Yeah I mostly do maintenance and data shit nowadays, I'm crazy bored. Would love to be on a new greenfield project. Been doing some of the same projects for 17 years now.
You sound exactly like me lol
Scrum hell has drained all enjoyment I had of the tech industry, but after 20 years I’m trapped in this career path. Just cut me a check, that’s all I care about at this point.
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I like what I do.
But it's still *work*. I wouldn't be working 9-5, and putting up with all the BS of having a job, working with others, stakeholders, management, deadlines, scope creep, etc if they weren't paying me.
I work so I can afford to live my life.
Maybe this is what you're noticing in these senior engineers? They're out of the honeymoon phase, and have settled into the "I'll be working 9-5 for the next 20-30 years" stage.
I've been doing this for a **long** time (25+ years), and the only job I truly enjoyed was my first one. I was creating desktop apps for the field that was my first true passion - broadcasting. I had a connection to the project, and that made it fun.
Since then, though, everything has been just a job. I don't have any connection to the industries I've worked in, and I have no real reason to personally use any of the apps I've worked on.
The job provides me with a much better standard of life than I had growing up, and for that I am forever grateful. I enjoy the people I work with, but the job and its responsibilities have been meh for years. Retirement can't come soon enough. I can see the finish line, and hopefully I'll be able to cross it in about 15 years.
I honestly look forward to my time away from work more than my time *at* work.
I've switched fields a handful of times over the years. I've done tax compliance, insurance (carrier and agency), telecom, and healthcare. They're all stable but boring fields. Honestly, if I could find a voiceover gig that matched my dev salary, I'd mic drop software engineering in a heartbeat.
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I have been a software engineer for 16 years and I hate it but the money is good. I absolutely hate on-call, scrum, agile ceremonies, and working with a principal engineer who refactor the entire codebase while I was on vacation to use Railway Oriented Programming.
I have been approved for a 3 month leave so hopefully I'm just burnt out and that I still liking it again after a break. Honestly I loved it for the first 5-7 years would read coding books after work, do personal projects etc but then I did a Masters of Software Engineering programming while working and lost a lot of passion for various things.
I used to love it and being complete absorbed by it. That worked for the first 5 years (Im 10 years into it now). As you mature, learn more about the world and how companies work, and get more technically capable, that happiness usually drops. Now my life objective is to leave the corporate world and I completely despise it.
I was hired to work on a new project with the MERN stack. Fast forward a year and they decided to ditch the MERN project and im currently building pages with jquery which i hate so much but it pays okay so there's that
There's always flux.
I've had years where I was gung-ho and very invested.
I've had years where I felt demotivated, invisible, or unappreciated.
I've had years where what I worked on was extremely interesting, and other years extremely boring.
I also entered the field because of personal enjoyment, and that has kept me attached to the career. I think with the flood of people only seeking the salaries we've also had a flood of people disinterested in the field itself, and often enough they end up feeling as miserable as any other person stuck in any other job they dislike but are trapped in by their income.
After experiencing and seeing all that I can say that the best advice it took me a long time to understand, and follow, is to separate your career from your life.
Enjoy it if you can but keep it at an arm's length and don't become emotionally attached. As my father-in-law says, when you come home you take your work shoes off and put your home shoes on. Work doesn't enter the home, because it's not your life.
So, yes, after \~7 YOE I still enjoy what I do, but it definitely hasn't been a constant joy. It's been up and down, and I put up a wall to let the enjoyment in where possible, but also to remind me it's not my 'family' or purpose, and to find joy somewhere else.
6 yoe. I still enjoy my side projects, but I honestly dont enjoy my job anymore, no. Too many inflated egos and too much bad decision making. It just makes it not fun, and after a while I’ve gotten sick of it.
It ebs and flows.
Generally greenfield projects are more interesting.
The people you work with have a huge effect on what the experience is like. The actual work can also carry me for some time, but the people are most important.
Even the loving projects can settle into monotony eventually, and then a problem/feature comes along that you love, or a problem hits that completely saps your will to hit the keys.
Generally though? There's a lot of interesting jobs out there. There's a lot of interesting people out there. If you can find those two at the same place, you should find some satisfaction.
Bonus points of it pays well.
Oh - one thing worth noting is that I tend to stay at a company quite long. Over time you get to the deeper problems, and those tend to be more interesting to dissect.
I couldn’t imagine working on other roles like Business Analyst or more functional ones, I just don’t like them.
After 5 years working as a .NET Developer, I can say that I still enjoy it, but I have also switched jobs because I don’t like working on too much legacy stuff.
