I’m a senior engineer (web full-stack) at a bank. I’ve been doing this for about 5 years.

When I write code, I find it similar to authoring a book or even writing a poem. I love trying to write code that reads really well, has beautifully designed boundaries between dependencies, great structure and so on. I also find that I write code with a big focus on making it a joy to work with for developers that touch it later on.

I struggle with the emphasis on collaboration and quick iteration approach in this field. “Co-authoring a book” with 6 other “authors” in two week chunks just seems crazy to me. And what I’ve seen that passes as shippable code is also crazy to me – but hey, “it works”.

I also have never been a guy that gets overly excited about using technology to solve problems or using software to satisfy business needs. I really just like writing code, setting up development environments or CI/CD pipelines, cloud infrastructure or whatever…just for those things themselves. (Again it’s like an art form to me. And I really really like reading other’s well thought out code and appreciate for just that rather than the use-case or problem that the code is actually solving)

Anyone else out there like me? (Not arguing the merits one way or the other…just curious if I’m a weirdo)

  • mo_ztt ✅English
    3•1 year ago

    I left software engineering as of 15 years ago for this exact reason.

    I learned how to code, it was magic, it was grand. Then I went to school for it, and was a little surprised that most people there didn’t feel like I did about it. Then I got out and started working at writing code, and it was dogshit. I found a place that was kind of okay, stayed there for a while, and finally bailed and decided to do something totally different.

    I’m actually trying to get back into it now (right at the perfect time 🥲) but yes I’m sort of steeling myself for the sad reality of what I might be walking into. For what it’s worth, if you can get it, good server sysadmin roles are sometimes pleasing to that same sensibility of being able to make beautiful stuff and sit back and let it run, without the necessity to crank out dubious code that hurts your soul.