The brain melt is real. Some days are so hard you can barely manage deciding to get up from the couch to get some food. When your job is to solve problems, the last thing you want to do when you come home, is solve problems.
For those who aren't familiar with tech jobs: Brain melt is like a burnout. But you get it from a single day of work, from the actual work itself. (Not from the stress of having a boss shout at you all day.) And a good nights sleep can usually solve it.
Yeah, Brain melt happens to me too. My family thinks I am just lazy. I hate that everyone thinks it is like a "normal" job where you learn something and repeat it every time.
I just don't understand why people can't understand that this IS hard work lol it really is. And again, this is coming from someone who has worked all types of jobs.
@@fknight Right? lmao. I've worked physically intensive jobs too and at least by the end of it i can mentally function. Back at my old software job, some days, I couldn't even load up a video game because my brain was so totally shot.
Whenever someone tells me that software engineer is an easy job I ask "yeah? why don't you do it then?" and in that moment they realize that it would take them a lot to become developers themselves. That assuming they have the intelligence needed in the first place.
That's not what standup is for. It's not about reporting to PM or your manager. It's about informing the team itself about where the team is at in relation to the committed goal. It's about syncing up with each other and to see if other team members can help unblock you if needed, including the scrum master.
@@peterparker1119 I didn't like it at first, ngl. I was more interested in astrophysics & chemistry before. But idk, the more that I learn about programming, the more that I love doing it
Yeah, I can relate with the “brain melt” lol. At least for me, a lot of that comes from having to keep track of tons of object and variables that are written throughout my projects, and you get to a certain point in the day where you just can’t maintain that focus anymore
That's an interesting perspective! I always felt super drained after jobs I had interacting with the public. Not to say sometimes it isn't frustrating dealing with a bug you're stuck on, but generally the problem-solving energizes me!
The thing I hate most about it is the constant ego games with other devs. You always have to walk this fine line of asking for help and appearing confident.
My experience of standup is pretty good when it's weekly. Tried daily but it became like a school register and lost the point. Can see how the blocker bit can work for some people, but more often than not if there is a problem people will know about it way before standup.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT PROFESSIONALS or pmp's. In any large-enough org these dull, incurious people suck the joy out of doing work by imposing rigid structure, separating people and their projects into silos of "deliverables" passed through "gates". Only one thing matters to them: not the work, not the functionality, not the quality, not the future opportunities, not the pride of solving a hard problem, the ONLY thing that matters to them is the answer to the question "When will it be done?". One of the most valuable lessons I learned is to never give these people a date-- never casually estimate when something will be done. No matter how many conditions you put on it, no matter how much you couch it in uncertainty, if you give any kind of calendar date it will be recorded as a HARD DEADLINE in their minds and on their fussy spreadsheets or on their insipid "tracker" tools.
But in SCRUM, it is essential to provide a completion time. This is one of the reasons I am no longer a SW developer, but instead rather a dull-administration worker and I have used my skills to silently automate the dull tasks for myself by writing a program with no manager always asking me when it will be done and what I have done yesterday. This would indeed make it much more wrecking and dramatic, because I have many times stumbled upon a small peculiar bug which took me long time to figure out. With a manager over me, I would every single time be humiliated and made to feel as a complete failure for not being able to adhere to the holy obligatory due date which I have freely determined, no pressure was present, of course, it was surely completely only in my head, so I am completely incompetent and paranoid and should visit a psychiatrist, take pills and work for the minimum wage, as I am surely not worth more, so there is no point in asking for a raise. Thus, I believe that this is the ideal state of things - everyone should be able to program themselves what makes their work simpler and profit from the program directly, as it makes their work easier, so they reduce their effort per dollar, as opposed to the prevailing state of matters when programming companies write stuff for people - in this case, programmers do not enjoy the simplification of the job thanks to the program they have written, but instead, once they have finished writing the program, they have immediately more and more tasks piled up, so they, as a human resource, can be fully exploited to the benefit of their bosses - vacations, women, luxury, etc. Of course, even in my proposed scenario, workers are exploited, but not in the area of programming, but in another area, but in this case, programming is not the target of exploitation, but it helps alleviate the weight of exploitation and this way bring the profit to the worker himself.
