idea what they're doing.

Over time a stagnant company like yours loses developers who like the thrill of developing something new while also running away from the problems they created, testers are of no use anymore as no one understands how the components of the system work together anyway, business analysts are replaced by managers who just want things to work without having the staff or the budget or the knowledge to make things work - I mean these are people with little technical knowledge - that's why your manager says things like "lack of onboarding" - it's something he can explain to his boss (even if it doesn't fix anything) without having to say "well the past 15 years have been fun but our software now has major problems and we can't afford the headcount to even begin trying to fix them".

I think you learned a lesson that some flexibility and overtime is needed - but only occasionally, and only when the management have a commitment to giving you a fair workload and decent training. It depends on the salary too.

I do think it's time to leave the company you're in before it does any more damage to your health and confidence. The escape plan doesn't necessarily require a new job. It would be just as good to figure out an in-demand technology and do a short course, make a few contacts in college, and simultaneously jobhunt while you have a renewed interest. Look before you leap in jobs.. the interesting jobs with most opportunities won't always be in multinationals and probably won't pay the most initially.

Another bit of advice but I noticed the most clever people are often overconfident (which is bad), and they're the doers .. they can actually perform the tricky work and have the mental capacity to figure things out and put in the hours when needed. They don't get rewarded in an environment where the blame game is key - because the more you do the more will be expected, and your attitude may get a bit toxic, and when you stop blaming the company but you can't find another job easily you'll internalise a lot of the problems. This will result in anxiety and depression in the short-term. After a year like this you'll probably end up with chronic anxiety and be incapable of handling stress.

The dummies and the underachievers sort of float along in a job for years, corner off a set of responsibilities, don't bite off more than they can chew.... eventually though, they'll have a nice, steady job with a manageable workload and realistic expectations from management.

I think the right balance is somewhere in the middle. Dynamic and interesting but manageable and with a good work-life balance. You need to find the right company and behave the right way.

zig

I think this post is more suitable for Personal Issues forum than it is for here to be honest with you. It sounds like you are dealing with issues that could follow you around in any type of job to be honest (i.e. anxiety and depression), but the behaviour of management in your experience seems to have exacerbated the situation.

The problem is, when you live with these issues, they make you a worse worker and can become frustrating for a boss. They also make you worse at doing interviews etc.

I think you need a two prone attack, one personal and one professionally.

Firstly I would talk to a therapist and start looking at your issues, secondly I would start looking for a new job

You are better off finding a company that thinks software from the top down because they have a much better understanding of what is deliverable by a developer and the sort of company/process habits that cause endless bugs in the first place.

Also, working in a company where a manager cannot recognise a toxic environment when its their faces is bad bad news. It destroys confidence for everyone.

Earthhorse

There's a few things packed up in your post so let's try and unpack it a little.

ThrowTheseAway wrote: »

There was a lot of stuff like people shouting, swearing a lot which is normally fine, but some of them looked and sounded like they're either going to have a stroke/heart attack someday soon or shoot up the office. They weren't just mad, they were LIVID with the person they were talking to/about. There was also plenty of pressure to fix bugs in a day or less for their ****ty legacy codebase (15+ years, riddled with really bad code from offshore like stuff that skips authentication for a particular user because the developer didn't want to keep resetting their password, or if X do Y else do Y anyway logic).

In a bank? Seriously? If you're a bad coder, what about the people who wrote that? Being a good coder also means not allowing things like this to find their way into the codebase. It sounds like you're in a, at least mildly, toxic environment. It's understandable that is stressful for you but it's no reflection on you so don't blame yourself for it.

The offshore and onsite teams seemed to hate each other too, and I couldn't get any response from people on my team 90% of the time. It really seems like a "**** rolls downhill and it sucks to be you" kind of place, which made me have a lot of empathy for another dude offshore who's new too and clearly struggling (Lot's of overtime. My manager told me that for at least the first six months, that was going to be the case. He'd be cute about asking for overtime though "Only if you think it will help, but I'm going to keep bringing this up until you can fix bugs fast enough").

