Sales employee Bob wants a clickable blue button.

Bob tells product owner Karen about his unstoppable desire for clickable blue buttons.

Karen assigns points for potential and impact (how much does a blue button improve Bob's life, how many people like Bob desire blue buttons)

Karen asks the button team how hard it is to build a button. The button team compares the request to a reference button they've built before, and gives an ease score, with higher score being easier (inverse of scrum points).

These three scores are combined to give a priority score. The global buttonbacklog is sorted by priority.

Once every two weeks (a "sprint") the button team convenes, uses the ease scores to assign scrum points. Difficult tasks are broken up into smaller tasks, because there is a scrum point upper limit. They use the average of the last 5 sprints to calculate each developer's "velocity".

The sprint is filled with tasks, from the top of the global button backlog, up to the team's capacity as determined by velocity. Approximate due dates are assigned, Bob is a happy Bob.

What if boss Peter runs into the office screaming "OUR IMPORTANT CLIENT WANTS A FUCKING PINK BUTTON WHICH MAKES HEARTS APPEAR"?

Devs tell boss to shut the fuck up and talk to Karen. Karen has a carefully curated list of button building tasks sorted by priority, can sedate boss with valium so he calms the fuck down until he can make a case for the impact and potential of his pink button.

Karen might agree that Peter's pink button gets a higher priority than Bob's blue button.

But devs are nocturnal creatures, easily disturbed when approached by humans, their natural rhythms thrown out of balance.

So the sprint is "locked", and Peter's pink button appears at the top of the global backlog, from where it flows into the next sprint.

On rare occasions a sprint is broken open, for example when Karen realizes that all of the end users will commit suicide if they don't have a pink heart-spawning button.

In such an event, Peter must make Bob happy (because Bob is crying that his blue button is delayed). And Peter must make the button team of devs happy.

This usually leads to a ritual involving chocolate or even hardware gift certificates to restore balance to the dev ecosystem.

Work life balance. Ever heard of it?

Height of work pressure:

⚠ I was flashing my ID card instead of unlocking the house door with the keys.

⚠Me and my friends went out for dinner in one of the best restaurants and as I finished, I started walking towards the wash basin with plates in my hand.

⚠I don't login to facebook, youtube, etc.. at my personal internet connection at home... thinking it will be blocked anyway. Till I realized that, I was at home.

⚠Once after talking to one of my friends I ended the conversation saying, "Ok bye... in case of any issues will call you back"

⚠Once I went to a pharmacy and asked for a tab. Pharmacist asked whether I want 250mg or 500mg? I replied 256mb. Thank god he didn't notice.

⚠After a hectic week, went to a movie. In the middle of the movie, when I wanted to check the time, I kept repeatedly glancing at the bottom right corner of the Theatre Screen.

😄So avoid working so hard !😄

Have a great work-life balance.

Lastly...

⚠Extreme Work Pressure:
An employee opens his lunch box on the road side to see, whether he is going to office, or coming back from office.😂😂..

Fuck open office spaces.

A few months ago I landed a super sweet job as a senior full stack developer, mainly going to work with their Python microarchitecture. The company pays well, has a sweet balance between freedom and responsibility, 30 days vacation etc.

During the recruiting process they walked me around the office that was super cozy with 14 devs in on large room and 10 people from marketing in another. They also mentioned that they would move and merge office with operations and customer service (around 100 more people) in a few months.

Life was good in the old office, I thought that this is the company where I will work for a looooong time.

Now we are in the new office and its fucking shit. No walls or FUCKING CEILINGS between departments. Right above my head there is balcony with customer service talking loud as fuck 24/7. Everyone that is not a developer is just so fucking loud.

I have to use earplugs AND earmuffs to get silence, or blast my ears with way to loud music. Every day around lunch I'm completely done mentally.

I know I'm extra sensitive to noise because of my ADHD, but seriously who the fuck thought this was a good idea?

All the devs have told our boss what needs to be done. If they listen i don't know. In the meantime I will start looking for a new job....

View from my "office" this week. I love coding on vacation.

Technical Founder at today's meeting: "All of you guys have work-life balance. It shouldn't be like that. We need act like a startup. You guys need to work really hard. This guy (pointing at me) once worked 10 hours each day, where I worked 16 hours. We really need to move fast."

I'll just leave this words here.

Company: we care about work/life balance (as long as shit gets done)

Company: we care about mental well-being (except when shit has to be done "now!")

Company: we help each other (we push work around until someone finally do it)

Company: management is here to help you do your work (as long as you don't ask them to help you to solve a real problem)

Company: we are agile (except we have more sub-processes than ever)

Company: we only hire best (and then put them in the team of morons)

Company: we are customer centric (that's why we are delivering bugged features)

Company: we constantly rise the bar (deliver more shit in shorter time)

... did I forget about something?

I vehemently despise the popular image of developers as borderline autistic savants living on junk food and working 24 hour days!

You see, I bought into that vision and became that person. When I first started working as a developer, I would work crazy long hours, eating junk food while neglecting my health and personal life. This behavior was encouraged by my boss and co-workers, and became expected, with the sales people boasting about it to the clients, like is somehow proved I was a better developer.
It's no big surprise that this kind of life comes at a cost and can not be sustained. I burnt out, my life fell to pieces and my body fucked out on me.
It's taken me years to repair the damage and I am still doing so.
I now work at a company that understands the importance of a healthy work/life balance, and I take full advantage of that.
Perhaps if I had a wise mentor when I first started, I could have worked smarter instead of harder and respected the needs of my mind and body.
I am that mentor now.

Developers are smart people, we should stop glamorising a stupid lifestyle.

So, my wife is in the hospital with two of the kids for an annual checkup. Should be nothing to worry about but still it's stressful and I want to be there.

I'd booked the day off (until the end of the week) and last week I got told, you've taken too many holidays, just the Friday is approved.

Ok, fine, I'll do some extra hours work from home and be there for the appointment. But fuck no, they schedule an "important" client meeting this morning and I'm required to attend.

TWO FUCKING HOURS and I contributed a sum total of 2 sentences which could have been filled in just as well by the other developer on the call

Just another reason I'm happy to be interviewing at other companies.

Prioritize work/life balance

These companies don’t give a F about you

If you die slaving for them, they’ll move on like you never existed to begin with.

A few interview tips from the other side of the table:

1. Bring a laptop

I mean come up man! Bring a laptop. Especially if there was some kind of project or challenge to present. I have seen so many people do a big UI design presentation and then come in like “can I use your laptop???”. Of course you can, but your looking very unprepared.

2. Ask for clarification

Communication problems happen in business every day. Different cultures and accents can cause issues. The important part isn’t wether you understand everything said but that you ask enough questions to make sure you eventually understand. Most people just wrongly assume things and start rambling.

3. Know what kind of company you and talking to

In my case, this is a startup. We aren’t IBM or Amazon or Google. We work hard and we play hard. Work life balance is important in life but if your very first question is “work/life balance???” then you played yourself. Wait a bit, pepper it in on the sly. Just don’t ask it right away, it shows us that you aren’t ready to work harder than usual if needed. Maybe try “so how do you like working here? How are the people, hours etc?” Or something besides the first question being a bad signal.

Just some random tips for an interviewer.

From me to you, don’t make me have to tell you like DJ Khalid would ...

Congratulations, you played yourself.

This is more on work and life balance.

1. Don't do hard work, but do 'Smart work', else you will end up burn yourself 100%.

2. Don't think your manager is your guardian angel, even though it seems like sometimes. He has his own goals to achieve.

3. Spend considerable time daily in and out of office/work, for your own development/improvement.

4. Learn new languages and technologies.

5. Stop making things perfect, 'good' is enough.

and it goes on ............

Most important phrase I learnt. "Can it wait till tomorrow?" Keep you work life balance healthy.

If you need to learn/teach object orientation, these are my approaches (I hate that classic "car" example):

1) Keep in mind games like Warcraft, Starcraft, Civilization, Age of Empires (yes, I am old school). They are a good example of having classes to use, instantiating objects (creatures) and putting them to work together. As in a real system.

2) Think of your program as an office that has a job to do, or a factory that has something to deliver. Classes are the roles/jobs and objects are the workers/employees. They don't need to be complex, but their purpose must be really (really, really) well defined. Just like in a real office / factory.

3) Even better (or crazier), see your classes and objects as real beings, digital creatures in a abstract world, and yourself as a kind of god, who creates species (define classes) with wisdom. Give life when it is the time for them to come into the world (instantiate object) and kill them when they are done with their mission (dispose an object). Give them behavior, logic, conditions to work with, situations where they take action, and when they don't. Make them kinda "smart". Build them able to make decisions and take actions based on conditions. Give them life. Think on your program as an ecossystem. There must be balance, connection, species must be well defined and creatures must work together to achieve a common objective. Don't just throw code and pray for it to run. Plan it.

-----

When I talk about my classes like they are real beings, and programs as mini-worlds, some people say I am crazy, some others say that's passion.

It is both! @__@

Previous job:
- Every dev needs to connect to a remote server, and do the coding there because the bosses are afraid that we will "steal" their legacy spaghetti written by the CTO in 2006 (the current year was 2016-2017).
- There are no QAs, because "why do you devs need mommy to look after your codes?"
- Bosses think it's our duty to stay extra hours without overtime payment while talking bullshit about a culture that promotes work life balance. You receive no bonus for staying late, but if you leave work 15 minutes early, HR will have a serious talk with you the next day.
- Bosses require "evidence" when you submit a leave request. For example, you tell them you're taking a vacation, they'll ask you for a copy of airline tickets, hotel bookings, etc.
- Bosses spend a ton on hosting parties for the customers while we're using 6-7 year-old laptops
- The CEO loves firing people for ridiculous reasons. Once he considered firing a guy because the way he walks is funny

What is it with the overworking fetish in IT?

I mean, I certainly do like my job (working in a SOC), but I also enjoy time off work. I get paid 8 to 5, so I'll stay at work from 8 to 5 and do my job to my best capacity. Certainly, if something happens at 4:50, I won't run out at 5:00 sharp, but I also won't voluntarily stay til 7 or 8.

Somehow, several of my colleagues pride themselves in working overtime pretty much daily. At least one of them doesn't even write down the overtime 'because he enjoys his job'. I also heard similar behaviour from several friends and feel like I read about it kinda frequently on here.

My manager is so cool at work that he doesn't care if I sleep during office hours or even skip working for a couple of days as long as I meet the deadlines. All he cares about is getting the work done and keeping his team happy.
I abso-frigging-lutely respect him very much and like him as a person.
Unlike my friends' managers in other departments, he wouldn't assign me more work if I finished a project before the deadline.
I wish all the managers in all the companies realise work-life balance is important and act like him.

My current boss' boss. Dude has my back, no questions asked. If I mess up, he backs me up to the customer and then teaches me the right way behind the scenes. Even stands up for me when i'm not around.

He's helped me change my lifestyle, too, connecting me with trainers and coaches who can help develop a workout plan around my one hand. He understands the value of work/life balance, but has no power to change our schedule, so he helps out however he can around that.

He is honestly #bossgoals. I want to be like him when i'm a boss

I work for healthcare client project in a start up, worked two years straight without a break.

Client is very inconsiderate about developers work-life balance, he always wants to release every features yesterday.

Never had a reasonable deadline, worked late nights most of the time. No one had backbone to control this client from our side.

Its only developers team, no project management, scrum masters or anything, everything has to be taken care by Dev's.

I decided to take a week break from work.

The first day of my leave he pinged me 3 times to change an "from email" address for notification email which no one give a damn about.

I never replied or did anything. But the part of myself is dying of guilt.

Now I can't relax myself completely.

Re-thinking of my life choices atm.

I loved programming since high school, I can work on computers 24/7 without tired. That's how much I love it. Now I'm just tired of it.

If anyone who read this till here. Thank you.

I started saying 'yes' to every opportunity in life. Long story short, I have 3 websites, 2 logos, a couple of leaflets and 2 non-profit websites due yesterday. Whiskey with cereal never tasted better at 8 AM!

