Programmer. I just fucking hate writing code. Also working with stupid frameworks and having to keep up with whatever new bullshit framework or feature people want implemented would drive me insane. I would crash out if asked to implement MCP into our app.
I was a web developer for a few years, WordPress killed the joy I had. Every update could break something because the client wanted a website, but also wanted to use WordPress, so we had to customize the hell out of each install.
I burned out about 5 years ago, and I haven’t even been able to work on my side projects.
I pretty much lived your comment. Working retail now, probably wouldn’t go back…
If you’re good at scripting you might be able to find a spot automating back end stuff for a sysadmin/infrastructure team. Of course, that would be in a sane job market.
I started in IT support with a general tech AA degree (with some extra programming background from a comp sci BS I dropped out of when I realized I could never code 8 hours a day for a living) and started automating the grunt work of tech support and basic access management. Caught the eye of the sysadmin/infra team and they snatched me up. I’ve been learning project management, infra stuff, and deep sysadmin stuff, but I mostly automate everything I possibly can surrounding our duties. Most systems and software have pretty static apis/sdks for automating with them, so I don’t need to stay current with whatever language or fad practice.
Recent projects have been around cleaning up shit in our Active Directory. Easy wins like deleting security groups with no members. Automating checks like once a month checking for any emtpy that haven’t changed in two weeks. Recently got rid of our on-prem exchange email servers, so I whipped up a script to take contact objects from AD, delete any non-functional ones (typo’d domains, domains that were internal to us so there was no need for a contact object), and then to recreate the valid ones in Exchange Online, and finally delete the originals from AD.
It’s not super difficult scripting-wise. And a lot of greybeards could learn scripting, but a lot are content to let new blood do it, which opens opportunities.
Thats kind of what I am doing at the moment and i enjoy writing those scripts but i get so nervous running them. Even though I’m really confident they won’t break something i still feel I’m unlucky enough for the script to accidentally delete our prod dB.
Lol, same. I spend more time writing guard rails, setting up verbose debugging output/logs, figuring out how I can test without blowing up shit, backing up data before, backing up what it’s going to do, and then trying to set up automated confirmation of success or failure than I do coding the purely functional parts.
I’ve run the “person has quit, yeet their access” script I made on people days early more than I should admit. Had to put in a lot of extra checks on that.
If you’re at a place still using VMWare, a tip: if you’re trying to automate shutting down all the VMs for some hardware moves (get list of VMs, send Guest OS shutdown command, wait a certain amount of time, if VM still showing online force shutoff), VSphere will return the VM management devices/servers/whatever they’re called (what vSphere runs on) in the list of VMs, and it will accept Guest OS shutdown commands sent to the thing hosting VM management/vSphere. Halfway through shutting it all down for a move I started getting “cannot reach VSphere” errors. Added an extra hour or two to that weekend project as we had to get into things through some other back end shanigans to finish shutdowns manually.
In my experience unfortunately there’s been a lot of pressure to speed up even the regular work cycle. Myself and others are starting to have more and more complaints of things suddenly getting shoved in at the last minute, or having sprints get more and more packed/scattered
100% agreed. I do a lot of coding as part of my job, and that is enjoyable because I don’t have to worry about whatever latest programming paradigm “everyone” uses.
My code is meant to just deal with minutia in the background and never be interacted with, and it’s rarely even seen by others than myself. Which is probably good, because my language of choice is perl.
Programmer. I just fucking hate writing code. Also working with stupid frameworks and having to keep up with whatever new bullshit framework or feature people want implemented would drive me insane. I would crash out if asked to implement MCP into our app.
I was a web developer for a few years, WordPress killed the joy I had. Every update could break something because the client wanted a website, but also wanted to use WordPress, so we had to customize the hell out of each install.
I burned out about 5 years ago, and I haven’t even been able to work on my side projects.
I pretty much lived your comment. Working retail now, probably wouldn’t go back…
I relate heavily to this. Feels like there’s no time for me to catch up with modern programming
If you’re good at scripting you might be able to find a spot automating back end stuff for a sysadmin/infrastructure team. Of course, that would be in a sane job market.
I started in IT support with a general tech AA degree (with some extra programming background from a comp sci BS I dropped out of when I realized I could never code 8 hours a day for a living) and started automating the grunt work of tech support and basic access management. Caught the eye of the sysadmin/infra team and they snatched me up. I’ve been learning project management, infra stuff, and deep sysadmin stuff, but I mostly automate everything I possibly can surrounding our duties. Most systems and software have pretty static apis/sdks for automating with them, so I don’t need to stay current with whatever language or fad practice.
Recent projects have been around cleaning up shit in our Active Directory. Easy wins like deleting security groups with no members. Automating checks like once a month checking for any emtpy that haven’t changed in two weeks. Recently got rid of our on-prem exchange email servers, so I whipped up a script to take contact objects from AD, delete any non-functional ones (typo’d domains, domains that were internal to us so there was no need for a contact object), and then to recreate the valid ones in Exchange Online, and finally delete the originals from AD.
It’s not super difficult scripting-wise. And a lot of greybeards could learn scripting, but a lot are content to let new blood do it, which opens opportunities.
Thats kind of what I am doing at the moment and i enjoy writing those scripts but i get so nervous running them. Even though I’m really confident they won’t break something i still feel I’m unlucky enough for the script to accidentally delete our prod dB.
Lol, same. I spend more time writing guard rails, setting up verbose debugging output/logs, figuring out how I can test without blowing up shit, backing up data before, backing up what it’s going to do, and then trying to set up automated confirmation of success or failure than I do coding the purely functional parts.
I’ve run the “person has quit, yeet their access” script I made on people days early more than I should admit. Had to put in a lot of extra checks on that.
If you’re at a place still using VMWare, a tip: if you’re trying to automate shutting down all the VMs for some hardware moves (get list of VMs, send Guest OS shutdown command, wait a certain amount of time, if VM still showing online force shutoff), VSphere will return the VM management devices/servers/whatever they’re called (what vSphere runs on) in the list of VMs, and it will accept Guest OS shutdown commands sent to the thing hosting VM management/vSphere. Halfway through shutting it all down for a move I started getting “cannot reach VSphere” errors. Added an extra hour or two to that weekend project as we had to get into things through some other back end shanigans to finish shutdowns manually.
Web deving sucks ass, i agree
But general programming moves slower
In my experience unfortunately there’s been a lot of pressure to speed up even the regular work cycle. Myself and others are starting to have more and more complaints of things suddenly getting shoved in at the last minute, or having sprints get more and more packed/scattered
100% agreed. I do a lot of coding as part of my job, and that is enjoyable because I don’t have to worry about whatever latest programming paradigm “everyone” uses.
My code is meant to just deal with minutia in the background and never be interacted with, and it’s rarely even seen by others than myself. Which is probably good, because my language of choice is perl.