Start each day with the thought: "if I got fired today do I have what it takes to bridge it through to the next opportunity, and would there be companies out there in need and willing to hire me".
If you can't honestly answer that with "yes" you are either accommodated, or running risks higher than you realize.
In my experience outline.com does a bang up job of getting all that clutter out. I am not in any way affiliated with them and don't even know how they monetize but I hope they stick around for as long as possible.
I joke that my career went downhill from when I started. At first I had my own office, with a door, desk, computer desk, bookshelf with books, two chairs in front of my desk for small meetings. Then I had a large, tall cube, with reasonable space. Next I had a small, short walled cube I could barely fit in and would bump into my neighbor. Finally I was in a open space, with tens of other people yapping in their speakerphones many times in the same online meeting, with maddening echo. One person got sick, everyone got sick. If you want to get any work done you need to wear Bose cancelling headphones.
Finally I managed to work from home. Once again I have my private office, silence, communicate via Slack and email, and never been more productive in my life.
OMG I do the same thing. First job out of college, I had a private office, bookcase, huge filing cabinet, everything. As my pay increases, my working conditions deteriorate. I hate working from home, though. I am now on the FI train (Financial Independence) so I can either take lower paying jobs and live partially off my savings, or do whatever I want. I also, of course, maximize my income. Making 4x what I was making back when I had my own office takes the sting off a little, you know? But still. Ridiculous.
I love WFH. It helps that I have been happily married for many years, I have home cooked meals, more family interaction (well when I am working I am working but whatercooler conversations in your own kitchen are great). And I can literally work from anywhere, be it visiting relatives or travelling to Europe. I really hope I can continue like this for a long time; I might accept going back to the office - but it better be a real one.
Working from home... For some of us, that too, is becoming impossible due to noise.
I moved, to my own house, in part in the hope of starting to consult as a sideline. To end up tortured by a series of neighbors.
I just had another one move in next door, and find my previously quiet neighboring property now has a fellow who plays music while he works in his garage. At least that I can't hear, inside my own house with the windows closed and the A/C on.
This "all noise, all the time" culture has invaded home life, too. And, it seems, for more and more people, not just from those you choose (or, are forced to...) live with.
Like the selfish people with their straight pipe Harleys. The absolutely ridiculous car stereos, which around here at least, the police finally seem to have cracked down on, a bit. (Once we got a noise ordinance, that for a long time they weren't really enforcing, I felt like pointing out to them, "Look! Here's your revenue stream! Third or fourth violation: $1000. You can afford to buy some calibrated sound meters.")
Choose where you live carefully. Home, like work, is a place where inconsiderate -- or, bad -- neighbors can drag your life and productivity down. Whereupon your options shrink, rather than grow.
I have this same problem as well. I don't know if the world is getting noisier or I'm getting more sensitive. Probably the latter. My neighbor to one side has two vehicles with massive car stereos that he enjoys just letting run most of the day on some days. He's told me to pound sand when I ask him to turn it down. My neighbor to the other side has a straight pipe Harley that he warms up at 7:30 on the morning. He's told me that loud pipes save lives when I ask him to not do it so much. My neighbor on the other side of the duplex has a stoop that faces my window and enjoys holding mobile phone conversations in the outdoors where it's nice and breezy. That's roughly the same effect as people gabbing in the open space.
I tried renting one of those small offices in a quiet neighborhood. Nope, they're apparently built with tissue paper so when the tattoo parlor moved in across the hall and started dropping the beat, there went all semblance of calm. Same for the small business just to the other side where they have loud stand-ups (with applause) and lots of sales calls.
So, yep, I know the old saying of "if everybody else is the asshole it's you who's the asshole." I still can't shake the feeling that I have nowhere to escape. Work is people loud, home is people loud, away is people loud, even the bus to and from work is getting people loud, the plane ride to vacation is people loud. Maybe I just need to hermit.
I commute by car, but frequently take the DC area Metro train to go into town for recreation. It's actually pretty quiet; people don't talk loudly usually. The exception is sometimes on the weekend when you have tourists on the train.
