Consulting is fucking burnout. 'Be better, faster, smarter'. Oh yeah? And a life, how about that?

I thought stepping into the Computer Science industry would be to create beautiful software with my passionate talents. All I've seen is: fix and maintain broken (badly designed)(legacy) shit. Yes, that's more of a backup role.

A good role is where you at least get to create a project from scratch that you own yourself.

Urgh.

Guess the app of this musical tone:

"tud-du, tu, tud-du, tudum-tum,.. tud-du, tu, tud-du, tu, tu, tododom, tom :)"

It's funny how beginner programmers think you can step into the industry and coast by on using established algorithms, thinking they will never need expert knowledge themselves.

A few years into the industry and I have realized that when it comes to highly customized requirements and you need to write and test complex algorithms yourself, that's when you better have your expert knowledge backing you up because aside from A.I. assistance, nothing is going to help you.

Oh, how complex it can get. I've had to think about rethinking entire architectures that gave me weeks of real headache, algorithms that required the deepest fine-tuning, tree traversion, generics, interfaces, extension methods, factory, singleton, decorator, facade, etc.

In short, you better know your way around the language you are programming in. You also need to know your algorithms and optimizations because when things are black box to you, that's not a good feeling.. especially not when people are relying on your expertise. The real world is complex and thus we model its complex models.

I really dislike it when non-devs ask devs: "I don't understand. What could be so hard about coding?".

Grumble. FredFlintStoneGrumble.

You graduate together with your peer who was in your same class and same group. Both of you apply for a job. They get the job and you don't because "At our company we have high standards".

What the fuck is that supposed to mean? I'm more capable than my colleague and they themselves know it. Such logic these days.

At times my frustration with debugging is so much my verbal expressions might as well be uuid strings.

You work your ass off up the corporate ladder, except no one cares. You're overqualified and you have a large skillset, a high determination and work ethic, yet again no one cares. You have years of experience and on various projects, for various companies.

Your colleague doesn't lift a finger half the day, takes naps, barely has the basics down and gets promoted to systems architect immediately.

What, the, f.

I'm sure this is a familiar situation.

Typical interview response from employers nowadays on a candidate's tech skills:

"We don't have the budget to teach someone how to work with the technology. We expect from you that you are already an expert and you need no guidance. We have neither time nor money for slowdowns. We are under pressure to deliver"

Back in the days "I'm willing to learn" used to be of value, but things have changed.

You know what would be nice? Coding and exploring for personal fun instead of for work! Even outside of work it's become about work now, because the market is so toxicly exigent!

Can't wait to do my own side projects.

Is there such a thing as natural talent for specific categories of developers?

I've seen this occur a few times. I have more affinity for front-end development or separately, for UX, so I naturally see wireframes, I naturally know what looks good or not to a user, and I can relate to a user.

I've seen multiple backend devs who share the same complaint that they don't have a knack for front-end and that they hate front-end. They can create beautiful architectures and solve complex problems, but they tell me: "Don't ask me to tell you what looks like a good layout or not because I have no idea".

The same thing happens to me when it comes to back-end (even though I'm a Fullstack developer): Don't try to give me extremely complex problems because I will likely get very stuck, but ask me if a design would look good, ask me to design a website UX wise and I will do well without a great deal of effort.

I wonder why I have a hard time with back-end and others vice versa. Maybe we're trained more in certain areas or our brains function differently.

And so.. I wonder if more people see this happen in their workplace and if this observation holds true.

Perhaps as a tip for the junior devs out there, here's what I learned about programming skills on the job:

You know those heavy classes back in college that taught you all about Data Structures? Some devs may argue that you just need to know how to code and you don't need to know fancy Data Structures or Big o notation theory, but in the real world we use them all the time, especially for important projects.

All those principles about Sets, (Linked) lists, map, filter, reduce, union, intersection, symmetric difference, Big O Notation... They matter and are used to solve problems. I used to think I could just coast by without being versed in them.. Soon, mathematics and Big o notation came back to bite me.