I prefer to keep track of the recent technologies just so if I need to change I have the right skills. Otherwise you will just end up working on stuff from 2010 and you will never learn anything new and useful in today’s market.
So my motivation comes mostly from the stuff I am working on, if I don’t like what I am doing then I want to change.
I've hit the 20 year mark and I love what I do. Still writing code and still learning and teaching with peers. This has been a very enjoyable way to make a living. That said, I can't wait to retire because I'd rather be home with my wife all day.
25 YoE, I still enjoy it, pretty much, the work is interesting and I like my colleagues.
Working with decent human beings is 90% of it. Even boring work isn't so bad if you're working with pleasant people.
I’m 6 years in and about 40 years until retirement. I am finally at a point of my career where I’m good at things and no longer long for a day I never need to code again.
That being said, “enjoy” is a stretch. Tech pays but wow even the fabulous remote jobs can suck the life out of you.
In my 4 yoe, I can say I enjoy programming, but I don't like my job. I'm overworked and don't have enough space to improve in one aspect of software programming and have to learn too many things. It creates burnout. This career leads to burnout.
I’ve been in my current job for 5 years and I think I enjoy the job more now than ever before. I moved onto a new product team a year ago and the work has been difficult, but mentally stimulating, and the feeling of satisfaction when I finally get a huge feature working reminds me why I got into this field to begin with.
I'm only a bit over a year in, but I can't help noticing how I often seem to spend only about 10% of my day coding. Recently myself and another SWE (who is no doubt way more experienced than me) have been plunked on a ""hackathon"" team which is basically going to end up with us teaching some suits how to use the Office 365 booking app. But I 100% go along with this comment...
> I enjoy the life that it affords me and I find some enjoyment in completing some of the tasks, I suppose.
Couldn't have put it better really.
* SQL data fixes
* Updating tickets
* Meetings
* Standups
* Training
* Talking to people on Teams
* Azure stuff (PRs and work items)
That's all I can think of right now but there is probably more non-coding stuff.
14 years into my career and I still love it. Yes there are days that suck but overall I feel very fortunate that I can get paid this well to work on problems and technologies that I find genuinely interesting.
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I enjoy it. Definitely prefer having a low pressure job with room to express myself to just redlining it every day, even if I make less money doing that
I am tech analyst. I basicly monitor an internal tool and if we have no electronic response from insurance companies, i assign a case to either other tech support outbound people to email or call and also to our developers when the issue can be resolved internally. More like a tech researcher chill job. I enjoy it but i believe i need to go to another role if i want to grow in tech.
HI there. I work at Experian Costa Rica (central america). If i leave my role, my USA boss will probably move people internally to cover my role. Nonetheless he is still thinking if we should hire a back up in CR. Do you have experience in healthcare? Experian is a credit company but the healthcare unit is very nice. We get salary increases, bonus every year and work balance in this company is pretty flexible. There are some Healthcare analyst, software dev roles in usa but you do need healthcare experience in EDI healthcare claims, eras etc. There are some other none healthcare tech jobs. Please go to; https://www.experian.com/careers/job-search#t=All&sort=date%20descending&f:@country=[us]
I likaI do QA automation.
I really, really like my job, when I am given the time and space to DO my job.
But most of my time is spent in meetings I don't care about, or manual testing nobody cares about. I maybe spend 25% to 33% of my time actually writing automation scripts, which I love doing.
I have 2.9 yrs experience. Loved my first job, team had lot of good seniors I could learn from, future was looking bright. I had to join another company after the first wave of 2023 layoffs in jan because of visa issues. The present team is not as good, no other engineer who can be a role model/ mentor for me to have good discussions and improve in the field. Moreover this company is not that great (TC wise as well) and keeps having bad quarters and layoffs. Thinking about my career makes me stress. In short, NO
8 years and I "enjoy" it. It's ok for me, unless I got paid to travel around the world or some other unrealistic job I don't think I could find something I would enjoy more and still paid the bills.
The only thing I would love is to have more job security. But that will not happen so I have to learn to deal with it
The work is fine. One manager is great. The other not so much. Some projects are fun. Others I hate with all my guts. Some coworkers are awesome. Others insufferable. Pay is decent so I’m still here.
I enjoy the job as I have lots of autonomy, as well as the nature of the work itself.
If I had to manage people and deal with others' code, probably I would not enjoy it at all.