In my experience (only 3 dev roles over the years) around six months of working slightly longer hours is needed to get up to speed but you should be able to put in more normal hours after that. I don't know what it means to "fix bugs fast enough" but you may be able to mitigate this by showing even if you haven't fixed bugs you have made some progress from yesterday and are progressing issues. A daily standup is an ideal time to do this (but I'm guessing this company isn't practising anything like that) so you made to take the initiative and just "accidentally" pop by your boss's office every morning and give him a quick update. And do make it quick and to the point.

But when I became a better dev and really took an interest in my career, it was the marketability of the languages being used that made me not want to learn everything about internal and proprietary tools. I had a few short stints at places that used proprietary tech that I didn't see the point in mastering when I could just focus on building up my portfolio and reading books instead of learning how to be as useful as my co-workers. All my jobs so far have had very high turnover, but I'm not sure how good of an indicator that is as to whether the problem is me or my jobs. It seems like everywhere in Ireland is an absolute pile of crap to work for in at least one major way (Though my current job definitely does take the biscuit at the top of the pile).

Everywhere uses proprietary tools, there's just no escaping that. Facebook do, Google do, and so will smaller dev shops. Not everywhere is a pile of poo to work though but there is also no ideal, dream job out there. All jobs have their downsides but you maybe need to accept that you're not a good fit for the current culture you're in.

I've also had managers strongly imply in the past, but never outright state, that I'm just stupid. I did really well in college, and thought I started my current job pretty well (I just dived straight in using tech and tools I'd never used before to fix issues, felt like I was making lots of progress), but my current manager kept giving me bad feedback and eventually put me on a coaching program. At this point I could barely look at the screen because I was so depressed and anxious all the time. I couldn't even get in the mood to keep reading books after work or going to the gym, I'd just go home and stay indoors every day after work playing videogames and eating ****ty food, feeling like I'm in a hole. I just can't progress with work when I feel like that and can barely motivate myself to do takehome tests and interview effectively at other companies. I spiral pretty badly to the point that I'm not even worried about work anymore and think I'm going to die of cancer because a mole got a little bigger, or think I'll die of a heart attack/stroke soon because I get chest pains from stress.

That's tough but maybe you are being a bit hard on yourself? You did well in college and in the job interviews and you also say you've dived right in and started fixing things so sounds like you've got the smarts to me. Programming is difficult though and we can all get stuck at times. It has a high rate of Impostor Syndrome so careful to not get caught up in it and think you're a fraud. We all struggle, some more than others, but we all struggle.

I know this isn't much to go on, but most of my experience has been in more traditional big/medium company "boring" industries. I saw an advertisement for a company that makes hairdresser software and thought it'd be an amazing place to work, but I'm really doubting myself at this point. I've gotten bad feedback at all of my jobs so far, albeit having spent over three years at one. They were really big though, so I figured I was just "getting away with being ****" and flying under the radar. I'm not sure if this industry is something that I'm just not smart enough for, but I've sunk an enormous amount of time, money and energy into it. I definitely work a lot better if I've been jogging and taking care of my diet, but it just looks like everywhere REALLY wants their pound of flesh from you, and if you aren't going to give it up, then you can **** off out the door. I'm worried what this could mean for me when I eventually want a family and house of my own and job security doesn't seem to exist. Having to do overtime makes me feel like a stupid failure that barely counts as a man.

You've held steady employment since leaving college so believe in that evidence and not some imagined fantasy (and I say this as someone who has had the same fantasies). In my last job we had a huge dev team and I got exposed to the range of quality that's out there. Some devs were great, some not so great, so be careful that you aren't just comparing yourself against the great ones and also in assuming that everything comes easy for them. I've worked with Senior Devs who needed me to resolve basic things for them and with Juniors whose knowledge and enthusiasm made me feel like I was quite replaceable. As for the pound of flesh thing, I've found that if I've put in a good day's work (not been distracted online, asked people for help when needed etc.) then I can walk out the door at the end of it with a clean conscience.

