Satisfying enough. Corporate red team at a big tech company, so I spend most days hacking first-party / internally developed software at said big tech company - usually developing exploits / PoC for novel vulnerabilities. But also sometimes longer engagements, including physical / SE at times. My favorite so far has been a long engagement where my team surreptitiously embedded ourselves into a build pipeline for a major tech product that goes out to 40m+ consumers, and added an innocuous flag to the source at build time as proof, starting from a physical break-in scenario without using our badges to enter the building.
The worst part of the job by far is drafting and editing reports. This sometimes goes on for several days.
I like it primarily because I get all the excitement of being a nation-state level adversary / threat actor / "bad guy", with none of the legal/moral/ethical risks/harms - my work ultimately contributes towards making our products (and thus our consumers) safer from such threats.
Yep! I’m writing Ruby/Rails code (which feeds my soul), I get opportunity to play/flex/perfect in doing that, it’s for a good mission (teen mental health) and the team is great (particularly my manager, we have absurdly amazing communication).
There have been a couple of rough patches, note.
But it comes down: Daily, I get to use my mastery over something I enjoy doing; and “monthly” I get an impact on the world I’m proud of.
I love that feeling after successfully completing and handing off a project, the ebullient sense of elation. There's nothing else like it in the world.
Yeah, the product manager lets us trying a lot of technical things for the benefits of the long-term development of the project. And also a heavy trust in every teammate skills.
You want an honest answer? Because our profession pays well.
I love programming, and I do it as a hobby, but if it didn't pay well, I wouldn't do it as a job. I would do whatever job I am capable of that pays the most.
I am just beyond lucky that programming pays well, because being poor in this world sucks.
I don't consider that a normal nor a healthy opinion. I'd choose happiness over money. Sure there is some level of money that's so low I wouldn't be happy but that just again means I'd choose happiness.
Happiness isn't making the most money possible, at least not for most people. Happiness, for most people, is having a life of people, relationships, meaning and a big part of all of that is working with people you love on something you love.
You're likely to spend 80,000hrs working. It would be nice not to just have to endure those 80,000hrs but actually enjoy them.
This is a very individualistic position, to the point of being self-centered. Not everyone sees themselves as the "consumer" of happiness. Sometimes we are in a position where we are producing it for the others. For example, kids can't share the joy of all the interesting projects or cool tech at their parent's job.
But the absence of money or their parent overworking due to low pay can easily affect them.
I can enjoy even menial work if I'm surrounded by friendly people who like doing a good job.
I can loathe any work if I have to deal with unqualified, socially combative, or unnecessarily difficult coworkers.
The job also needs to be focused on delivering the product, not constantly fighting corporate dysfunction, attending meetings, and jumping through managerial hoops.
This 100 %, I am in academia since 2013 changing every couple of years the team I work with. Everytime I have loved my job was when I was working with people I liked. Not necessary that I liked them outside of work (maybe we never even went to the pub together) but we liked each other in the way we were at work.
I also work at a place that has a social good (healthcare). The ability to materially help someone manage their disease on a daily basis is fulfilling. This is true in a way that helping people arbitrage crypto could never be. I've found the daily grind of tickets is different when you are helping people versus trying to finish UI that is designed to trick people into clicking on ads or whatnot.
It's a shame job ads are so focused on bullet points of technology, I'd much rather see info such as "really friendly and helpful team who are smart and effective but not in an insufferable way, working on generally interesting stuff" :-)
YES! ^^^ My favorite job, years ago, involved co-workers that I actually enjoyed spending time with. I looked forward to going into the office. I enjoyed staying late. The bosses/managers were generally jerks, but my co-workers were great.
One of the few things I miss about in person work is the banter that happens more organically in an office. I do love my job and enjoy my coworkers still, but it's not the same. Sometimes I'll grab a beer with some old coworkers and that's always a blast.
Even back in high school and college when I was working generic minimum wage jobs, coworkers could make or break it. So many good times collecting trash and cleaning bathrooms with Ashwin, but the same thing with Dave was dreadful. Turns out spending time with people you like leads to happiness, who would have though :)
Writing code is fun. The fundamental part of the job is something I enjoy doing. As you move up the ladder you do less and less, but it's still there. Also the pay. I am still retiring ASAP but the day to day is bearable.
I don't like tooling to get in the way of me doing my job. I work in infrastructure engineering (server ops) where due to the vast infrastructure doing things manually is not an option. Due to this I get to write a lot of code, which I enjoy. In a number of languages; some I enjoy more than others.