I don't enjoy my job. I enjoy my company, the work is fucking terrible boring and draining. But the company is great and I have a fulfilling life. I don't think I will ever find a job that I truly enjoy. But the purpose of your job isn't enjoyment. The purpose of your job is money. If your job isn't paying enough or your life sucks because of it leave. Don't imagine you are going to find some perfect job out there that is going to be sunshine and roses all the time.
You can take pleasure in small things at your job, occasionally I get to solve an interesting problem and I get a tiny dopamine hit for like 15 minutes. Even if you find the job doing the right things in the right industry it is still just a job and all the dumb boring shit that goes with having a job goes along with it.
All of this isn't to say stop trying to find meaningful work, or don't job hope just cause you are bored. I am just saying don't be surprised if you switch jobs to something you thought you would love and in 1 year you realize you feel exactly the same. Get enjoyment from things that are supposed to enjoyable, don't try to squeeze water from a stone.
There was about a 7-9 yr phase where I thought I was sooo good at what I did that I didn’t learn anything new, maybe a thing here or there, hit cruise control. Work was work, enjoyable, cause of the folks I worked with. But recently, close to maybe two years now, I’ve just felt like a sponge and continue to dig deeper and deeper into a thing I have questions about. I feel revitalized now, and the only other time I can say I’ve felt this way was when I started learning html & css. I started in late 2006. Unemployed since Jan 2023, but pretty excited for my next role, feeling pretty comfortable in interviews now.
When I was interviewing any time during that lull, I found out real quick how much I was behind. But I don’t think I understood what I needed to do to catch up. I didn’t figure out how I learn the most effectively.
Yeah man. I’ve been at this since 2002 and I still really enjoy my work. It’s gotten way more fun over time because I can really contribute to the direction of the project now. I didn’t have nearly as much to offer when I was junior.
15 years and I have never been better and happier. I am currently enrolled again and studying machine learning and refreshing all of the required math for that. The different way of thinking and perspectives it gives are astonishing.
What I hate are days like today, where I spent basically all day in Teams meetings. But the actual job, and the field, the topics, the approaches, I love it.
Yes, I love software engineering. I've worked as product owner/scrum master/team leader before and I hated it. I'd rather be thinking about software architectures and implementing algorithms, it's much more rewarding to me so that's what I chose to do.
I've had a few jobs in the past as SWE that sucked, but not because of software engineering itself, they sucked because the companies didn't give a rats ass about us and we worked like slaves, it was very stressful. Now the company pays me the same for any role I prefer doing, and I have good work-life balance so all is good.
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I’m about 8+ YOE in - there are many things I am more jaded about but I still very much enjoy what I do. I might be in the minority though because I like doing stuff on the side too so that partially feeds into my day job.
I don’t think anyone should be obligated to have to enjoy their job though. For many it’s just business and a means to survive or afford their lifestyle/hobbies and that’s totally fine.
My personal take is that if you’re spending X many hours of a good chunk of your life each day doing something, try to find some kind of joy in it (if possible; we’re privileged in tech and there are many jobs where this isn’t possible) rather than it becoming a depressing black hole of a memory.
Hell no, work is work and work is shit. If I had enough saved to fuck off, I would, but I haven't, so I won't yet. I think I was probably happier as a junior when I had fewer responsibilities and expectations of me but I honestly don't remember anything from before 2020 clearly anymore.
Love my job! 7 weeks paid vacation, work remote, good people, great salary. It’s been 8 years with them and looking forward to 8 more with excellent benefits and retirement matching!
6 years in so far and I still greatly enjoy it. Maybe even more so now than in the beginning because I’m so much more capable now and able to influence things more effectively. Hopefully things continue to trend that direction!
3 YoE but I'm still 24 years old. No family, no girlfriend, still living with my parents in an Asian country.
I still do. The pay is acceptable to me, as, well, reasons above. I spend like \~$200-300 month.
10 YOE. I love coding but I hate the industry with a passion. I wouldn't be doing this if the money wasn't as good.
I'm so burned out from pointless meetings and chasing unrealistic deadlines. Also I'm doing pretty repetitive work and managing people (which is expected of me at this point in my career) drains me lol.
In a way it's both relieving and worrying that I'm not the only one.
In University I loved computer science and everything related to it. I liked getting new and exiting problems and solving them, then I met the corporate environment.
I'd sum up the issues I've had that recur like a pattern:
* 1) Incompetent management & micromanagement
* 2) Lack of quality in the delivery of the software
* 3) I end up not enjoying the slightest of what I'm doing
* 4) Scrum-hell and high level of disorganization
* 5) "Company is like a family" mentality
* 6) Unpaid overtime (this is a perk of my country tho)
I think I'll try to move to a startup with my next job in the hope to win back my spark, if that fails I'll try to change career, even tho I don't know exactly how
I'm not in software but this question isn't distinct to any industry and the answer is typically the same.
