Once you get a job, and code for others and get paid for it, you are a professional, a part of the whole, a cell in business organism and the business needs to survive in the competitive economy. If you are working at a recognized company with a working business model, the doubts on keeping business up and running, are very different than struggling to create a new business. But, in either case, the reality for coders is that they must adhere to some rules defined by business drivers which might quickly become a conflict surface between techies and biz guys. These rules even might bend engineering practices so the company is able to deliver the product earlier than its competitors. You find yourself in a vicious circle of despair while adding more technical depts into the project as you can clean and if you’re lucky at all, you get some time to reduce them, if the project did not become a victim of priority shifting.
Isn’t it really motivating ? Definitely not. But, I think, it’s OK from many aspects. We could not realize how business worked, as we wrote our first programs many years ago and impressed by a flashing text on the screen, “Hello World!”. This enthusiasm probably become a crucial key as we made our career choice for the Information Technology. However, professional-life is a little different than our garage where we built our first DOS menus by using ASCII characters. Being a professional coder has its costs like trimming your hacker enthusiasm and adjusting yourself into the business. A conflict of interest. You’re giving up saying “but” and providing counterarguments for endless discussions. You want to return to your computer and write some source codes in order to achieve progress in the project. Just get your work done to be able to go home. Annoying. Moreover, you must be engaged for creating their business values. Sometimes, that value means to sit in endless meetings reluctantly, to answer stupid client questions, to write technical documentations or even to add more technical depts to the project. Whatever their justifications are, they set the rules for this game you are also involved in. They don’t want to hear your enthusiastic engineering designs, but to keep the business running.
As I said, it is OK.
The problem in all these scenarios is that daily activities at work are going to become routine some day while accepting these rules – otherwise you need to build your own business with your own rules. For many employees, probably, the routine might be a natural process of their careers. Settling down. But, I hate routine. It’s lack of excitement, creativity and demotivating. If you caught in routine, it will become your comfort zone. It’s dangerous.