[crpatino]

It is an important life skill, cannot be denied.

However, I cannot stop noticing that all the worst traits of the software industry start with the talented professionals amoungst us "caring less" about their jobs; and then the bozos running the show are free to go around wanking their minds and fucking up everything for everyone. If you ask the authors of every monstrosity out there, they will claim the Nuremberg defense, pennies to peanuts!

[omegaworks]

Just to clarify, I don't think it's appropriate to just "turn off" completely. Speak up. Make your opinions known, put the work in to back them up, but don't let that work be extra - build it into the time you need to prepare for meetings. Push back when you don't get enough time to do it.

If there's something alarmingly dangerous about the things that you end up doing, security concerns unaddressed etc, put the feedback in writing.

Don't clam up. Just don't let it eat away at you if you are ignored; dot your Is and cross your Ts.

It's a balancing act, of course. You have to get good at understanding and making the case for what's best for the company.

[normaljoe]

Care not about the job outside the job. Care much about the code while at the job. That's the true skill and it is very hard to do. As a coder you never really turn off, at least that's my last 20 years of experience.

The best way to "train" for this is to take a long cruise or other far away vacation. I took a transatlantic, 7 nights no Internet. Well I could have Internet paid in minutes at legacy modem baud rates, but "legacy baud" says enough.