Here's one. I went from a certified automotive mechanic/technician. To Junior software developer as a result of a medical incident. It's fun ripping new (you know what's) in those that think it's an easy job. I do not miss the 10+ hour days, only getting paid on the book time. Or spending 1/3 of my pay on overpriced specialty tools. Didn't want to sit in front of a screen all day. But at least im still working.
fish tanks and plants are a must, easy escape into nature while drinking coffee. I’m excited for the future of this path and I really appreciate the honesty of this channel on this topic
I watched a lot of your videos (not all of them but most of the topic I found interesting for me at the moment) and I'd like to thank you for making me feel more confident about my choice of career. A lot of aspects in the field looks like huge mountain of work and imposter syndrome kick in really hard sometimes but you're so relatable that it's reassuring to watch you talk about it. My imposter syndrome is almost gone now and now I don't fear anything that I don't know I just get better and learn more. Thanks a lot!
Our bodies suffer quickly when we sit for 8 hours at a desk each day. If you want to avoid pain and health problems as a programmer it is absolutely mandatory to have some kind of regular exercise. You don't have to become a body builder. Just a pick an exercise that you are able to perform consistently multiple times per week. While I don't envy people with manual labor jobs, they have to worry less about exercising.
stand ups are much better when they're just 2 or 3 days a week. daily is really annoying, it's like having someone hovering over you constantly, and you feel this pressure to get something tangible done every single day. i guess it's good for accountability and keeping others up to date, but i like to be left alone to do my work a bit more than that
When my family sees me working on a project, whether it's a web application, or even a game I want to make, my entire family sees it as if I'm just playing games. "Get off your game and get some work done. Learn something."
That happens to me all the time, i am a selft taught web developer and i study electronic engineering, and my parents do this every time i code something.. and im furious then
@@mateomalaj3278 100%. Im self-taught and have been working on a portfolio (now finished) that included programming a few games. Whilst doing it members of my family would accuse me of not doing anything and being lazy. Once I programmed a game, showed it to my mum and her response was "great, why don't you do something useful". It seems people only think you are actually "working" if you make a bucket load of money doing it or it looks physically hard.
I'm also a long haired dev. I remember my old company had a town hall meeting. I was sitting next to my boss, and he made a comment (just loud enough for all to hear) that my hair is getting a bit long and I might have to consult HR about it. The HR lady turned right around and said "I can't say anything about that, that's his choice. If the ladies can, so can he". I was so proud of her for that 🤣.
I call it "Brain Drain" - and it's really taxing. I worked in the trades before, and friends are like "how can you be tired, you work at a desk in the A/C" - but its way more exhausting than physical labor.
I graduate in 2 weeks, I got my first SWE job two weeks ago and I start next Tuesday. Imposter syndrome is creeping in, taking a bit of time off of coding has me feeling rusty and not ready. It’s adding up, lol.
when imposter syndrome attacks fight back with learning. Read about the stack. Review the docs for tools and frameworks that you'll use everyday. You can't have every answer early on; but you CAN learn where and how to find answers by knowing your way around the docs, tutorials, and blogs of people that have more experience. Familiarity fosters comfort.
but know this: you'll never know it all. In time you'll simply become less threatened by that fact. The learning never stops; because the tech constantly changes.
I totally get you! I'm not a fan of daily stand ups or working for someone else either, so I built my own business. I experienced imposter syndrome a lot in the process but with proper mindset, I was able to overcome it. Nice video, Forrest!
I finished my 3 year apprenticeship last month (going to school and working) and am officially a developer but I’m not happy about it, i mean i love coding but the past year (working from home) has been hard. exams, many jira tickets and stress... for me i find it often hard to „shut down“ my brain. Like i feel „brain melt“ but I can’t stop thinking about solutions to problems. Weed helps tho, still Its a pain in the ass. Standups is the only time of the day i see/hear my colleagues, so I kinda grew to like them more
Brain melt is definitely the most difficult part. I just want to shut my brain off after a long day, but still want to be there for my kids. It's a rough line to walk
To your last point: I used to work as a CNC programmer at a large machine shop and we occasionally promoted blue collar machine operators up to CNC programmers. They all universally came in thinking something like "Oh, hell yea, cushy office job", "No more sweating out in the shop", or something to that effect. They VERY quickly realized they are now having to deal with a different type of fatigue that can be way more brutal sometimes. Many chose to go back to the shop just to not have to deal with the stress.
