Nice attitude, that's for sure. However I feel like this is targeted at the open source community. At work, it sucks to be better, because I'll get the harder bugs, deeper work, more work, tough refactorings, architecture planning, and everything that programmers who can't even write decent PHP can't do.
I love getting that stuff. For me, the fun in work is to work on stuff that is hard and fix it and/or make it easy.
I will work on easy stuff when it is necessary and stuff just needs to get done, and I recognise that a lot of work is about getting easy stuff done because value is often tied to tedium not to complexity, but to me the fun part is when value comes from making sense of the stuff that doesnt make sense currently.
> At work, it sucks to be better, because I'll get the harder bugs, deeper work, more work, tough refactorings, architecture planning, and everything that programmers who can't even write decent PHP can't do.
At many workplaces, its awesome to be better, because -- while, yes, those kind of assignments come with it -- so does more advancement and security.
What sucks about being at the higher end of some teams is when other people come to you with trivial problems that they just can't be bothered to look into themselves. I'm happy to help people learn but I don't like being expected to do your job for you.
There is something called "decent PHP"? Use Haskell! =) (This joke is so relevant that I couldn't resist!)
Joking aside, my idea is that a job isn't good for one as long as you feel you aren't learning anything but rather covering for other people. Monetary compensation is not enough for these kind of situations because the programmers I know generally are motivated not just by money but equally from the sense of accomplishment as well. It's not about "confirming that you are smarter and know more" as discussed in the article but rather the very basic feeling of getting things done.
This is something every young dev should know, Especially if you're a regular full-time employee.
The job should do something for you! You may be paid well, but you must feel like you're getting something out of it too; and if you have any sort of intrinsic motivation you can't expect to be satisfied with just money. It may be on you to find out what that is, there's no guarantee it will be technical in nature.
There are times when this won't be the case, though, and you'll need to grind.
I get the impression that this essay is targeted quite specifically at elements of the Haskell community, and isn't just a general comment. I've not experienced it myself, but I've seen backscatter from people having thorny interactions with some Haskellers as they try to level up. The existence of #nothaskell would seem to support this.