At home, it's pretty quiet too: I live in a tiny condo on the ground floor. Sometimes I hear sounds from the plumbing from people flushing toilets above, or from someone dropping something in the shower above, but otherwise it's very quiet. Large dogs aren't allowed here.
Years ago, I lived in a subdivision with my own house. It was much noisier: every neighbor around me had dogs that barked at all hours, we even got into a war with some of them that went to court (they lost: the police testified they heard dogs barking and that was that, since there was a noise ordinance). One neighbor had friends that would drive up to pick them up every day and honk the horn (the police were no help here). That neighborhood was miserable.
I recommend NOT buying your own house in a subdivision, and moving into a condo instead, preferably in a fairly new (and somewhat expensive) high-rise. The whole culture of cars, motorcycles, big dogs, etc., and the individuality that goes with that is anathema to people who want peace and quiet.
It's not you who's the asshole, it's Americans who live in the suburbs.
Not necessarily. I had neighbors do that with the car stereos -- across the street and down a house.
They played them so loud, and the subwoofers were so strong, that I would hear the glass panes vibrating within their frames, in my windows. In addition to the bass, itself.
There is simply no way to stop such noise from penetrating right through nearby structures.
In my last corporate job, that moved from offices to shared, low wall "cubettes", there was a contingent that would stand up and shout their conversations across the aisles. There was my immediate neighbor, on the other side of my cubette wall, who would pound our connected desk system incessantly while on hours worth of personal phone calls. (Sometimes "multi-tasking", which would show up when her work products would have to be redone.) Not only would I hear it, it would shake my own desk. When I asked her, very politely, to please not to hit her desk repeatedly, she reported me to HR and I ended up in the dog house.
All the... well, corporate propaganda, was about "collaboration".
And within that cubette you shared, you were supposed to tune out hour long cube meetings taking place 3-4 feet from your shoulder.
Grandparent commenter: I sympathize. That... "sounds" very familiar.
I had no support from family and friends. Actually, sort of active anti-support, until they experienced it for themselves. Which few, other than family, did, because I was so uncomfortable that I didn't invite people over.
My strong advice, after having let the stress pull me into a downward spiral, is to do whatever you can to get yourself out of it and to someplace safe. Screw what other people say; they're not living with it.
And, we don't all have to be corporate -- or start up -- environment drones.
Get out, before it's too late.
P.S. Lest people say I'm "anti-social" or poor at working collaboratively, at one BigCo, I had a senior manager outside my reporting structure present me with a corporate-wide award for independently and pro-actively throwing a cross-country team together to troubleshoot and solve a process that had been in chronic, repeated crisis for some years. These weren't people who reported to me, just people across the organization who benefited from -- collaboratively -- establishing responsibilities, expectations, deliverables, dates, and a process for problem resolution, for something we all depended upon and knew needed to get done.
"Collaboration" does not mean tuning out a bunch of noise that has nothing to do with what you're working out.
One of the most effective, and senior, development teams I was on, within a rather large corporation and development shop, was about 50% remote, with developers upping their remote time as much as they felt they could, as that became acceptable. (This happened particularly after the move from offices to those "cubettes", for those who had been working in the office. Oh, and the distracted, desk-pounding neighbor was not part of that team.)
The team had no problem working together, nor with other teams, internal and external. People knew what they were doing, and they could make the space to concentrate on it effectively. One of the most effective guys, off in Atlanta, I never even met face-to-face, over the course of a few years.
Sorry if I've gone on about this, a bit. But this "mythology" of the primacy of "open space collaboration" needs to be... "dispelled" is too weak a word.
As far as I'm concerned, if people want to work that way, let them. Somewhere away from me. I'll outperform them, if my own work preferences -- needs -- are respected, and the metrics are fair.
Furthermore, you need a living space under your own control, to enjoy and also where you can rest up from the parts of the world -- including the work world -- that aren't under your control.
The idea that you should somehow learn to ignore, or even "enjoy" your neighbor's loud music and other behavior. No. And, I've found, most often the people making such comments aren't putting up with such circumstances, themselves.
People in other circumstances may live differently. Even then, I think there is a difference between community noise and penetrating, amplified noise that invades your space and triggers your autonomous nervous system.