I also get to deal with the hottest platforms just enough (public cloud, on-prem K8s, etc) while getting to maintain the vast on-prem server infrastructure that is the majority of my job. I'm not a fan of Terraform, Ansible, Chef, etc (I don't hate them and I've used them extensively elsewhere) so I enjoy that I've given the autonomy to write the actual code to do what needs to be done rather than use a platform that just takes in a config file.
So simply put, my job let's me do the technical work how I want (with team collaboration of course).
Algorithmic trader, quantitative researcher, 'retail trader' here. When your strategies are trend-heavy, most of the time you're slowly bleeding out, waiting and doubting your simulations, wondering whether the market has fundamentally changed etc, but a few times a year it's like you're printing money and you finally don't feel like an idiot anymore.
This is usually a reference to the types of securities he trades in - stuff that's available to the general public. It's normal to focus on certain security types even when working at larger firms/groups.
I work at a fairly large organization (>1000 employees) as something of a jack-of-all-trades-having-to-do-with-software-development. There are several different groups within this org pursuing a variety of projects, many of which involve software in some way (sometimes as their main thing, sometimes in support of their main thing). Over the last decade+ of working there I have managed to develop a positive enough reputation with a wide enough network that I can choose from a variety of interesting opportunities. Some are longer works that I support for years, some are shorter prototyping or POC efforts, and some are stepping in for a couple of days or weeks to bridge a gap, implement a specific feature, or address a particular issue.
I also get to act in a variety of roles, from developer to architect to reviewer/advisor to tech lead. I'm working to move away from formal leadership of people or projects (I seem to have a confounding inversely proportional relationship with Formal Responsibility: the more of it I have, the less I am able to accomplish) and this may ultimately have a negative impact on my career-total-compensation; the org has formal personnel and project management tracks but not really anything for ICs. However, it is having a very positive impact on both my productivity and my mental health. It is a relatively recent change, so we'll have to see what my raise looks like next year; maybe management will see my impact as an interconnected contributor as even greater than when I was a manager.
I am full-time remote with a pretty flexible schedule (attend all important meetings and get in my 80 hours every two weeks and it mostly doesn't matter if I'm writing code at 10AM or 10PM) and generally I get to work with whatever coding tools I prefer (need to get my Emacs-Jira integration MVP finished though, because Jira is a tremendous productivity sink for me and some of my projects use it)
5 years ago I got the opportunity to take over a project suite and was allowed to port from vb.net to c#, including build a new architecture that holds the work of a single developer for 10 years.
I love creating structure and consistency, so this was a very nice doing.
Today I just know almost every line of code in it and I can use the work to help my colleagues learning architecture.
I'm cofounder of a small company and wear many hats - writing code, roadmap planning, mentoring, product design, etc. The diversity of skills needed is fantastic and loads of fun.
But the biggest benefit is I get to set set the culture of the company without having to answer to anyone else. I worked for years in corporate tech companies (FAANG) and while I could create little pockets of healthy spaces, there were always people getting in the way of creating a truly psychologically safe place for people. It's a huge relief not having to worry about that anymore and instead I can fully tap into the psychology of motivation, treat people with fairness and empathy, and be transparent without getting into trouble with leadership. It's made the job more satisfying and everyone we work with gets along amazingly well while being incredibly supportive of each other.
It’s amazing how a few bad bananas can negatively impact a culture, isn’t it. The most attractive thing to me about entrepreneurship is what you described. FAANG companies so often have a few bad actors that set off a series of actions and reactions that lead to political, emotional turmoil. Better to make a culture yourself.
I'm in the same boat, I've had a few experiences of really awful work environments in the past like what you described and while that was honestly bearable for the most part it's just so much better being in companies where people actually give a damn about each other on a personal level.
I would've written almost the same thing. CTO and co-founder here. I'll also add the part that I can be friends with so many amazing people and support them even outside the workspace. It's really rewarding.
My current job is drudgery due to agile. But for most of my career I've found it enjoyable to have the kind of space and freedom and ownership of work that I don't have now. Earning trust and getting to exercise my own judgment about what to work on every day without Jira and sprints. Owning entire projects rather than having work I could do myself split among 3 people and getting blocked or delayed at every step.
