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Theopneusty t1_j5dbpih wrote

Reply to comment by Dissenting_voice in What High Tech and Media Layoffs Say About the Economy by PleaseThinkFirst

I used to be a line cook, and later a shift manager in food service. I’m now a software dev. I don’t work anywhere near as “hard” as I used to but it is a different kind of stress and work.

Instead of the highly physical and social work (dealing with customers) I did before I do a lot more mental work and have to explain things to non-technical managers/clients. While I work less hours than before there is a lot of cram time where I am working all day long. I’m also paid to problem solve. When there is a production issue I have to research and figure out what’s going on.

One issue I dealt with directly affected 60 million people. I had to quickly solve that issue because every minute counts when that many people are impacted. My most used work is used by literally 25% of the global population in some capacity.

I’m not paid for the hours I work (quite literally because I’m salaried). I am paid for my knowledge and ability to solve problems, whether live with production issues or while designing and building software.

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commentingrobot t1_j5dfhho wrote

By the sounds of it, you're a good dev.

I've worked at a variety of companies, and have found that for every good dev there are a half dozen who spend their time in meaningless side-quests, doing the bare minimum and then blaming the PM when the project flops, or making mistakes that would be obvious if they'd tried to understand their user's point of view.

Very often I hear people talk about the minimal amount of work they perceive software devs as doing. Can't say I blame them. But I've never worked harder than as a lead dev for a small company, where the product succeeded or failed based on my work. Those who only ever work at FAANG type companies often never learn what that's like.

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YawnTractor_1756 t1_j5f0y9q wrote

Have you actually worked in FAANG company, or you're just speculating? Because I worked 15 years in small and large non-FAANG companies, and when I went working for FAANG-level company then comparatively speaking I see that every regular developer in FAANG experiences pressure compared to that of a Team Lead in a small company.

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commentingrobot t1_j5f195g wrote

I have indeed

Ymmv in FAANG of course. They're different from each other and they're huge companies which vary from team to team.

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