Kids playing in the neighborhood, quite audible through an open window, are no problem for me. There is a difference.
> There is simply no way to stop such noise from penetrating right through nearby structures.
I'm not sure that's literally true. With enough budget, I think you could pull it off with the judicious use of (a) lawsuits, and/or (b) extensive soundproofing.
Although it you have that ^ much money to solve the problem, moving is probably the best first step.
> They played them so loud, and the subwoofers were so strong, that I would hear the glass panes vibrating within their frames, in my windows. In addition to the bass, itself.
I gotta admit that I'm one of those people. But at home, not with a car stereo. However, I make sure to live in places where sound won't bother my neighbors. Partly because I'm a nice guy. And partly to avoid the hassle.
I've lived in close-packed houses. But we had A/C, so the windows could always be closed. For apartments, I've sought out old-school concrete slab and block buildings. And currently, I'm in a modern frame building, with extreme sound isolation (both floors and walls). Also, I put my speakers overhead, so I'm mainly driving the floors, which have better sound isolation.
Sorry to hear about your noisy home environment. It reminds me of a time when I lived in a house with drug dealing neighbors on one side of the property and blasting Metallica in the middle of the night neighbors on the other side of the house. What a nightmare of a scenario. The. I moved into an apartment in Irvine CA near the 405 and holy shit, the noise from the highway drove me crazy for several years before I finally had enough. I am lucky to live in rural Japan now with super quiet neighbors and nowhere near a large street. What a relief it is to live in quiet. I can actually open my windows and not hear a single thing at night!
I feel for you brother. If you have a chance, move ASAP. If not, make that chance yourself. Everyone who seeks it deserves peace and quiet.
I don't think that's anything new. It used to be that everyone had a boom box in their garage. What seems to be new is that the music is getting louder and louder because so many people have early stage hearing loss by age 30 as a result of cranking the music on their earbuds up too loud.
I'm semi-regularly amazed to discover the things I can hear and people 10 years younger than me can't.
You might want to talk to Leslie Blomberg of the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse. He's doing research into the kinds of noise ordinances that have been enacted in the United States and how effective and enforceable they are. In particular, it seems that giving police officers sound meters is more complicated than you'd think (they require special training) and not all that effective.
I work from home. I used to put in 8 hours at an office, then went down to 5 at home. Since I had a baby my work time is now 1-2 hours. To make up for the lost time I have to be super productive. Basically, I don’t work unless I’m in the zone. I should probably mention that I work for myself so it’s not like I’m stealing time from anyone. A deadline is a deadline and I meet them regardless of hours worked. I’ve learned that there is work, productive work and super productive work. I have to be in the zone 100% of the time I work or things turn into a shitshow.
Pretty sure the "great productivity while WFH" is contingent on having a dedicated workspace (I mean, I guess it can be shared with other work-from-homers in the household, but it should be dedicated). Which isn't something everyone can afford. That's why, even as I advocate for WFH as the default, I think companies should still have offices where people can do their work if they need to.
My last job was 100% WFH and I tell people this all the time who ask how I do it.
"Dedicate a work area for work and nothing else".
All I have on my work desk (which is an actual desk in a smallish room I converted for the purpose) is a monitor, keyboard and mouse and a coffee mug full of pens. The only thing in the room that isn't work is a Dualshock 4 PS4 controller that I use for gaming when I'm on lunch breaks or after work is done and I feel like playing some street fighter.
You don't just work at the house and expect to be productive. Much like muscles in the body working out for a marathon, you have to train at it, exercise and make deliberate efforts to get better. You don't just show up and run if you expect to have a good time.
YMMV though. I'm lucky to be a single-ish guy with a cat and no kids.
Yes, if I ever go back to WFH I'll make sure to have a dedicated office. You need a room where "work happens" and nothing else. The human mind needs boundaries.
Combine that with the growing popularity of "all-in-one-bucket" PTO (IOW, your sick days comes out of the same bucket as vacation/holiday), and it's a wonder anyone stays healthy for any period of time.
