I noticed it before I got into IT, but it seems to have gotten worse.
EDIT: Great comments guys, and thanks. I don’t feel so alone. :)
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Totally depends on the challenge of the project - and it follows a bell curve. Too easy and it’s annoying, too difficult (or takes too long) and it’s fucking aggravating. But those rare Goldilocks projects that are a challenge but shit just clicks along? Chefs kiss.
Inside you are two wolves.
One has Adhd and the other may be mildly autistic but it turns out they are working together and now its a situation
One by one my family is getting diagnosed autistic and ADHD. I have recently been diagnosed at 35 years old with ADHD. I figure it’s just a matter of time for the other shoe to drop.
I am not a doctor. This is not medical advice. There’s significant overlap between ADHD and Autism (also BPD). You could have just one, or all three. But, more important than nailing down precisely which you have, is finding treatments or techniques that help you function in a more effective way in your day to day life.
There’s a YouTube channel called How to ADHD that I highly recommend. She gives a lot of explainers about what ADHD looks like in real life, as well as techniques that she uses to help her.
She’s awesome! One of my favorites, actually. She did a thing called something like tell me you have ADHD without telling me you have it, and every comment was me. Made me go check. Just because you have one or two or all three, doesn’t mean you any less than someone who has none. All it means, is that you see the world differently and must adapt differently.
I’ll check her out, thanks!
Pretty sure you’re describing most if not all the developer’s demographics, coding can always be optimized.
The same goes for a lot of things we do in life (Productivity).I’m pretty sure this is just ADHD. And yes, I do have ADHD.
I mean that’s literally what it is from a psychological perspective. Your brain doesn’t reward you for the mere act of finishing a task, so it’s basically impossible to find motivation for it unless it ticks at least one box in your reward center.
It rewards you for it but the reward doesn’t have enough time before it sets in and brain takes the reward back.
Who maintains a to-do list? sees many hands
Who maintains a done list? sees no hands
If I had a nickel for everytime I heard “Stop starting, start finishing!” from upper management, I’d be as rich as them.
Dude, that may actually be a great idea in general!
I’m not a programmer, but I do have a job where every success proves a failure of the system. It’s draining.
Penetration tester?
Pssh I wish. That sounds like so much more fun than what I do.
Here’s my unsolicited advice from a software engineer who fluctuates on this:
Try pair programming
Some of my most satisfying work was done in collaboration with my coworkers. Not only did it add an extra social element, the end result came out better than how either of us could have designed the feature on our own.
Try to view your accomplishments in aggregate
My company has us write up self-reviews every 6 months where we summarize all the stuff we got done and what we could have done better. I find this to be a great opportunity to go back through the kanban board and reminisce on all the features I helped ship. Even if you’re programming personal projects this is a good exercise.
Try to find external validation if it helps
This validation can come from various sources. Sometimes it comes from asking for feedback from your manager or coworkers. Other times it can come from customer feedback. It may seem shallow, but hearing praise from others for your work helps to reaffirm that what you do matters to others.
Idk how much of these tips apply to your scenario, especially in IT, but I hope they can be adapted in some way. Ultimately the biggest factor in gaining satisfaction from your work is whether or not you actually like doing it. That’s harder to change.
These are some really great ideas. Thank you for your feedback!
It’s me, hi, I’m the problem it’s me.
Blame modern Scrum/Agile and the ever tighter deadlines…
I have mainly worked in Scrum environments. Only now at my current position am I working outside Agile and I LOVE it.
What’s the process you’re using instead? Some form of waterfall?
This is definitely a neurodivergent trait and one of the reasons why so many self medicate with cannabis.
THC connects to the reward center of the brain and enhances those feeling.
It took me to trying weed as a youngadult to finally experience basic shit like feeling refreshed after a bath, accomplished after doing household tasks and even relaxed when sun bathing.
I cant really use anymore for legal reasons but cannabis thought me that living a healthier/productive life really adds to your happiness and the experience i had with jt left a mark that helps me recognize/identify those lessened motivational feelings when i do similar things now.
Releasing open source projects has been the source of professional satisfaction to me. Just ignore people posting rude issues demanding you to work on something asap and instead do it at your own pace.
Man. I thought it was just me. I don’t know if I’m glad I’m not alone or upset that there are more suffering with me…
Lots of good advice in these comments. I hope they help you! Message me if they don’t.
This is me. I am not exclusively IT but I am the unofficial IT department for my company (they don’t want to pay an actual IT guy). I feel this across my whole job though. Phew, got that done, what’s gonna happen next?
Careful they don’t abuse you. Make your job description solid and make sure if they want to go outside it, they should pay you more. You are worth it.
Probably they abuse me a bit. I know I’m good at my job but I get imposter syndrome in my head sometimes. $100k a year isn’t awful though. Sometimes I fantasize about dying and all the shit do and know and handle are lost and my coworkers can’t figure shit out.
My last position had this problem. ‘Silo’s of knowledge’. We had a guy who could have retired yesterday who had so much institutional knowledge that when he left people were in such disarray. He was all, “I warned ya! You should have had me training people!”
But no one wants to learn anything beyond their tunnel vision job title.
You’d be surprised how many people have the drive and motivation to learn other things than their job.
The journey is the part that you remember anyways.
That is true. Kaylee - “I noticed you weren’t looking at destinations.” Shepherd Book - “'Cause how you get there is the more worthy part.”
I wasn’t really trying to give a valuable contribution. It was just a referral to a meme I see in some of my social media timelines. But I agree that the cliché is true.
I’m a student. This has been my life since around October 2021.
Same when I was a student. I wrongly believed it was a student thing…It isn’t. It’s a mindset thing.
