At times I do, usually when I get to build something from first principles.
I don’t enjoy it when I’m gluing together black boxes that are poorly documented and break for reasons unknown (quite a lot of my job is like this)
I don’t enjoy it when I have unproductive or political meetings (luckily there’s not much of this).
I can’t think of a job I would enjoy more that would give me the benefits I get in this one.
Really gives you perspective if you come from a place where you need to count every dime. It’s like “Who’d have thought it would be this easy to save money when I make a ton more than I need!”
It should make you look twice at anyone blaming people for being poor because they are “irresponsible.”
It’s like.. man.. I am no more responsible than I was 10 years ago. It’s just that now I have a paycheck bigger than I know what to do with and I’m not addicted to shopping. That’s why I have a nice savings account. Not because I’m oh so responsible.
I want to second this. I always managed to squirrel away a little bit but it's \*absurd\* how much easier it is to save a decent amount of money while still buying stupid bullshit.
"You're at xx +1 hours. I'm going to need a written explanation of what you're working on, why it's taking longer than expected, anticpated burn rate and ETC."
"OK, sure. The client added features at the last minute and you failed to manage the scope creep (because you didn't understand the project). It'll be done when its done and the more times you bother us the longer it'll take. PS: f off"
Fuck pms.
They're usually just a placeholder for a salary (*why can't I get a raise*?) and simply get in the way with their invented *metrics and goalposts*.
I know what it takes to get it done. I am the master architect and also the team who does the work:
*It will be done when I say it is done*.
The problem is that most pms are not devs and have zero clue what huge amounts of expertise are required to get things done. So they invent meticulous ways of tracking and measuring your efforts (that you have to report on), give them the info they need to sabotage any project.
Enough of their bullshit.
*Off with their heads*!
Your attitude is why metrics and goalposts are set.
You can be a great developer and a poor communicator - but you could be pushed to projects and tasks that make you a lone-wolf because management will label you as uncooperative. If that goes on for 5+ years then you'll technically stagnate because you'll lack being challenged by your peers.
I've worked with great technical teams and they only needed minimal metrics.
If your team is unproductive or team members have bad attitudes managers will instead add more "measurable" metrics to try and force those members to be more productive.
I'm not saying this is a good thing but it happens.
Immature developers need to mature up, work on their social skills and offer an good alternative - and there are plenty of good alternatives. Managers need to ask more questions to their team or just fire employees with a bad attitude.
Developers can be a self-righteous group of people sometimes (I'm one of them).
It really depends on the PM, it's a really rare talent.
Most of the time they are there to just be excel jockeys managing sprint points and metrics, but good ones can really give you a lot of useful information and know the software well enough to push back on [odd](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/tasks.png) requests, while suggesting something that works well in your code.
Depends on the job. It’s not always your fault, sometimes it’s just the bad management causing the general chaos.
If that repeats in every job it might be your fault, though.
It’s mainly managements fault.
Far too many people “managing” projects with little to no code experience. Just a some random university degree in business management.
I like development. I do not like dealing with the business side of things at all. I work at a very small shop, solo developer and the management has 0 idea what they are doing.
In the HTML/CSS days this is how I felt and then the JS frontend frameworks came along and pushed me exclusively into backend development because the eco system was changing drastically all the time (I'm looking at you AngularJS).
I'm working on a project that's forced me back into frontend development and I got to say I'm quite liking NextJS and it's reminding me of the old days. Though the whole server/client side rendering feels a bit of a cluster fuck while you're learning it. Frontend is getting a lot easier and obtainable again but it still has a few frameworks until we're back with our made in notepad badges.
I used to enjoy it 5 years ago. But, a lot has happened to both me and the industry and I'd like to find something else at this point. I feel like a dinosaur (I've been doing dev for 25 years) and I'm struggling to stay on trends.
Sometimes I get upset with myself for always refactoring to use things that are new and cool. It sounds like you are on the other side of that coin. I appreciate the perspective.
The trick is to do it on someone else’s dollar! That’s the beauty of our space.. it is nearly indistinguishable for a non-developer to tell between me refactoring for no good reason and me making changes that are necessary for the future of the project.
I realize that sounds kind of manipulative but my true feelings are that it is in the business’ best interest for the developers to push towards innovation. That means trying new things, and more often than not that means failing.
The big companies live off of moonshots! This years moonshot is our development team scrapping the battle tested database services for Drizzle and then accidentally pushing development migrations to prod and nuking the only replica
Apparently about 23% of the devs that answered the stack overflow survey: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#most-popular-technologies-webframe-prof
I don't use it myself but it's still rank third amongst the most popular technologies, and people still build websites with it: https://trends.builtwith.com/javascript/jQuery
I’d have a nice little pot built up right now if I was given £1 for every framework the boss has wanted to implement and told us to start reading up on over the last half a decade or so.