Did the manual labor for 6 years 12-18 days. Got a job in the IT sector and sat at a computer screen for 8 hours and nearly passed out. Sometimes I would "burst" for 2 hours straight trying to figure something out. I remember the first time my brain I would say just shutdown? Like I was incoherent? It was wild. But yeah, Iv seen both sides. And both equally challenging/demanding
Same as you, recently i found out that i prefer to exercise pre work (even if its freezing cold in the dawn) than doing it post work. Physical fatigue at least lets you think, brain melt doesnt.
Oh I feel the standup pain... Our 5 minutes standups turned into half an hour offtopic chatter every single day 🤮 + we used JIRA and 🍉 - how much more reporting does one need?
I've had a frustrating offshoot of the brainmelt problem. I work as a System Analyst (with dev background). As the only computer guy in the extended family, *everyone* comes to me as their "tech support" or for advice like "I need a laptop for school within this price range ____, what's good?" (oddly specific, huh? lol. That was just this morning). They don't understand after researching and solving problems for 40-50 hours a week, then solving my own problems, I don't want to spend my minimal off time researching and solving their problems too. And I don't have the kind of time to keep up with every new laptop, phone, gfx card, tv, etc, so research and a time investment is always required.
Really feeling with you regarding the daily standups. In my current project they can take up to around 30 minutes or more, and it often feels really pointless and that we just have them for the sake of formalities. Really kills the flow of a working day.
Standups shouldn't feel like reporting to authority, they should feel like informing the team where you are at and serving as a springboard for informal discussions. Rule of thumb, if ever a scrum meeting feels like a roll call, it's not being done right. Daily scrum should feel like friends sorting out a round of drinks at a party. I recommend 'walking the board', where you go over work tickets in turn, rather than three questions.
I always kinda get the vibe that standup meetings are more for managers so they can listen to the devs give status updates. They always make me feel uncomfortable because I feel like I’m just repeating myself and most devs don’t really care what you did during the day lol. If I run into a problem I’m not going to wait until standup to bring it up…I’m going to post it on slack for the devs to help. Awesome video man!
These complaints apply to basically any job where your main role is working with computers in a technical manner. I was a developer for 8 years. I've been a systems admin/analyst for the last 15. I liked that former better, but it's like choosing between walking over hot coals or broken glass. Imposter syndrome abounds for all of us man. Humans weren't meant to act like machines, with machines. We are supposed to be expressive.
I am a professional sw engineer for thirty years and took a few years off in between because it was too much. Now I have a good balance; I always work from home so I can schedule my hours in a way that suits me the best. I am convinced that screen/thinking work should not be done for more than six hours a day. People are not made for that. Another tiring thing is that you constantly needs to keep up with new technology. Once you have learned something new, it is almost out dated again. And when do you learn it? In your own time of course.
Hey man, your videos really helped me get my shit together and organise my life. Just got my first frontend internship as a first year CompSci student! Thanks a lot for your work!
Do not aggree with the standup point you made. Especcialy during covid. For me it's a good thing to just talk and get a bit of team feeling again with these daily standups. Instead of just looking at the jira board
Very good video! I'm in industrial automation field and this all relates to me as well. One thing that they never told us in school is that pro automation devs needs a week off every month. Otherwise, burnout and brain turning into applesauce will occur!
But where on earth will those greedy businessmen grant you such luxury? They will rather squeeze every bit of energy out of you and then replace you with new, fresh and enthusiastic graduates and so forth.
@@alexandrecouture2462 Automation is a significant part of programming. I know this stuff about rarity, but from my experience, managers will rather invest in some HR campaign, offer a bounty for finding a new programmer and whine in media about the deficit of workers and organize paid bootcamps rather than change anything about their approach to workers.
Daily stand ups are important to keep the team in sync. In smaller teams it makes less sense, but as a team gets bigger, you need it have visibility. No one is going to look at what everyone else is working.
If you're a student or self learning, go as long as you can or you feel comfortable with and when you start to burn out take a few days or a week off. Feels so good to just wind down
Just stumble upone this video. The worst thing for me is bringing work to home, meaning you still bash your head solving something after you "finished with today". I don't think other professions have that in that regard as software developer, and they can have much more defined after work hours not thinking about work at all.