Hipsters be like: i aM iN cOnTrOl oF mY oWn LiFe

And then proceed to give away their Calendly link.

Fucking hilarious. They fail to realise that time is the most important entity anyone can have. And they give it away to strangers to control their time.

Imagine, giving access and control of your most important entity of your life to some random stranger on internet.

I coincidently found this. I had to read it three times before I understood what the message was.

I am slowly getting back to my life where I had good work life balance, but this time I am paid well with lots of learning.

I am on my way to become a time millionaire.

Me: I just can’t keep working these hours. I’m on calls and emails 8pm and 9pm 4 times a week.

Boss: ok, but come on, Office X does be on for the same calls but it’s midnight their time.

Me: ... How does that make anything better?

So a few days ago I shared about the conflict with my colleague on learning React. Today I was let go. Obviously I asked why they would do that and they said they feel the problem isn't even my React knowledge but the fact I don't grasp the fundamentals of OO programming.

Thing is in these 3 months there has not been a single code review. They are either going of what my lying colleague told them (they claimed he was excluded from giving feedback), or the consultants who were hired to help us. And yes, I got feedback I should improve but at the same time the assurance so long as I show improvement it'd be fine. And I was told they could see improvement. So I'm not sure what changed but suddenly there is no budget to keep me on. In any case it feels like shitty corporate bullshit.

But I can't say they are wrong. I struggle to explain simple concepts I know in words. I've worked a series of bad jobs where nobody cared how you did stuff as long as it got done. I feel I'm so behind now and so affected by bad knowledge it's even harder to fix than to learn the first time. So I'm wondering how to fix this.

I'm really gutted too because I loved this company. I was finally getting a fair wage instead of being underpaid. The people were excellent. I felt I could finally relax and feel safe at work. And now I feel betrayed. Which for someone with self esteem issues is very hard. Can't trust in myself and can't trust in others.

I'm gonna try and pick myself up in the morning, but today I feel totally shit. This wasn't how I'd expected things to go. I thought my manager had intended to talk conflicts over but instead I get the boot. And the advice to stop overselling myself. Real useful that. Like it is on me that they hired me despite my subpar interview because my CV looked good. It's a shitty excuse. In any case they're now stuck with a dev that walks out of work, throws false accusations about colleagues, and another person warned me about to not engage because nothing good ever came from it. He's gonna keep over engineering everything and make up for all the time he wastes outside of work creating a dysfunctional environment for everyone. But yeah, easier to fire the new person who does her best despite the odds. And who cautioned against over engineering because we kept missing deadlines. And who believes in refactoring when it is needed because that's how agile works. Yeah better keep someone who has no sense of work life balance and makes others miserable then claiming he's being driven out by your ignorance. And of course the consultants who throw your own people under the bus. Can't get rid of those now.

Im gunna get a lot of flak for this but just hear me out:

People keep asking me what it's like working in a male dominated industry. They have conferences for women in tech empowerment and I get forced to go to them because I'm the only female in the office.

The thing is. I don't feel oppressed. I get that we "need" more women in tech but from my experience and from talking to various women at my old university, the reason women are avoiding the tech industry isn't because it's male dominated and they feel out of place. It's because a) it doesn't interest them or b) they never thought of it as an option (like myself).

Computer programming should be in grade schools and highschool's just like math and science to help educated not only women but people in general that it's an option. That's what's going to help more women get in the tech industry. Not these bullshit conferences and women's rights in tech movements, and hiring women over men (even if she's worse than him in skill level) just because she's a woman.

Frankly I think it's downright shameful that companies that are male dominated feel the need to hire women over men just because of gender. If I'm applying somewhere and there's a better male candidate, hire him! I'd much rather your company have a good team then a "balanced" team. Great tech teams are what will bring along new and better technologies, not balanced ones.

Keep in mind I'm talking about Western Civilization here, I get that a lot of countries are still struggling with the balance of women's rights at all but this is Canada.

I also get that there are probably some women who want to join tech but won't because it's too male dominated but frankly that's a shit poor excuse. If you really wanted to join tech then being surrounded by make co-workers wouldn't deter you from living your life the way you want to. If you feel so uncomfortable around men that you won't go into an industry you love because it's male dominated then I'm sorry for you and you should probably see a councillor to get that worked out.

I feel more oppressed by having to put aside my programming and being forced to go to these conferences than I do in the every day workplace. My boss is literally more offended that I don't feel offended about being a woman "minority". He spent a week pestering me about how I would feel about this, that and the other thing if it happened to me.

I'm not saying nobody ever says anything even remotely sexist to me but frankly I could give two shits- I'm here. I'm coding. I'm good at what I do and I'm comfortable enough with myself that I can just blow off the comment (which probably wasn't even meant to offend me) and continue working. But you're going to get that wherever you go, this isn't a flaw of the tech industry. This is a flaw of the world and it goes both ways (men get flak too).

Currently on vacation and all I wanna do is code. But I took vacation to get rest from coding. What’s a person to do?

People fucking think that working for a fucking startup is a fucking cake walk. Every person making 6 figure salaries but no one fucking wants to put in an effort to work slightly harder! Show up at 10 and leave a 4 and yeah v'll get funded. And the worst fucking part is no one wants to check something as simple as fucking work emails after work! Fucking get your acts together or just walk the fuck out the door.

I know work life balance is important but don't expect that when you know the company is treading harsh waters and needs everyone to get their shit together so we get funded!

So one day on tech huddle my tech lead got frustrated, don't know why and told me - "the tasks you're doing can be done by interns"

I felt bad. Ofcourse I was putting my 100%.

That day I decided to put the resignation. I didn't discussed with anyone about it and sent the resignation email directly.

After serving 2 months of notice period I was able to land a better job successfully!

I called the lead on the last working day in that company and shared him the news about my offer letter and a little about the company.
His first question was - "Did you cleared all the interview process?"
In my mind - "That's only why I'm sharing the news here with you man! Stop thinking of me as a noob."
I replied with - "yes, if needed/the new company try to get feedback about me then please be honest atleast there by keeping your ego aside."

You shouldn't pull someone's leg if you aren't able to climb higher!!

Lesson I learnt;
DON'T STAY AT A PLACE WHERE THERE'S NO VALUE OF YOUR WORK AND THE DEDICATION TOWARDS IT!

Working in a startup isn't that easy, mostly for those where there's no work life balance.

So today I realized that Im not happy.

When I was a kid I wanted to do many things because I had time and energy but I had no money. Now that Im an adult and I have the money, I have no energy and no will power to try and have personal life in these few hours left of my day. I spend 9 hours at work everyday and totally 1hr 30min is wasted on commuting.

I spent 4 years in uni between lectures and working on my side projects, and I really believed that after uni I will get a job and my life work balance will improve.

After uni I spent 2 years working abroad in 3 jobs at 3 countries. I work as android dev and now Im making a really decent salary.

However Im not happy at all. I realized that life is not about the money. Im changing countries like socks and dont even feel the need to socialize or enjoy my life anymore. Im european and these other eu countries are not that different at all. It came to a point where relationships are meaningless to me. I became an office drone who cares only about work and outside of work I care only about my projects and more work.

At this point im only 25 years old with around 2 years of experience and money is really good, but fuck it Im so tired of being an emigrant and having no stability in life. Im so drained. I spent past 6 years (4 in uni combined with side projects and 2 years working in 3 jobs in different countriee) working my ass off and lying to myself that after the next big thing Im gonna take a break and enjoy life. But its never enough. I dont want to hit 30s or 40s and realize that I wasted my life on pursuing money and didnt get to enjoy life..

Im really considering taking a 6-12 months vacation. I need to find myself. Probably going back to my own country. Just learn how to enjoy life, attend workshops, get to know new city area, meet new people, do some interesting hobbies. Maybe do a little freelance (max 10hrs a week).

Im tired of feeling like I need to make as much money as I can and learn as much about my work as I can. Its not rewarding because its never enough.

Whats the point in that money if I cant enjoy it?

Reasons not to be a dev:
High Stress level
Caffeine addiction
No home/work life balance.

1. There is nothing in this field that is impossible or out of reach for someone with the correct dedication and perseverance. Even if you suck at a particular topic, I highly believe that you can make sense of it through computer science, be it math, biology physics, finances etc. The field opens the doors to other subjects. This is true for everything else, but I seriously believe that Comp Sci makes it more reachable.

2. You cannot make development a quirky personality trait. There is more to life than just sitting around all day fucking with a computer, but at the same time that is how you hone your skills, find balance!

3. Being attractive and or charismatic in this field pays a lot, but also makes you a target.

4. I have never met more people in my life I wanted to punch to a pulp, and I worked in retail and was in the military....that says a lot.

5. Penises, there are way too many penises in this field. I hate being surrounded by dudes and since I grew up in a nail/hair salon I am more used/enjoy female company more.

6. Stuxnet se la come.

So I just had this job interview with a "startup" (side note: who the fuck still calls limping companies "startups" in 2024? That is sooooo 2010s).

There was this tattooed and very pale girl (you just know the vibe), the mandatory Norse bearded tall guy and the balding, "I'm-in-my-fifties-but-I-am-not-a-square, maaan" sleasy-looking white guy in a button up shirt but no suit jacket. The whole stereotypes gang came looking for their missing nerdy Indian.

The sleasy bloke goes on and on on a looong tirade on how they're "a tech innovation academy", how they "move fast and break things" and they "run smoking hot", so that "long nights are to be expected".
So, they usual red-flagging shit.

Then they all went on a "but we're not like all those companies that look exactly like us" word salad about "sustainability and a healthy work life balance", with their "highest value" being "the utmost respect at all times". I'm nodding my head at the meaningless splurge until they fart out the sentence "for example, cussing while talking with colleagues is a fireable offence".

If some hustling enterprise rather prefers a posh working environment, one can adapt to such circumstances. Provided, of course, that said enterprise adheres to the administrative coherence expected from a culturally refined institution. Mostly by compliance, from the leadership, to a rigidly predictable working schedule.

Now, if the bloody curs want coder dogs that work assfucking hours with a shit eating grin, they better swallow our fucking sailor mouths. Fuck, I've done twenty hour shifts getting my ass kicked in dark startup fisting/rush rooms. If unable to yell at any blabbering cocksucker to go stick his fucking opinions up the bitch who crapped him, then I ain't gonna bloody be there.

TL;DR they can either have a "utmost respect" working environment XOR a "fast and hot" daily hustle.

After they crapped out that oxymoron I could barely hold myself to avoid saying "sorry, I do not partake in any of the psychedelics you must be on".
On to the next interviews!

!dev && !rant

My sister is getting married tomorrow. My cousin will get married in 3 weeks.. a good friend of mine just became a mom.

They’re all about my age.

This made me realize i only have about 2 friends which I see once every few months, don’t meet any new people, don’t take care of my physical health and haven’t been in a relationship for about 7 years by now.
I started working as a dev 8 years ago and really sacrificed my life to the 2 companies I worked for.

I own nice cars and make good money (relatively spoken) , but for me I know I really have to get my shit together and start to actually get a personal / social life.

So I decided to quit my job and move to another country where I feel like I fit in (posted about the idea to do this a while ago and devs here were super supportive, thanks for that guys)

From now on, I’ll make sure to have a good work-life balance and take more care of myself.
Otherwise, success and money ain’t worth shit..

A good weekend to all of you and happy coding.

If the company advertises itself as a family environment, RUN. I know no family's perfect, or how functional yours is- but remember that with any family there's a high risk of drama and bullshit.

Call me boring but...

Working in a secure job with a great work/life balance, little or no travel, great people, really interesting challenges, earning a tidy salary, contributing to open source, all the while creating something worthwhile and interesting.

I have a few of those already, so can't complain.

Accout balance went from 0 to NULL, Life is hard as a student :(

I just decided to take some time off from work, and use my savings to survive next months. I have been dealing with work related problems for a few years now, and since last year I was sure I needed time to recover my health and improve my skills, to get better job opportunities.

