Yes, but the situation was much different than the one you have found yourself in.
As an "intern" I found myself at a very small company - literally just my boss, his son, and me. I was the only programmer. I loved the autonomy that came with being the only one who knew how to write code, and they were in desperate need of it. There was a lot to do, and they had a dream I believed in. I worked there - sometimes I even slept there I worked so late - for five years. They ended up giving me a salary of 48k per year (in 2006) and no healthcare or benefits. I worked every weekday and most weekends, lost contact with friends and family, and ate terribly because I wouldn't even take time to try and make healthy food. Spent those five years cramming shitty fast food down my throat every day.
There are several warning signs that are hopefully plain as day to people reading that.
1) an "internship" should be tightly directed learning under a mentor. If you are the only software engineer at your "internship" what they are really looking for is free labor.
2) No software engineering job should pay 48k in America.
3) No full time job should go without health insurance.
4) Under no circumstances should a person work 60-80 hour weeks, but particularly under that horrible pay and no benefits.
I stayed because I felt a misguided sense of loyalty to them, and because their desperation to make their small business work meant that I got a huge and diverse array of systems that I got to build, and I got full autonomy to build them. There was something deeply addicting about that: addicting enough that I didn't even think about how my finances were crumbling and I hadn't seen a doctor in half a decade.
I finally woke up from my addiction when I started encountering health problems and couldn't see a doctor.
After a lot of soul searching, I left - and instantly upon finding a new job realized just how badly they had abused my naivete and sense of loyalty. I make many multiples of that income now, but I will never regain the lost health, lost friendships, and years of earning potential.
My advice to people is that, no matter how fun the work involved in the job ITSELF is, you need to still take an honest assessment on a regular basis about whether it is worth it. Even a very fun and fulfilling job can be killing you, or underpaying you, or distancing you from your family and from other opportunities.
In your situation, you are earning a reasonable wage and it sounds like you are not being stretched thin by it. Feel free to look around, but I don't see your situation as dire or necessarily in need of change.
I don't think people can realize how bad the "inglorious" side of software engineering can be. That isn't to say don't look and see if you can find better, but recognize that you are already in a great situation. And also one where you can either comfortably look for a new job or do your own side projects to learn and grow in ways your job might not be providing.
Hard Work +
Market Analysis +
(Massive Luck OR Large upfront funding OR Large and relevant network of personal connections) +
Luck IRT externalities that can impact your business
I wasted my 20's because I didn't understand the formula above. I worked for a small startup and I thought the idea was great. I worked 80 hours a week and churned out massive improvements to the product as they pivoted over and over trying to find a foothold in the market. But now I realize that the failure was because of both a lack of market analysis and a failure in that third term: we had neither luck nor upfront funding nor a network of REAL connections that could make things happen for us. It was a recipe for disaster: for wasted effort and a wasted era of my life before I woke up and realized how unlikely it was that we would turn the ship around.
The unfortunate part is that the third factor - the Luck or funding or connections factor - is mostly only influenceable by how successful you already were before you started the venture. It is the "success begets more success" factor that is unpopular to talk about among people who want to believe that their success came exclusively from the sweat of their brow.
I feel like a large number of software engineer positions interview as if they are looking for computer scientists.
The distinction is subtle, but important in terms of what is needed for the role.
Most software engineers are going to be asked to solve problems and actively avoid recreating algorithms and libraries from scratch while doing so: it represents added time, risk of bugs, and complexity to do so for minimal gain in many cases.
For most software jobs, the more important role when it comes to algorithms is in choosing which algorithm is most relevant to a task, not implementing it from scratch. To do so is often wasting your companies' time.
It's unpopular, but most software engineering (including most of my own career) is closer to a plumber than a scientist. And you know what? We provide a lot of value as plumbers, as unsexy as it sounds.
It's for these reasons that I think leetcode is an unsuitable test for most software engineering positions.
Agreed with your concerns, though to me it sounds like this guy in the article is also trying to limit his hours spent on learning and side projects outside of work, which is healthy. But I think the case you bring up is more interesting and prevalent in our field.
I used to be the guy who lived in software development. Lived as in spent every waking moment doing something with development, including working stupid hours that in retrospect could not possibly have been productive. I woke up one morning and I was 30 years old, divorced in large part because I lived at work, had developed diabetes because I didn't take care of my body, and almost friendless because I chose my computer over my friendships nearly every time.
That wasn't living. When I finally woke up I realized that I had wasted my 20's: I was an addict getting a fix, not some genius reaching enlightenment.
Maybe some people are able to do both, but when I had that realization I decided to leave my software endeavors at work unless I knew it was a side project of a very short duration. If I wasn't being paid at my 40 hour a week - and not more than 40 hour a week - job, I needed to actively resist plunging into it as a default rather than vice versa.
