Lead Developer, business owner, US Army veteran. I build things for the web. My website is a bunch of HTML pages that didn't need a framework. Yours can be too!
At my 30s I found out that there was a developer inside a Political Science Graduated.
I've been COO an CMO for 4 years but I decided to persue my dream and become a Front-end developer:)
Location
Elche, Alicante, Spain
Education
Certificate of Higher Education for Web Applications Development & Degree in Political Science
+1 Yes, life is too short to be in a crappy job. You can be a team of one but be realistic as well and explore your options. There comes a time when all your pleading and convincing will go to waste if the executives/management don't value your opinion. You deserve to be happy! :)
One and only, IMO: Link this question to an action you do every evening!
For example, washing your teeth, changing clothes, taking a shower, or when pulling the covers on to sleep. Select one action you do religiously every evening, and whenever you do this action, ask yourself the question, "have I learned something new today?". If you can honestly say "yes, I learned something useful today", then sleep sound, you earned it! But if not, then get up and do something, or read something useful on your phone using the DEV app :), etc.
Back when I was around 10 years old, I heard somewhere that the Japanese did this every night. I thought it was SO cool I decided to make that a part of my life. I don't even know if it's true from the Japanese! Also, I thank to my dad, who I saw learning and working really hard every day and night from home, to build his own thing. I learned that, even if all goes south, I can still learn something new every day, and what I learn, I can use to improve my life.
Been using UNIX since the late 80s; Linux since the mid-90s; virtualization since the early 2000s and spent the past few years working in the cloud space.
Location
Alexandria, VA, USA
Education
B.S. Psychology from Pennsylvania State University
Always amazes me when I run into people that claim to know, with absolute certitude, that what they're doing is the correct, best way to do a given thing.
Usually, such certitude does not bear up under even the most casual of scrutiny.
Been using UNIX since the late 80s; Linux since the mid-90s; virtualization since the early 2000s and spent the past few years working in the cloud space.
Location
Alexandria, VA, USA
Education
B.S. Psychology from Pennsylvania State University
(More junior) teammates often wonder why I'm so verbose with my status-reporting. I can't count the number of times where I've sent out a "I've been banging my head on , here's everything I've done - did I miss something trivial" only to have a reply, a few minutes/hours later, saying something as simple as "line 24 of your problem-description".
Doing this one right now. Completely borked the local database for one my apps today. Shut down my machine and went home. Going to play some video games and deal with it in the morning
Been using UNIX since the late 80s; Linux since the mid-90s; virtualization since the early 2000s and spent the past few years working in the cloud space.
Location
Alexandria, VA, USA
Education
B.S. Psychology from Pennsylvania State University
That's why I love doing infrastructure automation: something's gone completely sideways with a system or an entire architecture? Punch a button to deploy a new, functional copy in a few (or few tens of) minutes.
Been using UNIX since the late 80s; Linux since the mid-90s; virtualization since the early 2000s and spent the past few years working in the cloud space.
Location
Alexandria, VA, USA
Education
B.S. Psychology from Pennsylvania State University
Yeah. Automating deployments is definitely a time-suck, but it's a time-suck that, once done, quickly pays for itself by freeing you up to do other thing more quickly and easily. Unfortunately, many organizations that love to say "we want to do devops" or "we want to do infrastructure automation" don't seem to understand that you have to allocate considerable time to getting there. That it's an investment to reach the point where you replace broken systems – or even just do regular patching – with "lemme launch a new copy". Then again, there's a lot of shops that think that re-hosting into a CSP and/or switching to containers magically impart capabilities they never designed into their solutions.
Oldest comments (148)
Don't be afraid to admit when you're wrong.
Never stop learning.
If you are not happy, do something. Life is short.
That’s how I felt after I got my first job my degree trained me for.
I sort of knew how to code and that looked like a lot more fun so I quit and figured out my happy path.
+1 Yes, life is too short to be in a crappy job. You can be a team of one but be realistic as well and explore your options. There comes a time when all your pleading and convincing will go to waste if the executives/management don't value your opinion. You deserve to be happy! :)
Maybe life is too long to be unhappy.
Don't stop learning, take breaks, learn from mistakes.
Don’t go to bed if you haven’t learned something new today [repeat every day]
Any tips on keeping up this discipline?
One and only, IMO: Link this question to an action you do every evening!
For example, washing your teeth, changing clothes, taking a shower, or when pulling the covers on to sleep. Select one action you do religiously every evening, and whenever you do this action, ask yourself the question, "have I learned something new today?". If you can honestly say "yes, I learned something useful today", then sleep sound, you earned it! But if not, then get up and do something, or read something useful on your phone using the DEV app :), etc.
Back when I was around 10 years old, I heard somewhere that the Japanese did this every night. I thought it was SO cool I decided to make that a part of my life. I don't even know if it's true from the Japanese! Also, I thank to my dad, who I saw learning and working really hard every day and night from home, to build his own thing. I learned that, even if all goes south, I can still learn something new every day, and what I learn, I can use to improve my life.
Nice!
Depending on what you consider as "learning something new", you may ruin your sleep really badly :D
"Get enough sleep" would be my no. 2 advice!
while(isAlive())
That's why programming is so great. Two paragraphs of explanation condensed in one function! Awesome! Thanks 😄
Experience is overrated over knowledge, and knowledge over motivation to learn.
Don't worry, nobody knows what they are doing.
Can confirm. Don’t know what I’m doing.
Always amazes me when I run into people that claim to know, with absolute certitude, that what they're doing is the correct, best way to do a given thing.
Usually, such certitude does not bear up under even the most casual of scrutiny.
How comes you can only like a comment once?
Some people do, learn from them.
I know what I'm doing: trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do
The best worst advice I can give is "Don't work on other people's dreams, work on your own"
I truly believe in that line, but it's not viable for most people so it's terrible advice.
Sleep and tackle the problem tomorrow with fresh eyes.
Second that
A colleague's eyes are always fresher than your own.
Too many times has a colleague been able to immediately pin down a problem I'd been pouring HOURS into.
(More junior) teammates often wonder why I'm so verbose with my status-reporting. I can't count the number of times where I've sent out a "I've been banging my head on , here's everything I've done - did I miss something trivial" only to have a reply, a few minutes/hours later, saying something as simple as "line 24 of your problem-description".
Doing this one right now. Completely borked the local database for one my apps today. Shut down my machine and went home. Going to play some video games and deal with it in the morning
That's why I love doing infrastructure automation: something's gone completely sideways with a system or an entire architecture? Punch a button to deploy a new, functional copy in a few (or few tens of) minutes.
I would love to but we're in feature factory mode so not a ton of time for that level of automation 🙁
Yeah. Automating deployments is definitely a time-suck, but it's a time-suck that, once done, quickly pays for itself by freeing you up to do other thing more quickly and easily. Unfortunately, many organizations that love to say "we want to do devops" or "we want to do infrastructure automation" don't seem to understand that you have to allocate considerable time to getting there. That it's an investment to reach the point where you replace broken systems – or even just do regular patching – with "lemme launch a new copy". Then again, there's a lot of shops that think that re-hosting into a CSP and/or switching to containers magically impart capabilities they never designed into their solutions.
Keep calm, find ways to be happy with your job.