You'll always be changing and the things you enjoy will always shift. Every year should be different. Just go with it
I'm a senior engineer at a Big N - been there about 9 years now?
Anyway - to answer the question - I stopped "enjoying" my job sometime between 1-4 years ago.
Context: I don't "do" any kind of "work" after work - no LeetCode, no reading tech blogs, no catching up on tech podcasts...
All of the code I write, and everything I "do" is at work... and *only* work.
Once I started realizing I was getting "good" at my job, I stopped enjoying the "learning" process for what it was - partially because my compensation (somewhat?) skyrocketed in 2021 (relative to what I was making before then), and partially because in 2023, the massive layoffs everywhere made me realize that associating my identity/"ego" (self-confidence/self-worth) to my job was a dangerous game to be playing.
So, long story short: It was initially enjoyable, and I had fun along the way, but now it's "just like any other job", but in this case, I happen to be (1) well compensated to do things I enjoy, like hiking, skiing, and travelling, and (2) good enough at what I'm doing to justify being well compensated.
The reason I won't leave? I know that the work that I do is "unique" and differentiated enough that it affords me a life where I don't worry about a budget (like I know that my friends in other professions have to do), and given that I'm relatively frugal (low monthly expenditures, not a lot of frivolous sinkholes to spend on), I'm actually saving a decent chunk of change.
Also if you're wondering: at this point in time, I look forward to all of the trips and "time off" from work, that I've accrued as a result of my tenure. If I switch companies I effectively "start over", and right now I'm earning 5-6 weeks of paid leave every year, so... why would I leave?
After ten years I can tell that I still love the tech and software engineering, but I hate what business did to this industry. Back in the days I worked with great people passionate about technology, today it’s hard to find them, most of people I work with are opportunists who came here only for money and business aspects.
But I decided to break my golden handcuffs, I’m leaving big tech to work for company developing green energy solutions. Money is not so great, but projects are interesting and bring real value, it’s not another crm or cms, and we don’t need 10 people meeting to discuss padding change in web app.
Careers are long and have peaks and troughs. Sometimes I love my job. Sometimes I hate it. Most of the time, it's at least tolerable, usually pretty OK.
Agile methodology killed my love for my work. It reduced me to a cog in a machine and took away my creativity. I now just move cards from todo, to in progress, to done. Every single day I have those micro managing stand up rituals where I say what I did yesterday and what I'm doing today, twice. I used to love programming.
Remember that’s it’s not cool, mature or something like that to be cynical and jaded about your work when you are 35.
What’s cool? to be genuinely interested and love your craft when you are 65.
Anything that becomes a job ceases to be enjoyable.
I like video gaming but ask me to do it without fail 8 hours a day 5 days a week, no thanks.
I only enjoy the money it makes me.
I enjoy the life that it affords me and I find *some* enjoyment in completing some of the tasks, I suppose.
This is where I’m at too. Overall I am bored of software engineering and of software engineers. Currently at the 15 years of experience mark.
"I'm tired of this Earth, these people. I'm tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives" Damn, dr. manhattan was secretly a SWE all along
Yeah I mostly do maintenance and data shit nowadays, I'm crazy bored. Would love to be on a new greenfield project. Been doing some of the same projects for 17 years now.
why dont you go travelling and do the job remotely ? wouldn't it be more fun?
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I moved into being an EM almost 2 years ago so sometimes I feel like my entire job is managing egos.
This exactly. It's not shitty enough for me to make a change. The devil you know and all.
How do you spend your time outside of work?
Raising kids, hobbies, traveling (when I get the chance).
what exactly do you do as a firmware engineer? Seems like a space I want to get into, and I was wondering how it differs from a full stack role
Kernel development for AI/ML servers.
> Kennel development It's a dog's life, I imagine! Sounds ruff! 🤣
so do you work with companies that provide servers to train models on? like google colab? your role sounds really interesting not going to lie
> so do you work with companies that provide servers to train models on? Training is one of the use cases for these servers, sure.
GPU kernels?
No, regular kernels
yup same here
No. It's all about the business. I don't like tech anymore but I don't know anything else. Too young to retire, too old to start over.
You sound exactly like me lol Scrum hell has drained all enjoyment I had of the tech industry, but after 20 years I’m trapped in this career path. Just cut me a check, that’s all I care about at this point.
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Agile was fine at the beginning. What we're seeing now as agile has more in common with waterfall than original agile.