I was trying to balance my life and my time, working a bit less, trying to rest, study, and so on. I was hopeful I could achieve my goals just fine with some adjustments. But now... I just don't care.

Last Thursday my mother was diagnosed with cancer.
Two weeks ago, my only brother lost his job.
The same happened with my bf, few months ago, and he needed to move to another state to get a new job.

There is so much going on... Sometimes I just feel like panicking.

It's sad to fear the future, and deal with so much uncertainty.

It's hard to deal with work and money issues. It's even harder to deal with serious health issues.

I hope things will get better somehow, but I needed to vent this. Sometimes life can be a bitch.

I hate school, but I wish I finished collage…

Just to imagine all the free time I had, I if I had it now I would do so much... But I left and Got employed, and now I have to watch myself getting fucked over salary wise and not learning anything new at work. Constantly being called junior just makes me wish I stayed in school. And use the extra time to do my own company

So if I had the chance , I'd go back... But I have bills to pay! (Sad)

Realized I hadn’t subjected you guys to cat photos.

The brown cat is Robert Lazarus (the rescue named him Bob) and the white and brown cat is Dylan Thomas (rescue named him Dylan).

Bobcat died as a kitten (thus his middle name) and was brought back to life, but was blind for a bit as a result. According to legend, Tomcat acted as his seeing eye cat when he wasn’t able to see on his own. Bobcat’s vision’s better now (though he still might have some issues as he’s a little iffy on balance sometimes), but the rescue didn’t want to separate the two of them since they were a bonded pair.

Loads of people wanted Tomcat but didn’t want to take a chance on a zombie cat. Which I’m constantly thankful for because they’re awesome. Even if they steal my keyboard and try to eat my notes and try (and succeed) to jump on me while I’m trying to cook because they want to play with the feather toy that’s been hidden (not so well!) on top of the fridge and know it’s their best shot at getting up there.

I'm in the process of changing jobs and at the point where I need to sign the contract with the new company.

The concern I have is that of work life balance. There is a clause that obviously speaks to overtime and renumeration thereof, etc. But, there is also a clause that mentions that their office hours extend to Saturday mornings.

Speak to my wife about it and all I get is "That's how it is in your industry. I know of my other programmer friends who work late and long hours, so the fact that you don't currently work overtime seems very rare."

I don't think it's rare nor should it be the normal to have to constantly work extra hours. This is not a thing of being lazy or not dedicated to your job, but rather that you put in the time that is required and that alone should be enough to show your "dedication" to the job. Personally I feel that if you're fucking there everyday, giving your best, and you leave at the end of the day, no questions asked, that it is good enough!

Started off a developer 6 months back. I seem to have lost control of my life. I wake up at 8, be at work at 9am, get back home by 7 or 8pm, dinner, learn, work on my platform, sleep at 12am or 1am and the cycle continues.

I have no time for taking care of myself, no working out, no grooming, no family time, no time with friends, nothing naada! It scares me that I don't have that balance.

I always feel like I'm not good enough and I'm curious by nature, because of these, I sit my ass down and work / learn like crazy because I want to be good but I fear for my health, I'm 22, so I can live for now like this but this lifestyle will ruin my future, I've started getting back problems and shit, that was the wake up call!

How do you guys do it? work - life balance? I believe this information is vital for everyone starting out as a developer.

The worst part of being a dev

My social dilemma

In a fast paced world where the average human spends at least 6 hours a day with technology, deriving basic entertainment, pleasures and engaging in various activities.

Here we are the developers that have to engage with technology for longer hours for a living , having to keep up with deadlines, immersing our minds in complicated algorithms and then the endless possibilities of entertainment from the machine in so few human hours a day , you wonder how you’d get off, and to top it up, I personally work from home.

And then the dilemma of overcoming different suggestions from various parties in taking a break off, a break off to what you later ask yourself, thus creating the shadow of doubt, splitting the fragile programmer’s mind , trying to solve this imaginary puzzle, “this bug of the mind”.

Then the challenge often arises in creating a balance, telling yourself, just catching up with people with this same technology takes a whole day, or then again quitting my Job, but from my little experience of life, nobody likes a poor visitor, this is actually worse than a “bug” and as I bask in this quagmire, “a little voice in my head keeps singing keep doing what you love doing”.

Like an infinite loop of crazy, spiralling back to these machines, trying the find and fix the balance of normalcy. Always remembered the cool years of college tho, with so much people around and then again that was college.

An then the thought arises, maybe something else might be worth doing, but after so much time spent in building your skills and the enormous joy of programming even typing without looking at the keyboard is a real pleasure, and yeah sure the days are short with the reality of a constant need to survive, remain sane, compete and make the best of life in such short time.

Then how do we know if we have fallen off the so-called “social track”, when we have only lived so little to really comprehend the most parts of life? with such constant stream of unanswered question, you’d realise you shouldn’t have burdened the mind creating such questions in the first place

But then again maybe it gets better, one of the above, the disturbed mind or the situation as whole and yes I try oh I try, I place calls, do some visiting, no relationship tho but with a good perspective in mind.

In this race of life, you sometimes ask yourself would you rather be in a different position, or maybe already put exactly where we belong. For this illusionary fight with self is a fight with reality as a whole and true bliss comes from actually letting go as time and people pass you by.

And my greatest achievement to date aside family and my work is getting into the 1000 club on devRant.

I finally got a job at a tech company (although it's not a tech job) with a very good work/life balance.

Therefore, I plan on getting more serious about properly learning how to program in my spare time, also because, being a tech company, programmers are all over the place and are generally willing to talk about code.

I must say that while job hunting, devRant has been very useful to me since it allowed me to understand what kind of environment I'd like to work in. So far, the first few weeks of work have been great.

Ah, and the view from the office is unbeatable.

Found this gem today while looking through confluence.

Goals:
Can the candidate use Slack?
Ask follow up questions if missed anything.
Ask the questions that tell a lot about someone without directly asking it (i.e. Have you ever met someone famous? (Telling what the candidate values in life) What are your hobbies? (Telling if candidate has a work life balance). If you were a crayon, what color would you be and why? (Highlights prominent aspects of candidate’s personality) Please don’t just use these, be creative.)

A crayon???? Das when I hang up

Best: Got into game modding and had tons of fun! Learned a lot about Unity engine and became very comfortable with C#.

Worst: Abandoned my social life as a result of my new obsession. Need to find the balance.

When you launch a project just before you take your vacation..

i don't think that i'm having a burnout but i think that i'm maybe not so far away from it... several people, including friends, my therapist and also a colleague, told me they see me at risk of sliding into a real burnout.

i've known this for longer that i have a crappy work life balance. the habit of making work the most important part of my own life. thinking about work even in my private time, when i fall asleep, when i wake up in the night or in the morning. the tendency to think about problems, plans, coworkers, not being able to quit work mentally. the idea that i have to prove to everybody at work that i'm awesome. the feeling that, after a work day, i'm just "waiting" at home for the next day, in idle mode, so i can continue working on a problem (like a bug) that's occupying my whole mind. and at the same time, feeling totally empty after work, having no energy. i've lost interest and quit several hobbies in the last two years that once were important for me. and i think one important reason is that i didn't have any mental energy left to deal with that.

another factor for this development was also the pandemic for sure, because for some time, i had no real social life except for that at work.
but more important is probably that i find my job most of the time really fun and am highly motivated. i have the tendency to say yes to everything and to really commit to and own the problems that are handed to me. (right now, however i feel like there's not much motivation left)
then again there is the feeling that what i do is never good enough, i have little self confidence in my own abilities as a software engineer. there's a big discrepancy between how i myself perceive my work and how other people do (not only at work). on a rational level, i know that what i do is at least "good enough", otherwise i wouldn't have this job, and i wouldn't receive this amount of positive feedback from people. but it's hard to really deeply understand this thing, when there are deep-rooted beliefs like "only perfect is good enough" or "your colleagues will be disappointed and get a negative idea of you (and something bad will happen), if you don't give your best"... and there's also this idea that i have to be this super nerdy person who also codes in their free time, reads IT magazines and stuff, because only then i will fit this stereotype of a software developer, and only then i can be taken seriously and be good enough. no matter if this is fun for me or not.

anyway, right now i'm at a point in life where i'm realizing all this not only rationally, but with full emotional impact... :/ my life feels like it's gone stale and empty. i've lost creativity, warmth and human connection and that hurts a lot.

i'm trying to change my life.
one thing that really helps me right now is to talk with people who have (made) similar experiences. can you relate? if yes, how do / did you address those problems? i would really appreciate to hear your stories...

I'm basically an introvert. I've lived most of my childhood with my mother alone with few friends and the ones I had betreyed me real hard at some point. So how come that I'm now founding a startup, speaking in front of a big audience at meetups and have a nearly 60/40 work/social life?

At some point I decided to be more social. Making that decision alone had a huge impact. It took several years though, to implement this decision. Some day I cut off my draining social bounds and found energyzing relationships by simple doing what I wanted to do. I started to reach out and experiment with a lot of hobbies like bow casting and going to board games evenings. I made little steps. E.g bow casting is a sport where you don't necessarily interact with others within the sport, but you have the opportunity to interact about the sport.

A physiologist once told me the neat fact, that being an introvert is just an attribute that does not contradict the skill being socially involved. So it is possible with training and decisions to learn how to be more extroverted. For in introvert this is more exhausting and challanging, but definitely possible.

So today I balance my social life and work by visiting meetups, playing board games and all that stuff that makes me comfortable. There I get to know people with similar interests and similar struggle ;)

At some point the work was just not enough to be happy, I identified my missing social interactions as the root cause so I decided to change that.

On the other hand, don't think you have to be social. Don't think you have to care about everything others expect you to care about. It's bullshit. Don't care about that. Rather ask yourself what you want for yourself. Certainly a social life is part of that, but you alone decide how this will look like. E.g. After I decided hey I just don't give a fuck if you like cuddling your cat and when it's birthday is, several months or years later I started to be interested in these things from my own, not because some dippshit society construct expects me to care about it.

So to wrap up:
Introvert is an attribute, social life is a skill.
Deciding for yourself and giving a fuck about others is key.
It takes a shit load of time. But it works.

I dunno how I landed on an Indian web series known as Mr Das. Yo...Indians and Mexicans are very much alike. I would say that yo streets are dirtier and messier, but in terms of overal work life balance and day to day shit we are pretty alike.

Yall get stuck in traffic, so do we.
Yall get shit bosses, so do we.
Yall have shit government, so do we.

But man, y'all be scamming people on the phone, we prefer selling drugs and killing each other.

And we both brown.

I ain't that brown tho

Team leader sets up meeting for Monday morning on Sunday. In the scrum group Whatsapp. Ahhhh!

Help, I don't know if I want to code as a job for the rest of my life.
I feel that I miss physical activity in my job. Its just sitting and programming.
I like programming, it's an infinite series of puzzles, and I like puzzles. But more physical would be nice.

Maybe I should find a 2nd job that is more physical and balance the two.

What is everyone's thoughts on this?

Balance between knowledge and wealth = perfect life

8, simply because I'm not payed for extra 😁 and neither I'm gonna accept if proposed with payment, I'm not that much greedy about money and I prefer way more the work-life balance

Passive aggressive taunts from office folks for not working on a holiday

Never do personal stuff at work, never do work stuff unless hours are being counted. Proper separation of duties.
Boss always tells us we only work 38 hours a week and any other time we do we can take off later.

Procrastination for work projects thus usually involves working on unrelated, more exciting projects instead of the one with the hard deadline ;)

Dont become a dev if you:

- Cant sit in the office for 8-10 hours a day

- Dont know how to google information/ errors, instead you interrupt your teammates with stupid questions every 5 minutes

- Are a perfectionist and don't like constant change.

- Are neurotic and give up easily. If you get triggered about broken or messy things to the point where it ruins your day to you and everyone else around you. You need to separate your work from your life.