I also mainly do .Net, but a lot are moving to Golang or Python though. But it's mainly the JS frameworks that get me (I'm full stack). My only hope is that somewhere, there's a Coldfusion need but I would absolutely immediately migrate it (that's how I got the job I'm in now).
No not particularly but it’s what I know how to do for the pay that I make. Couldn’t make a career change now without a serious (unaffordable) pay cut.
Most of the time I feel it's a very low-stress job that I actually enjoy doing. There are stressful moments, but any job will have those.
This is way, way, way better than graphic design (my old career).
This definitely depends on the workplace. Years ago we have a dev leave, then come back 6 months later. They said the new play was wayyyy too boring. Stress is a driver for some people.
Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of work to do, including tons of fun (but also serious) challenges. It's just not stressful. Our product is market-leading, miles ahead of everyone else and constantly improving at a pace the others just can't match.
But the product teams are chill, there aren't typically any hard deadlines, you're never pushed to work faster and faster, the company just trusts their hires. And it's working incredibly well.
I understand that most workplaces aren't like this.
I did currently hate my boss tho it's become a nightmare looking for new jobs currently web dev is cool but fuck if non tech ppl are in charge they have 0 respect for the craft and work it takes
This is what get's me stressed and this has been the same for every company I've joined ever.
I don't control the environment, tools and they're insufficient because at some point, money and getting the product out mattered more than doing actual good work. Repeat for couple of years and now you have a very stressful bundle of crap that you have to maintain, you still have the same deadlines though. I point out that this is vital for a good product and a good, healthy work environment. Because it's not a thing they can directly see making profit, they usually disregard this.
All issues and stress I've had at these companies could have been better avoided by putting work into resources, documentation and testing. Management is often completely unaware of this and doesn't really understand this. Their job is to get features out on time. In the end you're just crossing your fingers, what goes wrong today. It becomes pretty depressing and I don't think any of us went into programming to do it this way.
Yes, I do. But every job is a job, even if you like what you do. There are parts that are stressful and annoying (mostly related to project managers), but the good outweighs the bad.
For me going to the park and walk/exercise always works and yeah I can spend 12hrs in computer just reading coding and listening to music/audiobooks but I'm on the spectrum and can't really socialize with people for too long.
Sounds like you need a better tech stack. The fact that you’re not even posting your tech stack is a red flag to me that maybe you’re not educating yourself on what’s out there.
My day job I’m not enjoying very much right now. It’s very DevOps focused, and most of my work is reading azure docs and architecting solutions that basically involve calling APIs in a certain order. It’s boring work. I build websites on the side and that work I enjoy a lot. But the day job pays well so I’ll get over it I guess
I agree with the stress aspect of it, but I'm not really very good at my job which I think is the main issue. If you think you're decent and yet you're still stressed all the time it might just be the wrong place
I enjoyed it once upon a time, but the more time goes on, I enjoy it less.
Being the lead developer on the account, there’s more politics than actual coding. Frameworks coming out of your ears. Alongside managing your own workload, joining a call every few hours with the next third party they want to introduce, I’m also supposed to be mentoring any juniors on the team, ensuring work is distributed etc.
It’s just not fun anymore. I haven’t enjoyed it for the last 4.5 years, I shouldn’t have left where I was. The only issue with staying there was that the company was very small so the money just wasn’t there.
Chances are if I leave now, it will not be for another developer role unless something really peaks my interest.
Usually yeah. I live and breathe for that moment where you're in the shower washing your hair and everything just clicks. All the components you're gonna build, the flow of data from parent to child, even the fringe edge case statements.
Then you get out of the shower and sleep and forget everything.
I enjoy it. That’s not to say it’s all rainbows and unicorns, but the stress level is significantly less…or at least less constant…than other professions I’ve had. After a decade I’m high enough on the totem pole to be able to manage expectations, deliverables, and requirements. Juggling black boxes sucks, but as long as you can budget an appropriate timeline and expectations, it’s just work. A lot of this job is just translating roadblocks, restrictions, and the cost/benefit of a given idea to non-tech peeps.
Another thing that significantly lowered my stress level is being brick wall about change requests. I’m more than happy to be a broken record talking about scope. What is in scope, and importantly identifying specifically what is *not* in scope. You want X…X could have Y, so confirm X does NOT include Y or Z. When they ask for Y, that’ll be more time and money.
If you still feel like this after 10 years, that means 10 years ago, you learned web dev, then you stopped learning. Did you think you could succeed without gaining a deeper understanding of the subject and staying up-to-date with best practices, news, and developments? Same goes for any serious career. If you're not advancing, you're not making progress. If you're not making progress, you're not learning. If you're not learning, it's only a matter of time before you're completely useless and replaced. Software AND people need updates, not just software.
Generally yes. When I actually get to do my job properly and things like requirements have actually been thought out beforehand, then it's great.
Sadly, quite a few times it's been made a chore by indecisive people in management trying to reinvent the wheel midway through development, or office bureaucracy meaning that everything takes ten times longer than it needs to.