For the longest time I joked with my wife that I'd take a $20K pay cut to not work in an open office. The job market called my bluff. gulp Sure, it's less money (and probably right around the $20K I was willing to trade), but I'm pretty sure my office is bigger than the one I had at Microsoft back in the day. Ask me today, and it's a trade I'm glad I made. And I haven't been sick in the five months since I started. :-)
I worked in a hallway cubicle at a law office for a while. Once a day an attorney would start chatting with another behind my back and would stay there for an hour. I got so annoyed at some point that I stopped working for the entirety of their conversation any time someone started talking. I felt wrong for taking up company time but these people did not respect my space. At some point I also started just turning around and looking at them while they talked. A few got the point and left but others just kept on talking even after making eye contact.
That almost never works in software jobs as workplaces are not mobile.
Move a big desktop with hardware? Good luck. Try to access local state from a laptop? Does not work or is inconvenient.
Multiply by number of people talking.
It really was nice back when I started to have a dedicated office. When I was at Shell even the "hot seat" SA who had to answer the hotline and customer emails rotated into an office dedicated to that task for their week in the hot seat.
But it wasn't all perfect - Chevron used to allow in office smoking. Fortunately for everyone else the two smokers had their own shared office but still everything in there was covered in a yellow tar miasma and the offices on either side didn't fare much better.
And Shell's offices were in a building that could be resold as a hospital, so we sat in rooms that were meant to be a private hospital room and were jammed in with easily removed furniture: in my case that meant sharing a room with four card tables and literally getting up and leaving the office so my office mate could walk past my desk and exit the room.
OMG my office might as well sponser Bose noise cancelling headphones. "Warehouse style" bare concrete on every surface. The cheapest shittiest office space for a bunch of people making 70+k a year. It's crazy.
In my company everyone from the janitor to the CTO sits in the same shitty chairs in the same giant concrete warehouse. At least they're fair about it...
Noise cancellation does nothing for office noise. It is only useful for things like fans, engines, etc. So, any headphones with isolation will do in an office.
As someone who uses noise cancelling headphones (Bose QC35) every day in the office for ~1.5y, I can tell you that yes it re ally help for me.
It won't hide the voices of people's talking but it will mask them somewhat (like if they where more far). It's the only way I'm able to be functional and talk with clients and continue working in an open space..
However Bose mic is catching everything, but that's another problem..
Programmers are a trade worker the same as plumbers and electricians, etc.... There was a bit of 'magic happens here' in the industry for a while but nowadays we're pretty much a skilled trade.
Trade means "skilled work", so programming has always been by definition a trade. That's not disparaging in the least. There's absolutely nothing wrong with trade work.
My only issue is the matter of supplies. If you hired me as an electrician but wouldn't let me have any wire cutters, I would have a very difficult time doing my job. Likewise, a quiet space to think is one of the necessary reagents for programming.
It depends on how close to the sales pipeline you are, or whatever creates value in your company. It's still possible to have an outsized, leveraged effect as a developer.
Yeap, I'm looking for an exit from being a permanent programmer employed by someone else. Whether that's self-employment, or transitioning to a PM or BA type role. Code monkey is a dead-end if you're outside a tech-hub.
I don't wear headphones that play music much (unless I want rainy mood or something) but Shooting Earmuffs are perfect. With a good pair I would forget I'm even at work at times.
At the same time if someone comes to my cube and is close by, I can still hear them. Far away noises, not so much.
I highly recommend getting a pair, they're super cheap, all kinds of styles and sizes.
I'm in a dead end job right now but I'm reluctant to leave because my office is huge. big bookshelf, multiple chairs, nice view. I'm going to need a big pay increase to go back to an open office, and no one is ponying up.
Same, except I don't work from home. After open floor plan came "flex-seating" where spaces in an open floor plan office are available 'first-come, first serve' and you can't leave pictures, papers, books, or anything on your desk when you go home.
When I see the phrase "emailing like a CEO" I imagine mainly not asking for opinions or decisions rather making statements of fact or decisions. For example, I got into the habit of not asking for vacation, rather I say "I am taking time off from day X to day Y", or declaring my design decisions instead of asking for opinions.
In the case of asking for time off, my rationale is to avoid making someone spend time evaluating if my request is acceptable.