- Don't have good communication skills. Worst I saw was a guy who speaks with a stutter(nobody understands him) and also writes very poorly (nobody understands his emails). Also he gets very angry when you ask additional questions to clarify what he said. How can you work with someone like that?

- Are very sensitive to critique. I prefer someone telling me that my code is shit and telling me why, instead of feeding me delusions and false validation.

- Dont know how to balance working in team and working solo. Nobody likes lone wolfs who are arrogant and not in sync with the team. But also nobody likes to drag teammates who cant think for themselves and even after years of spent in the field are required constant spoonfeeding because they are unable to google and teach themselves with trial and error.

When I started off working on this particular project under a new technical manager, I used to love working overtime because the work and the problem we were trying to solve was really interesting. My technical lead was also a really awesome dude and I was able to learn a lot of things under his guidance. A couple of times, I didn't even mind working on the weekends too in case we wanted to meet some strict deadlines. I wanted to make sure that my team's brand name does not get spoiled and we deliver on what we promise.

It was all good until all the management started taking our overtime and weekend work for granted. It took me some time to realize this. Now it almost became a part of standard expectations. It was getting irritating. Managers could see this uneasiness but chose to do nothing.

The work increased, so did the team and the communication channels. The newbies in the team now worked overtime and on weekends. And everybody started acting as if it was normal. That's when it stuck me that I am responsible for inculcating this unsustainable and life sucking culture in the team. I stopped working overtime and started questioning the set deadlines, often asking them to postpone things. Management got furious and changed their focus on the newbies who'd work overtime, often rewarding them to reinforce the behavior.

I tried undoing it, asking managers that the team will not work on weekends. There was friction and managers would agree but the old bad habited cultural spore would pop up tume and again and the team would go back to the regular overtime and working weekends thing. As more time passed, the managers would circumvent me and start talking to others in the team, giving them work and deadlines directly because I started to say 'No' when I felt the need to do so. I tried to protect some folks in the team who would not be able to speak up but were frustrated. I started caring less about the team's brand and more about colleagues who were suffering due to such unethical (and illegal?) practices being normalised in the team.

Trying again and again to get back to 'normal', I failed everytime. Unsure of how far I'll be able to go on with this without getting severly burnt in the process and seeing no respite, I decided to move on. I put in my resignation two weeks back and want to start a fresh in another company.

I feel I am responsible for bringing this into the team without realizing the repurcussions of my working overtime. Staying in the team for more than 3.5 years, I could actually feel how managers have no fucks about your personal life and work life balance (despite showing oh so much concern about the well being of my family) and would reward anyone who works as per their whims and fancies. I wish I never get to work for a management such as this.

!dev

I’ve been ranting & posting a lot about my career, relocation, work life balance etc. in the last year.

Just wanna say, relocating was probably the best decision I’ve ever made. Professionally and personally..
Although it was a bit scary and I didn’t have any money left after relocating..

It’s 6PM, I’m sitting in the garden, listen to some classical music and don’t spend a single thought on work.
Tomorrow I will arrive in the office around 7:45, I will do my work. My boss recognizes my teams effort and thanks all of us for the work on the end of each sprint.

There are no personal fights in the team, everyone is getting along with the others.

I do some good work, get a good salary and don’t have to mix up work and personal life.

The people here are awesome, everyone is welcoming and supportive.

If everything goes as planned, I’ll be able to buy my dream car by the end of summer because the government doesn’t take all of my money. They take their taxes before I get my salary and the money I get is the money I HAVE..

Ireland is awesome.
At this point: thanks for the Irish guys here who provided information about work and life over here! And also to the other devs who supported me here👍

How long do my fellow devRanters spend per day coding? I will spend about 10 hours per day 6/7 days per week.

I ask this because I'm wondering if I need to re-balance my life choices. I took a whole day off
over the weekend and ended up feeling more rejuvenated coming back to my code this Monday.

them: welcome new project members, this is our CI/CD pipeline which is completely different from the rest of the company, there won't be any great knowledge transfer, we just expect you to be able to know and use everything. but also, we expect you to work on your tasks and don't waste any time.
me: okay, so my tasks aren't going as fast as expected, because I need to invest some learning so i can set up my project correctly.
later: some help would be nice, i'm stuck right now
coworker: *helps me to fix my problems, which were partly due to misconfigured build servers* i know it's a lot, and unfortunately, for this topic sources on the web aren't so good. i can really recommend this book, this will give a deeper understanding of the topic.
me: okay, yeah i mean, tbh, i'll read the book if the project invests some time for me so i can learn everything that's required, but this won't happen. also, some initial workshop on the topic or anything would have been nice.
coworker: well, i mean, i am a software developer. for me, it is normal that i learn all that stuff in my free time. and i think that's what the PM expects from us.
me: okay, that's fine for you, i mean, if i'm interested in a topic, i will invest my private time. but in this case, PM would just expect me to do unpaid labor, to gain knowledge and skills that i can use in this specific project. i'm not willing to do that.
coworker: ...
me: ...

it's not that i don't want to learn. the thing is that there isn't any energy left by the end of the day. i'm actually trying to find some work life balance, because i don't feel balanced right now, haven't felt since i started this job.
also, this is only one of several projects i'm working on. it's like they expect me this project has top priority in my life. if it wasn't so annoying on different levels, maybe i'd have a more positive attitude towards it.

also, at the moment i find it fucking annoying that i have to invest so much time in this dev ops bullshit and this keeps me from doing my actual work.

if they are unhappy with my skills, either they can invest in my learning or kick me out. at this point, either is fine for me..

"Work life balance"

My social life consists of spending much of my free time with my girlfriend, seeing my close family on weekends and meeting with a few friends from time to time.

It's enough for me and since there's not much of it, it isn't hard to "balance". Whatever that means.

Seriously tho, "social/work life balance" is subjective. It depends on what you need to feel good and happy. What works for some will not work for others. Don't try to push others into being social when they don't want to. Don't give me that "you need to go out more" crap. I don't. I'm fine just like this. I prefer to stay home and see a movie with my girlfriend.

That "people need to be social" mindset made me feel bad about myself for too long because I'm just not like that and people keep pushing that idea into my head. I'll go out with you when I feel like it, don't push it. Stop asking me every fucking weekend ffs.

Random thought of the day. I'm sure I've been told the "common wisdom" is that you can take a job with a lower salary and enjoy a better work-life balance, or go gung-ho for the inner city jobs and earn way more but sacrifice your quality of life.

Anyone else found the complete opposite? The higher the salary I've had over my career, generally the *better* the working environment and the more the employer seems to care for, and value its employees. Not universally true I'm sure, and perhaps I'm just lucky about where I pick, but I've certainly had way more "high stress" situations in some of my lower paid, rather than higher paid roles.

Simple. I push everyone I care about out of my life, and procrastinate dev life until the last seconds. My life has no balance.

I just had a professor unironically ask why students are stressed all the time. Education has changed. The insane assessments and workload make a healthy work-life balance impossible. There's no love of learning when the pace is shoved down your throat.

Come into work, 5 of our 18 employees have been fired. The boss stares at you with a gleam in his eye. This makes me want to program incredibly technical shizzle. Of course it does. There's nothing like a supportive work life balance :/

I belive developers need their own dating app type to get to know each other better and balance their social life...😁

Do you think that "Work From Home" or "Remote Work" tends to reduce the work life boundary for the employees?

What I think is that Managers feel fine pinging employees at any time of the day. And as employees either you get good at ignoring messages or work outside the working hours.

First rant! I hate being OnCall. I'm just out of college, give me some time to ramp up without these panic attacks.

Work-life balance. Still trying to figure out the balancing point.

Something I have learnt in the past month:

Never settle for a low salary no matter how good a company sounds (unless it's a really prestige company) if they don't realise your worth and don't care about their employees. Salary is important. You are important. And customers are important. Any company that just values money, income, profit and growth over their customer and employee experience is a huge red flag. If your work life is so stressful that it doesn't let you have a good work/life balance then avoid it. What comes above being a developer is being healthy and I think alot of people don't realise this. It may sound good to work as an engineer for a big platform but if they only value themselves you are just a cheap slave, move on and do something respectable and enjoyable.

Just my life lesson in applying for grad jobs.

Work-life balance. I will go home and code more for my job even though my work day is complete.

Hahaha under the gun lol

So at the beginning of the year I took a new job at a large, stable company. Leaving a failing startup, toxic leadership, and an absolutely stellar development team in the process. Given what's happened in the world since then, I'm overall pretty happy with the decision to have some more stability for me and my family.

That being said, I'm super bummed out (and weirdly burned out) now because I feel like I'm becoming a worse engineer.

I've worked for large organizations before (single digit thousands of employees), but never have I experienced a personification of enterprise memes like this. Leadership too out of touch, lots of bullshit work just to make worthless reports look good, horrific legacy codebases and infrastructure, you name it.

My biggest problem are the expectations are shockingly low. I went from a hyper demanding work environment where the fate of the entire company seemed to hang in the balance each and every week, to an environment where we literally invent arbitrary, bullshit deadlines and requirements so we have something to feel some stress about. And even still, most of the deadlines are laughably far away. The pace of work that's not only accepted, but praised is so slow that I find myself procrastinating more and more. I spend so little time doing any work, and even less time doing things that would pass as "interesting", that I feel like the engineering and problem solving part of my brain is starting to rot.

To make matters worse, the culture is weirdly confrontational despite the pace being so slow. The people here are _incredibly_ pedantic and will launch into 15 minute arguments over the tiniest incorrect details in a story title. Interrupting someone just so you can say what they were going to say is a daily trial. And most ridiculous of all, _repeating_ word for word what someone _just_ finished saying like it was your thought and you didn't even hear them. I don't even know what the motivation for this could be because it makes them look like total clowns.

I've tried to bring up some of the things I find ridiculous, but most everyone has just accepted them at this point and there's virtually no effort to try and make things better. I only get stupid non-answers like "obviously you've never worked at a large enterprise before". Yes I have. Twice. We didn't partake in half the bullshit that happens here.

Honestly this was all just a passing frustration for the first month or two, but 7 months in I'm starting to see myself become complacent. My current output would be absolutely _shameful_ to myself from a year ago, and even my personality has started to shift to the point that I just go with the flow and don't challenge anything.

I've stopped keeping up with tech trends. I've stopped experimenting with new things. I've tried to do more work on personal projects, but the burnout is starting to affect my life outside of work. In general I've just completely stopped trying, and I absolutely fucking hate it.

I also feel like a total tool for complaining about having a cushy, stable job where I barely have to do anything given the current world climate. But I'm more miserable now than I think I've every been in my career. Has anyone else experienced this and found ways to combat it? How do you get your motivation back once it's lost and there isn't even any pressure to regain it?

I totally blame myself for becoming part of this joke. That's totally on me for not continuing to push myself, but I never realized how much of my "drive" from the last job was coming from the high stakes we were operating under. I really just want to get back to being proud of my work and pushing to be better.

Anyway, sorry for the lengthy post. This turned out to be a weirder rant/self-roast than I intended. But I'm hoping this will be the first step to kicking my own ass back into shape.

Battling impossible project deadlines and maintaining a work life balance. Estimating projects properly.

Regain work life balance.
The last few years especially with COVID I've started to do way to much for the company's I've worked for. Working while I was coughing my lungs out when I had COVID. Working during my holiday because it was finally a fun feature to develop. Working in lunch breaks because people would call me all the time (remote there are no boundaries)

I left that company on a good note, started actually healthy as the new company actually understands flex working. However as I gained responsibly more meetings started to appear also causing rushed lunches no more walks of sport activities. Than I was lead in a project and because of some personal circumstances (death in the family) that was running long. Again started to work overtime trying to catch up.

I need to stop doing this. Caring is fine but I just give to much when I feel responsible. Good thing is that my current company actually wants to help me with this.

