Many people assume that solving those big, complicated problems is the hardest part of being a software engineer. Sure those problems are hard, but for many, they probably aren't the hardest part of their jobs. What do you do and what is the hardest part of your job?
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I recently became a technical lead and now I have a team of 2 that I am responsible for. At first, I assumed that I, plus 2 more people meant that we would get 3x as much work done as before and it would be a piece of cake. Oh boy, how wrong I was! Leading a team is HARD WORK! Figuring out exactly how much support each member needs and how to best give it to them while also continuing to technically contribute myself is tough. I have had to accept that contributing less is OK because my time is better spent sharing my knowledge and helping others on my team grow.
TL;DR The hardest part of my job is learning how to effectively lead a team.
I was in that position for two years more or less and was easy for me, my team was so proactive that was easy to advice and help when was necessary. I had to face one person going out of the team even the company and replace them with another person less qualified. None of those challenges modified my way of working, I did a daily starting meeting (like a daily scrum meeting) to schedule their tasks for the day. This allowed me to check what they were doing and identify their issues to plan helping chats. In addition, you have to assume you spend some time managing your team and you will not doing the same tasks as before, in some way, you are the expert and has to start the way of doing things or remove the rocks from the path.
Hope this can help you.
I am in the same situation! The hardest part for me is coping with the lack of actual coding time as I spend most of the time planning, assigning task and review everybody's else PRs. I feel like I am just less than 1/2 Dev in the team.
Leading a team takes a very different skill set then developing software. I've had different sizes of dev teams working under me - but for me, even managing myself is a hard thing, and managing other people as well is even harder.
Not having a leader in a company where only 10x engineers are retained. It's my first job, had to implement a full stack application from zero, not having mentories and not know if doing right exhaust me.
10x anything is a scam. Nobody is 10x.
10x not in the sense that devs are themselves productive but in the sense that they are required to meet ridiculous deadlines day-in and day-out.
That and they brag about the abuse they endure. Most toxic trend in the industry since the whole "need ten years experience with HTML5" three years after it came out.
Maybe is just work overtime all the time..
I had exactly the same problem in my previous job (it was my first job also), not having mentors and good project managers is a hell
I work in a startup and I can relate so much to this!
Coworkers. I'm the only venezuelan in a group of mexicans (which is ok) but, they sure don't understand me and I don't understand them and that's caused me more frustrations than normal 😅
Adapting to cultures is super difficult and even more so when you're an immigrant. I'm learning though :3
I'm Mexican, si tienes preguntas te puedo ayudar :)
For me it is actually navigating bureaucracy. Getting anything done takes ages because of rigidly defined processes, controls, policies, and compliance tasks. I have to engage with 11 teams external to my own in order to take an application from start to finish, and it is absolutely exhausting sometimes. Life in the enterprise.
11 teams?! Wow sounds like a big organization. We have 4 dev teams at Kenna and it already feels huge
Yeah, it’s a giant institution, everything is siloed still, so there is nonsense. If you need a SQL DB, first submit a hardware request to the provisioning team, then when that’s complete, submit a request to the data management team for your DB. That kind of stuff.
Let's not forget when PM pushes you to finish the app, but you haven't finished the whole proposed codebase design. Now you ends up writing spaghetti code for the first release and rewrite it from the scratch.
This is happening right now, I'm rewriting this f**** up codebase.
Explaining the existing codebase we're working on.
One time a new guy joined me as a team and it takes a MONTH to explain our existing codebase. I don't know maybe the doc I've written is not verbose enough 😄
And this guy also hardly working with Git and causes many conflict on the master branch (he didn't checkout a new branch to play around).
Knowing that it's a complete dead end and that I'll never really do anything I enjoy.
An architect that tells me to use something he doesn't know how to use himself. If you want me to inject something into my project, it should be on you to prove that it works. Also, being the only one who can get it to work somehow translates to me not properly understanding it. He speaks strictly in accusations, and it gets frustrating when I'm the only one who understands a problem yet I'm being told I don't understand a problem. Thankfully, he's mostly aloof and I deal with him only in weekly meetings.
Two jobs ago, the hardest part was holding to together from the stress. New requirements had to be delivered yesterday. We had no tests. More time was spent playing politics than working in a company of about 20 people. That company doesn't exist anymore.
In my last job, it went from learning how to Salesforce, to learning how to write good automated tests, to learning how to write good Sencha UI code, to learning how to write good automated tests, to learning how to write Capybara (selenium in Ruby tests), to learning how to support a team, to trying to change the culture, to finding a new job after three years of surprisingly unmarketable experience.
In my current job, it's dealing with clients while still delivering. They often want this, then this, then this - all while I'm still working on the thing before those! If I responded to every email with the depth I usually do, I'd have literally no time to work on features for them. So it's often in their best interests for me to delay in responding, or to give shorter answers.
The client balance is always hard, you want to give all of them the complete answer but you simply dont have the time.
Working for idiots.
I've had my share of stupid bosses/superiors, and I have to say that's absolutely the worst in my book.
Going to work knowing you'll be forced to do wrong things in a way that you know is wrong, that's a real problem for me. Especially when I know what the right thing to do is.
Solving problems is the fun part at work, at least for me.
About that - here's a free tip: 99.9% of the time, someone else have already encountered your current problem. They've done the hard work, they've solved it, and most importantly, they've posted the solution online. You just need to find it and adapt it to your specific needs.