My biggest gripes at the moment are (1) not enough greenfield projects anymore. (2) wishing that I could get some more serious and consistent time on enterprise tech stack, such as AWS, k8s, Github Actions etc. I do get to touch them occasionally, but it always seems to be some adhoc bits and pieces and nothing that is a meaningful chunk of work, and by the time I get to it again, I've forgotten it all again. (3) Wishing I could do some sort of event driven architecture or something new like AI. I have all these skills and they give me legacy crap. Meanwhile some projects do pop up, but they are implemented elsewhere. It irritates the crap out of me. (4) Having to support so many legacy projects. I have upgraded a bunch by stealth and luckily I was backed by my boss, but they do have a policy of "it aint broken so don't fix it" so it could have been worse. (5) Having to support so many legacy projects that are on tech stacks that turned out to be faddish. If someone tells you to use NodeRed because it is low code, don't believe them - it's a dog's breakfast of graphical icons with no easy way to debug it. I spent years on Angular but these days don't want to go anywhere near it. They did Angular with a nodejs backend so no one in my .net team really wants to touch it. They sacked the perl guy so yay, my team has to know how to support a couple of perl products too. (6) Expecting to do so much more with so much less. People leave and they won't replace them. My direct team has to support a whole bunch of apps but there are only 5 of us. (7) Wanting to be a contractor again because the pay is so much better, but knowing that high paying quality contract jobs seem to be few and far between at the moment. Most companies don't want to hire a contractor team lead. Also feeling that I'm underpaid by about $30k.
Probably just means I should find a new job, but I'm a team lead and that reduces the size of the market for me in a time when there doesn't appear to be many quality jobs on offer. Also, the thought of having to do the hiring dance again. Argh! On Tue, Oct 8, 2024 at 8:07 PM Tony McGee via ozdotnet < ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com> wrote: > Hey Greg, > This whole email resonated, it's software garbage piled on top of garbage > on top of garbage for decades, yet somehow it runs the world. 😂 These bits > definitely hit all the way home though: > > - > * I develop and test something with great care, then deploy it and it > crashes. This is part of the general “it works on my machine” disease. * > - * I can stop successful work on Friday night, then resume on Monday > morning and everything utterly fails.* > > It works on my machine so often that we just follow the old joke and > package up and ship the whole machine now (docker, k8s). > I've also lost count of the times everything is compiling then suddenly a > mysterious version mismatch error a few hours later requiring the .vs > folder or nuget cache blown away, astounding. AI will surely save us. /s 😉 > > Enjoy the garden, the list won't be the same! > > cheers, > Tony > > > On 7/10/2024 11:07, Greg Keogh via ozdotnet wrote: > > Hello everyone, it's not Friday, but I have an announcement and tale that > might interest you. > > I’m easing into retirement. > > Companies I’ve been working for are being sold, retired or are no longer > developing new software. Running out of legacy work would drive a regular > dev to seek new work, but in my case, I declined to create a LinkedIn page, > or send out feelers through contacts for new work, because… I’m burnt out. > > Why? > > I learned to code in 1975 and became an official programmer in 1981. I > wrote FORTRAN, ALGOL, COBOL, assemblers and various JCLs and scripting > languages on Honeywell, FACOM and IBM mainframes. Things were simpler back > then of course because you moved inside the ecosystem of a particular > manufacturer and had high-level support and voluminous and accurate > documentation. If you wanted to solve a problem or do something edgy, then > an answer was nearby. It was a different simpler world, but … everything > worked. > > Now, well into the 21st century of IT, everything doesn’t work. My wife > often hears me shout from the other end of the house “Everything f***ing > doesn’t work”. I also only semi-jokingly say I’ll have these words carved > into my gravestone: “Everything f***ing doesn’t work all the f***ing time”. > > Overall, what has burnt me out is *complexity *and *instability*. I’ll > break those topics down a bit. > > Everything in modern IT is *complicated *and *fragile*. Every new > toolkit, platform, pattern, library, package, upgrade, etc is unlikely to > install and work first time. I seem to spend more time getting things > working and updated than I do actually writing software. In a typical > working month I might have to juggle Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, macOS, > Google, Amazon, Azure, .NET, Python, PowerShell and C++, and they all have > different styles and cultures. Software engineering has fractured into so > many overlapping pieces that I’m tired of trying to maintain competence in > them all. > > That leads naturally to the problem of *dependencies*. Just having so > many moving parts with so many different versions available produces > dependencies more complex than abstract algebra. How many times have you > hit some kind of compile or runtime version conflict and spent hours trying > to dig your way out of it? (A special salute to Mr Newtonsoft there!) Or > you install A, but it needs B, which needs C, and so on. > > I often hit incomprehensible blocker *problems *for which web searches > produce absurd and conflicting suggestions which don’t work anyway. All I > can do is futz around and change things randomly until things work again. I > don’t know what went wrong and I don’t know what went right. > > *The Web* -- Browsers, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, the HTTP protocol, JSON and > REST can all burn for eternity in fusing hellfire. About ten years ago I > told my customers I refused to write any more web UI apps. However, I was > forced to do so a few times and I’m still scarred by the horror. It’s just > over 30 years since the web became public and we’re still attempting to > render serious business apps using dumb HTML. HTML5 is the joke of the > century (so far). I still lament the loss of Silverlight. > > *Git *-- Someone is lucky I don’t own a gun. > > *Fads *-- An exercise for the reader: name all the platforms, kits, > patterns and frameworks that you know were once the coolest thing and now > might only be found in history articles. An advanced exercise is to > speculate on which currently cool things will be gone soon. > > Finally, here is a list of typical things that give me the shits, just as > they pop out of my head. > > > - Attempting to compile projects that have been idle for a year or > more will usually fail due to changed dependencies or deprecations and it > can take hours to get them going again. > - I develop and test something with great care, then deploy it and it > crashes. This is part of the general “it works on my machine” disease. > - I can stop successful work on Friday night, then resume on Monday > morning and everything utterly fails. > - My USB microscope and music recording both stopped working recently, > and it took me a week to discover that it was a block by Windows 11 app > security (I thought it was a hardware or incompatibility problem due to > lack of clear error messages). > - Security! Walls, barriers and hurdles of security everywhere to > crash through. Yes, I know we need security everywhere to stop the black > hats, but it’s also stopping developers. Lord knows how many times I’ve hit > run or debug on my own PC and I get “Access denied” and hours of research > will be required. I’m also fed-up with ceaseless 2FA requests via email or > SMS. > - Everything about mobile devices. The ludicrous variety of devices > and brands makes app development a nightmare. Then you must struggle > through the variety of labyrinthine publishing processes. > - My final entry is simply the tiny “thousand cuts” that torture you > during development: version mismatches, inconsistent behaviour, strange > errors, editor quirks, missing files, etc. All the little personal problems > that slip between the cracks of bigger issues I’ve previously mentioned. > Your mileage may vary. > > > In summary, being a software engineer is now so exhausting that after 40+ > years of a generally enjoyable career immersed in programming and computer > science I’ve reached a point I never thought would arrive… I’m burnt out. > Even working on my hobby projects has become a burden because they suffer > from many of the impediments previously mentioned. > > I still plan to attend some upcoming conventions and Meetups, and I’ll be > watching the forum, but my posts will diminish because I’m probably out > trying to prevent the garden and house from disintegrating back into the > earth from whence they came. > > *Greg Keogh* > > > -- > ozdotnet mailing list > To manage your subscription, access archives: https://codify.mailman3.com/
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