Front End Developer's work life balance 🤣

It might also be frustrating to keep changing the same design. 🤣😂

Looking at Slack, it seems like several people were working past 8pm last night. I refuse to feel guilty for only working 40 hours a week. That's all on them.

Reached second stage of interviews with one of the big tech giants. Problem is that I have heard they work you to death.

The time at university I was kind of burned out all the time.
I was far away from being a hard-working student, I needed more than double time to finish, but I constantly had a feeling of being stressed.
My free time never felt like free time because I thought I should learn/do something for the university.
Now at work, I can spend my free time without feeling guilty. Sure, I also have to think about problems at work sometime and I still should learn something to get better, but now I can focus on stuff I'm really interested in.

How do you feel with not having motivation to work on/finish your personal projects?

I'm working 9 to 5 plus commute and at the end of the day I just want to eat some food and chill. But I keep beating myself up over not working on things that will improve myself.

Does anyone else feel like this while working full time?

"How do I balance my Social life and Dev life?", they asked. I am now wondering when did I had any life?

Coding has absorbed my life.. I need a new side hobby for balance 😂 something hands-on, physically challenging and *social*. But I live at the most flat and boring place in germany and winter is approaching.. this will be a few boring, hazy months...

What I have learned from neutral networks for my life.

It's already a year that I'm familiar with NNs. I did not write anything serious and did not learn it that deep. But, actually, the basic knowledge gave me an interesting view to my life. I just want to share one fact with you.

There is a learning speed in NNs, which specifies how fast does the network learn. If it is too high, any new information will be accepted very easily but will wipe the past of the network's knowledge and if it is too low, the network will hardly accept new info but remember everything. When people born, they learn everything very fast and by the age they become more hard-learners Here, I've learned that you should not live in the past, and not for the current day. You just have to keep the balance.

It's my last week at my job. They have decent pay and great work life balance but the work is boring and uninspiring.

Leaving for a F500 company. The pay is insane and I've been warned the workload matches. The upcoming projects are interesting, and I've hit the next engineering level!

I'm still crazy anxious and feeling that imposter syndrome hard. I've only ever worked in small startups, and I've always been "The Guy", now I'll be a cog in the machine of incredibly smart people.

Just trying to get this off my chest, because right now I don't know what I'm doing...

I took a day off work to go enjoy camping.

I've never felt so much anxiety about work at this time. I feel like I need to be working right now.

2 job offers on table.

One, where I'd to work on multiple technologies, comfortable timing i.e 6 - 7 hours a day. Enough time to do personal projects.

Other, I'd to work on single technology stack, but more complex and large projects. Good for architectural and design pattern knowledge. Better pay, but stressing work hours like 8-10 hours daily. Might be on weekends as well.

Help me out!

Joined a new startup as a remote dev, feeling a bit micromanaged. So this week I joined an established startup as a senior mobile dev where I work remotely.

Previous two devs got fired and two new guys got hired (me as a senior dev and another senior dev as a teamlead, also third senior dev will join next week).

Situation is that codebase is really crappy (they invested 4 years developing the android app which hasn't even been released yet). It seems that previous devs were piggybacking on old architecture and didn't bother to update anything, looking at their GIT output I could tell that they were working at 20-30% capacity and just accepting each other MR's usually with no comments meaning no actual code reviews. So codebase already is outdated and has lots of technical debt. Anyways, I like the challenges so a crappy codebase is not really a problem.

Problem is that management seems to be shitting bricks now and because they got burned by devs who treated this as a freelance gig (Im talking taking 8-10 weeks pto in a given year, lots of questionable sick leaves and skipping half of the meetings) now after management fired them it seems that they are changing their strategy into micro managament and want to roll this app out into production in the next 3 months or so lol. I started seeing redflags, for example:

1. Saw VP's slack announcement where he is urging devs to push code everyday. I'm a senior dev and I push code only when I'm ready and I have at least a proof of concept that's working. Not a big fan of pushing draft work daily that is in in progress and have to deal with nitpicky comments on stuff that is not ready yet. This was never a problem in 4-5 other jobs I worked in over the years.

2. Senior dev who's assigned as the teamlead on my team has been working for 1 month and I can already see that he hates the codebase, doesn't plan on coding too much himself and seems like he plans on just sitting in meetings and micromanaging me and other dev who will join soon. For example everyday he is asking me on how I am doing and I have to report this to him + in a separate daily meeting with him and product. Feels weird.

3. Same senior dev/teamlead had a child born yesterday. While his wife was in hospital the guy rushed home to join all work meetings and to work on the project. Even today he seems to be working. That screams to me like a major redflag, how will he be able to balance his teamlead position and his family life? Why management didn't tell him to just take a few days off? He told me himself he is a senior dev who helped other devs out, but never was in an actual lead position. I'm starting to doubt if he will be able to handle this properly and set proper boundaries so that management wouldn't impact mental health.

Right now this is only my 1st week. They didn't even have a proper backend documentation. Not a problem. I installed their iOS app which is released and intercepted the traffic so I know how backend works so I can implement it in android app now.

My point is that I'm not a child who needs hand holding. I already took on 2 tickets and gonna push an MR with fixes. This is my first week guys. In more corporate companies people sit 2 months just reading documentation and are not expected to be useful for first few months. All I want is for management to fuckoff and let me do my thing. I already join daily standup, respond to my teamlead daily and I ping people if I need something. I take on responsibility and I deliver.

How to handle this situation? I think maybe I came off as too humble in the interview or something, but basically I feel like I'm being treated like a junior or something. I think I need to deliver a few times and establish some firm boundaries here.

In all workplaces where I worked I was trusted and given freedom. I feel like if they continue treating me like a junior/mid workhorse who needs to be micromanaged I will just start interviewing for other places soon.

Had a dream where I was giving update of my tasks at sprint planning meeting.

Does anyone else ever stop themselves from working on a side project on the weekends? Like I spend 5 days a week coding, and I try to take the weekends off just to balance my life, but I have this feeling in the back of my head that I should be working on something. Should I start smoking pot or something?

I used to be at a company where it was kind of expected that you worked long days, which made it quite difficult to balance work and private life. It got so out of control that I was even called to work while I was on my holiday. At first I started with shutting off my phone after work hours, but the real solution I found was moving away from that company.

Pretty much everyone at my new company just stops working when the clock hits 4 or 5 pm unless there is something critical that needs to be done. Seeing that also discourages me (and everyone else) from working long days. We are also quite open about our workload so if anyone thinks they’re overwhelmed they can find a relevant person to talk to and eventually a solution is found. The salary isn’t incredible, but the work/life balance and the benefits I get are just way better than getting paid more and living to work.

I think a lot of people go for the high salaries, most of the time disregarding the other part of the equation. If the company has a meh work culture with low regard to employees’ work/life balance, there isn’t much the employee can do besides finding a place to work with better wlb. I’d pick a great work/life balance and peace of mind to a high salary any day.

Burn down my burn down!

No really, get a better work life balance again.

Well beginning today, I hope to balance it with devRant... This is considered social life right?

If anyone has read any of my posts before you may know, they're usually of a certain... Shall we say, dark, nature?

Well this possibly represents one of the darkest things I've imagined (with regards to technology and programming) I've had.

I was asked if I want to be buried or cremated when I die and they seem so... Pedestrian and I thought long and hard about what would be a fitting way to honour my life and what to do with my remains and it came to me...

I want my flesh to be only partially treated with formaldehyde so chunks of me rot away and others don't.

I want my skeletal structure to be replace with titanium rods with actuators and servo motors where my joints would have been with an internal gyroscope to assist with balance and my corpse will be installed with some sort of IOT controller board with on board wifi.

The companion smart phone app will allow my partially rotting cybernetic zombie corpse to be driven around by a bored grave yard grounds keeper while kids are doing LSD pretending they're all that.

Make them really believe the apocalypse has begun and the dead have risen.

I could be a whole thing for future corpse disposal too.

"Smart corpses, for the loved one who will be more intelligent in death than they were in life."

Although that's probably a bit too harsh...

How much time a week to you spend socializing away from the computer?

More interestingly, how does this compare to how much you would like to be socializing?

No judgement.

Myself. I would say it is around 2-5 hours per week and I wish it was closer to 7-10

No procrastination is bad.

It is good for work-life or life-life balance.

Ok, so I need some clarity from you good folk, please.

My lead developer is also my main mentor, as I am still very much a junior. He carved out most of his career in PHP, but due to his curious/hands-on personality, he has become proficient with Golang, Docker, Javascript, HTML/CSS.

We have had a number of chats about what I am best focusing on, both personally and related to work, and he makes quite a compelling case for the "learn as many things as possible; this is what makes you truly valuable" school of thought. Trouble is, this is in direct contrast to what I was taught by my previously esteemed mentor, Gordon Zhu from watchandcode.com. "Watch and Code is about the core skills that all great developers possess. These skills are incredibly important but sound boring and forgettable. They’re things like reading code, consistency and style, debugging, refactoring, and test-driven development. If I could distill Watch and Code to one skill, it would be the ability to take any codebase and rip it apart. And the most important component of that ability is being able to read code."

As you can see, Gordon always emphasised language neutrality, mastering the fundamentals, and going deep rather than wide. He has a ruthlessly high barrier of entry for learning new skills, which is basically "learn something when you have no other option but to learn it".

His approach served me well for my deep dive into Javascript, my first language. It is still the one I know the best and enjoy using the most, despite having written programs in PHP, Ruby, Golang and C# since then. I have picked up quite a lot about different build pipelines, development environments and general web development as a result of exposure to these other things, so it isn't a waste of time.

But I am starting to go a bit mad. I focus almost exclusively on quite data intensive UI development with Vue.js in my day job, although there is an expectation I will help with porting an app to .NET Core 3 in a few months. .NET is rather huge from what I have seen so far, and I am seriously craving a sense of focus. My intuition says I am happiest on the front end, and that focusing on becoming a skilled Javascript engineer is where I will get the biggest returns in mastery, pay and also LIFE BALANCE/WELLBEING...

Any thoughts, people? I would be interested to hear peoples experiences regarding depth vs breadth when it comes to the real world.

The main reason I moved from Linux to macOS was that I grew up. If we count not just Linux experiments but prolonged usage, I was an avid Crunchbang fan. After it died, I moved to elementaryos.

What I want to say is, Linux can be very fun and educational when you're still in the uni. You have all the energy in the world, and you can afford to diverge from your daily routine for an hour to debug GPU drivers.
Now, the backbone of my life is keeping a very tight sleep schedule, taking meds on time, avoid infohazards, avoid scrolling on the web, all to remain in a very fragile state of balance that keeps the bipolar disorder away. I'm in the middle of all this, earning derealization (yes, I'm also autistic) every time I design a data model. All I want from my computer is to be treated like a careless, regular user, not like someone with a CS degree.

I use Sublime Merge instead of command line Git. I use Postico to explore PostgreSQL databases, not psql from my terminal. By the way, my terminal is not iTerm, Alacritty or some other such thing, my terminal is whatever came with my Mac, with whatever default settings.

Linux is crawling into a non-street-legal racecar's cockpit and strapping yourself in, ready to blast off. MacOS is your chauffeur, holding your old shaking hand as he helps you into your Maybach's backseat. They're different, and that's okay.
Can Maybach race? Well, it has a 621 HP V12, so if _you_ can race, it probably can too, but we all know it's not a racecar.

Windows? Windows is an SS officer, wearing the all too familiar Windows logo for swastika, throwing you into a gaswagen.

How tf one manages his work/life balance . I'm either working without pauses, studying a new framework or wasting my time playing video games. It's no middle .

Not sure it's so much about my vacation, but my boss' one. I look forward to uninterrupted days in the office where I can work without much small talk or having to explain my logic in great detail to a non-technical boss. So, when I heard he was away for a week, I thought, great, I'll have some time to focus...

Whoah there, not so fast. Turn up at work on Monday morning to find my boss online on Slack waiting to chat with me. He's on the other side of the world. It's the middle of the night for him. And he says I'm not allowed to work remotely...