As a result of this, I know I have become a worse engineer. But I also have a wife and kids, several hobbies, friends I care about who care about me, and while my health will never fully recover from developing diabetes I would say that I am in astonishingly better health than I was at 30. I will take that over my addiction to the software treadmill.
Whether this would work depends on the kind of system and the deadlines imposed by external needs of the company.
Does your system have a lot of (intentional or unintentional) emergent behavior, like a sandbox-heavy video game? You could end up never making a feature again.
Do your customers expect the frequent shipping of new features? Unless you can sell them on the idea of unexpected or infrequent addition of features, you could quickly lose your core audience.
However, if it is a product that no one is expecting tight deadlines on the release of new features, or the product's purpose is straightforward enough that there is no intentional emergent behavior in the system, then I could see someone running it in this way. I don't mean this in a cheeky way: there are definitely products that fit this criteria. It just won't be something that every product can reasonably do while also expecting to retain their user base.
I have been reading a book that was recommended to me, "From Strength to Strength": and while it is cheesy as fuck, the theory it presents is interesting and has made me think a lot about what has been driving my identity for the past 20 years, and how to pivot from an "addiction" to problem solving into the latter years of life, where you will more frequently be asked to rely on strategizing and helping others to succeed rather than performing the individual contributor tasks that you relied on for a feeling of fulfillment up to this point.
Maybe this will help you too, but I would recommend skipping the intro chapter if you do decide to read it. I almost put it down because the example being given in that chapter was so obviously fake and contrived. But ultimately I am glad that I continued reading it and would recommend it to someone in your situation.
How do you get around the CAN-SPAM act and GDPR for the sending of emails in response to posts, when the people being sent them haven't already signed up on the site?
I had to bend over backwards to try and make a workaround for that issue, basically by letting people manually send invite links if they weren't already registered for the site because of the restrictions around who you are allowed to send emails to, when, and for what purpose. It's a real pain in the butt, but maybe I didn't have to go that far?
It was articles like this one that got me paranoid about it, really set back my prototype as I went around trying to change features related to email as a result:
(for context though, I love your site! I just would love tips as someone thinking in this area who ran into what he thought was trouble in this area... I might have just been overly paranoid)
Coincidentally I've been working on a prototype that is almost the exact same idea. I had very similar motivations and a feeling that "slow social" (I was calling it the same thing even!) is something that can potentially break some people free from cycles of nonstop engagement and the unexpected downsides of always on, public and sharable social networks.
I hope you have success with it! Know that you're not alone in feeling like we need a solution like this. I think I'm far enough along with my prototype that I might as well see it through to completion anyways, but either way it's heartening to see that folks are feeling the same way I am about social networks.
As an "intern" I found myself at a very small company - literally just my boss, his son, and me. I was the only programmer. I loved the autonomy that came with being the only one who knew how to write code, and they were in desperate need of it. There was a lot to do, and they had a dream I believed in. I worked there - sometimes I even slept there I worked so late - for five years. They ended up giving me a salary of 48k per year (in 2006) and no healthcare or benefits. I worked every weekday and most weekends, lost contact with friends and family, and ate terribly because I wouldn't even take time to try and make healthy food. Spent those five years cramming shitty fast food down my throat every day.
There are several warning signs that are hopefully plain as day to people reading that.
1) an "internship" should be tightly directed learning under a mentor. If you are the only software engineer at your "internship" what they are really looking for is free labor.
2) No software engineering job should pay 48k in America.
3) No full time job should go without health insurance.
4) Under no circumstances should a person work 60-80 hour weeks, but particularly under that horrible pay and no benefits.
I stayed because I felt a misguided sense of loyalty to them, and because their desperation to make their small business work meant that I got a huge and diverse array of systems that I got to build, and I got full autonomy to build them. There was something deeply addicting about that: addicting enough that I didn't even think about how my finances were crumbling and I hadn't seen a doctor in half a decade.
I finally woke up from my addiction when I started encountering health problems and couldn't see a doctor.
After a lot of soul searching, I left - and instantly upon finding a new job realized just how badly they had abused my naivete and sense of loyalty. I make many multiples of that income now, but I will never regain the lost health, lost friendships, and years of earning potential.
My advice to people is that, no matter how fun the work involved in the job ITSELF is, you need to still take an honest assessment on a regular basis about whether it is worth it. Even a very fun and fulfilling job can be killing you, or underpaying you, or distancing you from your family and from other opportunities.
In your situation, you are earning a reasonable wage and it sounds like you are not being stretched thin by it. Feel free to look around, but I don't see your situation as dire or necessarily in need of change.
I don't think people can realize how bad the "inglorious" side of software engineering can be. That isn't to say don't look and see if you can find better, but recognize that you are already in a great situation. And also one where you can either comfortably look for a new job or do your own side projects to learn and grow in ways your job might not be providing.