It's not hell on earth but I think about "oh my god dude get another job!" at least once a week. My job is this "hybrid" of 50% software developer, which I want to do, and 50% of, let's just say, flippin' burgers. It's not flipping burgers literally but the metaphor applies pretty well because being a short-order burger chef does take some skill, but it's repetitive, and subject to requests/orders that come in intermittently, each of which is urgent. So, it's like the interruptions everybody complains about from noisy co-workers and Nina from Corporate Accounts Payable, except the thing interrupting you, is the other half of your own job, and it continues all day long. So really with all the interruptions I'm doing close to zero programming.
Why this arrangement? Because they figured hey, what better way for him to find all the pain points and automate them, than to have him use this crappy cobbled-together system himself! Well sure, I'm all about seeing it from the user's point of view. So yep, did that, figured out long ago everything that's wrong with it, but now what? I'm stuck. Forget burger flipping, let's say this time, that I'm an axe maker. A craftsman of fine chopping implements. And the job they gave me is to chop wood all day with somebody else's dull axe. Um that is a different thing, that is not what axe makers do! And it's not like, okay make us a new axe, here's everything you need; they need someone to chop the wood! Pretty much the stupidest situation to be in.
Then there's the team - it's totally silo'd, a bunch of little fiefdoms, run by naysayers, and my every minor request for an enabling technology or whatever-it-might-be, is met with an unanswered phone call or email. I'm still kind of new, so I have no clout whatsoever, that is a truth, but I can also see that it's not just me. You've read much about the conflicts between Dev and Ops that led to "DevOps." Well on this team the Database people and the Programming people (hello, those two are the same thing, or perhaps you are an asshole) don't even see eye to eye.
Also - and this shouldn't matter - but the developers are somewhere else. Instead of being surrounded by developers bouncing interesting ideas all around (not that these particular ones would), I'm here physically sitting with the other burger-flippers. Yes we're back to that metaphor. These are people who either can't, or never wanted to, be anything other than burger-flippers, and everything they talk about is in terms of burger flipping, and life is just a big burger to be flipped. Starting to sound elitist, but keep in mind I'm intentionally not telling you what they, what we, actually do. They are skilled workers. Just not the same skills. I probably should've held out for something else.
You may be describing a support developer role. Reactive to support tickets (internal or otherwise) rather than planned uninterrupted work. Some people enjoy being a support developer, it's not for me and it sounds like it's not for you.
>These are people who either can't, or never wanted to, be anything other than burger-flippers, and everything they talk about is in terms of burger flipping, and life is just a big burger to be flipped.
Lol, hilarious! I love your writing style.
I'm in a similar situation. Thankfully rare but random unpredictable urgent but formulaic jobs to do, fixing things for well-educated burger flippers.
My job is ostensibly to improve things but that's impossible because everything is managed by inept naysayers, with the added entertainment of crippling bureaucracy mixed in.
"they figured hey, what better way for him to find all the pain points and automate them"
So, I'm not clear on why you haven't been able to do that?
I got to where I hated the developer culture, and got a job that was outside of it, where I had access to nothing except MS Office, and had the epiphany that it's Turing complete, I can do anything!
In a nutshell I'm spending most or all of my time using the tools (keeping up with a queue) not working on them. To work on them I need either permission to fall behind in the queue (probably not an option) or someone else to cover for me. I'll probably pursue that latter option.
Everyone drinks some flavor of Kool-Aid. Confirmation bias: it's the human condition. Do and think whatever whimsical thing you want to, then do the cognitive contortions later to justify it.
It's always like that though. Everybody wants to be 'in' while things are soaring, but wants to be 'out' by the time it turns downward. Some people get out too early, successfully missing the low but also missing the highest highs. Others wait too long and the low wipes out all their highs. The trick is being able to stay at the party until juuust before everybody else smells smoke and starts running for the exits.
I'll bet part of why they're conflated is because every company that tries to hire 10X engineers, does it wrong and ends up hiring arrogant engineers.
Not to mention, to the much more numerous ranks of "1X" engineers, a 10X engineer, even a real one, is kind of a pain in the ass and hard to distinguish from an arrogant engineer.
Why this arrangement? Because they figured hey, what better way for him to find all the pain points and automate them, than to have him use this crappy cobbled-together system himself! Well sure, I'm all about seeing it from the user's point of view. So yep, did that, figured out long ago everything that's wrong with it, but now what? I'm stuck. Forget burger flipping, let's say this time, that I'm an axe maker. A craftsman of fine chopping implements. And the job they gave me is to chop wood all day with somebody else's dull axe. Um that is a different thing, that is not what axe makers do! And it's not like, okay make us a new axe, here's everything you need; they need someone to chop the wood! Pretty much the stupidest situation to be in.
Then there's the team - it's totally silo'd, a bunch of little fiefdoms, run by naysayers, and my every minor request for an enabling technology or whatever-it-might-be, is met with an unanswered phone call or email. I'm still kind of new, so I have no clout whatsoever, that is a truth, but I can also see that it's not just me. You've read much about the conflicts between Dev and Ops that led to "DevOps." Well on this team the Database people and the Programming people (hello, those two are the same thing, or perhaps you are an asshole) don't even see eye to eye.
Also - and this shouldn't matter - but the developers are somewhere else. Instead of being surrounded by developers bouncing interesting ideas all around (not that these particular ones would), I'm here physically sitting with the other burger-flippers. Yes we're back to that metaphor. These are people who either can't, or never wanted to, be anything other than burger-flippers, and everything they talk about is in terms of burger flipping, and life is just a big burger to be flipped. Starting to sound elitist, but keep in mind I'm intentionally not telling you what they, what we, actually do. They are skilled workers. Just not the same skills. I probably should've held out for something else.