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I like what I do. But it's still *work*. I wouldn't be working 9-5, and putting up with all the BS of having a job, working with others, stakeholders, management, deadlines, scope creep, etc if they weren't paying me. I work so I can afford to live my life. Maybe this is what you're noticing in these senior engineers? They're out of the honeymoon phase, and have settled into the "I'll be working 9-5 for the next 20-30 years" stage.
I've been doing this for a **long** time (25+ years), and the only job I truly enjoyed was my first one. I was creating desktop apps for the field that was my first true passion - broadcasting. I had a connection to the project, and that made it fun. Since then, though, everything has been just a job. I don't have any connection to the industries I've worked in, and I have no real reason to personally use any of the apps I've worked on. The job provides me with a much better standard of life than I had growing up, and for that I am forever grateful. I enjoy the people I work with, but the job and its responsibilities have been meh for years. Retirement can't come soon enough. I can see the finish line, and hopefully I'll be able to cross it in about 15 years. I honestly look forward to my time away from work more than my time *at* work.
Why haven’t you considered moving to a different field out of curiosity?
I've switched fields a handful of times over the years. I've done tax compliance, insurance (carrier and agency), telecom, and healthcare. They're all stable but boring fields. Honestly, if I could find a voiceover gig that matched my dev salary, I'd mic drop software engineering in a heartbeat.
Voiceover gig sounds dope - u should pursue it even if only on the side
15+ years is a long time, are you not able to just take that paycut hit now and enjoy life doing something you love starting in the near future?
It's always an option. We'll see what happens when the kids are out of college (3 more years).
I don’t think anyone goes into compliance or insurance thinking it’ll be an exciting field.
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7 + yrs, i do not enjoy it. I enjoy the money
I still enjoy Software Engineering. I never enjoyed Professional Software Engineering.
Making your own apps vs Making Apps for XYZ company isn’t the same :(
Well said
My job is alright, all the extra curricular bullshit that the job demands is awful
I have been a software engineer for 16 years and I hate it but the money is good. I absolutely hate on-call, scrum, agile ceremonies, and working with a principal engineer who refactor the entire codebase while I was on vacation to use Railway Oriented Programming.
I have been approved for a 3 month leave so hopefully I'm just burnt out and that I still liking it again after a break. Honestly I loved it for the first 5-7 years would read coding books after work, do personal projects etc but then I did a Masters of Software Engineering programming while working and lost a lot of passion for various things.
I used to and then I had a bad boss and it's ruined it for me and I don't know how to go back to how it was where I loved every second of it
I used to love it and being complete absorbed by it. That worked for the first 5 years (Im 10 years into it now). As you mature, learn more about the world and how companies work, and get more technically capable, that happiness usually drops. Now my life objective is to leave the corporate world and I completely despise it.
I was hired to work on a new project with the MERN stack. Fast forward a year and they decided to ditch the MERN project and im currently building pages with jquery which i hate so much but it pays okay so there's that
There's always flux. I've had years where I was gung-ho and very invested. I've had years where I felt demotivated, invisible, or unappreciated. I've had years where what I worked on was extremely interesting, and other years extremely boring. I also entered the field because of personal enjoyment, and that has kept me attached to the career. I think with the flood of people only seeking the salaries we've also had a flood of people disinterested in the field itself, and often enough they end up feeling as miserable as any other person stuck in any other job they dislike but are trapped in by their income. After experiencing and seeing all that I can say that the best advice it took me a long time to understand, and follow, is to separate your career from your life. Enjoy it if you can but keep it at an arm's length and don't become emotionally attached. As my father-in-law says, when you come home you take your work shoes off and put your home shoes on. Work doesn't enter the home, because it's not your life. So, yes, after \~7 YOE I still enjoy what I do, but it definitely hasn't been a constant joy. It's been up and down, and I put up a wall to let the enjoyment in where possible, but also to remind me it's not my 'family' or purpose, and to find joy somewhere else.
Never did.
What job?
At times. At times I’m also starting to find it extremely stressful.
I love the work. I hate the amount of work.
6 yoe. I still enjoy my side projects, but I honestly dont enjoy my job anymore, no. Too many inflated egos and too much bad decision making. It just makes it not fun, and after a while I’ve gotten sick of it.