Please give me your honest to god feedback, because if the next 40 years are going to be like 2019 for me, I think I'll just give up on this industry. I just don't have the energy to be this stressed out 24/7. That or I'll just have to become a job-hopping leech that only leaves companies after soaking up 6 months pay.

My honest feedback is I don't know if you are good or bad but I suspect you are being a bit hard on yourself and also have a lot to learn. You need to find your rhythm with work; I try my best to do one thing, however small, everyday that improves my knowledge of the product or ability to resolve future issues (could be something as simple as writing a document for an issue that keeps coming up). And my other honest feedback is you need to get a new job.

14ned

After I first graduated, I had a very similar experience and reaction to you for the first few roles I took. I thought it was me, but after a while the lightbulb switched on that statistically speaking, the places doing the most hiring are by definition most likely to be the worst places to work.

Once I realised that, things became much better. Firstly, the best jobs are far and away the ones never advertised. You get hired because you've done the networking to find out about those roles, and you have someone who told you about the role, and recommends you for that role. You then interview having absolutely no competition, because they specifically want to hire you and not some warm body.

It's a big, big difference, let me tell you.

Secondly, as I've often said on here, jobs which pay much worse and are far outside a city centre often are much nicer places to work in. Not always, of course, but choosing to work in a small company generally comes with small-company benefits. And small-company woes too, of course.

So, my advice to you is that it's probably not you. If you were noticeably inferior to your colleagues, they'd have fired you. So I suggest that you change your job finding strategy instead.

Oh, and you'll find all the crap at work doesn't bother you as much when you get older. As with all things, you get better at stuff with practice. So relax, things will get better with time and a bit of proactive networking on your part. Choose a team with a good reputation over the firm or pay. You'll only find out which teams are good via networking.

Niall

moycullen14

Without going into detail, what screams out to me from your email is
Finance, bank, low end coding, OUTSOURCING - the vast netherworld of software development.

In reality, there is no good career reason to stay in a place like that. The work sucks, the people suck, the whole thing is one giant ball of crud. Yet why do people stay? Impostor syndrome? Laziness? Money? A whole truckload of non career reasons are keeping you there.

So, you work in a place that you despise, you work for an organisation that has so little respect for you that they are willing to replace you with a person they've never seen, who may or may not be any good, that they never have or never will meet for the simple expedient that they are a bit cheaper than you.

The conclusion that you come to is that it's somehow your fault. You've only ended up in this situation because you're cr*p.

The fact is that development or software engineering has dis-improved so much over the years as a career. There are good jobs out there but they are rare and getting rarer.

My advice to you would be to go and get a job at a small(ish) start-up where they are producing product, not service. When talking to them, focus on the people and the atmosphere, not the technology. Try and work in a happy place.

Sure, it may go bust in 6 months and you might be paid less than the going rate but I suspect it might go a long way to restoring your confidence.

You're probably not crap at what you do but you almost certainly are working in a crap environment and its rubbing off.

Elessar

I'd say it's just a string of bad jobs. I'm sure there are good places to work in, you just have to find them. I can't speak too much as I'm still in my first dev 'place' but we have a good team, a good work environment overall. 90% of the time I have zero stress and a boss who backs me up. I'm home at 5pm each day and rarely do overtime. If I've a lot on my plate my boss will give me some breathing room and delegate tasks to someone else on the team. We all help each other out. The business praise us for delivering even the most basic applications for them. But it's at the point where I'm kinda bored and looking around for what else is out there, and threads like these strike fear into me!

It's not all rosy of course, and there are downsides (no career advancement, no training, lower market salary, tech/skills stagnation among others) and bad days. But unless my place is an anomaly, I'd say there are plenty of similar places out there.

Colonel Panic

My experience is most software development jobs are bad to varying degrees. Usually it's money and people that acts as a decider for me.

The worst are SMEs who build software for some niche industry. The next worst are financial institutions created in the early to mid 2000s.

