What Are the Common Complaints of Software Engineers?

Based on your experience or observations, what are some common complaints that software engineers often have about their jobs?

What strategies or changes do you believe could address these complaints and improve the overall experience for software engineers in the workplace?

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Comments

[Schalk Neethling]

Backache :) Honestly though, the pressure to know everything, never ask a "stupid" question, and an expectation of bug-free code the first time, every time. Let's give ourselves a pat on the back for all the great work we do, and educate the rest to be kind and rewind.

[Mike Stemle]

Professionally, I think you could boil most complaints down to these two:

1. The business is not always as thoughtful about what they ask you to do, so sometimes you do a great job writing something that nobody wanted because the people making the request weren't clear or thoughtful in that request.
2. There's not enough time to do all of the various activities that make up the discipline of software engineering.
   1. Coding
   2. Professional development
   3. Production support
   4. Maintenance

For open source work, I think we all kinda have two very similar complaints:

1. Users aren't always clear about their requests and bugs, and it eats our time
2. The time dimension is stubbornly static, and it's far too easy to run out of time; life is busy

[Sukhpinder Singh]

They say they're tired of debugging in the dark!

Maybe installing better lighting in the office could brighten their debugging sessions and improve their overall experience! :D

Jokes apart, developers often complain about long hours and tight deadlines leading to burnout.

[adriens]

• Stop meetings
• Stop use us a project managers

[Franky Braem]

Stop telling we have to follow SAFE to be agile.