Honestly, I feel satisfied when I succeed. My job has long periods of scrambling in the dark for relatively few periods where everything works and you've made something great. I like the feelings of accomplishments when it finally works
I used to love having the freedom to figure out a need in whatever way made the most sense, without too much oversight, and working on things that actually helped people in the company. My only distractions from coding were Bi-weekly status meetings, and calls with future/current users to figure out their needs. Then scrum snuck it's way in under the guise of agile, and I've been a ball of anxiety ever since. Always either late for a meeting, or an arbitrary deadline, and unofficially spending most of my time teaching people with way better educations than me. I'm addicted to the money and healthcare, and because my contract forbids it I have no portfolio to show prospective new employers. It no longer feels like freedom, or problem solving, it feels like I'm stuck doing busy work, even though it's essentially the same job.
I quit programming because of Scrum. Programming used to be awesome, but Scrum turned it into the equivalent of digging ditches for my dad when I was a teenager.
I get regular emails from Tarsnap users thanking me for making it possible for them to recover data which they lost. The work itself isn't all that satisfying, but knowing that it's having a positive impact is very satisfying.
Interestingly, nobody has ever written to thank me for keeping their data secure. But I suppose security is something which is generally only noticed when it's missing.
Rather to my surprise, I have never received such a request. I don't know if this is because Tarsnap users aren't of interest to the relevant agencies, because they know they wouldn't get anything useful, or because I'm in Canada -- I wouldn't be surprised if US agencies preferred to request data directly from Amazon rather than making a request to someone outside of their jurisdiction.
It's a technical problem that feels like it should be easy to solve but turns out it's not.
And also turns out it's sufficiently difficult that not many people are interested in solving it/believe it can be solved. I'm here to prove them wrong.
I'm a consultant for Red Hat. I'm assigned a number of clients at a time, travel onsite (or work remote) to fix or build their systems, and sometimes supervise small teams as part of larger engagements.
Red Hat gives me my assignments for the next few weeks or months, tell me what end result everyone wants to see, and sends me to go get it done. I'm 100% trusted to do the job, no micromanagement. If I need help I'm a phone call away from expert engineers in all of our products. I have a TS clearance, so I'm onsite more often than not because I'm working on disconnected networks.
While I technically have a manager, they're more like a handler or mission control. He hands me my tasks, tells me the lay of the land, and gives me access to anything I need for the job. I'm not really "managed" on a day-to-day basis. Every engagement has it's own project manager that I work with closely but even that is a peer relationship, no supervisory.
I travel constantly but love it. 200+ nights in a hotel every year for the past 5 years. My wife's job is mostly remote, so she joins me on occasion, and I can get her plane tickets with my racked up mileage points.
I can "pay" for our vacations entirely with loyalty points (car, hotel, plane).
One thing I love about Red Hat is everyone pushes each other forward. Co-workers reach down and pull their colleagues up behind them. Never before have I felt such a sense that my colleagues have my back all the way. A very "we're all in this together" attitude throughout the company. Also, while you're always encouraged to move up the promotion ladder if you want, if you've found a niche that you're comfy in then that's supported to. There's no up-or-out like some organizations, and no forced ranking thank Yoba.
tl;dr Red Hat completely trusts me to do my job, and does everything it can to help me succeed. It's awesome.
My biggest hits of satisfaction seem to come when I learn something and when I finish something. In between is exploration.
The biggest drags seem to be repeating work I’ve done before, and being told not to make something as good as I think it should be.
So, exploring, discovering new things, and using what I’ve learned to do something excellently. Which can be hard sometimes. There isn’t always something new that needs doing!
132 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 219 ms ] threadThe worst part of the job by far is drafting and editing reports. This sometimes goes on for several days.
I like it primarily because I get all the excitement of being a nation-state level adversary / threat actor / "bad guy", with none of the legal/moral/ethical risks/harms - my work ultimately contributes towards making our products (and thus our consumers) safer from such threats.
There have been a couple of rough patches, note.
But it comes down: Daily, I get to use my mastery over something I enjoy doing; and “monthly” I get an impact on the world I’m proud of.
I'm a software engineer and solutions architect.
I love programming, and I do it as a hobby, but if it didn't pay well, I wouldn't do it as a job. I would do whatever job I am capable of that pays the most.
I am just beyond lucky that programming pays well, because being poor in this world sucks.
Happiness isn't making the most money possible, at least not for most people. Happiness, for most people, is having a life of people, relationships, meaning and a big part of all of that is working with people you love on something you love.
You're likely to spend 80,000hrs working. It would be nice not to just have to endure those 80,000hrs but actually enjoy them.
But the absence of money or their parent overworking due to low pay can easily affect them.
You've never gone hungry.
I can enjoy even menial work if I'm surrounded by friendly people who like doing a good job.
I can loathe any work if I have to deal with unqualified, socially combative, or unnecessarily difficult coworkers.