Consider yourself lucky if you really like CS I made the decision to study Mechanical Engineering when I was too young to know what I want to do. I got a job as Mechanical Engineer, worked for 3 years, then realized what I have been enjoying the most during my UG studies were the programming stuffs that I got to do. So 7 years after, I am studying again to become a software engineer. So yeah, enjoy your time as CS student, it will be very rewarding.
I think that the best way how to utilize a CS degree is to take a dull administration job and automatize it silently with your knowledge. This way, your coding will not be complicated by silly managerial stuff.
Going into my first internship this summer. Agile will be interesting... but I do appreciate having the tools to get help that this program is offering
7:20, I know that feeling. In my case, I could make it work but it doesn't feel right and the code doesn't look clean and I feel it will be hard to maintain in the future. When I got that, I will take a rest and sleep. When I wake up I watch something and going there looking for inspiration about how to make it clean. Sometimes take a day, two days, or even a week. But, when I got the solution I feel easier to code and because I stop during that time, I just need to change few things. I can't imagine if I didn't stop coding, I will have to change all of those codes. Just an advice, if your brain can't think straight then you make mistakes, and things just getting ugly, you should stop.
I went to school for CS at Claremont McKenna/Harvey Mudd in the late 90’s. The repetition, and the isolation for 8 to 16 hours a day is ultimately what made me find something else. Been a live sound engineer for the past seven years, and a recording engineer for ten before that. Except for Covid shutting my industry down for nearly a year and a half, I couldn’t have been happier with my choice.
Stand up's are the best way to evaluate if you are in the right team or the right company. It can be a great time to help others or get helped, if you are not a solo kinda guy :) ..i don't have the patience to read others tickets in jira
3:35 - People often forget to update their cards and I know that I'm guilty as well. I don't look at it as a report to anyone, but more of a status update for everyone. This way the teams can know if someone needs help or if we need to reestimate things! 5:38 - That sucks that you had the traditional corporate environment. At my job (not Silicon Valley) we had someone wear sweats almost every day, I wore chacos a lot too lol. I think it's just a company thing 7:07 - Brain melt is definitely real. Breaks are important! Then you gotta make sure your decisions at home are minimal. Decision fatigue is a very real thing. And lol at the ending!
If anyone makes fun of you for your looks you should just punch them in the face.Its not you're out of place. It is that they are out of place. I've been an engineer over ten years and never have I worked in an environment which requires me to dress up. I once went to my first day at a job a little dressed up and HR came around and told me to dress down. I literally had a HR rep come around and tell me not to wear a tie. The next way I showed up in shorts even though it was snowing outside. I really like how you say a proper scrum should be about 10 minutes - if done right. Sometimes my scrums take an hour. People start discussing implementation details which the team and I could care less about but on it goes. Documenting progress… very few engineers write any documentation. Even me. I've been handed enough projects with little to no docs. I have written docs but sometimes I feel like I'm doing the next dev a disservice providing them with useful information. I do always come back to writing docs helps not only devs but clients and ultimately the goal is to provide quality software. Software rarely dies putting into place constructs like documentation that eliminate risks and facilitate evolution of the product is part of delivering quality products.
I can only recommend to anyone who experiences brain melt to write cleaner, better designed code (learn and use design patterns) plus testing everything. the brain melt usually comes from relying too much on your "brain RAM". if u write small functions and use clearly defined design patterns and every function and class u write has a unit test accompanied with it. Then u don't need to use ur brain so much and you will feel much better in general. And for those who think "but dude, this way of writing code takes so much longer, i have deadlines to attend to." -> no it doesn't. if u get good at it, it actually takes less time, because the amount of bugs u have to fix after writing good code is pretty much 0.
Project estimates are the worst, although standups are dumb AF. I had a manager who claimed he could account for unforeseen issues, so why couldn't I? Once he asked, how long will this take? I immediately said "two weeks" because after enough experience, I knew it would take about 4 days of thinking and tinkering, 3 days of polishing and debugging according to the original requirements, and 3 days of adjusting to revamped requirements. He said, "that's too long". So I said, "seven days" based upon if they get the original requirements right. He said, "Now you're just low-balling to make me happy." So I said, "when do you need it?" He got very mad. It took two weeks, by the way.