And when you see job listings that list all the new things, be sure and as how far along that endevour is, and how much "legacy" stuff is still being maintained. The answer is never good.

Best bet, I think is look into contracting. Become a subject matter expert in *something* that makes you desirable and just divorce yourself from the insanity of trying to find a place that does things right.

Can you tell I'm super jaded?

dazberry

I spent 7 years in a financial, akin to Dante's 8th circle of hell, nearly had a stress related breakdown (not joking) - and came out a burnout.

Spent a couple of years in a insurance place that looks great on the CV, that would be the 7th circle of hell, came out jaded not from the work as we did practically FA, from the meetings about meetings and aholes you had to deal with on a regular basis.

Have been a dev for 25 years, most places weren't so great and often felt I was just making poor choices, either following the wrong tool-stacks or just taking the wrong jobs. A few times I've felt at the end of the road, but I'm currently in a startup and I feel energised and relevant again, but money problems there so doesn't look like it will last.

But OP I've worked with awful developers, none have the insight that you've shown in your post, the place is toxic don't let it drag you down, and if you want PM me about the hairdressers :eek:

D.

Berserker

I can see that you are passionate about software development from your post OP, so that would lead me to believe that you are better than you think you are. The market is full of poor jobs, so you need to think long and hard and ask lots of questions before you accept a particular role.

Colonel Panic wrote: »

And when you see job listings that list all the new things, be sure and as how far along that endevour is, and how much "legacy" stuff is still being maintained. The answer is never good.

A never ending battle I find. Attended two interviews last time round where companies were looking for people with experience in Angular 5. On each occasion it turned out that Angular was on their list of goals and all of their applications were written in .Net (mostly) or VB6.

Colonel Panic wrote: »

Best bet, I think is look into contracting.

I'm not so sure about that. As a contractor you have to do what you are asked, I find and you can end up doing some awful stuff. It can be very frustrating having to sit, listen to and implement the mindless nonsense that people think up of.

moycullen14

Berserker wrote: »

I can see that you are passionate about software development from your post OP, so that would lead me to believe that you are better than you think you are. The market is full of poor jobs, so you need to think long and hard and ask lots of questions before you accept a particular role.



A never ending battle I find. Attended two interviews last time round where companies were looking for people with experience in Angular 5. On each occasion it turned out that Angular was on their list of goals and all of their applications were written in .Net (mostly) or VB6.



I'm not so sure about that. As a contractor you have to do what you are asked, I find and you can end up doing some awful stuff. It can be very frustrating having to sit, listen to and implement the mindless nonsense that people think up of.

I'd agree with all of this. The utter nonsense that people request at interviews, that they have no hope of ever needing. It's almost as if companies use skill requirements as a sort of self justification. It's weird.

At one place I suggested we just be honest with people at interview, No point overselling the job and p**sing everyone off. It's as if people don't want to accept that their own job is just a bit cruddy. Understandable, I suppose.

BrokenArrows

moycullen14 wrote: »

I'd agree with all of this. The utter nonsense that people request at interviews, that they have no hope of ever needing. It's almost as if companies use skill requirements as a sort of self justification. It's weird.

At one place I suggested we just be honest with people at interview, No point overselling the job and p**sing everyone off. It's as if people don't want to accept that their own job is just a bit cruddy. Understandable, I suppose.

Totally agree with this.

I just recently found a new position having spent the last few months keeping an eye out for something worth moving for.

The amount of bull**** job specifications and conversations i had on the phone was insane.

Lots of job specifications out there with the required skills that sound like they want you to be the entire dev team and management all in one.

Most jobs require a few solid skills which will be your bread and butter day in and day out and other "nice to haves" which it really shouldn't matter. If you know it then great, if not then you can learn it on the job.

