Developers are unhappy

[gregf36665]

Yeah I spent a while working in industry but there was just so much mismanagement that I had enough and left. Now I do a completely different career and this is my side project. Makes it a lot more fun when it’s a cool project you care about. Even if the pay here isn’t as great

[itsddc94]

Programming just isn't for everybody, especially high-pressure situations. The industry definitely has its problems from mismanagement or whatever, but that's true everywhere and won't be fixed. The issue is that a lot of people forced themselves into programming because it was good money, not because they cared about the work or found it fulfilling. You force yourself to do something you dont actually like for 8 hours a day and of course you'll hate your job.

I know it's just my personal situation and it doesn't mean it's the same for any significant amount of people, but I'm definitely a case where I got into programming because I just loved it, but I wish I hadn't made it my career (except for the money, which is, in fact, very good). It's just that the kind of programming companies need done is 98% of the time really freaking dull and uninteresting, and doing an unending treadmill of dull and uninteresting things on a deadline is just miserable.
Then at the end of the day I'm usually just burned out of looking at code, so there goes the thing I used to like doing the most in my free time.

I think the majority of people still programming feel the same way. I for one did, its a very common story to hear that people hate what they've become as a person because their job was so soulless and they were treated as just another set of hands. The money goes a fair way to compensate, but I think our culture is too quick to sell our mental health.

I also think a consequence of this is stifled innovation. Most everything that was developed and subsequently became really popular, was developed from passion, not profit.

[Red Bracket]

the kind of programming companies need done is 98% of the time really freaking dull and uninteresting, and doing an unending treadmill of dull and uninteresting things on a deadline is just miserable.

On a good day I code for 2-3 hours. I spend the rest of the time waiting for "alignment" from "cross-functional partners", including but not limited to my team, my manager, privacy, legal, product design, content design, project manager, product manager (yes these are all real titles of people I work with) and sometimes other orgs.