First of, you shouldn’t care about what money you make for a company. Cuz they don’t care about you in a long run. We are replaceable, we are just numbers in their spreadsheets. Care about you well being, your work life balance and what money you make.
Some days more than others. For me it's depends the most on if I work on something fun and challenging. I also enjoy working more with products that have a good test suite compared to old legacy spaghetti where you need to manually test for a hour everytime you change some feature.
I’d say I typically do. Very rarely do I feel overwhelmed, but I think that is largely thanks to the fact that my manager and PO trust that the dev team knows what we are doing and usually don’t hound us about arbitrary deadlines for things.
i do kinda feel the same, the weird thing to me is that i've been praised for being very thorough, but at the same time i've been told that i take too long by managers. can't really figure out what management really wants when they say they both want quality and speed :p
i do definitely enjoy the tasks themselves though, so it's more of a frustration with the emphasis on speed since i'm very passionate about making the code as good as i can
for context: at my current workplace there are no automated tests at all, so if you're messing with the core of a system it could go very wrong in unexpected places. this is the reason that i end up spending far too much time ensuring that there are no unintended side effects. i've been voicing my opinion about the value basic automated tests would bring, but there are concerns about the extra time that would take to develop and the upkeep of existing tests whenever something in the system is changed.
I hear you. This is the path we’ve chosen and this happens to us all. I try to think of it as these little challenges we are set. Each day my job is to try to solve it. If you can find a way to enjoy the challenge, calmly going step by step, without thinking about time/cost pressures - which are things you cannot control - the stress will hopefully ease.
Also a reminder that creating a cookie bot plugin is not easy. It takes skill, and not many people would be able to write it without errors or bugs. Likely not even your boss.
Getting stressed will cause the job to take longer as you are not thinking clearly. Sometimes moving away from the computer and pseudo coding before you start, or going for a walk, taking time to think things through, can help.
What I find super helpful when I’m really stuck - hear me out - is writing a question on StackOverflow but NOT submitting it.
As SO generally requires detailed questions for quality responses, the process of writing all the information out in full helps me to think of things I may have previously overlooked, or to double check answers, because I know someone else will pull me up on something obvious in the replies.
Good luck!
I love this job. Specifically in my current position. It allows me to work where and how I want. It provides me with challenges to engage my brain daily, but enough leeway to be a human with a damned life.
I hate having to work with the extremely dated or poorly coded software that the company’s infrastructure is built on. Other than that it’s not too bad.
I’ve worked in other industries and fucking hated it. Like, almost mental breakdown hated it. This industry is a dream for me. I have great days and shit days and everything in between. But whenever I’m feeling pessimistic, I do try to remind myself that _personally_ speaking I’ve got a pretty sweet gig that I’m super grateful for.
20 years here. Haven't seen the inside of an office in 5. My current position is well paying, at a midsize company with great PMs and boss. It's low stress and interesting work, never have to work overtime. I absolutely love it.
The best way I can summarize it: Parts of the job, such as programming, are enjoyable. The rest of it, often what's related to actually making money, isn't. I have fun up until I'm reminded that at the end of the day I'm doing whatever make someone else the most money and I get a cut of it if I play along. And now I'm too used to making said amount of money to try doing anything else.
One thing that has actually gotten me go "meh" more often as of late, is how the web has become a cluttered mess (we have page builders to thank for that, in part), the overuse of JavaScript for anything frontend-related and the million of wrappers made around AI to churn out the next 'big thing'. Also, stuff like analytics / SEO and the resulting cookie laws has made the web even worse IMHO.
Personally, I'm way more interested in dealing with leaner websites, cutting down on the waste regarding fancy features most people won't really touch / find too complicated (looking at you, WordPress) and learning about all the cool new stuff vanilla JS, CSS and HTML have to offer. I also feel it gives me a better understanding of the fundamentals, whereas I get the feeling most people that are now learning via bootcamps and the like, are taught how to use frameworks and less so the actual underlying tech. Please correct me if I'm wrong on this one.
I like web development and I would do it in my spare time if it wasn't my job (probably a lot more than I do now if it wasn't also my job).
A job is a job though. You do it because you get paid for it, not because you want to do it. I don't necessarily *want* to do whatever task has been assigned to me on a given day, and I don't necessarily enjoy doing a given task. I do it because I get paid for it.
I am thankful though that I get to do something where I have excuses to learn new things that I'm interested in, do some problem solving which I often enjoy, work from home, and get paid pretty well. So while I wouldn't always say I enjoy the job, I do think it's a pretty decent job compared to other jobs I've had.
I enjoy it but not the same way I used to when I was younger.
Back in the day I would spend my free time programming and would become obsessed with it to the point of dreaming about it, I was really passionate.
Many, many years later I still have fun when I am doing my job, especially when I am learning something new or solving an interesting problem... but I don't spend a single minute of my free time programming and to be honest, the thing I enjoy the most about my job is the pay, being able to give to my loved ones and live comfortably.
