Hey, first of all, thanks for being the first reply on my first post ever!

Congrats on achieving the change! I like your framing of the positive take, as I too definitely believe we accomplish things by taking small steps in the right direction.

I also get where you're coming from with regards to discipline; I hadn't thought of it that way yet, as it being something that "forces" us to do something we actually don't want to be doing. I also think you can approach it from a positive side though, as being a kind of "habit" that you have built through intentional, hard work.

I believe that the more fundamental issue is that too many devs are 1) working on the wrong thing and 2) too disconnected to the users of their product, especially in larger companies.

1) I work at an early stage startup, and besides the tech challenges, what brings me most joy is our mission and vision of the product: to reduce the amount of time healthcare professionals are stuck doing administrative work, in turn allowing them to more effectively deliver care. I admit I was lucky to find a place building a product I can care about, and that it's a privilege. But for the love of god, please (try to) work on something you actually care about. For me that means building something that adds value to society, instead of e.g. trying to make [big corp] more money by ad optimization. I don't think I would feel fulfilled working on something like that, even if the engineering challenges of working on such a project could be great and fun.

2) The author mentions that doctors avoid leaving the sector, because they can see the impact they're having on their patients. It seems to me he missed the obvious analogy to us developers and the users of our software. If you never engage with the users of your product (which I do believe happens a lot, especially at larger companies), how will you know what value and joy it brings them? Staying close to the user, trying to understand them, is imo one of the most important (and fulfilling) things we can do as developers. It also allows us to do a better job, not in the least as a result of actually caring how your software will affect people.

TL;DR try to work on something you actually care about

Regarding your joy in working in tech, what types of administrative work can technology reduce for healthcare professionals? I find it depressing to see my general practitioner in front of a computer, typing in stuff, taking more time than it used to with paper.

Thanks for the interest! The things you mention are exactly what we are looking to solve! Basically we are doing speech recognition specifically for the healthcare domain, so that for instance your GP or nurse can just report by voice instead of typing. It can really save them a lot of time that they can then spend to provide better care.

Also, electronic health record systems (EHRs) like Epic generally have horrible UX, e.g. navigating to a specific page might take 6+ clicks. We'd like to improve that by for example enabling navigation by voice, filling in forms by voice, etc.

This seems like a fantastic idea. Voice assistant which could replace mundane navigation through web interface seems would be desirable for a greater good. Good luck with execution!