Page 2 - Life advice wanted from you more experienced guys (rycamor, etc)

>>As far as the comparison with other types of careers, how come
>>at the end of the day, they all have left before the IT people do?
Ouch. Hard to answer... may be because IT people don't show up as early ? That's the case in company where I work. Or may be because they are going to do final checks and maintainance tasks for 20 minutes at the end of the day. Or may be they didn't do a jack during the day. Or may be they like 19" LCD's or OC connections. May be they don't have life. There are 1000 and one reasons why some people stay in the office after work hours, but every single one of them could apply to any other position.

>>it's culturally expected as part of the job to put in insane hours as being normal.
What can I say... that's life? Those who want to achive something bigger strive for it, and that means going extra mile.
>>Tell me how that benefits your outside life?
It sure as hell doesn't, but those are sacrafices some of us choose to make. Personally I disagree with those people, and by what you speak I must have been helleva lucky throughout my life. But my point remains - don't like the show change the channel. Or job. Or career. Or city. Or country(ies). Too bad they don't let people go on the moon yet, otherwise I would have had a place there already. Nice view, I hear

Yeah, but like I said, those are your experiences, but compared to everything I've seen, it's not that way at all at any place I've worked, except Federal Government. I would DIE for a Fed job. IT people everyplace I work arrive at the same time, and leave later. They are often called back during weekends, and for late nights. They almost always stay there because they have no other choice. They all work the same way Zitan did back in the day -- way too much.



That's the whole point of the thread and why I started it.

One question - what the **** are they doing at night or on weekend that cannot be done any other time? How companies justify constant overtimes?

As for new career... You got biz major - any decent shopping chain wil like to have you aboard, I really don't see a reason why you couldn't get some sort of management position. But then again, I haven't been in states for past 4 months, so don't know how things are with upcoming elections and war in Iraq.

Well, I guess I might as well complete my bombing run of all the forums by posting in here.

Ted, I am 37 and still trying to figure out the answers to some of these questions. Most of my experience was in freelance work, but also some for small companies. I have never worked for large companies and probably never will, since I just don't fit the bill (For a good laugh, see my resume ).

One thing I finally decided: don't let anyone (including yourself) put needless stress on you. In the past, I have had the heart soreness the headaches, staying up all night, etc... and every time I made the decision to allow the stress, I realize I could have made a different choice, and I still would have made (most of) my money and kept my reputation, except for the few insane clients who I was better off not dealing with in the first place.

So, here are a couple of rules, I (somewhat) try to follow:

1. Be pro-active: It's tempting to just keep working on something, even when you know the time frame is going out of whack. So... you decide that rather than calling an immediate conference to reassess the problems, you will just stay up a few extra nights and make the problem "invisible" to them. Most of us geeks dislike meetings and discussions, because they are such a pain. It's easier just to pretend there never was a problem, so you fix it in the off-hours, so they won't know. Don't do that, ever. The very minute you feel there is a problem with time frame or job scope, you should take the most direct steps to deal with the problem, rather than work extra and wait until later.

1.a (corollary) Don't be afraid to call it off!!
I remember the most stressful time ever : I had bid on two large, urgent projects; one for an ASP/SQL Server job, and one for a PHP one. I really wanted the PHP job, and it actually offered more money. The ASP job gave me a funny feeling. But the ASP job came in first, and then the PHP job, so I decided to take them both, and just subcontracted a guy to help with the ASP. I spent three weeks on the front end for the ASP job, before realizing that the other guy had done absolutely zero work on it, and was not even answering my phone calls. We were running into trouble already, and I had the other deadline looming. My first impulse was to simply return the deposit, call it off, and go finish the much more fun PHP job. Instead, I let another ASP programmer talk me into clinging onto the job, and trying to fix the damage. I ended up losing almost all the profits of the PHP job on the ASP job, and endured almost daily screaming phone calls, threats, etc... from the client. The deadlines to both jobs were almost the same, and also managed to concur nicely with the birth of my first child. (Born on the last day of the 20th century ) I really thought I was going to die from stress a couple of times.

2. Don't ever add to your work. It is very tempting to just add a feature or two that you realize is necessary, without going back through the channels and asking the decision-maker if they would like the extra time taken to do X.

So, the very minute you feel there is a problem with job scope, immediately reassess the requirements documents, and make sure you aren't making up work for yourself. You will be amazed at how tempting it is to just add features without making management/clients aware that you are doing extra work.

3. Don't take projects if you have that uncertain, queasy feeling in your stomach about them. Every time I have ignored that feeling, I have been sorry. That would have saved months of stress in my PHP/ASP debacle. If the client acts at all nervous about whether you'll take the job, or if they act desperate to have you, there is a reason: they have probably run off all the other developers with daily stress attacks.

3.a. (corollary, for married devs) Your wife's instincts about a (job/project/client) are almost always right. Ask her opinion about every project, and see if you can arrange somehow to have her meet your (boss/client/contractor). I'm not kidding, there really is something to that intuition thing!!

------------------

On the personal side, I am a night owl, which is probably a given for developers. On occasion I pull all-nighters and get stressed, etc... but generally, I plan for about 6 "productive" hours in front of the computer, and about 4-5 "play hours", where I do stuff like research ideas, read tech books or documentation, hang out in the forums, plan features for my libraries, etc...