I've also generally found the job specs which require all the skills in the world are generally offering below the market rate for the position. That is a dead giveaway that the company don't really know what they're doing.

beauf

ThrowTheseAway wrote: »

...Please give me your honest to god feedback, because if the next 40 years are going to be like 2019 for me, I think I'll just give up on this industry. I just don't have the energy to be this stressed out 24/7. That or I'll just have to become a job-hopping leech that only leaves companies after soaking up 6 months pay....

It all depends on the specific people in a place and the environment and culture they generate.

Even in a great place to work, all it takes one or a couple of people with a jarring attitude introduced into the mix, or promoted to complete destroy the work environment.
Its more likely in a bigger faceless corporation. But it can happen anywhere.

The more competitive people are, often they make the worst team players. As every issue is power grab and thus there is no co-operation.

^^^^^^ Saw the same some years ago in a large US Multinational. Toxic environment. The lady who everyone hated because of this had one close collegue friend. About 3 years after leaving this company, I saw that her friend was charged with having child pornography images on his PC in the evening herald.....

beauf

That said working with difficult unreasonable people is quite common in software. Lots of ego and attitude.

AllForIt

I totally disagree that this is a personal issues matter. It is 100% down to the ****ty environment the OP is working in.

I have a degree in CS and I didn't do into it because my intuition told me that it really would be a very long slog before I would ever reach a level of success that would be in any way comparative to the amount of effort it took to get the degree in the first place no mind what I had to learn in the job.

I know I had a talent for it. But all I heard is you have to do this, you have to learn that, you'll be sent of evening courses ete etc. I always knew my college pilled on the coursework NOT just so you learn these things - it was to condition you to be the stereotypical dev who is in front of their PC day and night on the job and off the job. I happen to have a keen interest in fitness and I couldn't possible see how I cold ever work in development and live the kind of life that I desired. I also VALUE my spare time and the idea of getting into the rat race of dev showing how much you've learned and how much your perpetually willing to learn for me was just a non starter.

I also noticed that some of the tutors (who were often masters students) at college were needlessly aggressive and unhelpful. I could never see myself working with these kinds of unhelpful juvenile competitive nerds. I wouldn't mind but the salary is way way below what I considered reward for working in such an environment. But it was repeatedly drilled into us at college that working as a dev is somehow the dream job and being given the opportunity to do it is reward in itself. I thank my lucky stars that I saw through all that.

OP, I suggest to you you are not a ****ty developer. Rather you are working in an industry that tries to get more and more out of you by never telling you your good enough...to force you to do more and more i.e higher productivity. The end result is your wrecked and the industry gets more for their money. I think it's outrageous what goes on personally. While all the time in the media tech jobs/tech industry can do no wrong.

I suggest you accept that the life of a developer is as you've experienced it and consider whether that's the life you want. You won't study your way out of your issue. Some ppl are willing to cope with it but if your not maybe it's time to consider a different career path. You could branch off in a difference direction. I'm sure there are other jobs in IT that aren't pure development and would give you more free to time to look after yourself. You are thoroughly right be concerned about you health and it's good you've recognized it. Best of luck!

Buford T Justice

AllForIt wrote: »

I suggest you accept that the life of a developer is as you've experienced it and consider whether that's the life you want. You won't study your way out of your issue. Some ppl are willing to cope with it but if your not maybe it's time to consider a different career path. You could branch off in a difference direction. I'm sure there are other jobs in IT that aren't pure development and would give you more free to time to look after yourself. You are thoroughly right be concerned about you health and it's good you've recognized it. Best of luck!

I work as a software developer for a large company and I'm based in Ireland (and not in Dublin) and I couldn't disagree more with your blanket statements.

I work hard, I love my job and I do 9 - 5. If I need training the company provides it on company time. My job never interferes with my personal time and I'm never expected to spend more time at work than what I'm actually paid to do.

You appear to have had a bad experience and have an axe to grind, but painting all software engineering roles in the way you have done is unfair and wrong. Just because it was shitty for you doesn't mean it's shitty.

TrueDub

Buford T Justice wrote: »

I work as a software developer for a large company and I'm based in Ireland (and not in Dublin) and I couldn't disagree more with your blanket statements.

