Joy of The Craft

Like many other software engineers, I spend most of my time on tasks that fall under the broad category of “work”. In 2018, my full-time position barely amounted to half of that time. I spent the other half working on side projects, learning new tools and technologies, catching up on new releases of the existing tools, reading books and articles on the industry and its trends, listening to podcasts and following technical steering committees of several programming languages. I still do.

I am no exception; I can imagine many of my fellow engineers have more or less of the same lifestyle. If this assumption holds true, they too may find themselves periodically explaining to their partners why they choose to live this seemingly unhealthy lifestyle. What is it that makes it so hard for some of us to leave our work in the office and adapt to what for so many (including many of our peers) is a healthy work-life balance?

I used to blame it all on our industry. I argued that the pace of development of new technologies is too fast to catch up with a nine to five working schedule; that the lucrative job positions in the industry are demanding of too many skills to acquire at workplace, that staying relevant in the field and getting ahead in the competition requires extra effort. I once used to compare the career of a software engineer in this day and age with that of a professional athlete; It is over when those of other people have just begun.

But it is something else. These arguments fall short in justifying our obsessions with the craft. They cannot explain how we stay up some nights, working our way towards fixing one last defect, refactoring working pieces of code to make use of the great new thing, reimplementing the application in a new language to save maintenance time and driving to work the next day with sparkling eyes because we had created something; fully aware that it may already be obsolete by the time we finish.

It is this cherished element of fun that makes us distinct members of the secret society of the exempt from work-life balance. For us, it is all about fun. And there will never be enough of it.

Related posts:

Suara pertemuan antara sendok piring terdengar bersahutan diantara ruangan yang mereka tempati saat ini. Yakni di salah satu Restaurant ternama Fogo de Chão Brazilian Steakhouse berlokasi tengah kota…

There are actually a lot of variables that impact the client's selection on obtaining your item. If you possess a site, then the second best factor you need to carry out is actually to construct…

The USA and Nigeria have a lot in common, and the disparity in their economic outcomes is not sufficient to invalidate this assertion. To a large extent, they are both conflations of diverse…