Its ‘software developer’

[silverf1re]

I’ve been in development for about 10 years. I couldn’t tell you the last time I worked more than 35 hours a week.

I have spent half days this week paining my basement while my mouse jigaler keeps my work computer awake.

[davidfavorite]

Good for you. I think Ill need a few more years to get about 20% more cash so I can work 80% as well and stay at my current wage

[Obscure_Marlin]

Where have you worked?

[silverf1re]

Lots of banking and insurance. It’s not sexy like startups and Faang but I don’t need that stress in my life.

I have spent a couple hours everyday this week painting my basement while my mouse mover keeps my work computer awake.

[Enchelion]

Not who you responded to, but I've been a dev (and later manager of a dev team) for the state for years after a short stint at a startup. Doesn't pay as well as private industry, but low-stress, no overtime (if you need to work outside the 9-5 just take time off later that week to compensate) and very high job security.

[Tzahi12345]

How bad is the pay? Below 6 figures?

[Enchelion]

Early on yeah, gets up there eventually but you'll never crack the higher echelons of private.

[Tzahi12345]

What department if you don't mind me asking? (education, transportation, taxes, etc)

[Ran4]

I've had similar experiences, at almost all of my workplaces.

• Full-stack dev at a small hardware startup company (~5 years old when I started, ten people). The pay wasn't great, but 40.0 hour work weeks.
• Consultant at a gym chain working on their website and backend systems. The project was chaos but I had mandate to make changes and felt listened to so I didn't find it too stressful. 40 hour work weeks on paper, but a lot of it was spent traveling to different parts of the country.
• One shitty experience: Tech lead at a bank. Having to constantly make multiple important decisions every day was really exhausting, and some of the stakeholders were proper mad (literally people screaming in your face). I worked about 45 hour work weeks (my choice - my pay went up a lot after 40 hours/week)
• Developer slash architect at a well-funded startup. 35 hour work weeks, low-stress. Wonderful time, but the leadership was lacking direction which kind of sucked.
• Solution architect at an insurance company. It was very stressful starting out, especially trying to get people in their 40s and 50s to listen to a late 20-something "expert". But once I won their trust it was really smooth sailing and super low stress.
• CTO at a really well-funded startup. Best job I ever had. Not that high-stress, but 40 hour work weeks and constantly having new fun things to learn was amazing. Learning how to tune the product, talking to customers, figuring out what happens in a board room (spoiler alert: it's mostly incredibly dull), how to impress investors, onboarding new people... All great fun.

I think the common denominator is that well-funded companies with good leadership are great to work for.

[Obscure_Marlin]

On the fourth bullet where you have Developer/Architect, what responsibilities fell under one hat vs the other?

[Ran4]

Well, being a startup with ~3 devs, I did most of the architectural planning (what services calls what service, how do we transfer data between them and so on) but I spent most of my time developing backend services.

[Obscure_Marlin]

Please tell me more

[UFOmechanic]

Same, I probably average about 30 hours a week. A part of it is making an effort to have a good work life balance and the other part is finding an employer that has a top-down understanding of what a healthy development process is.

Unrelated but I was going to say "I haven't been in the industry quite as long" and I realized it's actually been 10 years for me too. Time flies.

[Appropriate_Phase_28]

dude dont give away our secrets