I work hard, I love my job and I do 9 - 5. If I need training the company provides it on company time. My job never interferes with my personal time and I'm never expected to spend more time at work than what I'm actually paid to do.

You appear to have had a bad experience and have an axe to grind, but painting all software engineering roles in the way you have done is unfair and wrong. Just because it was shitty for you doesn't mean it's shitty.

The above is entirely my experience, and I've been a professional software dev in Dublin for nearly 30 years.

14ned

moycullen14 wrote: »

I'd agree with all of this. The utter nonsense that people request at interviews, that they have no hope of ever needing. It's almost as if companies use skill requirements as a sort of self justification. It's weird.

At one place I suggested we just be honest with people at interview, No point overselling the job and p**sing everyone off. It's as if people don't want to accept that their own job is just a bit cruddy. Understandable, I suppose.

It's not that. The interviewers are looking for someone far better than the role they need to fill. Hiring is expensive, you want to build out capacity, so you always set the requirements as where you'd like to get to in five years time.

And that's very understandable, I'd do exactly the same myself. On the flip side, you need to learn to completely ignore anything advertised about the role. Always, always, always assume it'll be closing issue backlog on a legacy codebase involving decade old technologies or worse, that zero training will be provided, and no movement forwards will ever occur. Oh, and the codebase will be a steaming pile of bad design repeatedly patched with minimum possible effort for over a decade. And with a test suite that doesn't actually test anything, but still takes twenty hours to run.

And all that is fine, that's typical software development. So look for the nice place to work, reasonable salary, short commute, good chance of job security, and ideally enough free time left outside of work to enjoy life and upskill to keep yourself employable. Stop looking for what you do at work to mean anything more than paying your bills and not being an awful place to be all day each day, and I think you'll be much happier for it.

Niall

14ned

TrueDub wrote: »

The above is entirely my experience, and I've been a professional software dev in Dublin for nearly 30 years.

I would agree that it's been my majority experience in 25 years too.

However there are pockets of niceness, as Buford mentioned. You want to seek out those pockets, get into them, stay in them.

Funnily enough, last week at work I started - for the first time since 2002! - the design work for a new codebase.

Yes, that's right. I have not designed a new piece of software at work between 2002 and 2019. A mere 17 years! It's very rare in our industry to actually design a new piece of software from scratch with complete freedom, you almost always work on some existing implementation, or extend or refactor an existing implementation. If anything, more junior engineers get the opportunity to design something from scratch, whilst the senior engineer stands over them.

But it does happen from time that a senior engineer does get to deploy all their experience on a greenfield design. I'm enjoying it, though it's a bit stressful. I'm now into week two of working on the design document, it's the only thing I've done, which is beginning to irritate management. My view is two weeks is the minimum. I like detail, I like peer review, before a single line of code gets written.

And besides, it helps that this piece of software is considered extremely important to not get wrong by management. So, for once in my career, this won't be rushed, which is a-m-a-z-i-n-g.

Just need to get granted the resources to write a decent test suite for once, always a big ask, unfortunately.

Anyway, point is that there are pockets of not awfulness in software development. Find them.

Niall

beauf

14ned wrote: »

...Stop looking for what you do at work to mean anything more than paying your bills and not being an awful place to be all day each day, and I think you'll be much happier for it....

14Ned. I'm not sure if you mean this as ok for others, but not you, or are you in a an unusually passive (for you). You are generally far more demanding.

Punching the clock is ok for a while, especially if you have something more demanding going at home. But then I go stir crazy after a while. I also get this when I'm prevented from initiating change. But corralled into silos.

beauf

14ned wrote: »

...
Anyway, point is that there are pockets of not awfulness in software development. Find them...

I would also agree with this. I've worked within some great teams.
But also some really bad ones, where its torture. Usually the only way to escape this is to move on till you find the right place.

Though once you've worked in a few good places, it makes the bad ones much harder to tolerate. You've no patience with them.