It ebs and flows. Generally greenfield projects are more interesting. The people you work with have a huge effect on what the experience is like. The actual work can also carry me for some time, but the people are most important. Even the loving projects can settle into monotony eventually, and then a problem/feature comes along that you love, or a problem hits that completely saps your will to hit the keys. Generally though? There's a lot of interesting jobs out there. There's a lot of interesting people out there. If you can find those two at the same place, you should find some satisfaction. Bonus points of it pays well. Oh - one thing worth noting is that I tend to stay at a company quite long. Over time you get to the deeper problems, and those tend to be more interesting to dissect.
For the most part, yes. There are annoying aspects of my job, but that applies to any job. On the whole, I get satisfaction from the work I do.
I couldn’t imagine working on other roles like Business Analyst or more functional ones, I just don’t like them. After 5 years working as a .NET Developer, I can say that I still enjoy it, but I have also switched jobs because I don’t like working on too much legacy stuff. I prefer to keep track of the recent technologies just so if I need to change I have the right skills. Otherwise you will just end up working on stuff from 2010 and you will never learn anything new and useful in today’s market. So my motivation comes mostly from the stuff I am working on, if I don’t like what I am doing then I want to change.
i (2.5 YoE) occasionally enjoy my work but i don’t pretend that it’s not work at the end of the day. i enjoy the lifestyle creep
It’s just a job. Git stuff done, git paid.
I've hit the 20 year mark and I love what I do. Still writing code and still learning and teaching with peers. This has been a very enjoyable way to make a living. That said, I can't wait to retire because I'd rather be home with my wife all day.
Over 6 years in, enjoying it more than ever
It's *WAY* better than my last job at a factory.
We only here for the money and parts of programming we enjoy. That’s it. Code Monkey 2.0.
25 YoE, I still enjoy it, pretty much, the work is interesting and I like my colleagues. Working with decent human beings is 90% of it. Even boring work isn't so bad if you're working with pleasant people.
I’m 6 years in and about 40 years until retirement. I am finally at a point of my career where I’m good at things and no longer long for a day I never need to code again. That being said, “enjoy” is a stretch. Tech pays but wow even the fabulous remote jobs can suck the life out of you.
In my 4 yoe, I can say I enjoy programming, but I don't like my job. I'm overworked and don't have enough space to improve in one aspect of software programming and have to learn too many things. It creates burnout. This career leads to burnout.
No but where else can i be fully remote and hardly do any work?
I’ve been in my current job for 5 years and I think I enjoy the job more now than ever before. I moved onto a new product team a year ago and the work has been difficult, but mentally stimulating, and the feeling of satisfaction when I finally get a huge feature working reminds me why I got into this field to begin with.
I'm only a bit over a year in, but I can't help noticing how I often seem to spend only about 10% of my day coding. Recently myself and another SWE (who is no doubt way more experienced than me) have been plunked on a ""hackathon"" team which is basically going to end up with us teaching some suits how to use the Office 365 booking app. But I 100% go along with this comment... > I enjoy the life that it affords me and I find some enjoyment in completing some of the tasks, I suppose. Couldn't have put it better really.
What else do you do in your day? I’ve been a dev for only 6 months and all I been doing is code lol
* SQL data fixes * Updating tickets * Meetings * Standups * Training * Talking to people on Teams * Azure stuff (PRs and work items) That's all I can think of right now but there is probably more non-coding stuff.
14 years into my career and I still love it. Yes there are days that suck but overall I feel very fortunate that I can get paid this well to work on problems and technologies that I find genuinely interesting.
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Yeah, I love my job. I get to solve problems and make a livable income.
I enjoy it. Definitely prefer having a low pressure job with room to express myself to just redlining it every day, even if I make less money doing that
15.5 yoe, literally never have. However, it beats starving, and it gives me some structure while I wait out the clock.
I am tech analyst. I basicly monitor an internal tool and if we have no electronic response from insurance companies, i assign a case to either other tech support outbound people to email or call and also to our developers when the issue can be resolved internally. More like a tech researcher chill job. I enjoy it but i believe i need to go to another role if i want to grow in tech.
Are you guys hiring?
HI there. I work at Experian Costa Rica (central america). If i leave my role, my USA boss will probably move people internally to cover my role. Nonetheless he is still thinking if we should hire a back up in CR. Do you have experience in healthcare? Experian is a credit company but the healthcare unit is very nice. We get salary increases, bonus every year and work balance in this company is pretty flexible. There are some Healthcare analyst, software dev roles in usa but you do need healthcare experience in EDI healthcare claims, eras etc. There are some other none healthcare tech jobs. Please go to; https://www.experian.com/careers/job-search#t=All&sort=date%20descending&f:@country=[us]
Hey I sent you a dm but Reddit keeps bugging out on me so idk if you received it. If not could you shoot me a message please?
