Hi Silvia,
This is a tough question. I think partly it also depends on how diverse your work is and if you are being challenged by the work you do while you are clocked in.
If your work is challenging and you don't feel like you are given the time to learn during working hours, I think it is important to find the time to really understand your work and question the work you are doing (processes, coding conventions, finding better and more efficient ways of doing things, understanding what others are doing - e.g. understanding how FE/BE can better go together or understanding design and usability flaws).
If you feel that you are not being challenged at work and you are doing just enough to meet the requirements, than challenge yourself to speed up your work to then find time to do new things and improve. And again question everything.
There are many more scenarios that I could lay out, but in the end it is less about the working hours and more about whether or not you feel that you are being stimulated and fulfilled with the work that you are doing. Learning an attitude of curiosity and discipline is huge just for you as a coder. Not only as an employee.
Burnout usually comes from pushing yourself into an overworking attitude that is unfulfilling and causes you to pay less attention to your mental and physical health.
However if you feel like you are stagnating, or the other extreme of feeling fatigue even after just a little bit of coding, maybe it is important for you to find something that ignites your passion again.
The senior developers that I have looked up to most in my life are people who want to 1. share their knowledge, 2.are constantly wanting to learn and adapt, 3. are passionate about the thing they do.
Learning to ask the right questions and know how to solve problems doesnt just come from learning the newest technology or constantly reading decumentations for cool tools. Those things can be super important, but those things also take time and they are complimented by a healthy work environment where you can learn from others and share the knowledge you have.
It can all seem overwhelming sometimes. The amount of potential things to learn and all the cool technologies that developers love to fight about. But in the end, if you challenge yourself just a little bit each day and start to question everything, pretty sure you will find new worlds opening up to you.
I didn't switch fields long time ago so at the moment everything is still overwhelming. I work a lot in my free time but it's because I have the feeling I'll never catch up (feeling that might as well be false, cos' there's not enough time in the world to know everything that's out there). I don't believe that this is good on the long term strategy so lately I've started to take longer breaks and keep the extra coding for the weekend. I do agree tho' that hard work comes with great results. Thank you for your input :).
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Hi Silvia,
This is a tough question. I think partly it also depends on how diverse your work is and if you are being challenged by the work you do while you are clocked in.
If your work is challenging and you don't feel like you are given the time to learn during working hours, I think it is important to find the time to really understand your work and question the work you are doing (processes, coding conventions, finding better and more efficient ways of doing things, understanding what others are doing - e.g. understanding how FE/BE can better go together or understanding design and usability flaws).
If you feel that you are not being challenged at work and you are doing just enough to meet the requirements, than challenge yourself to speed up your work to then find time to do new things and improve. And again question everything.
There are many more scenarios that I could lay out, but in the end it is less about the working hours and more about whether or not you feel that you are being stimulated and fulfilled with the work that you are doing. Learning an attitude of curiosity and discipline is huge just for you as a coder. Not only as an employee.
Burnout usually comes from pushing yourself into an overworking attitude that is unfulfilling and causes you to pay less attention to your mental and physical health.
However if you feel like you are stagnating, or the other extreme of feeling fatigue even after just a little bit of coding, maybe it is important for you to find something that ignites your passion again.
The senior developers that I have looked up to most in my life are people who want to 1. share their knowledge, 2.are constantly wanting to learn and adapt, 3. are passionate about the thing they do.
Learning to ask the right questions and know how to solve problems doesnt just come from learning the newest technology or constantly reading decumentations for cool tools. Those things can be super important, but those things also take time and they are complimented by a healthy work environment where you can learn from others and share the knowledge you have.
It can all seem overwhelming sometimes. The amount of potential things to learn and all the cool technologies that developers love to fight about. But in the end, if you challenge yourself just a little bit each day and start to question everything, pretty sure you will find new worlds opening up to you.
Thoughts?
great post right here by Ilona Codes on mental health and productivity.
I didn't switch fields long time ago so at the moment everything is still overwhelming. I work a lot in my free time but it's because I have the feeling I'll never catch up (feeling that might as well be false, cos' there's not enough time in the world to know everything that's out there). I don't believe that this is good on the long term strategy so lately I've started to take longer breaks and keep the extra coding for the weekend. I do agree tho' that hard work comes with great results. Thank you for your input :).