Earthhorse

14ned wrote: »

It's not that. The interviewers are looking for someone far better than the role they need to fill. Hiring is expensive, you want to build out capacity, so you always set the requirements as where you'd like to get to in five years time.

Don't know what you mean by this (and don't want to drag the thread off topic). Are you saying you want to hire someone who is five years ahead of the role their in? I assume not. I think what you want to hire for is the capability not the ability, right? Otherwise you would never hire anyone.

14ned wrote: »

I would agree that it's been my majority experience in 25 years too.

However there are pockets of niceness, as Buford mentioned. You want to seek out those pockets, get into them, stay in them.

I think you're misunderstanding TrueDub's quote (I think). He is saying that most places are nice in his experience.

There are both types of places in my experience thought I don't know what the split is overall. Every place has it's good and bad but it's wrong to paint it as all one or the other.

boreder

Buford T Justice wrote: »

I work as a software developer for a large company and I'm based in Ireland (and not in Dublin) and I couldn't disagree more with your blanket statements.

I work hard, I love my job and I do 9 - 5. If I need training the company provides it on company time. My job never interferes with my personal time and I'm never expected to spend more time at work than what I'm actually paid to do.

You appear to have had a bad experience and have an axe to grind, but painting all software engineering roles in the way you have done is unfair and wrong. Just because it was shitty for you doesn't mean it's shitty.

Same. I've worked on 4 different dev teams in the same (large) company in Ireland & California, they've all been well run and pretty much as said above.

There might be 2 or 3 weeks a year where I have to take the laptop out in the evenings or work a bit later. Its certainly rare and there's usually some incentive offered to do it.

Berserker

boreder wrote: »

Same. I've worked on 4 different dev teams in the same (large) company in Ireland & California, they've all been well run and pretty much as said above.

There might be 2 or 3 weeks a year where I have to take the laptop out in the evenings or work a bit later. Its certainly rare and there's usually some incentive offered to do it.

Agree with this. Code quality goes down hill big time when people work late on a consistent basis also. I'm a fully qualified PT and I've no problem mixing the two. The two work well together, software is 9-5 and PT in the evenings.

14ned

beauf wrote: »

14Ned. I'm not sure if you mean this as ok for others, but not you, or are you in a an unusually passive (for you). You are generally far more demanding.

I guess maybe I've spent too much time contracting where when they assign you s*it, you say "yes sir, how high do you want it?". That's your purpose there, else they'd have found a permie to do it instead.

But all jobs in software development involve a lot of stacking s*it. Pointless drudgery working on unsalvagable code bases where the best of anything you can do is merely not make it worse, which strongly incentivises looking busy rather than actually doing anything. I guess I accepted the meaninglessness of software development a long time ago. I go to work, appear to be busy, in fact actually trying to avoid changing anything important lest the edifice completely collapse, get paid, come home. Do real software development once home to keep myself keen, and skilled.

Punching the clock is ok for a while, especially if you have something more demanding going at home. But then I go stir crazy after a while. I also get this when I'm prevented from initiating change. But corralled into silos.

I've never stuck a permie role for more than 18 months, so maybe I'm the same!

Niall

mayordenis

I know you're not looking for compliments here, but being able to critically evaluate yourself in this way is a ****ing great skill and one most of us don't have. Speaks to you not being an idiot like you say some people have implied.

14ned

Earthhorse wrote: »

Don't know what you mean by this (and don't want to drag the thread off topic). Are you saying you want to hire someone who is five years ahead of the role their in? I assume not. I think what you want to hire for is the capability not the ability, right? Otherwise you would never hire anyone.

I'm saying that anyone hiring will tend to have hopes for where they'd like the code to be in five year's time, and they tend to select candidates with a skillset they think would be useful in the near future. They also tend to overpromise how much of that leading edge skillset the candidate would be doing in order to land the candidate with them, and not elsewhere.

A lot of people get upset with the lies during hiring. Sure, I wish it weren't the case, but I understand how it happens, and as I always say here, don't join a role, join a team.