We may be looking at this the wrong way. It isn't a question of ageism, rather did that person keep up with the evolution of languages and ecosystems? It is OK to be old(er) as long as one has what companies are looking for. Waiting for the time go by and count on "seniority raises" alone is counterproductive.
I am 55. I am as current as I can be, including when it comes to cloud, nosql, APIs, and the javascript renaissance. I try to do what companies need. My experience is a bonus because of the things I don't do, because of the problems I did not cause, because of the things that didn't happen. These in my experience are valuable even though almost impossible to measure.
Amen to that. Where I work I see people adding await/async all over the place because "performance". So now when you get exception stack traces they are hard to follow or flat out useless.
Here's what have been working well for me. I wear dress pants (not jeans, not chino - Izod for example), colorful shirts (Nautica are my favorite) - always tucked in, good looking but comfortable shoes (not sneakers). I make sure they are always reasonably ironed. And silly socks - Happy Socks are the best. During the summer I use short sleeves, long sleeves in the winter if I feel like.
I never use a tie, but you may if you feel like.
I achieved some level of happiness when I managed to go up the earnings ladder (move frequently, move fast) and stop behaving if it was my own business. It is someone else's business, and I am there to do what they ask me. Which may or may not match to what they need, but that's not for me to decide.
When things go wrong, you either move on or start fixing things, and that perpetuates your job (hopefully). If things take more time, it is their time. I come in at 8am, leave at 4pm. I don't take my laptop home. I don't work from home. I see their inefficiencies as opportunities for me to spend time on things like learning and experimenting.
But that's me. I get paid enough, I don't need or want to go up the "career ladder". Others may have loftier goals.
I ask this sincerely because this is the mindset that I've noticed has made me the happiest and I'm currently looking for a new place that will pay me more. I've been happier when earning more and working less. I don't really care about what I do while at work or whether I'm using a hot technology or what the company does. This doesn't mean I care about what I'm doing. I do care and put effort in during the work day and I've always had high praise from managers.
Unfortunately, in order to distinguish themselves, pretty much every company wants to market themselves as such a great place to work and of course they ask the question "Why do you want to work here?" when for me the honest answer would be "I would want to work there if you pay the most and I can stick to a max office time of 8 hours per day." But I play along and say generic things about the product and people and show interest.
I find meaning in my life outside of work and more money helps me achieve my outside goals which makes me happy.
Oh you learn that "you just don't say things like that". Interviewing is a lot like sales, where you are the product. So it stands to reason that the "truth" is a movable entity. You build the truth your "client" is looking for, you enhance what would be pluses for them, and keep your real reasons for yourself. After all, they are your reasons and no one else's.
As you mention, I do care and put effort. I don't have things coming back to haunt me. I have quite a bit of experience. And I do things fast if I need to. I just don't do them fast just for the sake of it, so I try to be seen as "meeting the targets" as well as "meeting expectations". Because if you are exceeding expectations you are really being underpaid. Well that's my view and my opinion after quite a bit of decades.
> I have quite a bit of experience. And I do things fast if I need to. I just don't do them fast just for the sake of it, so I try to be seen as "meeting the targets" as well as "meeting expectations".
Also meet targets your boss cares about. Don't be a miracle worker, you have to manage expectations. In large organizations I can always point to other teams shortcomings, or organizational inefficiencies as reasons for slow progress and delays.
Yes, absolutely do what your boss expects. But one can be a miracle worker just for so long. In reality you are moving your baseline upwards, and the day you stop being a miracle worker you become a slacker.
The primary quality an interview tests for is your ability to lie to meet social expectations you do not personally believe in in such a way that it isn't apparent you are doing such.
If a test looks for the presence of something which isn't apparent, how does any subject pass?
I don't think interviewers are specifically looking for fake in preference to genuine, but they perhaps tend to be satisfied with appearance as an estimator of substance.
A job is just a job, and a business is just a business. Mistaking either for anything more will lead to a paradox.
Businesses just need extremely specific work to get done. Jobs are ways to get people to do that work in exchange for money.
If you're flipping burgers at McDonald's, you don't reinvent their burger. If you're assembling iPhones at Foxconn, you never add your personal touch. You do what is expected of you, and if you'd rather be doing something else, you need to find a job that matches. And that's it.
