Motivation

A lot of my family work in supervisory roles, and when I talk to them about the difficulties of working with other people our problems are very different: they need to keep people motivated to work.

I rarely work with people who need to be motivated. Most of the people in my last few jobs have brought loads of their own motivation. If anything, they need to be calmed down and reminded to take their vacation days.

“Please do not build this from scratch: a solution already exists.”

Carl Sagan famously said

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe”

— and I’ve met countless software developers (myself included) who would respond to that quote by rolling up their sleeves and going “welp.”

I use a term to justify building things that don’t need to be built: joy-driven development.

Sometimes, especially if you’re trying to manage your own flagging motivation, you can do things your own way because that makes it… more fun. It improves your sense of ownership over the product. It’s what differentiates craftsmanship from good engineering. Sure, the custom solution is not as flexible or well understood as the existing one, but…

A lot of becoming a senior developer is developing better instincts about where projects can and should fall on the DIY to NIH spectrum. I’m still way too gung-ho about building my own solutions for things.