Some developers get itchy feet after a year or so, some stay in the same place for years. If you are the latter - what is it that keeps you happily at the same place? Environment? Challenges? Access to lastest tools? Good management? ...
There was an interesting question this morning about why Why Did you pick your current job?. More interestingly, I think is why do you stay? What is it that keeps you happily working at your company? perks, environment, status, satisfaction, challenge? and what change at the company might make you leave? ...
I found this question on the issue: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/129508/when-did-you-know-it-was-time-to-leave-your-job. But I would like to get more "under-the-skin" on the responses. The other question's answers included commuting, personnel conflict, when you are not getting anywhere professionally speaking. Let's say I meet w...
In the course of my career I've noticed that developers working on new functionality are, as a rule, more cheerful than these assigned to troubleshooting and fixing bugs. Good tips on keeping business support a happy? Organising business support in the way that team's morale isn’t hurt? ...
Lately I have been bogged down with my job. I'm working on open source software all of my free time(outside of my job) and that is my passion. However my job zaps me for energy with endless meetings, talks with dumb customers, ridiculous deadlines and a boss riding my ass from the start of a project to the end(even though I'm the top pro...
Does anybody else feel like they need to change jobs every year or two to stay sane and happy or am I just in the wrong profession entirely? I think I am burned out both on my current job and burned out on programming in general. Let me explain. I have been a software engineer for going on 8 years and I am now nearly two years into my...
Greetings, Stack Overflow. My question today is, "How do I get from where I am at in my career and life to where I want to be?" Being unable to wander through every path in life, I seek heuristics (advice) from those who have or are travelling different paths. The Initial Condition I went to a technical school to become a video-game ...
My boss is against requiring our users to have secure passwords, even going so far to request they be setup by default to have passwords the same as their username. What should I do in this situation? What would you do? Update - Some users have brought up the question of whether the application needs high security. This isn't credit car...
Lately I was thinking about job interviews. Most of time you can see information about how to look for a employer, how much you can earn or what do you look for in new employer and how to show from your best side. My concern is slightly different. You go to job interview to a employer you would like to work for next 1 or 2 years (or mor...
Some days I feel a grand sense of accomplishment when I'm able to help a business improve what they do and capitalize on new opportunities. So what's your favorite part of being a programmer? I'm going to supply another answer, and it's sincere: Having such a rich community of programmers such as StackOverflow and not once have I se...
I'm a developer and have very much fun at nearly all stages of software developent, from gathering requirements, deciding on language, libraries and tools, sketching the architecture to implementing. Even bugfixing is fun. Unit testing is not. Writing a unit test is not that bad, I can get over it. But the quantity of work involved in t...
EDIT: This has been closed and I realise that I may not have been specific enough with the original title. I ask two questions here: The general one (Does a PhD help get a job?) which has been asked elsewhere, and the specific one (Is it possible to get work outside of the specific research field?). Assume I've already decided going to ...
I recently answered a question with a proposition that the asker should improve his resistant-to-change boss's legacy system by coding the alternative in his spare time and then presenting it as an alternative approach to his peers. It got me thinking about all the unpaid development work I have done in my working life. Although I know ...
Well, this question might be prone to discussion, but I'd really like to know your take on this, SPECIALLY if you are a Lead Programmer, Product Manager, or just if you have programmers that report to you. A little more than a year back, I started in this company, I was the only programmer there, and I still was in a Jr. level. So after...
I have an opportunity to make a career move to dba from developer. I graduated college two years ago and enjoy development but I feel like I need to be researching new technologies if I'm going to keep up with the industry. I enjoy development but I also find it fun when trying to come up with complex sql statements. I'm thinking of swit...
Hi guys, I've worked for some time(few years) for my company. As time passed, the important tasks with new technologies started to be given to my colleague although I've asked several times for more challenging projects. I believe this could be because I asked a few times for a raise when I had more responsibilities for the projects and...
What exactly do you do, and what do you love about your work? P.S. Im looking for technical stuff like an interesting domain, challenging problems and not non-technical factors like being self-employed, work-life balance, flexible hours etc. ...
When I was a teenager (about 8 years ago), programming used to be fun. That alone led me to study Systems Engineering. (Later, I found that SE wasn't only about programming, but that's another story.) However, my first experiences working as a programmer haven't quite been what I expected. Most of the time, those I work for don't expect ...
I started a new job recently. I've been a Java & XML Web Developer for two years. The new place I'm at has several large web applications, but none of them deploy to my local JBOSS server because some genius decided to create a Java Projects instead of a Dynamic Web Project. I tried following the steps to convert the project but that cre...
Suppose circumstances cause you to be transferred to a new team of programmers. This can happen for example because you are assigned to a new project within the same company, or after changing jobs. After a while you begin to realize that your new team members have very bad programming habits: there code contains a lot of duplication, is...