So normally the 6 productive hours occur during the day (I work at home), and the play hours occur after the wife and kid are asleep . This is actually a great de-stresser, because it allows me to pursue the things that interest me, such as XUL, but the things I learn from this make my day hours much more productive.

Now, I'm not saying I've solved the problems of productivity/personal life in the developer field. I still struggle every day with these things. But the main thing I have learned is: if you don't have any enjoyment in it, go somewhere where you will. Programming relies on a very unreliable personal attribute known as inspiration. Some days you are glowing hot, and some days you end up throwing away all your code for the day. Learn to strike when the iron is hot, and minimize spinning your wheels when it is not.

Will I stay in my field? I strongly doubt I will be doing exactly the same thing in 5 years that I am doing now. In fact, 5 years ago, I was doing a different job. In fact, in some ways, I have been using computers for a shorter time than many of my younger colleagues. After college, I didn't really get into computing again until I was about 26, when the 'Net made it interesting again. Maybe in another few years, I will want to go back to some of my other interests. I might even become a high school teacher. ("In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something else." - Lee Iacocca)

My feeling is this: if you are in a rut, either go further into what you are doing, or get out of it into something else. In other words, if you feel you are hitting a brick wall, you might want to switch tracks into a different branch of computing, or you might want to dive deeper into the theory end of your current area (maybe even go back to school). Either way, no standing still! It doesn't work. You will just stagnate.

I'll add my .02 here. I'm currently a freelance programmer (php, mysql, etc.), and I own two computer hardware/repair/network stores (about to open a third store). Things can get pretty stressful. Troubleshooting many different networks with completely different setups, software, and budgets is challenging. Plus dealing with your average meathead windoze users.

A few tidbits:

1) One of the nice things about being your own boss is you really don't have to take any crap from any clients. If a client starts to get out of hand I simply tell them to calm down or I am leaving. They aren't worth it and there is always another to take their place.

2) Don't undervalue your services. One of the biggest things I see as problem is the way people undervalue their time. These freelance programmers that do things for less than $50 an hour are hurting themselves and the industry.

3) Time is money, get paid for every minute that you work. Not always possible, but try to maximize paid time. Also, know when you are in over your head, and contract out for work to be done.

4) Work hard and play hard. Take vacations, long and short. When it gets too much for me, I go fishing/hunting and forget all about my computer/stores/networks.

5) Overtime - Too much overtime will wear you down and ruin your personal life. I used to work six days a week (when we first started out) I started getting mean and nasty. I cut that down to five days, and more normal hours. If something can't get done, then it is put off.

Now sometimes you do have to work overtime and burn a little midnight oil. It's when that gets out of hand it becomes a problem.

I didn't start out in these industries. I have a BA in Pre-Law, and I have my Juris Doctor. After seeing what new lawyers in firms actually went through, and realizing how much I hate to wear suits, I bagged it.

Diversify how you make your cash. In other words do not rely on one income source.

I used to think
"live fast, die young and leave a good looking corpse."
(but now I want to ensure I have somewhere warm and dry when I can't look after myself)

I like good solid returns for my cash. Will not invest in any thing I don't fully understand.

Picked property, land is very solid in more ways than one. Low interest rates and rising population will mean it should increase quickly. Plus rent or occupy to reduce your expenses (and in Australia the govt gives you $7000 to $14000 towards your first house).

My properties now make much more than I earn each year. I get some equity, buy another and put tenants in.

This gives me the freedom to pick and choose what I do.

If I feel like a few months off in Thailand, of I go. Bugger the code. Lifes too short.

I agree with you completely Frank. That's one of my plans for my future......investment properties. Heck, you buy a house and have someone else pay the mortgage for you....can't beat that. My family has made quite a living doing this very thing and I intend on doing the same when I can afford it.

Ted, I personally wouldn't stive too much for a government job. I have worked hand in hand with several DOD personnel and have several friends that work for the government in various departments. Very few are actually happy with thier jobs. Yeah, in most cases thier hours are stable but their pay is horrible compared to the private sector. It also takes forever to move up the chain. But that is just my personnal experience.

As far as the hours worked, I usually work a regular week. I only have to work long hours if I am on a trip at another location in the company. Every once in a while I get called in to fix something, but it is rare, now that wasn't always the case, but things have drastically improved since then. (Put a lot of critical tasks on Linux and they quit failing. )
Now, they guy I work with might come in a 10:00, or every 11:00 at times so he works later than everyone else, but he basically comes and goes when he wants. That is what I want.

I went ahead and got my own server colocated at a nice high-performance hosting facility. Within a few months, it was paying for itself, and now I am getting more than three times what I put into it, with regular domain hosting, and a few high-end application hosting deals .

(Now, if this were a Windows 2000 server, I would be constantly fretting, wondering when it would crash or get rooted next, but this is a solid FreeBSD machine, so I can actually sleep at night. Although, next I want to spread my hosting among several machines, for fault-tolerance.)

>>I agree with you completely Frank

LOL!


I'm not Frank Zappa (he is dead you know), nor am I Dweezel or Moon Unit (his kids).

Alright thanks for the advice everybody. Some interesting developments have occurred in the last couple of days, I'll try and update when I can.

Well don't be a hold out