I found myself being less disciplined with my sleep schedule on weekends and every time i had a weekend where i stuck to the weekday schedule the weekdays after became so much easier.
We can see a lot of contents here on youtube about software development and tech stuff, but it's amazing how you can share the real life of a software engineer and the things that we go through. I'm kind of a lone wolf and I don't share much about my work and how I feel about it with other people.. I had so many destructive thoughts about myself and my carreer because we are used to seeing on social media "software engineers with superpowers" and I'm definitely the opposite of it but when I watch your videos, read the comments I know I'm not alone... and actually that's the real life! haha I love what I do! And I try to get better every single day, but those fake super productive and heroes developers make us feel like shit! but I definitely don't buy that anymore! haha
Ok. So the look thing… I’m sorry you experienced this… I’m not in silicon valley, but when my job made me dress “professionally” I just got a different job. I found places to work that value you being you. I can’t tell from this video if you’re still a software engineer… I hope you find a good job soon. Also, I don’t like being at a desk all day, but lots of jobs offer free lunch/hangout space/snacks/game rooms/etc and encourage you to take breaks frequently! WFH has made my dime at a desk very high. I have to remind myself to get up more often than when I was in office. Anyway, thanks for the video
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I guess the most important aspect of having a standup/daily or however you call it, is to report issues (delays, bugs, etc.) and if they affect the timeline/deadline. This also includes not knowing how to resolve an issue and whether you require assistance from another team member
I definitely see what you mean, and let me know if you see this differently, but wouldn't you want to shed some light on an issue as soon as you can? For example, say I get stuck and need some help around 1pm. I'd prefer to ask at that moment rather than wait until the next morning's standup.
@@fknight You are giving a good example, thanks for bringing that up. I agree with you, getting in touch with the team asap should be the rule of thumb here. If you manage to do so right away, great. If your team member is out of office already, then you'd probably go for the daily/standup (assuming it's taking place in the morning or evening). However there are more aspects to why the daily/standup is not that useless: - The team not being transparent enough about the current state in the backlog - Team members not communicating well enough - Time zone differences - ... In an ideal team the daily/standup could be dispensable. In the end it's kind of situational.
I really wish there was a good way to be active when working on a computer. To your point I love being outside or just moving around, but writing code doesn’t mesh well with that for me unfortunately.
Brain melt is a real thing. The number of headaches I have from coding. Sometimes, I wake up with the headache from the day prior. I've started trying to limit the number of decisions I have to make to help ease the pain. I wear the same types of clothes every day. I eat the same lunch every day. Whatever I can do to not have to think more than I have to lol.
I run my stand-ups with the following mentality. It's a 10 to 15 minute investment on everyone's part where we all get to hear of some of the challenges being faced in parts of the system or new approaches. I figure a 10% chance per stand-up that something serendipitous happens and we all get better and faster either as a team or as individual software developers.
Try to change the daily stand up from "person perspective" to "task prespective". It might help be less boring. From "talking about what you did yesterday, what you'll do today" to "this task is giving me a hard time, I could use help. This other task is done."
@@beckham955 I usually take 5 minutes before stand-up to look at what tasks I did the day(s) before and write down in a notepad what I will say during the meeting. If I had a text reader would be a replacement for my person in daily meetings
3 года назад
I much prefer 30 minute meetings that could have been an email. Then you get 30 mins to turn off your brain and stare at the wall 👌
On my team for standups we just look at our jira board and go down the list of active items rather than focus on going around the group to share what we did.
very nice video.. Like you, I don't like doing the same thing every day. How I have Delt with that is I do both development and design so switching gears helps and some days it is all code, some it is all design. Another thing that will help with the sitting something every Dev should have. A standing desk. Now you are not sitting. Stand up are not for people checking in on you. it is meant for the team to communicate. More so to deal with blockers, know who is working on what, and deciding which tickets need to be a priority. I don't know where you have worked, but all the dress codes I have dealt with have been super relaxed if there even was one. I think one said pants no shorts... No advice about brian melt... That stuff is real. Sometimes it feels like my brain is on fire... But your points are valid. It proves my point there is no "perfect job" no matter the career path one chooses there will always be busywork that is annoying to do. It is just a matter of finding ones that have the least annoying.