Doing the impossible...

.work-life-balance {
display: flex;
}

How about being laid off over a 5min video call one morning when you completely didn’t suspect it? 😅 At least that taught me a valuable lesson about all these fuckin companies early on in my tech career! Watch me never prioritize their bs over work/life balance haha

The most work hours in a row n a non-dev job were 14 hours, but they were the hardest.
During University I worked in a warehouse once a week. It wasn't that bad and I could rest my brain for 8 hours. But around Christmas time they wanted me to do some extra work (as well as everybody else there). So I had to carry 20kg packages for 14 hours. Three days in a row from 7am to 9pm. I had two travel two hours to work and home again, so I had to get up around 4:30am and went to sleep at midnight. I'm so glad it was only a student job and I don't have to do this in my current job. And I feel sorry for all those warehouse workers, who had to do this regularly.

@zlice I am going to ...subtweet you? (Screenshot included)

Basically, so much what you said. 100%.

You stumble your way around different companies until you find something that sits right with you.

There are so many contributing factors to the "good company" and as many definitions as everyone will value different aspects of work. Good management? Tech stack to your liking? Kick ass colleagues? Interesting product? Good work life balance? Company contributing to world's welfare?

I can go on. Each of you will decide what is good, good enough, or decent and what sacrifices and tradeoffs are acceptable.

I'm 22 years old and 1.5 years into my first Startup Job. (and second Dev job)
I feel kind of uncomfortable now and I would like to ask your opinions.
I'll start with the work related description of my situation and later add a bit of my life situation.

I develop as hobby since I can think. I'm pretty engaged and love to do things right. So I quickly found myself in the position of the de-facto lead fullstack Developer.
Although, to be clear, were only a few devs - which are now replaced by not so many other devs. I feel often like the only person able to design and decide and implement in a way that won't kill us later (and I spend half of my time fixing technical debt).

I mostly like what I do , because it's a challenge and I feel needed. I learn new things and I am pretty flexible in work time. (but I also often work till late in the night, sacrificing friendship time)
But there are so many things I would love to do and used to do, but now I have no motivation to develop outside of my job.
I don't really feel that what my company is doing is something I find valuable. (Image rights management)

I earn pretty well - in comparison to what I'm used to: 20€/hour, Brutto 2.800 / month for 32 hours a week. In Berlin. (Minus tax and stuff it's 1.800€). It's more than enough for what I need.
But when I see what others in similar positions earn (~4.000), I feel weird. I got promised a raise since nearly a year now. I don't feel I could demand it. I also got the hint that I could get virtual shares. But nothing happened.

Now what further complicates the situation is that I will go to Portugal in April for at least half a year, for joining a social project I love. My plan used to be that I work from there for a few hours a week - but I'm starting to hesitate as I fear that I will actually work more and it will keep me from fully being there.

So, I kind of feel emotionally attached - I like (some of) the people, I know (or at least believe) that the company will have a big problem without me. (I hold a lot of the knowledge for legacy applications) .
But I also feel like I'm putting too much of myself into the company and it is not really giving me back. And it's also not so much worth it... Or is it?

Should I stick to the company and keep my pretty secure position and be financially supported during my time in Portugal, while possibly sacrificing my time there?
Should I ask for a raise (possibly even retroactively) and then still quit later? (they will probably try to get my 1 month of cancelation period upped to 3).

Also, is this a risk for my "career"?

Can we rename "Life at {Company}" ?
We don't want to live in our work.
There is a reason we call it "work-life" balance, both are different things.

Work/life balance doesn’t exist!

I have no personal life outside what I do. My creative expression. It heavily influences my every decision and makes up who I am, and it is not possible to draw the line where my creativity ends and my personal life with my partner, friends and stuff begins. Coincidentally, it is also my “job”.

The day my creativity stops will mark the end of what makes my life meaningful.

!dev

Through life, I've heard some people say horror movies are bad, that they promote violence (usually religious people).

Of course I think that's pure bs, but I think I could provide one argument that is hard to deny, so here it goes, although I might go off rails at the end.

I'll preface with this: life itself is violent. Violence, the word, is mostly used to describe immoral inflictions of harm on other beings.

But you can also say that some deaths are violent by themselves too, event those that weren't caused by humans, like a disease or a natural disaster.

This would be the "visual" meaning of the word, "the way it looks", the shock of humans when observing something gruesome/violent.

That described, it's not hard to also think that technological advancements in modern western life has made such observations of violence very unfrequent for people.

And naturally, modern people get accustomed to the lack of these observations. So accustomed that when they happen they become traumatic.

Because of this, people react weirdly to death. One reaction is censoring the topic. Another reaction is trivializing it, as if it doesn't really matter.

Sometimes they can't even accept old people dying at 90, an awfully stupid reaction in my opinion.

Another interesting reaction is personifying diseases as if they were villains ruining lives intentionally.

Or at least that's what it feels until you look at them through a microscope and realize that diseases aren't more evil than bread changing flavour after toasting.

All of these irrationality and cowardice comes from low exposure to violence, and that's where horror movies balance things out.

Some diseases in the real life can put some of the worst horror movies to shame.

The human body itself is pending violence. Why? Because when you die all sort of worms eat your fucking flesh. And sometimes that happens even before you die.

We bury humans because of the diseases corpses transmit, but also because we don't like the spectacle and the aesthetics of the rotting process.

Just picture for a second bad things happening to your body, and if you feel that is making you too uncomfortable, then maybe you got too used to this too.

I think horror movies help us to remember the reality of our inminent and intrinsic violence.

In ancient times, you would live outdoors, stepping on dirt, and be very used to "bad" things happening to humans.

Nowadays, most homes are sterile clean, and it's unlikely to observe violence.

Oh, some family member is pucking blood and dying from something? Send em to a hospital, or an elderly care center. Don't need to witness that!

I understand and accept grief. What I don't understand or accept is the vilification of death, describing it as something wrong that shouldn't happen.

it almost feels like a burden, like you shouldn't die when you're young, that it's an unforgivable thing to happen.

Well thanks, society, you can't even fucking die in peace.

I would love to die (no suicide) in a mildly celebratory way, watching people around me smile. I think that would be a good ending for me.

But no. Most of my relatives would be fucking crying like the chickenshits they are, ruining it for me.

And that scares the shit out me: people usually say the scary part of dying is that they die alone.

Well that's what dying alone would mean to me: watching people cry instead of smiling at me.

When my grandma died at 80, with all the achievements she made, I considered her death a success, also considering how quick it was. And because of that I didn't mourn for too long.

In fact, I don't even consider her dead, and not because of some religious mumbo jumbo. I guess the memories are still alive in me, I don't know.

Some famous chunk of coal said once that he felt people don't believe they're gonna die. And I agree with him.

Another upside of horror movies is that they hurt nobody, which is why you can enjoy it and not get ptsd, unlink watching a snuff film.

I will also be fair and add that this might a be a cultural thing, but deep down desire for survival is a genetic thing could play a big part in this too.

So, today I got my first day of vacation. Amazingly I didn't get called yet, but I know the other Dev wasn't in today else.

Who wants to place bets I'm going to get called this week. Really bad that I'm already bracing myself :l

I currently don't work over 40 hours a week. When I come to work, everyone else is setup in the "war room," however my monitor and laptop are still at my desk (it's quieter with everyone out in the war room).

I have a good work/life balance, and I'm not alone. One of the other employees also refuses to work over 40 hours or on weekends. He has a PhD and teaches classes on the side. We both did at least participate in a Sunday all-day work session to get something to production.

What I'm worried about is resentment. I have taken zero vacation and was going to bank all my time, then in January take it all at once. I was going to ask for 3 weeks of unpaid on top of that so I could get a month and a half off to go south for the winter.

Even though my output has been really good while I've been working, I have a fear of resentment from others who do put in the extra time. We're all salary and none of them get paid overtime except for a one-time bonus for that Sunday I mentioned.

working at an MNC is like dating the hottest girl in campus. everyone stares at you, but only you know of the tantrums and the expenses that you have to take.

Every random aunty and uncle I come across gets a wide smile on their face when i tell them my company's parent company name. i goto this temple , and there, one uncle was introducing me to his wife "meet X ji's son , he is at Y company" .
previously when i worked at a startup, most of the time , people were like "huh? what does this company do?" and when i would explain them how our DBs are sending billions of notifications and interaction each second, they would be like "oh , so you work at IT" , YES DUDE, YOU WANNA GIVE YOUR DAUGHTER'S HAND NOW?

And this mentality is sick. i loathe the place where i currently work. i loved my previous org and now am just here coz my mom is too scared to let her son live in a different state.

The only reason a person works in a company is money and WLB. Indian service based MNCs don't give a penny more than basic industry standards. and when they want their employees to be available 2 days a week + x number of days when any CEO , ED or other sugar daddy is coming to office, you get an idea of the shitty Work life balance.

my previous company was a b2b startup, it always paid me more than industry standards and we had wfh until a notification came to enforce hybrid working bh end of 2024. till now not a single person from my team has relocated. All i had to do was to *plan* for living in a state and my mom got cold feet :/

i think so much about my future. i earn decent, so i wanna spend it to live and grow.
i wanna go party at friday nights and go on night outs. i wanna meet this cute school crush at anytime after office and don't worry about the 9 pm curfew. i wanna go look for a new home in a different area and get out of this parking hellhole. i wanna prepare for exams and do a hugher studies from aborad.

everything needs money and growth mindset. money makes money and i am trying to earn every minute. but a chained mind cannot fly . a non growth mindset will not let you evolve. and someone needs to tell it to people who control my every . fucking. action

i have seen people switching from one big name to another. i personally feel that you are just too comfortable in the environment of big names and deliberately ignoring the smaller names which are doing the actual build fast and break reality stuff. reward is proportional to risk and if you are okay with just attributing to a big name, then that's on you

I really feel lost in the world of freelancing, I mean I literally have three jobs on the go so barely any pressure and yet I'm cocking up my time estimations and mixing up code for each site, and giving incorrect predictions for completion, so basically I keep ending up working for free. Freelancers of the depths of devRant, please help! How do you manage to maintain a work life balance? Is accurate predictions and time management just something that comes with experience?

Also huge props to you for being able to keep your mentality!

I am overwhelmed in my mind right now and I kinda just need it out.

I'm incredibly divided. There's so much I want to do which is fine I can balance some of it kinda well but when it comes to the programming aspects of what I want to do is where my head gets tugged in multiple directions.

Parts of me really want to continue to dive into C# and learn it a lot more than I currently do so I can continue to write the tools I use for problems I come across.

And the other part of me just wants to go do lower level development with C because that's where most of my goals are being mostly embedded and OS development.

But so many people I know that are incredibly smart devs use C# and I see why it's an incredible language and I'm glad it's one of the languages I know but I feel like there's so much to learn about it and I there's so much shit I see that I'm just like I don't know when I would want to use this, or I can see X feature being very useful but I don't know where I'd use it in my projects. Hell even C#s version of structs I know are very useful but I'm not able to make good use of them

I'm just in that headspace where I'm not learning enough and I feel dumb when I look at someone else's project because there's a lot more complexity In their project that none of my projects have ever had and so many people make use of language features I've never used or thought about using (generics being a good example) and I'm constantly asking questions which I know is okay but too much is happening in life lately and it's just making it harder to handle.

Thanks to anyone that got through it hopefully I'm not alone in these feelings

An interviewer asked me what work-life balance meant to me
I said something like it was essential, and I would like to set boundaries and start and end work at set times if possible.
They then asked if I would fix something at 2 am, I sort of jokingly said that I would if I could wake up (probably shouldn't have said that lol)
And so they asked what if in case I was on-call, and I said I would if I was on-call

After this interview, I had one tech interview (that went well), but then I didn't hear back from them.

How to cope with getting cockblocked by coronavirus before job change?

I signed a contract for a job in a foreign country. I was excited for the advantages like better work/life balance, finally getting to linux dev env, friendlier company. But now, I can not even apply for work permit because of restrictions.

