Not even a new thing either. Barely any jobs are done because people want to do specific types of work, and those jobs tend to be severely underpaid (teaching, social services).
People didn’t flock to factories in the 60s and 70s because they wanted to work in a factory, they wanted the pay and benefits. Same for office work today.
It’s not possible to flourish in my line of work without genuine engagement, and a tenacity beyond curiosity to solve certain problems. A jobsworth will not do.
Neither, on the other hand, will a soulless boss or employer, manage to engage.
“You can’t flourish as a corporate lapdog without a genuine passion for being a corporate lapdog. I should know, im a very successful corporate lapdog. My manager tells me im a good boy almost every week. The managers can tell if your heart isnt in it when you lick their face and their boots, if you dont have tenacity and a go getter attitude you’ll never be able to be a successful corporate lapdog like me. Its not easy making money for other people.”
Look mate, I’ve been in Software Development for almost 3 decades, mainly in the Technical careed path (did some Project Management but, frankly, it’s not my thing) and all the way to Technical Architect, in 3 different countries and most of it as a contractor, so I worked in quite a number of companies and work environment.
(I’m not trying to pull rank here, just showing that I’ve seen a lot)
In my experience, things like Enthusiasm are what bright eyed naive junior developers have: they’re like me as a teen in the swiming pool having learnt to swim by myself and never having had lessons - intense strokes trowing water all over the place but moving very little for all that effort, or in other words lots of effort with little in the way of results.
Worse, Enthusiasm doesn’t last forever and, further, most of the work than needs to be done is not exactly stimulating (if it was fun, people wouldn’t have to pay money to others for doing it).
People who get at least some enjoyment of their work are good to have (and I’m lucky that after all these years I still get those moments of great enjoyment when at the end of doing something insanelly complex it all works), but in the real world most work that needs to be done is needed but boring so fun in that kind of task by itself won’t be enough, plus such people are actually uncommon beyond the bright eyed young things, so if you want somebody who will actually deliver you results (rather than work a lot to achieve little) and you’re not a prestigious company (say, like Google, which leverages their brand recognition to pull in such bright young things by the bucket load and drip them out drained of on the other side) and can’t pay well above average, you’re highly unlikely to get those kinds of people.
What you really want is people who have things like professional pride: they want to do a good job because they see themselves as professionals and feel a professional responsability to deliver good results in an efficient way that doesn’t hinder the work of others.
I’ve seen over the years people with your perspective heading Startups or teams within small companies, and invariably they end up with unproductive teams filled with inexperienced people making all the mistakes in the book (and inventing new ones), enthusiastically. Maybe the people seeking such workers should’ve asked themselves what their real objective is in that: is it deliver the results needed by the company so that it prospers and grows or is it the pleasure of being surrounded by people having fun.
R&D, software and embedded systems.
Small team, hugely collaborative by its nature and sometimes find ourselves faced with problems / puzzles with no apparent solution or precedent. Hugely rewarding when we can crack them.
I do genuinely feel for other respondents who seem to be bitter or cynical - despite the banter.
Ah, no concreted metrics for efficiency and delivery of results.
Explains why you prioritize employees who have fun on the job rather than efficient professionals who are there to do a job well done - you can’t really like to like compare with other teams (much less the broader industry) when it comes to delivering objectives because it’s all open ended and unique, so you really don’t know for sure which kind of employee is more effective but you do know for sure which kind is more fun to work with, hence you prioritize what you can measure - a fun team - not what is more effective and efficient.
Most work out there in software development is not “cracking interesting problems for fun without a strict timeline”, it’s “integrate new functionality into an existing massive custom-made system, which has at least 3 different styles of programming and software design because different people have worked on it over the last 8 years and only not a complete mess of spaghetti code if you’re lucky” - not really the kind of work were Enthusiasm lasts long, but it still has to be done and sometimes, millions, tens of millions and even hundreds of millions in yearly revenue of some company or other rides in doing that job well and in a timelly fashion.
Don’t take this badly, but from where I’m standing you’re in the playground sandbox of software engineering. No doubt it’s fun and even an environment others would love to be able to work in, it’s just not the place for professionals and doesn’t really reflect most of the software development being done out there, so not exactly a representative environment for determining what kind of professionals are suitable for the wider industry.
A lot of what you’re saying is spot on and I respect your experience in this and the other comment.
I don’t hire for fun though. I hire for a diversity of perspectives, integrity and authenticity. We teach people how to constructively challenge and go after problems or objectives that may have no off the shelf solution (if they do, we may acquire it).
The problems are usually P&L quantified and prioritised before they get to us - we only have to do that legwork if it’s something we’ve generated.
It does feel like a playground to a degree and I do love the work - perhaps yes it’s less ‘professional’ and structured. We do have experienced devs and architects who I would hope aren’t reproducing problems - but it’s often our job to find a technical solution (if appropriate) to a problem, not to ‘productionise’ it or maintain it. This involves a handoff to others in the business and they ultimately determine how it is rolled out.
I get that this isn’t typical of the market and thanks for your response / take on this. One thing we have to be careful of is being ‘institutionalised’ and that will come across as naive, perhaps it is, but that has been a help.
That means that the HR account thinks what the employee account wrote is bad, too. Both posts are bad extremes.
As an employee, if i find a prospective colleague who doesn’t ask about what they’re supposed to be doing at all, I’d be wary of them, too.
To many people nowadays, the actual job itself doesn’t matter, it’s the fact that it’s a job and it pays.
