You know, reading this article half of me was thinking exactly this – it's so goddamn conceited and selfish to write something that says "treat your hackers like the supermen they are and allow them to do whatever they want whenever they want it or else you are stupid and don't deserve them". But the other half of my was thinking: My God, I need to get this to my boss stat.
I don't really consider myself a hacker, but when I'm sitting in front of a computer I expect to be doing one of two things: either I'm solving problems and stretching my mind, or I'm loafing off. If I'm not given work that involves some sort of interesting challenge, then I'll be spending a big chunk of my time cavorting and goofing around. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing; I spent a month in an intensive eight-hour-a-day writing program where probably five or six hours were spent looking at YouTube videos and Facebooking. The mind needs its down time. But when the idiotic gruntwork piles up, I find it harder and harder to actually do these stupidly simple things. It feels so pointless. I don't have an especially short attention span, but if I'm to spend six hours in front of a computer, I want to spend that time doing something meaningful, or at least creative. If I wanted mindless work, I'd at least like it to be physical or social in nature.
I've been trying to implement a site since August, and it's been an extremely aggravating experience. I had a rough design finished in two days; implementing it took three months, as I had routine task after routine task hurled my way, stopping me from making any progress. After those three months, I presented the site and was promptly told it was no good, the boss didn't like it – even though it'd been sitting in his inbox since my first week on the job. Now I've redesigned it and waited three more months to get extremely rudimentary feedback (on the level of, "you should put a button in that corner"), and now I'm finally allowed to implement it as an actual site.
I'm on the bottom of the list of "people who actually matter" in my workplace, and I'd feel irritating and self-righteous sending this link to anybody, but it nails every single aspect of why I find my workplace so frustrating. Everybody's smart and nice and doing big, important things, but I feel out-of-place and under-utilized. I could be a hell of a lot more productive if somebody even made half an effort to figure out how I work best in a team, but nope, I just sit in a corner and fiddle my thumbs and get told to post links to things on Twitter. (In two months I finish my position here; does anybody have advice on how I'd go about finding a less teeth-gritting employer?)
I don't really consider myself a hacker, but when I'm sitting in front of a computer I expect to be doing one of two things: either I'm solving problems and stretching my mind, or I'm loafing off. If I'm not given work that involves some sort of interesting challenge, then I'll be spending a big chunk of my time cavorting and goofing around. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing; I spent a month in an intensive eight-hour-a-day writing program where probably five or six hours were spent looking at YouTube videos and Facebooking. The mind needs its down time. But when the idiotic gruntwork piles up, I find it harder and harder to actually do these stupidly simple things. It feels so pointless. I don't have an especially short attention span, but if I'm to spend six hours in front of a computer, I want to spend that time doing something meaningful, or at least creative. If I wanted mindless work, I'd at least like it to be physical or social in nature.
I've been trying to implement a site since August, and it's been an extremely aggravating experience. I had a rough design finished in two days; implementing it took three months, as I had routine task after routine task hurled my way, stopping me from making any progress. After those three months, I presented the site and was promptly told it was no good, the boss didn't like it – even though it'd been sitting in his inbox since my first week on the job. Now I've redesigned it and waited three more months to get extremely rudimentary feedback (on the level of, "you should put a button in that corner"), and now I'm finally allowed to implement it as an actual site.
I'm on the bottom of the list of "people who actually matter" in my workplace, and I'd feel irritating and self-righteous sending this link to anybody, but it nails every single aspect of why I find my workplace so frustrating. Everybody's smart and nice and doing big, important things, but I feel out-of-place and under-utilized. I could be a hell of a lot more productive if somebody even made half an effort to figure out how I work best in a team, but nope, I just sit in a corner and fiddle my thumbs and get told to post links to things on Twitter. (In two months I finish my position here; does anybody have advice on how I'd go about finding a less teeth-gritting employer?)