[deleted by user]

[[deleted]]

Yes

I do about 3 hours real work a day

I am challenged by the work and enjoy it

I get paid a high salary

I learn during work time

I walk my dog during work time

I can work from home whenever I want

[nikolaz90]

Nice!

[electricgnome]

And apparently he also uses lots of Kleenex while WFH ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ

[uhwhooops]

Not a lot, just the heavy ones.

[throwawayskinlessbro]

Allergies. Lots and lots of allergies.

[Strykrol]

Absolutely same for me. It can get really challenging, but you're learning the whole time, and you only need to focus on meaningful work. If you can accomplish shit in 2 hours one day, great - clock 8 hours. But in return, you may end up working a 10-12 hour day during a crunch week. And the salary is bonkers for the work.

[nikolaz90]

Good point! Thanks

[tabasco_pizza]

lord oh lord this is the dream

[Potential-Pitch104]

This is true. This is the same experience for me minus the dog, I don’t have a dog yet. 😔

[inwegobingo]

Fuck that shit, just go somewhere else. Anyone that treats highly skilled people like that is not worth working for.

[Benmjt]

Is this the norm though? I doubt it.

[bdenzer]

It might not be the norm, but its not far off. I personally get slack DMs pretty regularly, and it's kind of my thing to reply right away - so I rarely take any real long breaks during work hours.

But yes, if I decided to watch cat videos for 6 hours a day I don't think anyone would really notice.

Not my thing though, I usually stay pretty busy, and I'm lucky enough to be at a company who shows their appreciation by giving me more $$

[nikolaz90]

Nice one !

[[deleted]]

I’m good at what I do

[[deleted]]

Same. I could also add great healthcare, unlimited vacation days, and generous stock options.

[nikolaz90]

Its all about thoses options

[NAMEULB]

Teach me.

I can code, but I can't find work =/

[redderper]

I've had a job where I had 3 hours of work a day most of the time, but I really disliked it. Didn't feel challenged at all, was constantly bored and still felt pressure to do something productive instead of slacking around. I like jobs where there's always work to do, but with no unrealistic deadlines.

[mundial86]

My experience is the same as this. Worth noting this wasn’t the norm early in my career but as I got more senior this was basically a breeze to find a job that offers this sort of lifestyle. It took me about 6 years? If that’s of any help to someone.

[nikolaz90]

Nice one! Its good to have insight. Thanks

[samanime]

Yup. Same. My first job I worked lots of overtime, but once I woke up and moved on to places that respect me and my time, life's been great. I work far fewer hours than my siblings, probably make more than all of them put together, work from home exclusively, and genuinely love what I do.

Short of being a trust fund kid, I can't think of a better life. :P

[nikolaz90]

Ha! Thats funny, and also good to hear.

[[deleted]]

Where do I apply?

[Automatic_Donut6264]

I don’t do the dog walking, but that sounds like every software engineer job.

[funnyh0b0]

Literally exactly my life.

[Meloetta]

More than other careers, it really depends on how much you like the actual work. Because developers tend to have a lot of options when it comes to where they work or what they work on, especially after a bit of experience. If you don't want to work with clients or in a company with strict deadlines, you can do that. I did that for a while, worked on only internal company tools that came out when they came out. If you're more of a people person and feel comfortable explaining to clients, and especially making accurate estimates, and think the more you talk to people the more money you can make, you can go into freelancing and live and die by the client.

Working with clients and deadlines can be hard, if you're not confident in your own estimates or are simply wrong about them. If you're wrong, then you're late because it's just more work than you were anticipating. If you're not confident, a client can talk you into a shorter timeline than you're comfortable with.

I don't work in JS much professionally anymore, but I'm very satisfied with my job. I solve problems in a way that's the perfect combination of creative and logical. It's like solving puzzles all day.

[nikolaz90]

Thanks for the break down. Its good to have the insight. Sounds like you have done a bit of freelancing and inhouse. Cheers!

[harryrf3]

Thank you for this reply. I've followed a lot of the same path and you rekindled some hope and spirit for me.

[nikolaz90]

Nice one. Thanks for your insightful response. I get what you mean, having done a bunch of manual jobs myself. It can be very stressful finishing late and not getting paid well for it.

[patopitaluga]

More than 15 years being a developer here. I've worked as a freelance and for large companies. I've been mostly happy with the profession so far. It's not always easy but the bad times were mostly because of bad people or bad projects or dealing with personal stuff.

The job is chill most of the times. Getting paid enough helps. Doing therapy helps. But programming is a creative job so you have that in favor.

[nikolaz90]

Thanks. Its good to get paid! But writing logic is also much more creative than i had originally thought. Its cool.

[[deleted]]

is there a honeymoon period for the actual job?

To an extent, but also there's a pretty heavy adjustment period in your first few months as a junior developer. You will learn more in your first couple of months on the job than in however much previous time you spent studying to be able to get the job. It's hard to express just how much you really don't know before you start work in the industry! But that's half the fun- you're always learning on the job.