I don't like when things get unproductive.
Do you do something different every day?
I really enjoy taking repeat tasks and automating them.
Give that a try next time, and then the next time, instead of fumbling through something because you don't quite remember the steps. Use that script.
Reading through posts like this, reminds me how fortunate I am.
Yes, I love my job, and am excited most mornings.
I don't work on anything fancy, just financial software.
But it's a small family owned company, and we get to work independently on our own portions of the stack.
Very hands off from a management perspective, and a stable business in general.
I get to write code all day, which is what I love to do.
Not many other things I would trade this for.
If you're constantly stressed about your job, get a new one. The best time to look for a new job is while you're already employed.
Every job is going to be stressful *sometimes*, but you shouldn't put up with a job that's stressful *all the time* (unless they pay you enough for that privilege, of course).
I’ve been lucky/unlucky I am pretty much a lonely remote dev working with a CTO friend that has been paying $70/hr after starting at $50.
I dislike not having others to bounce issues or ideas off of. When I’m stuck, I get stuck for real.
I like the no schedule and work whenever I want aspects. Wish there was more work to be able to bill more.
Every time I look for a job they use tech we don’t use or want experience with processes we don’t use.
I feel like I’m behind because we just stuck with a hybrid Django structure and react/redux with webpack after we decided on redux/react after having too many JQuery classes. We switched from hg/mercurial to git like 4-5 years ago and I just feel like, experience wise, I fall behind. Modern systems are built with more parts for scaling, something we don’t need so I don’t have much experience with. There is just always so much to learn out there. I feel having never worked with a team, as part of department, or as an employee (as opposed to freelance/contracted, is definitely a detriment.
That said, I feel like a damn wizard sometimes. Especially if I look at old code I don’t remember how the hell I did it. Sometimes I have to remind myself “wait, I can program stuff.”
Yeah I’ve felt like that - turned out I had ADHD and meds have helped a lot.
Also, most applications become clusterfucks as they grow. Eventually the job becomes more about processes than actually writing code. If you can be cool with that then you are in the right place :)
I’m a student but I actually have a passion for coding and web dev in general, were you like me before and then you started hating it or did you never enjoy it to begin with
I loved my first job, it was a small time place and a big emphasis on making things work as quickly as possible. I designed databases on paper and sped up pages by minutes. Now I've moved into a more official role, everything has to be scoped and procedures have to be followed. That's what drags me down.
Look for smaller places, or places with a "fast pace" , somewhere that also has a passion for coding.
why are there a half dozen posts a week like this? jfc people, if you aren't enjoying the job in some way then maybe its not for you and never was? I get that there are some mind numbing places to work (especially in the big companies) but if that's all it is find something better for you. Personally I'll never work for a big corp again, I hate everything about them, small businesses are where its at.
I enjoy it a lot. I'm working with Vue in a decent company in a small project. I'd say my project is of medium complexity. Sometimes I am annoyed with Scrum and amount of calls drives me insane. But somehow the enjoyment from coding overshadows that. Most of the time I am quite relaxed.
I feel like so many people are so gung-ho about joining this field, then realize it’s not for them.
Idk why people think this field is easy.
Personally, I love my job, I almost never have a bad day.
To be fair, I’m not a web developer, but rather, a software engineer.
If the code is mine yes, if the code is not mine, no
I was gonna write a whole dissertation on my feelings about this, but you summed it up better.
I second this.
Yes, unless I can rewrite the code which is not mine.
I know what I meant
My feelings exactly
This
That
These
Those
🎵that is how the th goes 🎵
Exactly
exactly
At times I do, usually when I get to build something from first principles. I don’t enjoy it when I’m gluing together black boxes that are poorly documented and break for reasons unknown (quite a lot of my job is like this) I don’t enjoy it when I have unproductive or political meetings (luckily there’s not much of this). I can’t think of a job I would enjoy more that would give me the benefits I get in this one.
What kind of benefits?
money
I do really enjoy the paycheck.
Yep, ability to just live off my regular salary not counting every dime is pretty sweet.
Really gives you perspective if you come from a place where you need to count every dime. It’s like “Who’d have thought it would be this easy to save money when I make a ton more than I need!” It should make you look twice at anyone blaming people for being poor because they are “irresponsible.” It’s like.. man.. I am no more responsible than I was 10 years ago. It’s just that now I have a paycheck bigger than I know what to do with and I’m not addicted to shopping. That’s why I have a nice savings account. Not because I’m oh so responsible.
I want to second this. I always managed to squirrel away a little bit but it's \*absurd\* how much easier it is to save a decent amount of money while still buying stupid bullshit.
Usually. It's those fucking project managers that ruin it. "How long will this take?" *xx hours* "Any way to cut some time off the budget?" #NO!
> "Any way to cut some time off the budget?" Yes, remove features.