Three example projects I worked in where this mattered:
- Massive data collection and processing in legacy Java (clients want their data fast, so better think about the performance implications of CRUD into Collections)
- ReactJS (oh yes, maps and filters are used a lot...)
- Massive data collection in C# where data manipulation results are crucial (union, intersection, symmetric difference,...)
Overall: speed and quality mattered (better know your Big o notation or use a cheat sheet, though I prefer the first)
Yes, the approach can be optimized here, but often we're tied to client constraints, with some room if we're lucky.

I'm glad I learned this lesson. I would rather have skills in my head and in memory than having to look up things and try to understand them all the time.

When you have qwerty at work but you use azerty at home, sometimes your brain keeps switching layouts... lol.

Writing down some general frustration.

softwareDevelopmentIndustry.pace = true ? manager.rush(employee) : fictionalLand.takeItEasy();

Stack trace: most recent call last
StressException occurred at line 1: employee too stressed
.keepPushing()
.manager.push(employee)
.industry.demand()

Later on:
StressOverloadException:
nested exception is: PaceIndexOutOfBounds

We get our degree from a high-end higher education institution and with it we have proven that we studied Computer Science and a number of important programming languages in-depth.

Now why is it that when we get a job as a Software Developer, that people only seem to value you if you get industry certificates in those programming languages?

I understand a degree forms the basis with which to tackle modern-day software problems, but for your entire education to be practically invisible to stakeholders? That's what seems strange to me. We are valued by the number of certificates we have? Something doesn't add up. The only reason for this I can see is that the Business department hasn't had the thorough STEM education we had and thus thinks we are still novices who need to get 'trained'.

Developer annoyance number two: fixing or having to work with or around other people's crappy code with days-long headaches following.

I hate complex boolean logic.

(true||false) && true || false || (true && false) ... etc (continue for at least ten clauses four times as long)

I look at my code after a month's break. My first thought: what the **** am I reading..?

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

College: We will give you six to twelve weeks to build a decent, fully-equipped application that involves a backend with domain business logic, DAL, service layer, security, etc.

In the real world: we give you an afternoon. If it takes two days, you are slow.

Gotta love it.

Ah.. the beauty of clean code.

I wrote a very cleanly written program two years ago. Proper variable names, not too many, right naming, right design pattern,.. Now I come back to it and I am able to instantly figure out the code again. It only took me half a minute.

The importance of clean code... that's something the industry needs to understand more. Well, then there's the money issue. lol

Dear Java, I don't care about your tight rules and patterns; I just want the data.

Do I want some values from some far, hidden-away objects? Oh no, I can't, because I must respect the OO contracts between those objects and interfaces and type safety and blah dee bla.

I didn't think this were true when I started out programming in the field, but now that I've been working for a few years, I've discovered this:

While your technical expertise does matter, it does not weigh as hard through as how likeable you are; that's right, likeable. You can be an idiot, yet if you make people like you and pull the right strings, people will think you're this grand genius (while you're not!). How perception matters..

Soft skills matter somewhat, but I discovered they can make or break it. I noticed people like to be idiots and frolic around instead of taking things seriously that need to be taken seriously.

Here I am, with my expertise. People don't like me - and it makes them judge me the wrong way, like I'm stupid. Yes, imagine that, you with more skills, being looked at as stupid by idiots with little the fewer skills.

It would be neat if I were valued for my skills, not how much someone likes me!

This industry is... disappointing.

Really frustrating is when business asks you to finish large tasks in an unreasonable amount of time (4-8 hours). As a Medior developer, my speed is not at hours, but at days/weeks. Perhaps if I were a Senior with absolute mastery I could achieve such speeds.

They don't seem to understand programming takes a lot of thinking, testing, debugging and communicating, which not always necessarily sync. Some people are busy and others are jerks.

Focus only on the absolutely necessary...

I find it unfair how many talented frontend developers get assigned to backend-only/focused positions. This is a sign of bad management that sees developers as code monkeys rather than talent.

I speak for many when I say: "I'm tired of arrogant devs".

I'm starting to compare Computer Science to sadism... the amount of things you have to know and master (no pun intended)...

And then there's the all-time industry favorite: "You have to master this discipline by yesterday".

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

Programming is so damn difficult sometimes!