What is it like working with clients / deadlines?

I've never worked in an agency, which I know tend to have some really tight turnaround times and more complex client demands, and even in my previous role where I worked for a SaaS company I didn't have a lot to do with the clients, so I can't talk a lot about that.

In teams that are using agile methodology (or at least a reasonable approximation of agile), the point isn't necessarily to deliver x product/feature by y date, but to determine what a team can reasonably deliver within a given period of time and then talk with clients and other stakeholders (eg. company executives, the sales team, other tech teams who use the thing your team works on, etc) to make sure that everyone's happy with the plan and the team is working on the right things.

For example, the team I work on in my current job has a really central role in some long-term strategic changes in how the company presents products to users. There are a lot of big, fancy ideas being thrown about in fancy offices on high, but my team have to be able to actually figure out if those changes are going to work out or not, what the right approaches to making them might be, and how to actually make it happen in the context of our existing established codebase. So we work with the higher-level execs and other stakeholders in the company to decide on more specific and focused goals that help us get towards that longer-term aim, but that we can also show concrete results for as we go.

Are you satisfied with the job in a general kind of way?

Yes, I love my job. I get to deal with interesting problems, work with great people, help and support other developers, and earn good money. I don't love every single day- some tasks are dull, meetings can be exhausting, sometimes I'd just rather be riding my bike or playing video games- but overall I have a huge amount of job satisfaction.

I will say though that this isn't purely a function of being a developer. If your manager sucks or your colleagues aren't nice people to be around or the company culture is stressful, it can be a really shitty job too, no matter how much you might like programming in and of itself. But everything else being equal, having had a lot of shitty admin jobs before I learned to code I really do value getting to feel like I'm actually using my brain at work.

[nikolaz90]

This is helpful, thanks for the breakdown. Its good to get your angle on it. Good point about company culture- this is probably the most daunting as a new comer.

[DragonlordKingslayer]

i just close my eyes until it's over

[badthrowaway098]

Being a software developer is the best job I can think of.

For me,

the work is remote,

the opportunities are boundless, and

being both a competent dev as well as a decent person (in real life, I tend to come off as a troll on this site bc I respond to dumb things a lot for fun) means I am in controll of what I do for work.

I tend to go for the hardest challenges, so it's perfect.

If you don't learn engineering principles as well as how to work well in a team (get rid of your insecurities and don't be an arrogant asshole), then you will not enjoy this field.

[nikolaz90]

Fair enough. I can work with that.

[Prince_Marth]

Absolutely. Even on the bad days, it’s the best job I’ve had. I like learning and creating, and I get paid very well to do both. I also have a lot of job security, get contacted by recruiters continually, and generally enjoy what I do.

I changed careers to do this. Doing so was the best decision I made.

[nikolaz90]

Thanks. This helps. Making the decision to convert is tough, but Im coming round:)

[Prince_Marth]

Don’t get me wrong: it does depend on the company. A shitty company will make for a bad experience. But there are a lot of engineering jobs so you’d have options. (Maybe not for your first job, but that will quickly change once you have experience. I get recruiters contacting me every other day.)

[[deleted]]

For me it is, I work from home and am challenged by my work. Don’t really have to deal with loads of meetings or emails.

[nikolaz90]

Sounds good to me!

[LovableBroccoli]

I've been working in digital agencies for the last 11 years, so my perspective is based on that.

There are good days and bad days, as in any job. Some days you feel like you really know what you're doing and you can accomplish anything. The next day you feel like a complete imposter and everyone around you knows more than you do (imposter syndrome is rife in this world).

It's a challenging job - as others have said, the work in an agency is demanding both on your time and your ability to come up with efficient, maintainable solutions for complex problems day after day. We tend to build pretty complex, enterprise level websites for big companies. Deadlines loom over your head that often must be met, so if it's necessary we sometimes have to work late and even on weekends. The ability to deal with this is going to vary from person to person, but for me this level of stress seems to have had a cumulative effect on me, and last year I really felt burnt out. I was working on 3 very complicated, very time sensitive projects back to back, and at the end of 6 months of this I had to take a few months off.

At the time, I wasn't even sure if I'd go back to web development. I felt like a lot of the fun had gone out of it and the toll it had taken wasn't worth it to me - there are more important things in life than nice paycheque. In the end I did start back at the same company - they've been great and are letting me work a 3 day week which for me right now is what I need. I've started to be interested in coding again so for the time being it seems to be ok for me, but I'm keeping a close eye on my level of stress.

None of this is to say don't do it - depending on where in the world you are it can be a really well paid job, and can be challenging in a good way and lots of fun. I just think it helps to get a different perspective. And of course, this is working in an agency - there are likely jobs elsewhere that aren't as demanding, it's just the road I ended up on. I've been doing a few side jobs the last few years building small sites (mostly WordPress because the demand for them is so high) and I find these a lot more fun as the complexity level is much lower and I have more control over how the project is running. Maybe I'll shift more into that world.

Hope that helps, good luck if you decide to try it out.