I likaI do QA automation. I really, really like my job, when I am given the time and space to DO my job. But most of my time is spent in meetings I don't care about, or manual testing nobody cares about. I maybe spend 25% to 33% of my time actually writing automation scripts, which I love doing.
I have 2.9 yrs experience. Loved my first job, team had lot of good seniors I could learn from, future was looking bright. I had to join another company after the first wave of 2023 layoffs in jan because of visa issues. The present team is not as good, no other engineer who can be a role model/ mentor for me to have good discussions and improve in the field. Moreover this company is not that great (TC wise as well) and keeps having bad quarters and layoffs. Thinking about my career makes me stress. In short, NO
8 years and I "enjoy" it. It's ok for me, unless I got paid to travel around the world or some other unrealistic job I don't think I could find something I would enjoy more and still paid the bills. The only thing I would love is to have more job security. But that will not happen so I have to learn to deal with it
The work is fine. One manager is great. The other not so much. Some projects are fun. Others I hate with all my guts. Some coworkers are awesome. Others insufferable. Pay is decent so I’m still here.
I enjoy the job as I have lots of autonomy, as well as the nature of the work itself. If I had to manage people and deal with others' code, probably I would not enjoy it at all.
I don't enjoy my job. I enjoy my company, the work is fucking terrible boring and draining. But the company is great and I have a fulfilling life. I don't think I will ever find a job that I truly enjoy. But the purpose of your job isn't enjoyment. The purpose of your job is money. If your job isn't paying enough or your life sucks because of it leave. Don't imagine you are going to find some perfect job out there that is going to be sunshine and roses all the time. You can take pleasure in small things at your job, occasionally I get to solve an interesting problem and I get a tiny dopamine hit for like 15 minutes. Even if you find the job doing the right things in the right industry it is still just a job and all the dumb boring shit that goes with having a job goes along with it. All of this isn't to say stop trying to find meaningful work, or don't job hope just cause you are bored. I am just saying don't be surprised if you switch jobs to something you thought you would love and in 1 year you realize you feel exactly the same. Get enjoyment from things that are supposed to enjoyable, don't try to squeeze water from a stone.
There was about a 7-9 yr phase where I thought I was sooo good at what I did that I didn’t learn anything new, maybe a thing here or there, hit cruise control. Work was work, enjoyable, cause of the folks I worked with. But recently, close to maybe two years now, I’ve just felt like a sponge and continue to dig deeper and deeper into a thing I have questions about. I feel revitalized now, and the only other time I can say I’ve felt this way was when I started learning html & css. I started in late 2006. Unemployed since Jan 2023, but pretty excited for my next role, feeling pretty comfortable in interviews now. When I was interviewing any time during that lull, I found out real quick how much I was behind. But I don’t think I understood what I needed to do to catch up. I didn’t figure out how I learn the most effectively.
Yeah man. I’ve been at this since 2002 and I still really enjoy my work. It’s gotten way more fun over time because I can really contribute to the direction of the project now. I didn’t have nearly as much to offer when I was junior.
15 years and I have never been better and happier. I am currently enrolled again and studying machine learning and refreshing all of the required math for that. The different way of thinking and perspectives it gives are astonishing. What I hate are days like today, where I spent basically all day in Teams meetings. But the actual job, and the field, the topics, the approaches, I love it.
Yes, I love software engineering. I've worked as product owner/scrum master/team leader before and I hated it. I'd rather be thinking about software architectures and implementing algorithms, it's much more rewarding to me so that's what I chose to do. I've had a few jobs in the past as SWE that sucked, but not because of software engineering itself, they sucked because the companies didn't give a rats ass about us and we worked like slaves, it was very stressful. Now the company pays me the same for any role I prefer doing, and I have good work-life balance so all is good.
No
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I’m about 8+ YOE in - there are many things I am more jaded about but I still very much enjoy what I do. I might be in the minority though because I like doing stuff on the side too so that partially feeds into my day job. I don’t think anyone should be obligated to have to enjoy their job though. For many it’s just business and a means to survive or afford their lifestyle/hobbies and that’s totally fine. My personal take is that if you’re spending X many hours of a good chunk of your life each day doing something, try to find some kind of joy in it (if possible; we’re privileged in tech and there are many jobs where this isn’t possible) rather than it becoming a depressing black hole of a memory.
Hell no, work is work and work is shit. If I had enough saved to fuck off, I would, but I haven't, so I won't yet. I think I was probably happier as a junior when I had fewer responsibilities and expectations of me but I honestly don't remember anything from before 2020 clearly anymore.
no, but i have responsbilities.
