On the life

 

As software engineers our life are subject to forces which are not entirely in our control. The chief are health, family and politics. I will start from the latter and go the former, discussing how a software engineer can mitigate some of their ill effects on her life and career.

Politics is the art of the achievable, of getting things done. I’ve listened to an audio book version of the ‘Prince"’ by my namesake Nicollo Machiavelli. While some may disagree with its context or rebuff it in its entirety on moral grounds alone, I generally find its context true and suitable to any endeavor where you have a hierarchy of people working in environment with limited resources, or any environment where you can find humans. The truth is that in the base of the human nature lies the instinct of self preservation, which is often achieved and perceived to originate from ones advancement above her station in respect to the domination and control her peers. When working in any organization there will always be personal goals, issues, treats originating from people working around you, above you and bellow you.

‘I just want to do my work, and be done”, some may say. And you are obviously right in that life philosophy, but given the fact that out there are people who will benefit by inflicting or just by you incurring a loss of some kind. Thus a wise person should strive to position him self in a prepared state, watchful about what is going on around him, about the goals and positions of the people in his circle. He should align him self with the people who have ambitions in alignment with his own, make useful and not a threat to people above his station and respected and not an obvious impediment to people bellow his station. A wise person would also be aware that each state is only temporary and thus not permanent and that person will always need to be on the lookout for the next situation and have always a backup plan when all things start to fall apart.

In short going to work nine to five and forgetting about work afterward is not a really good strategy any more.

The second ill which may befall a software engineer is family. I’m a family man, my family is my sanctuary, my church and holy ground. I short my family is my life. But often the work we do puts us across the needs and wants of our family members. Our spouses, our fathers and mothers, out girlfriends. This is the truth.

If you read any book about people, or software processes or any topic related the the culture of software engineering you are going to pass by references to “Death march “ projects, long hours and weekends spent working, broken projects and divorces which resulted from those activities. The pressures and the time, of the time, we spend working maniacally in order to reach our deadlines reflect negatively on the needs and goals of those around us. No amount of money or bonuses is going to mitigate that. Maybe you live on a farm and regardless of your work you must spend time working on the family estate (new a guy who had a problem like that) or your wife is fed up being all alone with the children while you do whatever you do. And then meeting your business commitments and your family commitments is going to get really though, and your morale and your performance is going to drop and your private life is going, well down under.

What can a savvy engineer do than? First, you can’t please everybody. You have a limited resource, your time, and two opposing forces. What I’ve found out is that you need to be open at the beginning to both parties about what you can do and what you can’t do. And then be prepared to take blows. Or marry a wife who will not mind you being around so much. Or find a nine to five job.

The third and most important is your health. Your mental and physical health is the most important assent you are having in your career as a software developer. In order to achieve the level of performance and excellence you are able and required to produce you must be mentally and physically fit. Thus you must always leave room for physical exercise and strive to conserve a positive outlook to every situation and prospect. I can’t remember how many time those two thins helped me, and I can remember oh so well how many time one or the other failed me.

Experience is never taught, only learned by doing. Thus read and watch what others have done and experienced. A good documentary I watched five years go showed a year of frenzied development of a team of engineers at Netscape developing the first version the Firefox open source browser. That is a good example of what kind of life we lead.

But all is not dark, and all is not done, for we are human and we make mistake but to be human is to be able to learn and change, to adapt and improve thus we will make our lives better trough knowledge, spiritual advancement and physical toil.