And most importantly, if you got paid, you're being appreciated. If you need someone to pat you on the back, know that the business is paying someone to pat you on the back because you are deemed to work better that way, and it's called overhead. It's why you're being paid less than someone who doesn't need pats on the back (probably the guy patting you on the back). Same with dangling carrots.
Unfortunately, there is so much more to being human. So it truly is up to each individual person to fill in their voids. A true professional is defined by someone who is capable of remaining satisfied while accomplishing demanding work.
I agree with this fully. I was taught this lesson very specifically after being laid off and doing a stint as an hourly consultant.
I've found being senior enough to actually be (slightly) respected is nice in that you can spend time cleaning if you know how to sell it (I just reduced X, which translates to $$$), making your day-to-day easier.
>It is someone else's business, and I am there to do what they ask me. Which may or may not match to what they need, but that's not for me to decide.
I know that this is the right idea, but it is so painful to build something you know is stupid and waste of time. Its impposible to go home happy knowing what you are building is crap.
I look it this way: if I were good/smart/eager enough to decide if something is stupid or a waste of time, I may think about becoming the entrepreneur myself. I am not that person. I am a tool. Someone is paying me to develop something that it is important at least to them. I am a professional, I get things done for other people.
"I am a professional, I get things done for other people."
I agree, but only if people want to pay "professionally" for it. Additionally, there can be problems with this if you're working someplace where your job is potentially at risk if the project fails.
It's very hard to take strategic direction from folks who have golden parachutes in their contracts. Succeed or fail, they'll be OK, but when you can see the project is DOA, you now have to spend some time preparing to look for the next job/engagement/etc.
I realize not all situations are like this, but have seen enough to understand it happens. You can be professional, but also have to understand that sometimes your best interests and the project's best interests may not line up, and plan accordingly.
I learned the hard way to always be prepared to move on. I keep myself current. I actually assume the project will fail and prepare for it. If it succeed that's great news.
I never had and probably never will have golden parachutes. My insurance is what I know and why I do. It must be valuable for the marketplace, not just for the company I am currently working for. That is my duty.
I learned the hard way to always be prepared to
move on.
This bears repeating. I have had many jobs, and a lot of them were great jobs. Sometimes for whatever reason, you need/want to move.
It is quite often out of your control (e.g. the company is in trouble and they layoff your entire department or cancel the project you're working on) and even in socialist Europe there isn't really such A thing as job security (outside of the public sector anyway).
Even huge succesful companies like amazon/microsoft/google/etc sometimes have layoffs. Or they become less succesful for whatever reason you couldn't predict ahead of time and then have layoffs. Or they merge/buy another company and get rid of redundant/duplicate positions.
> I actually assume the project will fail and prepare for it
I do as well, but it is always a bit of a conflict in the back of my mind wrt feeling 100% dedicated to someone else's project. I want to feel that I'm committed 100%, but always have to be preparing for "this will not work out, what is plan B?".
At some point regardless of feelings you just shouldn't be 100% committed to some else's project, of which you have very limited control (if at all). You can be 90% committed and a professional and still get a lot done and do great work.
In the company's eyes you should be 100% or even more committed. Perception is everything in this case. But you must do it by creating your own reserve space, where you are really 90% (or less) committed while using the remainder to worry about your next gig, because it will come. That's when you learn to apply proactive procrastination (sometimes it pays off to hold off on something you suspect will be cancelled), and absolutely use all the time estimated and allocated. Say whatever they want, managers and people in general take estimates for what it must be. Therefore you make it so.
"I am a professional, I get things done for other people."
I get what you're saying here (I think). Part of being a professional is putting your own ego aside and not making it all about yourself.
However, a true professional doesn't actually obey an employer the way a simple employee does. And in that regard, regrettably, we software developers really aren't professionals. We can take a personal stand, but there is no professional code of ethics that we serve that stands above the client or employer, at least not in the sense that it does for physicians or lawyers.
It isn't really our "fault", though we could organize better. Professionals belong to associations that have formal standing with government. In many cases, they can't "report to" a person who is not a member of their profession. They must serve their clients, but they are empowered, by law, to stand up to their clients and refuse to breach the ethics of their profession.
