On work - and the enjoyment thereof

[metallian]

I clicked on this article today, thinking it would be another diatribe against working in an office, which is supposed to be soul-crushing and all that.

Now, I like working in an office. If I have to be stuck doing a particular activity for hours at a time on a regular basis, I'd rather it involve predictable hours and travel time in a clean and

Comments

[fatherdog]

Well, if you think about it software development basically /is/ a trade. You're making/fixing things that exist in a computer rather than outside it, but a lot of the things he articulates about hands on work is still true.

When he talks about office work he's talking about clerical and management work, which is still what most people who work in an office do - that and sales/marketing.

[metallian]

It's true, it basically is a trade.

I guess I never thought too much, really, about what non-IT office work fundamentally entails, so I don't know what to think about it. I suppose I always thought it entailed making/fixing different sorts of things, maybe at a higher level of abstraction?

Working at a bigger company in recent years has started me thinking that maybe, when you get down to it, an organization is just a different kind of system, and thus management could be thought of as a form of systems development in a way. Not sure how valid that is. In any case, I'm sure you don't get the ability to gather information and conduct experiments rapidly like we do. One nice thing about our work is that truly unrecoverable errors are rare in the day-to-day, and a retry is just a recompile away. (Today a co-worker told me she didn't feel like she was solving a weird problem correctly because she basically figured it out through trial-and-error. I said, "How do you think I solve weird problems things all the time? I just conduct my

[fortinbras16]

While in some ways management COULD work like that, it usually doesn't. Because the level of abstraction is so high, and the system has too many uncontrolled variables, that it's hard to get any sort of useful data on the thing. So, a lot of it boils down to gut feeling, with a bit of number crunching to see how much your gut feeling actually held up after implementation. And when there are arguments about management style, it ends up being more of a culture clash instead of an argument about best practices. Even with all the tech we have to monitor things these days, it's really hard to have solid data, getting that data takes a long time after you implement policy, and even when you have data, outliers can be important, cause those outliers are still employee's that you are trying to get to work better.

[elgorade]

I still tell people I'm a programer. I just go on to tell them I program in English. "do ... while" loops are the easiest and, as you pointed out, fatal exceptions are (thankfully) rare. :)

I have to deal with some pure management trivia. Someone's got to do it, and often I would rather it is me, rather than someone who might really think SOX or internal audit is important. Mostly what I do is two things. 1) keep the team balance correct -- not too much focus on programing "frameworks" not too much focus on one-off pleasing the clients; some of both. 2) talk to the clients and other IT folk about what they do and how we can make that better That second item isn't as concrete as fixing a bike or real, hands-on programing, but when it goes well, it sort of is like programing at another level of abstraction -- primarily refactoring.

Besides, like House, I look smarter when I'm the one asking the questions. :)

[llargh]

Hey, you can always get a beaten down house and be Super House Man and fix it up. That's a nice project. :)

[indynsummr]

your (seeming) contentment and enjoyment of your life and lifestyle always gets me, especially when i think of the attitudes of so many others I know. I had to restrain myself from commenting on your 'should we have children' post weeks ago, mainly because I feel like you and Lindsey have a wonderful life traveling socializing and being free and children might impinge on that significantly, but screw that--you two should be creating and sending out more people like you guys into the world. :-p

[metallian]

Aw. ^_^

The thing to consider is if we'd impart that if we didn't still feel that way ourselves. I think there's definitely a temperamental component to it (e.g., I have always ultimately adapted well to moving), but a lot of it is situational...we've gotten very good at understanding ourselves and honestly appraising what makes us happy, and at exercising a high degree of control over our situation accordingly. "High degree of control" is not something you get with kids - as I have been reminded by many parents over the past week for some reason. (Including one who straight-out told me, "Don't do it. All that stuff [you enjoy] will be...gone." @_@ )

[entropic_loris]

Of course he's presenting the joys of being an independent tradesman. He doesn't say anything about being a mechanic employed by your local Goodyear/Firestone/whatever store where the tradesman is just another low level worker with a quota and a set of mandated procedures.

Any kind of work can be good as long as you have meaningful work, creative control over the work, and a feeling of competence. Well, I suppose I need to say that there is a minimum level of monetary reward that's needed also but that really seems obvious.

[metallian]

That's a very fair point.