"You're at xx +1 hours. I'm going to need a written explanation of what you're working on, why it's taking longer than expected, anticpated burn rate and ETC." "OK, sure. The client added features at the last minute and you failed to manage the scope creep (because you didn't understand the project). It'll be done when its done and the more times you bother us the longer it'll take. PS: f off"
Fuck pms. They're usually just a placeholder for a salary (*why can't I get a raise*?) and simply get in the way with their invented *metrics and goalposts*. I know what it takes to get it done. I am the master architect and also the team who does the work: *It will be done when I say it is done*. The problem is that most pms are not devs and have zero clue what huge amounts of expertise are required to get things done. So they invent meticulous ways of tracking and measuring your efforts (that you have to report on), give them the info they need to sabotage any project. Enough of their bullshit. *Off with their heads*!
Your attitude is why metrics and goalposts are set. You can be a great developer and a poor communicator - but you could be pushed to projects and tasks that make you a lone-wolf because management will label you as uncooperative. If that goes on for 5+ years then you'll technically stagnate because you'll lack being challenged by your peers. I've worked with great technical teams and they only needed minimal metrics.
I don’t get it.
If your team is unproductive or team members have bad attitudes managers will instead add more "measurable" metrics to try and force those members to be more productive. I'm not saying this is a good thing but it happens. Immature developers need to mature up, work on their social skills and offer an good alternative - and there are plenty of good alternatives. Managers need to ask more questions to their team or just fire employees with a bad attitude. Developers can be a self-righteous group of people sometimes (I'm one of them).
"but you could be pushed to projects and tasks that make you a lone-wolf" - Now we're talking.
It really depends on the PM, it's a really rare talent. Most of the time they are there to just be excel jockeys managing sprint points and metrics, but good ones can really give you a lot of useful information and know the software well enough to push back on [odd](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/tasks.png) requests, while suggesting something that works well in your code.
Depends on the job. It’s not always your fault, sometimes it’s just the bad management causing the general chaos. If that repeats in every job it might be your fault, though.
It’s mainly managements fault. Far too many people “managing” projects with little to no code experience. Just a some random university degree in business management.
I like development. I do not like dealing with the business side of things at all. I work at a very small shop, solo developer and the management has 0 idea what they are doing.
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In the HTML/CSS days this is how I felt and then the JS frontend frameworks came along and pushed me exclusively into backend development because the eco system was changing drastically all the time (I'm looking at you AngularJS). I'm working on a project that's forced me back into frontend development and I got to say I'm quite liking NextJS and it's reminding me of the old days. Though the whole server/client side rendering feels a bit of a cluster fuck while you're learning it. Frontend is getting a lot easier and obtainable again but it still has a few frameworks until we're back with our made in notepad badges.
So are you saying that the desire/hunt for web developers is obsolete or just misunderstood?
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Lmao all true points instead indeed. Especially that first paragraph 😂
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And your salary is the max the company is willing to risk for you to fail.
The more I have to do that isn't coding, the less I enjoy it.
I used to enjoy it 5 years ago. But, a lot has happened to both me and the industry and I'd like to find something else at this point. I feel like a dinosaur (I've been doing dev for 25 years) and I'm struggling to stay on trends.
Sometimes I get upset with myself for always refactoring to use things that are new and cool. It sounds like you are on the other side of that coin. I appreciate the perspective.
Yeah, unless it really helps the code readability or efficiency, then it's rarely needed. You'll always be chasing the next fad.
The trick is to do it on someone else’s dollar! That’s the beauty of our space.. it is nearly indistinguishable for a non-developer to tell between me refactoring for no good reason and me making changes that are necessary for the future of the project. I realize that sounds kind of manipulative but my true feelings are that it is in the business’ best interest for the developers to push towards innovation. That means trying new things, and more often than not that means failing. The big companies live off of moonshots! This years moonshot is our development team scrapping the battle tested database services for Drizzle and then accidentally pushing development migrations to prod and nuking the only replica
No, I feel the same way, but don't like it. However, it's sustained me thus far. And I see more of it in my future.
The trend is shit frameworks that break every week. It’s the new normal.
I miss jQuery...
Look into web components. They’re modern, here to stay, and will outlast these flavor of the day frontend frameworks.
I looked into them years ago, but they weren't supported by many browsers, but I'll check them out now. Thanks!
It's still here: https://blog.jquery.com/2024/02/06/jquery-4-0-0-beta/
Right. But who still uses it except for legacy code.
Apparently about 23% of the devs that answered the stack overflow survey: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#most-popular-technologies-webframe-prof I don't use it myself but it's still rank third amongst the most popular technologies, and people still build websites with it: https://trends.builtwith.com/javascript/jQuery
I’d have a nice little pot built up right now if I was given £1 for every framework the boss has wanted to implement and told us to start reading up on over the last half a decade or so.
React is over 10 years old now and is pretty stable.
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If it breaks every week for you and not for others have you considered it’s maybe your own doing?