Due to already having signed contract already, I completely lost my touch with my current job. I hate it so much that I am having unpaid leaves even though I could do nothing since we are working half team at the same time. Dont tell me to “learn new skills”, I tried, it does not work for me. I am not in the mood for learning.

New company is great that they reassured me I would not lost the opportunity, I would join them whenever I can. So I dont fear losing job but uncertainty kills me. European travel ban was up to 15 May, prolonged to 15 june, which prevents me to apply for work visa. I guess this was the last straw that broke camel’s back.

I was invited to on-site interview with Amazon, but the more I think about this opportunity the more doubts I have. After reading a lot of reviews, it is expected to be the hardest job with a lot of pressure and overtime. My biggest concern - the poor work life balance. Spending all my life at work is not what I really want.
Should I give it up or does it still worth trying?

Some of us developers have that moment where we think: ("Please not another programming language...").

you know that feel when you're in one or two weeks of vacation and one day, you look into the mirror and you notice you look like 5 years younger and also you're able to actually enjoy things in life and try out new things, and you wonder, what am i doing with my life...

my phone is dying. Very slowly, i see the first signs of decay, i probably have months or even more than a year, but it will die on me. I knew it will happen.

I currently have an asus phone (ZE552KL), it is technically DualSim or SD-Card, has a camera that is..badish and sometimes the bluetooth wont start and then it reboots. Also the camera has a pure software bug where it isnt able to ever focus properly, but with tricks you can get it to work again. The asus forums constantly refer to sending it to a repair station (wherever one is in germoney). That annoys me.

Back to dying. For now its definetly the battery.
I remember when you could change the battery on a whim. Great times. My last phone died duo battery aswell (well, the gps module broke aswell so it wasnt all flowers besides the battery).

My current asus phone was something around 300 € and according to reviews 2 years ago it has a good bang for the buck ratio.

I havent looked into the market, just a cursory glance. But apparently if you want a phone that has a decent battery life, is not basically a tablet, has an sd card slot and a camera that is not total rubbish it gets hard. Its hard to balance those things, and if you want a swappeable battery all hope is lost.
Further i have started to misstrust chinese phones, the asus software support is wacky and some stuff is weird. I suspect its as bad with huwai and all the others. Also its apparently kinda hard to get any resemblance of quality in accessoires for non-mainstream brands (i mean cases and display protection)

So i dread the future, the future in which i need a new phone that is somewhere in the mid price segments and fits my needs. In the end i will take something suboptimal and be unhappy with it till it dies.

I despise the phone market.

I was always into computers, ever since I was a kid. Played a lot of videogames on Windows 98 and XP, and a lot of my earliest drawings were level ideas for those games. My first encounters with code were with game creation software like GameMaker, but I barely touched the code proper outside of editing a few variables from other people's code. After that I basically forgot all about it and spent most of my teen years being a shutin.

Skip ahead to my last year of high school without much idea on what to do. I was good at math when I wasn't being a lazy shit, so between that and what my parents expected of me, I was prepared to go to university for civil engineering. However, two things changed that decision, the first being a great IT professor, when me and a friend were so far ahead, he started assigning us some harder work, and suggested we study computer science at university. The second was a super jank and obscure open-source early 2000's game that somehow still has a thriving community and is actively being developed. I stumbled upon it by chance, and after playing for a while, I submitted a balance change on the GitHub repo. Even though it was just a single variable change, that time I got it. That time I saw how powerful programming could be and what could be done with it. I submitted PR after PR of new features, changes and bugfixes, by the time I left there I had a somewhat solid grasp of the fundamentals of programming, and decided to enrol in the computer science degree.

Enrolling was possibly the best decision I ever made (not america; debt isn't an issue), as well as giving me actual social skills, every course I took just clicked. The knowledge I already somewhat intuitively had a vague grasp on from videogames, general computer use and collaborating with russian coders who produced the jankiest shit that was still somehow functional was expanded upon and consolidated with a high-quality formal education. Four years later and I'm fresh out of uni, it was a long road between when the seed was first planted in my mind and now, but I've finally found out what I want to do with my life.

won't know for sure until i find a job though ffs

Maybe I'll get some decent advice from a rampant over simplification...

2 job offers, assume compensation is close enough to not matter much.

Pride & Ambition/Opportunties
vs
Work-life balance & Time

How would you compare them, and where is the tipping point?

I'm feeling burnt out at the moment, which is screaming to pick the second, but... I can't let go of the first.

How do you guys learn? As we all know, we have a lot of stuff to learn in our field and it's growing and growing and growing. Other than the programming itself, we also have to learn the other stuff like algorithm designs, programming paradigms, big o notations, git, etc. And if you are working, you also need to learn the business rules your clients might have. And if you're unlucky with your job, your boss might even assign you to tasks with a programming language you have zero knowledge about.

So I was wondering, how do you guys balance your life, your family, your studying and your job? And how do you keep your head from exploding with information?

My friends don't understand what it's like to be a dev so when I ask for times/arrangements they think I'm just being a prick about it. Sometimes I ask for specific times because I have to do pull requests and what not and I want to arrange it to maximize little downtime but because none of these guys are Devs they don't understand. How do I help these guys understand that me asking for specific times isn't about me being a prick, it just has to do with work because when I tell them that they don't get it

Dealing with relationships when you are a night owl. I don't burn the midnight oil like in my twenties but I don't want to go to sleep at 1030pm. Midnight is typical but I feel my actions affect my missus as she can't sleep when I'm not there...that said..she has issues sleeping anyway or nodding off. Whereas I can fall asleep in front a TV that's on no problems or whenever my head hits a pillow. I sleep on the couch when I stay up so I don't disturb her. Or does everyone here have a cushy work life balance job where you only work 9 to 5 and don't need to be on the pc.

Balance work and life? Recently? I’ve cut my number of friends in half. There’s been enough betrayal and petty bullshit to write a melodramatic soap opera.

I did have some work life balance once upon a time, but it’s been all work lately. Gotta get back to having some me time. Not all dev work necessarily. I’ve accidentally jumped in the real estate game with 2 feet.

Any devs here from Canada or who have worked there?... know any?

I'm strongly considering immigrating to Canada to give my future family a better chance at life (My current country has a highly unstable political climate).

Just wondering how the dev lifestyle is living there (for the average dev) i.e.

- Quality of life - I know I can't buy a house, but what can I rent? A house/ flat/ box?
- Hows the dev scene / culture?
- Work life balance / Work environment frustrations (I hear they are very politically correct and this may be a conflict with my blunt nature)
- Income Tax vs Government service delivery, I expect tax will be high due to free health care/ education but are they worth it? nb; any service delivery beats what I get...

Any feedback is welcome and will be appreciated.

For the game devs out there … Is following a game developer career a good idea ? We always hear about crunch and no work life balance. Im thinking about changing my job( currently a dev at a fintech company) for a while and need some insights from you guys :)

I really don't balance social and dev life. I know I need some time to socialize but I just can't. It's like my life right now is in front of a computer and lines of code... Not that I don't like it, but I know I need to do other stuff besides coding, but I really don't know what to do and how to manage time. If anyone can give some advice, it would be great.

Attention Irish developers.
What's the pay like for developers in Ireland compared to the cost of living?
I have been offered a job there with migration support, but I don't want to go be poor in another country when I have it pretty good in my homeland. Also, what is the industry like, is there a healthy work life balance?

Question for you developers and DevOps folks with kids in the community, specifically those that work from home...

I have a daughter who will be 3 next month. How do maintain your focus and "edge" while still keeping a life balance?

I used to have so much time and spent hours upon hours coding and learning. Now I find it so tiring and like my brain is turning to mush.

How much time do you spend after work catching up with work?

Is social life a thing? I wouldn't know.

But then again I'm not to fond of people in general (only a few in particular).

I'd like to work for a small software house that pays decent, understands a life/work balance (40hr/wk), has a relaxed environment, worries more about the end product than timelines, and gives you Fridays to work on pet projects and training.

Work 8 hours at the company
But also wants to...
...play sports ?
......learn new knowledge ?

Having a lot of bad experiences while working as intern in startups and about to join a MNC, i wanted to share my work life balance and technical demands that i expect from a company. These are going to be my list of checkpoints that i look forward , let me know which of them are way too unrealistic. also add some of yours if i missed anything :

Work life balance demands ( As a fresher, i am just looking forward for 1a, 2a and 8, but as my experience and expertise grows, i am looking forward for all 10. Would i be right to expect them? ):

1a 8 hr/day. 1b 9h/day
2a 5days/week. 2b 6 days/week
3 work from home (if am not working on something that requires my office presence)
4 get out of office whenever i feel like i am done for the day
5 near to home/ office cab service
6 office food/gym service
7 mac book for working
8 2-4 paid leaves/month
9 paid overtime/work on a holiday
10.. visa sponsorship if outside india

Tech Demands (most of them would be gone when i am ready to loose my "fresher " tag, but during my time in internship, training i always wished if things happened this way):

1. I want to work as a fresher first, and fresher means a guy who will be doing more non tech works at first than going straight for code. For eg, if someone hires me in the app dev team, my first week task should be documenting the whole app code / piece of it and making the test cases, so that i can understand the environment/ the knowledge needed to work on it

2. Again before coding the real meaningful stuff for the main product, i feel i should be made to prepare for the libraries ,frameworks,etc used in the product. For eg if i don't know how a particular library ( say data binding) used in the app, i should be asked to make a mini project in 1-2 days using all the important aspects of data binding used in the project, to learn about it. The number of mini tasks and time to complete them should be given adequately , as it is only going to benefit the company once am proficient in that tech

3. Be specific in your tasks for the fresher. You don't want a half knowledgeable fresher/intern think on its own diverging from your main vision and coding it wrong. And the fresher is definitely not wrong for doing so , if you were vague on the first place.

4. most important. even when am saying am proficient , don't just take my word for it. FUCKIN REVIEW MY CODE!! Personally, I am a person who does a lot of testing on his code. Once i gave it to you, i believe that it has no possible issues and it would work in all possible cases. But if it isn't working then you should sit with me and we 2 should be looking, disccussing and debugging code, and not just me looking at the code repeatedly.

4. Don't be too hard on fresher for not doing it right. Sometimes the fresher might haven't researched so much , or you didn't told him the exact instructions but that doesn't mean you have the right to humiliate him or pressurize him

5. Let multiple people work on a same project. Sometimes its just not possible but whenever it is, as a senior one must let multiple freshers work on the same project. This gives a sense of mutual understanding and responsibility to them, they learn how to collaborate. Plus it reduces the burden/stress on a single guy and you will be eventually getting a better product faster

Am i wrong to demand those things? Would any company ever provide a learning and working environment the way i fantasize?

For coding advice
Don't stop thinking
Keep asking how and why a thing works
Learn the logic
Pick any one language
Write some code, do mistake, fix, learn and repeat
Do keep a balance of coding and real life ,playing games are necessary
Do exercise as well....

Maybe some more things we can , but most important is

Do what you love not what others love.
It's your life live and code your way...

Tech and product teams have to be aligned. If not, there’s chaos where dev teams suffer. No skunk project(s), no adhoc project(s), No special or pet projects for the CTO or Product Manager. Figure out what needs to get done, plan a road map, plan milestones to get there, consider the folks who ACTUALLY does the work. Protect your teams work-life balance.

I feel blessed that I am a software developer, best perks, good work life balance, don't have to be physically in the office to contribute. Life is good

How is everyone handling their day job lately? I'm feeling pretty safe about my position, but my day-to-day is definitely suffering as my mind wanders off.
Cost of living crisis, trying to have a social life, impending fatherhood, all while trying to do good work and improve my knowledge. Not easy.

Odd question to a dev community who are naturally socially awkward that talks to their ducks.

Even then, for those of us who do have a social life, we just chill when we need to. Anyone who "tries" to balance their life would find it very stressful. Just go with it. Do what you need to do at that scheduled time and when time is up, do the other thing that you promised yourself.

