Member-only story
The Biggest Regrets Senior Developers Have In Their Careers
What you didn’t do can hurt as much as what you did
I’d rather regret the things I’ve done than regret the things I haven’t done. Lucille Ball
I was reading this article top five regrets of the dying and it made me think what are my top regrets as a developer.
Many of the regrets are not for things I have done but for things I didn’t do. Like the regret you feel when you didn’t ask a beautiful girl (or boy) out for a date and you left wondering what might have happened.
The regrets are not technical. Getting things wrong technically is part of the job as a developer. We make decisions that seem correct at the time but can find they are wrong later. This is difficult to take but its part of the process of being a developer.]
These are my regrets but I will assume they ring true for the majority developers. Please your biggest regrets in the comments, I’m sure I have missed some.
Working extra hours (my time for free) to meet pointless deadlines
The common approach for developers to resolve their problems is to outwork them. It’ doesn’t solve the problem and makes the project become addicted to developers working extra hours to meet deadlines.
Many times I worked extra hours at night to meet a minor deadline on projects that ended up many months late. You work late to meet one deadline and the next deadline is late and the next one, etc.
Working extra hours, is working in your own time for free (Developers Stop Working for Free — It’s Burning You Out). It does not solve the root problem or identify why the development team is missing deadlines.
You realise you worked all these extra hours and no one really cared. All the time you missed with your family and friends is for nothing because the project was still months late.
Working extra hours is the sign of the development team and the project isn’t working efficiently. It’s a warning and can end up with your best developers burning out and leaving the company.