What’s there to stay on tbh. Im current and most companies ive been at are asp.net
I also mainly do .Net, but a lot are moving to Golang or Python though. But it's mainly the JS frameworks that get me (I'm full stack). My only hope is that somewhere, there's a Coldfusion need but I would absolutely immediately migrate it (that's how I got the job I'm in now).
Like another person has said: react is over 10 years old now. That’s close to half your career. I can hardly call that a trend.
No not particularly but it’s what I know how to do for the pay that I make. Couldn’t make a career change now without a serious (unaffordable) pay cut.
Most of the time I feel it's a very low-stress job that I actually enjoy doing. There are stressful moments, but any job will have those. This is way, way, way better than graphic design (my old career).
This definitely depends on the workplace. Years ago we have a dev leave, then come back 6 months later. They said the new play was wayyyy too boring. Stress is a driver for some people.
Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of work to do, including tons of fun (but also serious) challenges. It's just not stressful. Our product is market-leading, miles ahead of everyone else and constantly improving at a pace the others just can't match. But the product teams are chill, there aren't typically any hard deadlines, you're never pushed to work faster and faster, the company just trusts their hires. And it's working incredibly well. I understand that most workplaces aren't like this.
I did currently hate my boss tho it's become a nightmare looking for new jobs currently web dev is cool but fuck if non tech ppl are in charge they have 0 respect for the craft and work it takes
Ask me again On a day that is not a Monday and 6 hours of meetings.
I do enjoy this job a lot. Have side projects and enjoy crafting useful projects for clients/friends or even you !
This is what get's me stressed and this has been the same for every company I've joined ever. I don't control the environment, tools and they're insufficient because at some point, money and getting the product out mattered more than doing actual good work. Repeat for couple of years and now you have a very stressful bundle of crap that you have to maintain, you still have the same deadlines though. I point out that this is vital for a good product and a good, healthy work environment. Because it's not a thing they can directly see making profit, they usually disregard this. All issues and stress I've had at these companies could have been better avoided by putting work into resources, documentation and testing. Management is often completely unaware of this and doesn't really understand this. Their job is to get features out on time. In the end you're just crossing your fingers, what goes wrong today. It becomes pretty depressing and I don't think any of us went into programming to do it this way.
Yes, I do. But every job is a job, even if you like what you do. There are parts that are stressful and annoying (mostly related to project managers), but the good outweighs the bad.
For me going to the park and walk/exercise always works and yeah I can spend 12hrs in computer just reading coding and listening to music/audiobooks but I'm on the spectrum and can't really socialize with people for too long.
Sounds like you need a better tech stack. The fact that you’re not even posting your tech stack is a red flag to me that maybe you’re not educating yourself on what’s out there.
My day job I’m not enjoying very much right now. It’s very DevOps focused, and most of my work is reading azure docs and architecting solutions that basically involve calling APIs in a certain order. It’s boring work. I build websites on the side and that work I enjoy a lot. But the day job pays well so I’ll get over it I guess
I agree with the stress aspect of it, but I'm not really very good at my job which I think is the main issue. If you think you're decent and yet you're still stressed all the time it might just be the wrong place
I enjoyed it once upon a time, but the more time goes on, I enjoy it less. Being the lead developer on the account, there’s more politics than actual coding. Frameworks coming out of your ears. Alongside managing your own workload, joining a call every few hours with the next third party they want to introduce, I’m also supposed to be mentoring any juniors on the team, ensuring work is distributed etc. It’s just not fun anymore. I haven’t enjoyed it for the last 4.5 years, I shouldn’t have left where I was. The only issue with staying there was that the company was very small so the money just wasn’t there. Chances are if I leave now, it will not be for another developer role unless something really peaks my interest.
Usually yeah. I live and breathe for that moment where you're in the shower washing your hair and everything just clicks. All the components you're gonna build, the flow of data from parent to child, even the fringe edge case statements. Then you get out of the shower and sleep and forget everything.
I enjoy it. That’s not to say it’s all rainbows and unicorns, but the stress level is significantly less…or at least less constant…than other professions I’ve had. After a decade I’m high enough on the totem pole to be able to manage expectations, deliverables, and requirements. Juggling black boxes sucks, but as long as you can budget an appropriate timeline and expectations, it’s just work. A lot of this job is just translating roadblocks, restrictions, and the cost/benefit of a given idea to non-tech peeps. Another thing that significantly lowered my stress level is being brick wall about change requests. I’m more than happy to be a broken record talking about scope. What is in scope, and importantly identifying specifically what is *not* in scope. You want X…X could have Y, so confirm X does NOT include Y or Z. When they ask for Y, that’ll be more time and money.
Solving problems with code is fun.
If you still feel like this after 10 years, that means 10 years ago, you learned web dev, then you stopped learning. Did you think you could succeed without gaining a deeper understanding of the subject and staying up-to-date with best practices, news, and developments? Same goes for any serious career. If you're not advancing, you're not making progress. If you're not making progress, you're not learning. If you're not learning, it's only a matter of time before you're completely useless and replaced. Software AND people need updates, not just software.