This is software development. We are not professionals, and I sometimes say there is no such thing as "software engineer". I am an engineer by education (EE) and I can tell you software development is a long way from being a regulatable profession. Heck if you want to install an outlet or a faucet in your home you need to be properly licensed and insured. But when it comes to developing software that arguably is having more and more importance on people's lives there is no such thing.
>Heck if you want to install an outlet or a faucet in your home you need to be properly licensed and insured.
That's what happens when you have strong plumbing and electricians unions. They convince the legislate to legislate a form of welfare for their trade.
Small scale plumbing and electrical are tasks a significant chunk of homeowners are perfectly capable of doing without screwing up. It used to be that the majority of homeowners could accomplish these tasks and that was in the days before the Internet.
I've spent plenty of time in my career building stupid things. While I'd prefer to build non-stupid things, as long as I'm getting paid well for it, I will happily build your stupid thing. If you get hung up on needing more control over what you're building, you actually have a few other options:
1. Take on a hobby in your free time.
2. Work for a different company, where developers have more of a stake and help define the product (there are few but they exist).
3. Moving into a "product management" role where you're defining features and requirements, etc.
4. Put your ass on the line and gamble on starting your own company.
I've had a lot of existential issues with this. What makes me feel better is that the system in the moment is what matters. Everything gets destroyed in the end as per every world view (goes to a heat death, gets destroyed by Yahweh and a new Earth comes about, wolf eats everything). Nothing you build will last more than one or two generations, statistically. Just enjoy making the thing and the process of trying to solve a problem. Maybe pick which problems you work on.
Yeah, this is what I call the "Marine Model." You and I work like grunts; kick doors in; blow shit up.
However I feel that my experience has indicated that this only works when the brass are present and making such orders. When you're on your own, even when within the context of a organization or team, this is more easily prone to failure.
You talk about them being loftier goals, but maybe they're just different methods to solve different problems.
Great inisght. I've recently been wondering how I can rebase my values to achieve the same behaviour. You seem like you had a different mindset before -- how were you able to rewire yourself?
Also, just curious:
> [..] but that's not for me to decide [..] When things go wrong, you either move on or start fixing things [..]
Start fixing things is your own decision or do you wait until someone asks you?
I do my best to have someone tell me to fix them. Not because I lack initiative, but because I saw too many times well- intentioned developers get in a lot of trouble by "taking the initiative" to make things better, to fix things. To the point where one place I worked the word "refactor" was spoken with a high degree of suspicion.
Part of the problem is that well-intentioned developers don't always get it right. The assumption in these discussions seems to be that every time developer starts refactoring, the system is bound to end up better then before. The reality is, that the refactoring attempt may end up as bad or even worst then before - it may end up over-engineered, under-engineered or simply buggy, slower or loosing features people actually liked. Unfinished refactoring basically forces everyone to deal with two different architectures at once which causes quite a lot of problems.
I think that these kinds of experience are behind the word "refactor" being suspicious at some places.
The other issue is that "I am taking initiative" is sometimes euphemism for "I am going to do things my way and don't care to argue with other team members/departments who I expect to obey me anyway by default" power grab which leads to people rejecting changes even as they are right.
"They" like to say yes, that we scrum. Practically I have a manager that calls biweekly meetings and hands out work to be done in one or two weeks. Which usually is more than enough, but I manage to get everything done "on time".
Every two weeks sounds great. At my last company "they" decided to do scrum. We had stand-ups daily (with 2 developers) and it was horrible micromanagement. They send out our burndown chart every day and if we were behind, the "scrum master" would constantly ask why and if we would make it on time. We had to do estimates and story refinement for hours. It was a huge mess. I quit and will never work for a company that is like that again.
Scrum is a process with way more than just daily stand ups. Obviously a company can do whatever works for them, but formal 'scrum' involves time-delineated sprints, planning meetings, demos, retrospectives, the daily stand ups, pointing stories and a handful of other aspects.
If you can't honestly answer that with "yes" you are either accommodated, or running risks higher than you realize.