Developers "please answer"! HN hot post "When you are disappointed with software development, how to plan your career path?"

The outside world has such an evaluation of the technology circle, "software drives the world, and developers are the engine behind it"... Indeed, for software developers, in the environment of open source spirit, the world is driven by code programming Progress, both pragmatic and romantic.

But there are times when developers are also "disappointed" with their software development efforts. I believe that for many developers and software development engineers, they often encounter difficulties of one kind or another in the process of programming. At this time, they will be skeptical about their career path.

On Hacker News, there is such a hot post "Ask HN: Career paths when you've been disillusioned by the software dev process?", a group of software developers from all over the world In-depth exchanges and discussions on the issue have aroused heated discussions.

Amazingly, during the discussion, they have a new understanding of software development and career paths.

Tired of development, but still love programming

For example, a software developer with a 10-year career is very tired of team-based software development. Still, he loves programming, but he's starting to get scared of everything around him.

Having a good job, living, working for a good company, making a cool product, and having good co-workers, it does seem like it all works perfectly together. Despite this, the developer has suffered from mild to moderate depression for most of his life, but he still does his best to deal with the problem, such as actively seeing a psychiatrist. Despite seeing some typical signs of burnout, he doesn't think it's entirely a burnout issue.

Works well in teams and his teammates like him, but the developer himself prefers to work alone, which he sees as a stable personality. Because developing software with a group of people in an extremely complex environment creates a series of problems such as some weird, ill-considered technical decisions, failed projects, endless meetings, and being told that something needs to be done by never Anyone who's ever written any code to do it...so maybe it's better to do the work on your own, by comparison.

Can frequent job-hopping really find the "perfect" team?

"Find the perfect team - if I switch jobs enough, I might find a perfect team that really suits my work style."

In the hot thread of the discussion, some developers proposed to "optimize salary and change jobs as soon as possible": you can work hard to find a job with the highest total salary, if possible, you can change jobs after working for a few years, and then choose your favorite according to your own conditions. Work.

Of course, switching jobs is about being "selected" for an interview, so he was confused and said, "However, the thought of doing this makes me mentally exhausted, and I don't want to be mocked in the interview"...

Is it feasible to do part-time freelance work while developing?

In the discussion thread, there are also developers who came up with the idea of combining freelancers with personal entrepreneurship, so that there are enough freelancers to pay for living expenses and use the rest of the time to build their own things (hope to sell them).

Therefore, there are also developers who said, "Don't treat writing software as a career entirely, just treat it as a hobby - maybe, but I don't have any other jobs that I can do, or I'm interested in. But I can keep that in mind."

It seems that for most developers, "working as a part-time freelancer while working on your own product" seems to be an interesting path worth pursuing. But there are also developers who want to be more cautious when doing this, "I don't plan to make any major changes for the next year or two at least. I may find that I'm already at my best, it's just a happy motivation at work. ."

The Power of Software Development - Dreams

Another Solo founder/indie hacker developer also shared his opinion: "Having a small product developed entirely by yourself sounds like a dream".

Despite making $100k-$200k a year, there are a lot of cool stories here like a developer who worked tirelessly for years on a MRR project that never exceeded $1000...probably for the average person Saying that the thought of doing so much development while working full-time sounds incredible, but for these developers, they enjoy it.

Roundup view

I believe that many software developers and software engineers will encounter difficulties in programming, but in retrospect, they think it is no big deal. For many ordinary people, the difficulties of software development are believed not to be felt by everyone, but for the majority of developers, they can talk a lot about specific details for a long time.

As we all know, the software development process does not have a fixed formula, and the development environment and actual project of each project are complex and there are no rules to follow. Therefore, the software development of each project needs suitable developers, and under the influence of "cognitive bias", each developer is more inclined to shine on the projects he loves.

The issues discussed in this hot post are believed to be issues that many developers around us have had or are concerned about. I hope that after the discussion, everyone can have a new understanding of software development and let you find your own heart. s answer.

If you have your own opinions on this topic, you are also welcome to exchange and interact in the comment area, thank you for your support!

Related Links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31043717