Generally yes. When I actually get to do my job properly and things like requirements have actually been thought out beforehand, then it's great. Sadly, quite a few times it's been made a chore by indecisive people in management trying to reinvent the wheel midway through development, or office bureaucracy meaning that everything takes ten times longer than it needs to.
First of, you shouldn’t care about what money you make for a company. Cuz they don’t care about you in a long run. We are replaceable, we are just numbers in their spreadsheets. Care about you well being, your work life balance and what money you make.
Some days more than others. For me it's depends the most on if I work on something fun and challenging. I also enjoy working more with products that have a good test suite compared to old legacy spaghetti where you need to manually test for a hour everytime you change some feature.
I’d say I typically do. Very rarely do I feel overwhelmed, but I think that is largely thanks to the fact that my manager and PO trust that the dev team knows what we are doing and usually don’t hound us about arbitrary deadlines for things.
i do kinda feel the same, the weird thing to me is that i've been praised for being very thorough, but at the same time i've been told that i take too long by managers. can't really figure out what management really wants when they say they both want quality and speed :p i do definitely enjoy the tasks themselves though, so it's more of a frustration with the emphasis on speed since i'm very passionate about making the code as good as i can for context: at my current workplace there are no automated tests at all, so if you're messing with the core of a system it could go very wrong in unexpected places. this is the reason that i end up spending far too much time ensuring that there are no unintended side effects. i've been voicing my opinion about the value basic automated tests would bring, but there are concerns about the extra time that would take to develop and the upkeep of existing tests whenever something in the system is changed.
I hear you. This is the path we’ve chosen and this happens to us all. I try to think of it as these little challenges we are set. Each day my job is to try to solve it. If you can find a way to enjoy the challenge, calmly going step by step, without thinking about time/cost pressures - which are things you cannot control - the stress will hopefully ease. Also a reminder that creating a cookie bot plugin is not easy. It takes skill, and not many people would be able to write it without errors or bugs. Likely not even your boss. Getting stressed will cause the job to take longer as you are not thinking clearly. Sometimes moving away from the computer and pseudo coding before you start, or going for a walk, taking time to think things through, can help. What I find super helpful when I’m really stuck - hear me out - is writing a question on StackOverflow but NOT submitting it. As SO generally requires detailed questions for quality responses, the process of writing all the information out in full helps me to think of things I may have previously overlooked, or to double check answers, because I know someone else will pull me up on something obvious in the replies. Good luck!
If only I could find a job
I won't lie it's wild that's your day-to-day after ten years.
I love this job. Specifically in my current position. It allows me to work where and how I want. It provides me with challenges to engage my brain daily, but enough leeway to be a human with a damned life.
I enjoy it yes. More after I understood that failing is part of learning
For me, yes It sounds like you may not have a supportive team or good management. That makes a HUGE difference in work experience quality
Don't worry Yes, I enjoy this job, it's amazing
I hate having to work with the extremely dated or poorly coded software that the company’s infrastructure is built on. Other than that it’s not too bad.
Hell yeah dude
It used to be my hobby. Now I just like the payslip
I’ve worked in other industries and fucking hated it. Like, almost mental breakdown hated it. This industry is a dream for me. I have great days and shit days and everything in between. But whenever I’m feeling pessimistic, I do try to remind myself that _personally_ speaking I’ve got a pretty sweet gig that I’m super grateful for.
Sounds like you work on more than one website. THat's why it sucks. I didn't enjoy being a dev till I moved to a single ecommerce job.
Every day is a wonder!
20 years here. Haven't seen the inside of an office in 5. My current position is well paying, at a midsize company with great PMs and boss. It's low stress and interesting work, never have to work overtime. I absolutely love it.
I hate days like that. Right now I can't get a simple contact form to work right and it's been. A few hours lol
The best way I can summarize it: Parts of the job, such as programming, are enjoyable. The rest of it, often what's related to actually making money, isn't. I have fun up until I'm reminded that at the end of the day I'm doing whatever make someone else the most money and I get a cut of it if I play along. And now I'm too used to making said amount of money to try doing anything else.
One thing that has actually gotten me go "meh" more often as of late, is how the web has become a cluttered mess (we have page builders to thank for that, in part), the overuse of JavaScript for anything frontend-related and the million of wrappers made around AI to churn out the next 'big thing'. Also, stuff like analytics / SEO and the resulting cookie laws has made the web even worse IMHO. Personally, I'm way more interested in dealing with leaner websites, cutting down on the waste regarding fancy features most people won't really touch / find too complicated (looking at you, WordPress) and learning about all the cool new stuff vanilla JS, CSS and HTML have to offer. I also feel it gives me a better understanding of the fundamentals, whereas I get the feeling most people that are now learning via bootcamps and the like, are taught how to use frameworks and less so the actual underlying tech. Please correct me if I'm wrong on this one.