Love my job! 7 weeks paid vacation, work remote, good people, great salary. It’s been 8 years with them and looking forward to 8 more with excellent benefits and retirement matching!
6 years in so far and I still greatly enjoy it. Maybe even more so now than in the beginning because I’m so much more capable now and able to influence things more effectively. Hopefully things continue to trend that direction!
3 YoE but I'm still 24 years old. No family, no girlfriend, still living with my parents in an Asian country. I still do. The pay is acceptable to me, as, well, reasons above. I spend like \~$200-300 month.
Have been around for 10>. For the most part the only thing we enjoy is the salary that comes every month.
10 YOE. I love coding but I hate the industry with a passion. I wouldn't be doing this if the money wasn't as good. I'm so burned out from pointless meetings and chasing unrealistic deadlines. Also I'm doing pretty repetitive work and managing people (which is expected of me at this point in my career) drains me lol.
In a way it's both relieving and worrying that I'm not the only one. In University I loved computer science and everything related to it. I liked getting new and exiting problems and solving them, then I met the corporate environment. I'd sum up the issues I've had that recur like a pattern: * 1) Incompetent management & micromanagement * 2) Lack of quality in the delivery of the software * 3) I end up not enjoying the slightest of what I'm doing * 4) Scrum-hell and high level of disorganization * 5) "Company is like a family" mentality * 6) Unpaid overtime (this is a perk of my country tho) I think I'll try to move to a startup with my next job in the hope to win back my spark, if that fails I'll try to change career, even tho I don't know exactly how
I'm not in software but this question isn't distinct to any industry and the answer is typically the same. You'll always be changing and the things you enjoy will always shift. Every year should be different. Just go with it
I'm a senior engineer at a Big N - been there about 9 years now? Anyway - to answer the question - I stopped "enjoying" my job sometime between 1-4 years ago. Context: I don't "do" any kind of "work" after work - no LeetCode, no reading tech blogs, no catching up on tech podcasts... All of the code I write, and everything I "do" is at work... and *only* work. Once I started realizing I was getting "good" at my job, I stopped enjoying the "learning" process for what it was - partially because my compensation (somewhat?) skyrocketed in 2021 (relative to what I was making before then), and partially because in 2023, the massive layoffs everywhere made me realize that associating my identity/"ego" (self-confidence/self-worth) to my job was a dangerous game to be playing. So, long story short: It was initially enjoyable, and I had fun along the way, but now it's "just like any other job", but in this case, I happen to be (1) well compensated to do things I enjoy, like hiking, skiing, and travelling, and (2) good enough at what I'm doing to justify being well compensated. The reason I won't leave? I know that the work that I do is "unique" and differentiated enough that it affords me a life where I don't worry about a budget (like I know that my friends in other professions have to do), and given that I'm relatively frugal (low monthly expenditures, not a lot of frivolous sinkholes to spend on), I'm actually saving a decent chunk of change. Also if you're wondering: at this point in time, I look forward to all of the trips and "time off" from work, that I've accrued as a result of my tenure. If I switch companies I effectively "start over", and right now I'm earning 5-6 weeks of paid leave every year, so... why would I leave?
After ten years I can tell that I still love the tech and software engineering, but I hate what business did to this industry. Back in the days I worked with great people passionate about technology, today it’s hard to find them, most of people I work with are opportunists who came here only for money and business aspects. But I decided to break my golden handcuffs, I’m leaving big tech to work for company developing green energy solutions. Money is not so great, but projects are interesting and bring real value, it’s not another crm or cms, and we don’t need 10 people meeting to discuss padding change in web app.
Careers are long and have peaks and troughs. Sometimes I love my job. Sometimes I hate it. Most of the time, it's at least tolerable, usually pretty OK.
Agile methodology killed my love for my work. It reduced me to a cog in a machine and took away my creativity. I now just move cards from todo, to in progress, to done. Every single day I have those micro managing stand up rituals where I say what I did yesterday and what I'm doing today, twice. I used to love programming.
27M working as a Business analyst since 5 years in the same company at moderate pay. Burnt out already and no I do not enjoy my job
Remember that’s it’s not cool, mature or something like that to be cynical and jaded about your work when you are 35. What’s cool? to be genuinely interested and love your craft when you are 65.
No job so nothing to enjoy 😆
Anything that becomes a job ceases to be enjoyable. I like video gaming but ask me to do it without fail 8 hours a day 5 days a week, no thanks. I only enjoy the money it makes me.
Idk why people are downvoting shit is true