New Poll: What’s The Worst Part About Software Development As A Career?

14 commentsWritten on March 31st, 2009 by
Categories: About The Blog

Alright, time for a new poll. Being a software developer is a pretty nice job, but it definitely has some downsides to it. Which parts do you dislike the most about this job?

  • Too many incompetent managers
  • Buzzwords
  • Dealing with incompetent devs or devs that just don't care
  • Dealing with customers who change their mind all the time
  • Tool vendors that don't focus on proper software development practices
  • Too much overtime
  • Corporate politics

You can select as many options as you want. Again, for the people who only reed this through their RSS reader, you can vote on my site at the top right corner. I'm not going to add more options to the poll, but feel free to mention other downsides to this career in the comments :)

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 at 21:47 and is filed under About The Blog. You can subscribe to any comments to this entry via RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • Jim Frantzen

    IE6.

  • http://www.geekswithblogs.com/alternativedotnet Michel Grootjans

    It’s not that bad. It’s actually a great job with minor issues.

  • http://www.davesquared.net David

    Best *and* worst part about software development:

    There is always so much to learn. This leads to an exhausting effort to continually learn and improve, and also means that no matter how good you are you will tend to look back at what you did 12+ months ago and it will look like rubbish.

    Or maybe that’s just me :\ :)

  • http://www.yostivanich.com/ Justin Yost

    As a Web Developer, customers who don’t want to pay for quality work and who have no taste and insight on bad/cruddy designs.

  • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

    lol @ IE6 :p

    @Michel

    i agree it’s (usually) a great job, but we all run into these downsides every once in a while, and some us need to deal with them on a daily basis

    @David

    i agree… the ‘worst’ part about that somewhat falls into the ‘Buzzwords’ option. But yeah, continuously learning new things (if you pick the right ones to invest your time in) is one of the better parts of the job

    @Justin

    that applies to more than just web developers ;)

  • http://lessthandot.com chrissie1

    Windows?

    Just kidding. But I’ll second IE6.

  • http://blog.kristofrennen.be/ Kristof Rennen

    I also dislike bad database access and bad written queries.
    Fixing timeouts, deadlocks, database tuning, slow queries … is really a terrible thing.

    You really need very good sql knowledge to get everything right in big systems, and most developers don’t know sql very well, ending up in badly written and badly performing queries.

  • http://invinciblezombiecow.wordpress.com/ RCE

    Interacting with business people who skip the technical lead of a project and start shouting about things that should, according to them, take two minutes to fix but in reality takes over two days. Eventually I can convince them that it might take longer than expected, but they still try, hence irritating me and wasting my time.

    Business requirements that get changed behind one’s back (they expect you to check their “bible” thing the whole damn time). I mean, if you insist on using word, put change tracking on plskthx. And emails don’t cost you anything.

    Business people who think it’s a-ok to play around with the stored procedures on the database.

  • Grant Trimble

    Developers that have almost religious affiliation to some or other language, tool etc.
    Can you imagine two mechanics arguing over which 3/8 wrench will get the job done better.
    It just seems, in general, developers are gullable and narrow minded.

  • Bunter

    Lot of the same field professionals who always blame technology, managers, incompetent devs, tools and buzzwords to hide their own incompetence, narrow-mindness, zero knowledge of things outside one’s professional field and complete and utter lazyness :)

    • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

      that reminds me… i forgot to include ‘dealing with frustrated, bitter people’

  • http://exold.com/ David Pickett

    “Can you imagine two mechanics arguing over which 3/8 wrench will get the job done better.”

    If you frequent forums where people who use (physical) tools hang out, you’ll see this ALL the time. DeWalt vs. Porter-Cable vs. Grizzly vs. ….

    I think the real differentiator is the fact that software tools are easy to change back and forth between — anyone can click a link to just about any language distribution in existence and try it out and/or attempt to wedge it into the production cycle. Your average cabinet maker is probably not vehement enough about his choices to try and sneak a Euro-style sliding tablesaw into the shop to “prove” how much better it works (not to mention the physical feasibility, even if desire and funds were available).

  • http://riverink.co.uk Thomas

    I agree with this one: “customers who don’t want to pay for quality work”.
    Too many companies are delivering sub-standard work at low prices which leads to unrealistic price expectations among clients – and the resulting price squeeze means that a proportionally larger part of the budget is spent on pitching and selling the project – with preciously little left for the actual development – and so it’s corner cutting time yet again – and forget about testing!

    Still – overall I still think it’s a great job – beats picking up phones and sending emails all day.

  • Waynemckittrick

    Poor code is everywhere. Difficult personalities and incompetent managers. Anyone who doesn’t care about the work – I can handle those who don’t have knowledge, but they need to have a real drive to learn and improve. Teamwork is everything. Why is it that I only encounter those with passion responding to blogs? I have worked with folks with passion, but it seems too common that we have folks involved in IT (actually, anywhere these days) who don’t really care. Man, life is too short – no passion = walking dead.

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