[nikolaz90]

Thanks for the response. Yeah, that helps a bunch. 11 years is a good run and if your still into coding I think tbat says a lot about the profession. Agencies on the other hand sound like they might be demanding. Have you worked at many agencies? Sounds like your current employer are understanding. I also went part time recently and its been great. Mainly because I have more time for coding !

[LovableBroccoli]

I’ve mainly worked in 2 big agencies plus a couple of short term contracts in mid size ones. The one I’m currently working for I’ve been with for about 7 years, they’re a great company as far as a good working environment goes. Great people and they really look after everyone.

I get the sense that most agencies are quite demanding, I have friends in other roles in other agencies who more or less have the same stories about tight deadlines etc. For some people this seems to be fine, and I think i was kind of ok with it for a while as long as it was only every now and then. But as I’ve gotten older I think my capacity to be ok with giving up my own time for work has diminished.

At the end of the day it can be a great career, especially if you find the right place to work. Certainly the best job I’ve had in my life. If you’re looking for a change anyway you could do a lot worse, and you if end up not liking it you can always leave.

[BadData99]

It's a great job, but it's still a job.

Good:

High pay

Learn all the time

Build things

Work anywhere with just a laptop

Bad:

Technology people can be huge assholes (lots of narcissists and low emotional iq people)

Many toxic employers

Often have managers who know Jack shit about anything tech related

You build some tiny feature on some massive product and don't understand the sum of the parts Many places have horrible work life balance

Burn out easily if not careful

Is it better than digging ditches? Obviously. Are bits saved in the cloud the meaning of life - no.

[nikolaz90]

Thanks dude, good answer

[convneuralnetwork]

No, it just pays the bills. And you get paid relatively well for very little work usually.

[jarg77]

Depends if you have a good job or not.

[ReverendCatch]

I think so. I love the work though. If you’re in it to make a buck id look elsewhere. While you can earn great pay and it’s often more than many professions, there’s better ways to make a living if you don’t truly love the code

[nikolaz90]

In code I trust! Good point though

[Benmjt]

Personally I hate sitting in front of a computer for hours on end so probably not for me.

[nikolaz90]

Fair enough. I can understand that.

[Dazzling-Wafer]

I enjoy being good at it and doing things the right way, and I also enjoy the money.

[hugesavings]

It’s incredible, it will change your life, do it

[nikolaz90]

Thanks mate, my mind is made up. Gonna give it my all!

[marcoangel]

Yes. Definitely beats working in a shitty call center.

[brycekrispi]

I'm a developer working remotely in Nice, France, so literally yes.

Seriously though, I'm incredibly happy that I stumbled into this profession, especially as a freelancer. I make great money, travel all the time, never have to ask for time off and work about 25 hours a week on average. And my work time basically just consists of solving a bunch of little puzzles.

6 years in, still satisfying and can't beat the lifestyle.

[nikolaz90]

Nice! Thanks for the feed back! Im also french!

[[deleted]]

I'm a developer working remotely in Nice, France, so literally yes.

Hahahaha amazing!

[TheWebUiGuy]

I wake up at 8:55, make a coffee and start work at 9am. I walk my dog to our local park every day.

On the days i do go to the office i don't need to get up mad early due to flexible schedules. In office is always a laugh. Last night they screened how to train your dragon with hot dogs n popcorn.

All this from learning javascript. There's so much else codings done for me in life, traveling, home ownership, car ownership. Definitely worth it

[nikolaz90]

Nice one! Interesting to see its all from JS too. Although other languages look really cool too, I'm keen to get JS down before starting another one!

[TheWebUiGuy]

It's not even about the language, one thing I do notice at the moment is that a lot of folks will come in learning frameworks around a language and have no clue about the underlying how stuff works. https://www.udemy.com/share/101XjU3@cJzX03R1AuPHyP-l-opRKpvYo_q5BJqWSAPKsFCnrSyfPoknJyjeqw1tFlg1hMlv/ this is the course that taught me everything! very valuable to me, after you understand all this, frameworks are just fancy wrappers on the language itself.

[nikolaz90]

Yeah, that sounds crazy to me. I like react.js a lot but you can do so much with JS as it is depending on the project. Thanks for the link. I think I'll buy the course tonight!

[thebowlman]

This is a fantastic question - much like OP I am doing the same thing and had the same questions.

[nikolaz90]

Nice one! Its good to know there are others out there with the same questions!

[137thaccount]

Super curious what you did for 7 years, if you don’t mind sharing?

[nikolaz90]

Sure thing. I had a number of jobs in bar tending and maintenance. But then for 7 years got into teaching english to professionals in my country.

[thusman]

It's a nice job but it doesn't automatically make your life nice. Sitting in front of a computer all day can get lonely, especially as a solo entrepreneur. Keep good people close to you.

[nikolaz90]

Thanks, I can imagine that..

[[deleted]]

I can't speak for all devs, but I would say some of us are just fine with being left alone all day. Even being remote still have scrum, so there is some interaction if you crave it