September, 2015 - Tiago

(this was shared with a colleague)

I can talk about the software engineer life a  bit  -  I've  been  doing  this
professionally for about 10 years now.

You know, being a software engineer is tough.  Usually we spend the whole  day
inside a dark room, in the front of the computer and (physically) alone.   Our
bodies were not made for that, it's simple.  On top of that, add our  personal
problems like the ordinary rush of life, the career growing anxiety, financial
issues, mental health and so on. Sometimes our life is work & sleep. Just. No
wonder why we easily become sad and  depressed.   There's  the	good  side  of
this profession though: meet culturally and geographically  different  people,
work  on  exciting  and  challenging   projects,   do	something   that   can
impact people's life, choose your area of knowledge (specially	if  you're  in
 a big company) and raise up  money.   Informatics  is	so  hype  again  after
all (self note for  the  future:  flying  cars	do  not  exist	yet).

Much of my daily work involves	on  networking	(which	if  I'd  be  mean  I'd
translate to "forcing the connection and socialization	with  other  people"),
reading technical news (blogs, rss feeds, google+, IRC), reading and selecting
emails (*selecting* is important) to read and  organizing  my  current	tasks,
projects and future research areas.  This is what I call the "managerial",  or
"strategical", part of the day, which usually I do during the morning.	Then I
have a break and go to the gym, to short walks, meet people for lunch outside,
grocery store, barbershop, bank etc. In other words I go out to see the Sun. A
bit.  The "operational" part, usually coming in the afternoon/evening, is when
I put the other things aside and go do the  coding...	man,  I  love  coding.
That's the cherry on the top for me.  Coding is very  important  though  cause
it's where "people" see if we, software engineers, are	good  and  productive.
*What* to code is important.  For  example,  it's  easy  to  fix  up  bugs  on
superfluous piece of a program and people will	think  that  you're  doing  an
amazing job.  But don't fool yourself.	And the things are even more difficult
because sometimes we lie to ourselves on this aspects -- many times  I	caught
myself spending days, weeks programming many LoC, becoming extremely satisfied
about it in the end of the day, but then I've noticed that,  overall  for  the
project, it wasn't so beneficial; that is when we lie to ourselves. Avoid this
cause in the long run you going to hate yourself and people you.

The conclusion?  Yes, there is: I think we need to  constantly	question  what
we're doing in our engineering life and why we're doing so.  Like, always.   I
constantly think about giving up, going for a long travel, become  a  musician
again, study art or go live in the Mediterranean. Be a bohemian. Or something
like that. So it's natural what you're doing right now and questioning, trying
to find out an interesting project, changing the habits, etc.  So, keep doing,
keep questioning! Perhaps we are already happy on the current project. Perhaps
not.

"In programming, as in many fields, the hard part isn't solving problems,  but
deciding what problems to solve.  Imagination  is  hard  to  measure,  but  in
practice it dominates the kind of productivity that's  measured  in  lines  of
code.", Paul Graham

"If you want to get real work done in an office with cubicles,	you  have  two
options: work at home, or come in early or late or on a weekend, when  no  one
else is there.	Don't companies realize this  is  a  sign  that  something  is
broken?", Paul Graham

"Perhappiness", Paulo Leminski