I think you're misunderstanding TrueDub's quote (I think). He is saying that most places are nice in his experience.

Yes, you're right. Sorry TrueDub, I thought you were quoting to disagree with.

There are both types of places in my experience thought I don't know what the split is overall. Every place has it's good and bad but it's wrong to paint it as all one or the other.

Dunno, I've seen some places which are truly awful. But you get excellence and mediocrity in any large org, different teams can be world's apart to worm for.

A former boss of mine never stuck it as a permie for anywhere more than 18 months, except one place: ARM in Cambridge. There he lasted over five years.

Pay was well below market rates, but you got Continental Europe long annual holidays, and extreme work flexibility e.g. if you didn't feel like coming into the office one day, you just didn't. Very handy when you have kids.

A lot of employers would think that couldn't work well, but ARM grew and grew and grew into the behemoth it is today. They still offer two months of annual time off, incidentally.

Point I'm making is that there are very good places to work, but you have to work hard to find the gold nuggets. Generally, those who advertise aren't filling their openings through word of mouth.

Niall

John_Mc

AllForIt wrote: »

I totally disagree that this is a personal issues matter. It is 100% down to the ****ty environment the OP is working in.

I have a degree in CS and I didn't do into it because my intuition told me that it really would be a very long slog before I would ever reach a level of success that would be in any way comparative to the amount of effort it took to get the degree in the first place no mind what I had to learn in the job.

I know I had a talent for it. But all I heard is you have to do this, you have to learn that, you'll be sent of evening courses ete etc. I always knew my college pilled on the coursework NOT just so you learn these things - it was to condition you to be the stereotypical dev who is in front of their PC day and night on the job and off the job. I happen to have a keen interest in fitness and I couldn't possible see how I cold ever work in development and live the kind of life that I desired. I also VALUE my spare time and the idea of getting into the rat race of dev showing how much you've learned and how much your perpetually willing to learn for me was just a non starter.

I also noticed that some of the tutors (who were often masters students) at college were needlessly aggressive and unhelpful. I could never see myself working with these kinds of unhelpful juvenile competitive nerds. I wouldn't mind but the salary is way way below what I considered reward for working in such an environment. But it was repeatedly drilled into us at college that working as a dev is somehow the dream job and being given the opportunity to do it is reward in itself. I thank my lucky stars that I saw through all that.

OP, I suggest to you you are not a ****ty developer. Rather you are working in an industry that tries to get more and more out of you by never telling you your good enough...to force you to do more and more i.e higher productivity. The end result is your wrecked and the industry gets more for their money. I think it's outrageous what goes on personally. While all the time in the media tech jobs/tech industry can do no wrong.

I suggest you accept that the life of a developer is as you've experienced it and consider whether that's the life you want. You won't study your way out of your issue. Some ppl are willing to cope with it but if your not maybe it's time to consider a different career path. You could branch off in a difference direction. I'm sure there are other jobs in IT that aren't pure development and would give you more free to time to look after yourself. You are thoroughly right be concerned about you health and it's good you've recognized it. Best of luck!

Take all of this and inverse it and that's where I'm coming from. You have a serious chip there and I'd hate to be working in a team with you with that kind of attitude!

moycullen14

John_Mc wrote: »

Take all of this and inverse it and that's where I'm coming from. You have a serious chip there and I'd hate to be working in a team with you with that kind of attitude!

Might be a bit overstated but you can't deny that a lot of places can be quite toxic , especially corporate IT departments. The truth of the matter is that IT/software doesn't necessarily suit everyone and, also, people get tired of it, burn out whatever.

Something that isn't discussed too often is the changing face of IT. It's a hugely different industry now to where it was 10, 15, 20 years ago. Some of the changes have not been for the better (I'm looking at you, Agile!) to put it mildly.

Constantly having to keep up with the latest fad, the long hours, etc, doesn't suit everyone.

Main reason lots of us got into software was the challenge and excitement of creating stuff in software. Think that's gone for a lot of people now.