Not even a new thing either. Barely any jobs are done because people want to do specific types of work, and those jobs tend to be severely underpaid (teaching, social services).
People didn’t flock to factories in the 60s and 70s because they wanted to work in a factory, they wanted the pay and benefits. Same for office work today.
Seriously though. I wouldn’t hire someone with that attitude.
deleted by creator
Yeah ok people.
It’s not possible to flourish in my line of work without genuine engagement, and a tenacity beyond curiosity to solve certain problems. A jobsworth will not do.
Neither, on the other hand, will a soulless boss or employer, manage to engage.
So keep up with the downvotes and good luck.
“You can’t flourish as a corporate lapdog without a genuine passion for being a corporate lapdog. I should know, im a very successful corporate lapdog. My manager tells me im a good boy almost every week. The managers can tell if your heart isnt in it when you lick their face and their boots, if you dont have tenacity and a go getter attitude you’ll never be able to be a successful corporate lapdog like me. Its not easy making money for other people.”
Wow. What’s happened to you to make you so cynical?
Life.
Look mate, I’ve been in Software Development for almost 3 decades, mainly in the Technical careed path (did some Project Management but, frankly, it’s not my thing) and all the way to Technical Architect, in 3 different countries and most of it as a contractor, so I worked in quite a number of companies and work environment.
(I’m not trying to pull rank here, just showing that I’ve seen a lot)
In my experience, things like Enthusiasm are what bright eyed naive junior developers have: they’re like me as a teen in the swiming pool having learnt to swim by myself and never having had lessons - intense strokes trowing water all over the place but moving very little for all that effort, or in other words lots of effort with little in the way of results.
Worse, Enthusiasm doesn’t last forever and, further, most of the work than needs to be done is not exactly stimulating (if it was fun, people wouldn’t have to pay money to others for doing it).
People who get at least some enjoyment of their work are good to have (and I’m lucky that after all these years I still get those moments of great enjoyment when at the end of doing something insanelly complex it all works), but in the real world most work that needs to be done is needed but boring so fun in that kind of task by itself won’t be enough, plus such people are actually uncommon beyond the bright eyed young things, so if you want somebody who will actually deliver you results (rather than work a lot to achieve little) and you’re not a prestigious company (say, like Google, which leverages their brand recognition to pull in such bright young things by the bucket load and drip them out drained of on the other side) and can’t pay well above average, you’re highly unlikely to get those kinds of people.
What you really want is people who have things like professional pride: they want to do a good job because they see themselves as professionals and feel a professional responsability to deliver good results in an efficient way that doesn’t hinder the work of others.
I’ve seen over the years people with your perspective heading Startups or teams within small companies, and invariably they end up with unproductive teams filled with inexperienced people making all the mistakes in the book (and inventing new ones), enthusiastically. Maybe the people seeking such workers should’ve asked themselves what their real objective is in that: is it deliver the results needed by the company so that it prospers and grows or is it the pleasure of being surrounded by people having fun.
I’m curious.
What’s your line of work, if you don’t mind?
R&D, software and embedded systems. Small team, hugely collaborative by its nature and sometimes find ourselves faced with problems / puzzles with no apparent solution or precedent. Hugely rewarding when we can crack them.
I do genuinely feel for other respondents who seem to be bitter or cynical - despite the banter.
Ah, no concreted metrics for efficiency and delivery of results.
Explains why you prioritize employees who have fun on the job rather than efficient professionals who are there to do a job well done - you can’t really like to like compare with other teams (much less the broader industry) when it comes to delivering objectives because it’s all open ended and unique, so you really don’t know for sure which kind of employee is more effective but you do know for sure which kind is more fun to work with, hence you prioritize what you can measure - a fun team - not what is more effective and efficient.
Most work out there in software development is not “cracking interesting problems for fun without a strict timeline”, it’s “integrate new functionality into an existing massive custom-made system, which has at least 3 different styles of programming and software design because different people have worked on it over the last 8 years and only not a complete mess of spaghetti code if you’re lucky” - not really the kind of work were Enthusiasm lasts long, but it still has to be done and sometimes, millions, tens of millions and even hundreds of millions in yearly revenue of some company or other rides in doing that job well and in a timelly fashion.
Don’t take this badly, but from where I’m standing you’re in the playground sandbox of software engineering. No doubt it’s fun and even an environment others would love to be able to work in, it’s just not the place for professionals and doesn’t really reflect most of the software development being done out there, so not exactly a representative environment for determining what kind of professionals are suitable for the wider industry.
A lot of what you’re saying is spot on and I respect your experience in this and the other comment.
I don’t hire for fun though. I hire for a diversity of perspectives, integrity and authenticity. We teach people how to constructively challenge and go after problems or objectives that may have no off the shelf solution (if they do, we may acquire it).
The problems are usually P&L quantified and prioritised before they get to us - we only have to do that legwork if it’s something we’ve generated.
It does feel like a playground to a degree and I do love the work - perhaps yes it’s less ‘professional’ and structured. We do have experienced devs and architects who I would hope aren’t reproducing problems - but it’s often our job to find a technical solution (if appropriate) to a problem, not to ‘productionise’ it or maintain it. This involves a handoff to others in the business and they ultimately determine how it is rolled out.
I get that this isn’t typical of the market and thanks for your response / take on this. One thing we have to be careful of is being ‘institutionalised’ and that will come across as naive, perhaps it is, but that has been a help.
Baby’s bottom soft.