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| Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do? | ||
| recommended by 1 user | 2021 | 1665 points by ConfessionTime | developer careers | original thread | | ||
I have been working as a software developer for almost two decades. I have received multiple promotions. I make decent money, 3x - 4x my area's median salary, so I live a comfortable life. I have never been fired or unemployed for more than a few months total over my entire career. Through most of that time I have averaged roughly 5 - 10 hours of actual work a week. I'm not even discounting job related but non-coding time as not work. There are literally days in which the only time I spend on my job is the few minutes it takes to attend the morning stand-up. Then I successfully bullshit my way through our next stand-up to hide my lack of production. No one has ever called me out on this and my performance reviews range from mediocre to great. I'm generally a smart person. I went to a top 30 university, but it's not like I'm a genius or I'm coasting off connections made while getting a Harvard education. I wouldn't consider myself an abnormally talented developer. I often don't understand the technical details other engineers discuss in meetings. I have probably bombed more tech interviews than I have passed. All my jobs have been between 2-5 years so I'm neither finding a place to stagnate or leaving before anyone could judge my production. It feels like I am in the middle of the bell curve in terms of career success. So what gives? Are most of us secretly lying about how much we are working? Do people regularly run into coworkers like me during their career and simply ignore it because they find it too awkward to criticize them? Have I just been incredibly lucky and every boss I have had is too incompetent to notice? Do I have imposter syndrome and I am actually a 10x developer whose laziness makes them a 1x developer? These questions have kept popping up in my mind over the last year. Remote work during the pandemic has allowed me to finally be honest with myself and stop pretending I am working when I am not. I want to know if I was the only one pretending. | ||
| One user recommended this thread. What they said: |
| sinenomine Dec 19, 2021 | on: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness? | context |
I have given advice just for this case here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25509941
So far it is working out pretty well for me. To be quite honest, you don't have to have passion for your job to perform well enough in accord with your salary and incentives. I'd say even more, overworking oneself is a "grave sin" against your future.
One's time and intelligence are better spent optimizing one's family size (in upwards direction) and health.
> I thought I was already doing that but looks like I've been doing something wrong with my professional career, and there is a path more equilibrated and focused on happiness I should follow.
In addition to my advice, I recommend you to read this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29581125
Several things should be pretty evident by this point:
1. Software engineering sub-niches are grossly different in pay/effort ratio, overtime expectations and ageism prevalence
2. Overperforming expecting a raise is a poor strategy in most cases
3. Discrete option/bonus increase thresholds doled out according to perceived effort/visibility are a devious trick to lure a significant part of workers to invest more effort than they would otherwise (and still fail to get over the threshold to get the bonus). Don't fall for it.
And in any case: I think one of the most valuable things one can do is raise a big family, while investing into stock market and slowing down one's aging as much as possible, to reap all this compounding interest.