The job also needs to be focused on delivering the product, not constantly fighting corporate dysfunction, attending meetings, and jumping through managerial hoops.
I also work at a place that has a social good (healthcare). The ability to materially help someone manage their disease on a daily basis is fulfilling. This is true in a way that helping people arbitrage crypto could never be. I've found the daily grind of tickets is different when you are helping people versus trying to finish UI that is designed to trick people into clicking on ads or whatnot.
Even back in high school and college when I was working generic minimum wage jobs, coworkers could make or break it. So many good times collecting trash and cleaning bathrooms with Ashwin, but the same thing with Dave was dreadful. Turns out spending time with people you like leads to happiness, who would have though :)
I also get to deal with the hottest platforms just enough (public cloud, on-prem K8s, etc) while getting to maintain the vast on-prem server infrastructure that is the majority of my job. I'm not a fan of Terraform, Ansible, Chef, etc (I don't hate them and I've used them extensively elsewhere) so I enjoy that I've given the autonomy to write the actual code to do what needs to be done rather than use a platform that just takes in a config file.
So simply put, my job let's me do the technical work how I want (with team collaboration of course).
I also get to act in a variety of roles, from developer to architect to reviewer/advisor to tech lead. I'm working to move away from formal leadership of people or projects (I seem to have a confounding inversely proportional relationship with Formal Responsibility: the more of it I have, the less I am able to accomplish) and this may ultimately have a negative impact on my career-total-compensation; the org has formal personnel and project management tracks but not really anything for ICs. However, it is having a very positive impact on both my productivity and my mental health. It is a relatively recent change, so we'll have to see what my raise looks like next year; maybe management will see my impact as an interconnected contributor as even greater than when I was a manager.
I am full-time remote with a pretty flexible schedule (attend all important meetings and get in my 80 hours every two weeks and it mostly doesn't matter if I'm writing code at 10AM or 10PM) and generally I get to work with whatever coding tools I prefer (need to get my Emacs-Jira integration MVP finished though, because Jira is a tremendous productivity sink for me and some of my projects use it)
But the biggest benefit is I get to set set the culture of the company without having to answer to anyone else. I worked for years in corporate tech companies (FAANG) and while I could create little pockets of healthy spaces, there were always people getting in the way of creating a truly psychologically safe place for people. It's a huge relief not having to worry about that anymore and instead I can fully tap into the psychology of motivation, treat people with fairness and empathy, and be transparent without getting into trouble with leadership. It's made the job more satisfying and everyone we work with gets along amazingly well while being incredibly supportive of each other.
Interestingly, nobody has ever written to thank me for keeping their data secure. But I suppose security is something which is generally only noticed when it's missing.
Also interesting to see that shitty, toxic commenting was also prevalent on HN in 2007.
Somewhat related, I wonder if responding to lawful access / key disclosure requests is at least a little bit funny for you.
And also turns out it's sufficiently difficult that not many people are interested in solving it/believe it can be solved. I'm here to prove them wrong.
Red Hat gives me my assignments for the next few weeks or months, tell me what end result everyone wants to see, and sends me to go get it done. I'm 100% trusted to do the job, no micromanagement. If I need help I'm a phone call away from expert engineers in all of our products. I have a TS clearance, so I'm onsite more often than not because I'm working on disconnected networks.
While I technically have a manager, they're more like a handler or mission control. He hands me my tasks, tells me the lay of the land, and gives me access to anything I need for the job. I'm not really "managed" on a day-to-day basis. Every engagement has it's own project manager that I work with closely but even that is a peer relationship, no supervisory.
I travel constantly but love it. 200+ nights in a hotel every year for the past 5 years. My wife's job is mostly remote, so she joins me on occasion, and I can get her plane tickets with my racked up mileage points. I can "pay" for our vacations entirely with loyalty points (car, hotel, plane).
One thing I love about Red Hat is everyone pushes each other forward. Co-workers reach down and pull their colleagues up behind them. Never before have I felt such a sense that my colleagues have my back all the way. A very "we're all in this together" attitude throughout the company. Also, while you're always encouraged to move up the promotion ladder if you want, if you've found a niche that you're comfy in then that's supported to. There's no up-or-out like some organizations, and no forced ranking thank Yoba.
tl;dr Red Hat completely trusts me to do my job, and does everything it can to help me succeed. It's awesome.
The biggest drags seem to be repeating work I’ve done before, and being told not to make something as good as I think it should be.
So, exploring, discovering new things, and using what I’ve learned to do something excellently. Which can be hard sometimes. There isn’t always something new that needs doing!