If your daily standup is used to report to someone, then the company is not exercising scrum the right way. standup is a dev team meeting, PO and scrum master are optional. If the team agrees standup is not necessary it can be dropped imo. The thing about standup is: If you are a person who can manage their workload on their own, standups are useless. you know what to do yourself. But some people don't have that capability. You need to tell them what to do next and they will happily hack the code. It's those people that could benefit from a proper standup in terms of direction and motivation
These comments are really depressing, especially because they're so bereft of class analysis. Class exists y'all. If you don't own what you labor you are a member of the working class. From the lowliest Mcdonald's worker to the superstar athlete, we are ALL united by our class. Think about your own personal experiences in the corporate workplace. There are fundamental contradictions that cannot be solved because of profit motives. Now imagine if your workplace was run democratically and the programming projects you were working on in the office were determined by a higher cause than just "muh make money buy nice car." Sure there are satisfying things about coding jobs now, but think about how much more satisfying it could be if people stopped blindly assuming that capitalism is the only system that's ever and will ever exist
Standups just turn into another backwhipping exercise. 20 years in and most of the agile process as implemented in most companies just gives me the shits.
I dont mind daily updates. It sets up the project and a venue to raise concern. Take it on a project management stand point. Not everyone updates tickets and thats venue to do so.
Sitting in an office 8 hours a day is a benefit! Much better than in the sun and heaven forbid doing something physically demanding (although we pay the price in the long term for staying seated). But for real I love being able to do something active after work at full capacity!
I love to stare at the computer screen all day, and after I'll finish my day, stare at pc all night. What I don't like about being a software engineer is everything that is not involving engineering.
I recently spoke with a Staff Engineer at my company about standups and he made an interesting observation. We are creatures of habit. Standups are not only used to help the team be involved with whatever you’re working on, but it also acts as a habit trigger that allows your brain to “go into work mode.” This means that whatever you do after standup will eventually become easier for you to do because your brain is trained to expect it. So make sure whatever you do after standup is meaningful because it’s a trigger that’ll be there everyday for you. Use it to your advantage. Pure wisdom from a Staff Engineer
Looking at this in the wrong frame of reference: software development is mostly about psychology -- there are controlling people, abusive people, deluded people, people who are in a cult, and so on. Here and there there are nice helpful open minded productive people too.
I am currently a network engineer with a computer science degree and I want to change my profession to software engineer. I enjoy solving problems and I am good at my work, but I’m burned out and tired of being on call 24/7 and sacrificing my life and time with my family for “the man”. Please give me some pros and cons to following a career as a software engineer.
I don't know... but I do know it's up to us as individuals to set boundaries.... for ex. how much we work and so on. You can choose to only accept jobs that respect a normal work life balance. Many companies ask nothing of their employees outside of their 40 hour work week (or whatever amount of hrs you work). You will for sure burn out being on call 24/7! You need 1 or 2 days a week to rest, play, and not be bothered!
I have long hair and beard and don't look so well groomed. I would also argue that I don't dress the best either. But I have made it a enviromental issue that I refuse to buy new clothes just to look good. That I buy my clothes and 2nd hand shops and it takes longer time to find something that I like. I weight it up with my charisma in interviews and my passion for the job.
I love coding. I work a minimum of 11 hours a day by choice, and on a good day, I can sit up to 16 hours in front of the screen. I have been doing that for 25 years. The thing I hate about software development these days is the ceremonies. Documentation for the sake of it, unit testing for the sake of it, standups, catchups, meetings, retros, PTWs, design sessions... It's endless, and corporations keep piling in more and more onto their developers. Software development has become an assembled line. During work hours, very little code is generated. I miss the old days.
I see your point, sometimes it feels like "processes over people". Companies like to use formal processes for tracking progress and managing risk which is understandable. However, it can drive motivation down and having more meetings is rarely a solution to a problem.
Yeah. The time that Software Engineering was the job for what I call "colourful people" is past. The suits have moved in. There still are plenty of SE places without too many suits, though. You just may have to look around a bit. Silicon Valley is a good guess. But it may not be within traveling distance.