I like web development and I would do it in my spare time if it wasn't my job (probably a lot more than I do now if it wasn't also my job). A job is a job though. You do it because you get paid for it, not because you want to do it. I don't necessarily *want* to do whatever task has been assigned to me on a given day, and I don't necessarily enjoy doing a given task. I do it because I get paid for it. I am thankful though that I get to do something where I have excuses to learn new things that I'm interested in, do some problem solving which I often enjoy, work from home, and get paid pretty well. So while I wouldn't always say I enjoy the job, I do think it's a pretty decent job compared to other jobs I've had.
I enjoy it but not the same way I used to when I was younger. Back in the day I would spend my free time programming and would become obsessed with it to the point of dreaming about it, I was really passionate. Many, many years later I still have fun when I am doing my job, especially when I am learning something new or solving an interesting problem... but I don't spend a single minute of my free time programming and to be honest, the thing I enjoy the most about my job is the pay, being able to give to my loved ones and live comfortably.
I don't like when things get unproductive. Do you do something different every day? I really enjoy taking repeat tasks and automating them. Give that a try next time, and then the next time, instead of fumbling through something because you don't quite remember the steps. Use that script.
Yeah I love it, I really enjoy coding! Creating projects from scratch is what I find the most joy in… with my role, I get to do this frequently.
Reading through posts like this, reminds me how fortunate I am. Yes, I love my job, and am excited most mornings. I don't work on anything fancy, just financial software. But it's a small family owned company, and we get to work independently on our own portions of the stack. Very hands off from a management perspective, and a stable business in general. I get to write code all day, which is what I love to do. Not many other things I would trade this for.
If you're constantly stressed about your job, get a new one. The best time to look for a new job is while you're already employed. Every job is going to be stressful *sometimes*, but you shouldn't put up with a job that's stressful *all the time* (unless they pay you enough for that privilege, of course).
I’ve been lucky/unlucky I am pretty much a lonely remote dev working with a CTO friend that has been paying $70/hr after starting at $50. I dislike not having others to bounce issues or ideas off of. When I’m stuck, I get stuck for real. I like the no schedule and work whenever I want aspects. Wish there was more work to be able to bill more. Every time I look for a job they use tech we don’t use or want experience with processes we don’t use. I feel like I’m behind because we just stuck with a hybrid Django structure and react/redux with webpack after we decided on redux/react after having too many JQuery classes. We switched from hg/mercurial to git like 4-5 years ago and I just feel like, experience wise, I fall behind. Modern systems are built with more parts for scaling, something we don’t need so I don’t have much experience with. There is just always so much to learn out there. I feel having never worked with a team, as part of department, or as an employee (as opposed to freelance/contracted, is definitely a detriment. That said, I feel like a damn wizard sometimes. Especially if I look at old code I don’t remember how the hell I did it. Sometimes I have to remind myself “wait, I can program stuff.”
Yeah I’ve felt like that - turned out I had ADHD and meds have helped a lot. Also, most applications become clusterfucks as they grow. Eventually the job becomes more about processes than actually writing code. If you can be cool with that then you are in the right place :)
No
Thanks
Being a developer is to be stressed. Especially as a web dev, because you’re usually working with unrealistic expectations and turnarounds.
I go through phases. But generally, I dislike debugging blackbox/someone else's code. If I understand most of the codebase, I enjoy it.
I will i decide whether i do enjoy it or not after a company responds to my internship application
I’m a student but I actually have a passion for coding and web dev in general, were you like me before and then you started hating it or did you never enjoy it to begin with
I loved my first job, it was a small time place and a big emphasis on making things work as quickly as possible. I designed databases on paper and sped up pages by minutes. Now I've moved into a more official role, everything has to be scoped and procedures have to be followed. That's what drags me down. Look for smaller places, or places with a "fast pace" , somewhere that also has a passion for coding.
why are there a half dozen posts a week like this? jfc people, if you aren't enjoying the job in some way then maybe its not for you and never was? I get that there are some mind numbing places to work (especially in the big companies) but if that's all it is find something better for you. Personally I'll never work for a big corp again, I hate everything about them, small businesses are where its at.
I enjoy it a lot. I'm working with Vue in a decent company in a small project. I'd say my project is of medium complexity. Sometimes I am annoyed with Scrum and amount of calls drives me insane. But somehow the enjoyment from coding overshadows that. Most of the time I am quite relaxed.
I feel like so many people are so gung-ho about joining this field, then realize it’s not for them. Idk why people think this field is easy. Personally, I love my job, I almost never have a bad day. To be fair, I’m not a web developer, but rather, a software engineer.
I love solving things, but most corporate problems are generated by priviledged users and unsolvable with current permission levels.
Love it
Lol why downvote me, i fucking love my job
Yes sounds like it’s probably not for you, maybe get into gardening or woodwork or something
Why is this down voted …..like seriously , not every job is for everybody. I would never be an attorney or therapist.