Others: "Easier said than done! You don't have to push releases and squash bugs in critical moments!"

Then that's a trigger to the question, "Do you even live, bro? There's more to life than just dev all day err'day."

Don't think too much.

I was doing android apps for a year and a half, but then during the pandemic my hobby gaming projects blew up and I had to quit my fulltime job and focus on them. Spent last year working for myself. I managed to save enough money and got a mortgage for my apartment. Now I feel accomplished what I wanted and Im tired of working alone on my own projects. Its sad doing all these mental gymnastics and not having anyone else to share the results with.

I'm considering getting back into part/full-time position. Main reason is the social aspect, as well as stability. I'm tired of stress, too much responsibility. I want a better work/life balance. Also I think I need a position where they would allow at least 2 days a week working from home.

How to recondition myself and first of all to motivate myself to get back into the rat race? I haven't done android app development in a year and a half, I'm rusty af. I'm a junior at best right now. Also in the past year I got fat and I'm too conscious about my beer belly lol. Thinking of loosing weight and sharpening my app dev skills first, only then applying.

Can anybody advice anything?

I'm a junior, now getting used to the idea of having to finish something in the same day if it's urgent for production and therefore having to clock in extra hours.

It's depressing, in a way.. I'm hoping to avoid this as much as I can and just get work done within the usual 7.5 hours.

How much time do you actually spend working?

I personally work 10 hours per week at my job. The rest of the time I watch YouTube or something like that. I have massive quilt because of this, but everyone is happy with my work.

Perfect job would be work life balance.
Colleagues are helpful.
The existing project are having clean architecture and code structure that won’t confuse developer at all.

Never quite finding that work life balance. I love development but it's not really until this year I've noticed myself burning out and not appreciating life, instead I spend countless hours in front of screen.

Recently I've taken up amateur photography and started travelling my country to take scenic pictures and honestly it's the best decision I've made

How do I balance my social life with dev life? Well, I try to meet with my friends at least 2 times a week, on fridays I'm taking dancing lessons, after that me and people from lessons go out for a bear and maybe to a club. There is also a girl there who I would like to meet more, but she is older and I'm shy as fuck. The rest of my time is mostly dev

Has anyone felt the need to go back to school after finishing their 4 year degree? There are a handful of reasons why I want to, but for some reason it seems like it might be a waste of time/money.

On the other hand I miss the atmosphere, constant learning, and feeling like I'm a part of a community. Although getting a paycheck is nice.

Any thoughts/input?

So, I have joined this new company where I used to work few years back. Something happened before I rejoined, so no one is working there now except me. It's web agency run by my boss and I am the only employee working on over 7 projects including front end, back end, mobile, devops, and some marketing also.

Now, I got offers from couple of other series a funded startups who are willing to pay me 30% more salary. I know I will have less responsibility and more work life balance. But I hate the politics in those companies.

My current company is making good revenue but my boss isn't giving me the salary I am expecting.

He said it will take few more months to give me the salary I demanded.

I also want to build my own company and provide services someday. That's why I thought it'll be better to stick with the company so that I cam learn other aspects of the business.

So. If the company is making say over 200k usd a year and its paying me around 23k usd per year, isn't this kinda low salary for my experience, skills and value I bring?

How should I go about asking a raise?

Also, I don't wanna move to another big tech company. I hate coding questions in the interview as its been years I have prepared for a proper tech interview.

Also, how secure do you think my job is? Is there any future working here? Will I ever be able to reach a salary comparable to big tech companies?
Is it a good place be in right now? (i jave over 5 years of experience)

Just wasted one hour on an employer info session. Can't understand why people ask stupid questions like "how is the work life balance?". Like those chosen representatives would tell the truth. Can't understand why those new grads working at the company would want to perpetuate the stupid interview process. "We want to hear how much you resent us while doing stupid white broad interview questions." Do they stream leetcode solving process to TikTok all day for work?

Open Question?
Can you describe how is your life /work balance as a IT professional?
I will love to hear some insights about it

It really depends on what time of the year it is. During the fall and spring semesters, my dev life and social life are about as balanced as they're going to get. From working on things in the CS class to socializing with the people I've met in those classes, this part of the year is pretty balanced in my opinion. During breaks and the summer, however, I don't really have a dev life. I don't have a dev job, so really the only times I do have a dev life is when I willingly decide to work on a side project, or have to update some major stuff on one of my three personal websites. Other than that, the only life I have during those breaks is my social life with the buddies I play PC games with on Discord.

I will say this, though. The day will come when I will be having to balance a dev life and a social life year-round. To be honest, I'm not really looking forward to that day.

Dear future me,

Please avenge us. Ruin the lives and reputation of specific individuals of the university professors and assistants that have ruined my life. Damage they had done is fatal and irreversible. Consequences for their actions are mandatory. For our own sanity, I am looking forward to seeking vengeance that will only ruin their careers, and from there let the karma finish them off.

Life is unfair, but why is it unfair to good people? I'll be the batman and balance this unfairness to make the other side of individuals experience it, too.

If i caught a virus and was unable to study for exam and failed because of that and you say life is unfair, you are inhumane.

If my mother got diagnosed with cancer and i was unable to study for exam and failed because of that and you say life is unfair, you are inhumane.

If my dad experienced a stroke and i had to be with him to make sure he's fine and unable to study for exam and failed because of that and you say life is unfair, you are inhumane.

If police knocked on my door and said my whole family just died in a car crash and i am unable to study out of depression and failed the exam because of that and you say life is unfair, you are inhumane.

You are inhumane because you have a choice to show that you as a human have compassion and understanding in tragic life situations and therefore work something out regarding exam, instead of making that student fail and walking over corposes like a cruel emotionless devil.

But they wont. They wont show it because they're inhumane. They're working for the matrix and not for the people. All of the professors and assistants.

I truly hope, and wish to create a curse, for all professors and assistants in all universities, for some tragic life event to happen to them and their family members with a death outcome, so I can also tell them life is unfair.

In fact, I'll step it up a level by enforcing "life is unfair" policy onto them by anonymously, slowly, ruining their careers from the shadow. Internet is a wild place that can ruin someones life. They have pushed me off the edge of my morality. They have turned me into Joker.

I mentioned earlier that I'll let karma take care of them, but what if I am, their karma? They have created a Joker. They wanted this war. These robots we call "professors and assistants" would rather die for the matrix than show human compassion.

What i plan to do to them might be illegal; but so is illegal to be inhuman fascists. Therefore like a batman, I will fight crime with crime. I cannot let them turn me into a Joker, because the Joker ruins lives of the good people, too. Batman ruins lives of the bad people only.

Their careers will be ruined, their life will be falling apart, they will continue to live but this time in a special kind of pain, the same pain they have caused to me, just so they can maybe understand how does it feel when you're hopeless and being told "lifes unfair".

It is.

Sincerely,
Me from the past, good luck

I know that the company is a big factor, but in general, who gets better work-life balance? Front-end developers or Back-end developers?

Fucking stupid spring-boot-devtools dependency !!!

Started work at 11AM and was working on a Rest API system using Spring Boot. Got to know about Spring Boot dev tools and added it to my project.

Later in the evening my endpoints started throwing exceptions for no god damn reason. Invalidated the caches, restarted my IDE and laptop. Rolled back my code to almost vanilla branch !!! YET THE ENDPOINTS KEPT THROWING RANDOM EXCEPTIONS.

This went on till 1:30 AM (I live in a country where work-life balance is not a thing for software developers :)). Frustrated, the last thing I tried was to rollback the devtools dependency from my POM file. AND MY ENDPOINTS STARTED WORKING AGAIN 🤬

What the actual ffffuhkkk !!!!

To all those who contribute to spring-boot-devtools, you guys are doing a great job and it isn’t a personal attack towards you (I really mean it). It just messed up my project in some way and I was extremely frustrated.

I'm a dev with a full time job and a family. Any recommendations on the best way to pick up side work in the US that won't completely blow out a work life balance?

Badly lahmayo eggsdee

Jokes aside, while I am a sociable person, I don’t feel the need to go and hang out with my friends - and they don’t demand I do either. I’ve been just fine with the daily interactions at school and that sort of stuff, so the balance is already biased for me. I do however hang out a lot on Discord in various communities and enjoy the social interaction I get from there as well.

As a result, the dev life takes the bigger piece of the cake, but in my case it’s not a bad thing. Which is how it should be at the end of the day - do what feels best for you.

How do all you other devs deal with sleep? Because I am losing my fucking mind I work for myself so I don't go to work at 9am leave at 6pm.

I normally work until 6am and then sleep till 12 drink 3 strong coffee to start functioning again try and do something productive which at the moment involves catching up on the NBA playoffs and then starting work at 6pm.

Due to resent baby I thought shit my life is fucked I haven't left the house in 3 days I need structure routine I need to work 9am to 6pm become human again but I just can't FUCKING sleep it's now 1:30am and I'm trying to sleep.

I know what your thinking why are you on devRant but I've been trying to sleep for the past 3 hours but all I can think about is work code, refactoring, new languages, security, support shit that can wait but I can't get it out my head, keep thinking "ah your not tired you could work", and YES I have a list which get bigger every day wish I had a drug dealer or was still in contact with my old mates so I could get some Valium but it's hot milk and sleeping tablets for me, life is so much easier when you can just fuck of home at the end of the day and forget about work, not having your laptop next to you trying to trick you into opening it. How do other people who work for theirselves deal with the life work balance?

I am thinking about leaving my job cause even though the work life balance is amazing and team is great, it doesn’t pay as much as tech companies around where I live (HCOL) and I feel like a terrible person for feeling that way.

-Make enough money to buy myself a laptop and a new phone to be able to work from my laptop and test on my phone.

-Be able to have better balance between my work, college and personal life.

-Do some useful open source projects (in swift) and put them on GitHub.

-Take care of my body and start working out.

-Work on my charity app idea and hopefully make big progress maybe even publish it.

Every little positive thing has a cumulatively encouraging effect on the mind

It may not balance out the bad in someone's life

It may cause a diseased mind discomfort at first

But in the end in the former case it's better than not to have things that reinforce a sense of well being

And in the latter a mind caused discomfort by happy things is one that is used to hiding in its own misery to avoid its own pain and the recognition of that pain dragging it slowly out of it's mopey bleak existence is the first step towards self betterment

I thought of this as previously over the smile my fitness app brought on my face saying 'beyond awesome'

It's nice to have little reinforcers

And to all the bitter hateful disgusting garbage that takes joy in making any and all causes of joy except their own dysfunctional warped interests please get fucked to death with a steel pole with a wide hook on the end 😁

It always blows my mind how a silly idea / hunch tries settling down in your head very close to your regular bedtime and before you realise you can hear the birds chirping and sunshine hitting your window pane.

It’s unhealthy and should not be encouraged whatsoever.

But I guess this is the sort of involvement and craziness that separates us from rest of the professional world.

It's always hard to balance time between romantic affairs and programming projects when both are going on simultaneously. I've been talking to a girl at my college, and even though she doesn't take up much of my time, I still feel like it's harder to make time for my programming. I guess this is more of dating affecting my code, but I personally prioritize code over dating currently in life.

Hi devRant!
I'm here asking for your advice!
I'm a MSc student in my mid 20s, I took a gap year to work as an IT consultant and I'm planning on going back to studying, keeping at the same time a part-time job.

I already have some experience as a data engineer, developer and sys admin. I'm also mastering in applied statistics and data science and have a BSc in physics. I'm planning to relocate around Europe. All I want is a salary I can live with and a good work/study/life balance (perhaps work 24-30hrs a week?).

So far I've checked out a few IT jobs website and I've found some suitable positions. Problem is most of them are fulltime.

Where would you search for such a job? Is there any website/portal I should prefer? How would you proceed?
Should I prefer any place in particular (i.e. Northen countries)?

Thank you in advance <3

Note: I know it's a very broad question, that's because I'm open to any piece of advice you are willing to give me