[codingdave]

> code reviews, sprints and constant deadlines.

Don't accept a job where teams do Scrum.

Scrum is an anxiety-inducing never-ending marathon. If people without anxiety make it work for them, great - but it doesn't work for me, so I reject it.

More broadly speaking, figure out if you have other boundaries you need to set, and make discovery of whether or not those boundaries would be crossed a part of any interview process. Decline jobs that cross them.

I find that smaller companies outside of the startup world are better. Look for bootstrapped small software shops, or an internal IT department of a non-tech company. Find a place where you are helping the business run, but not directly producing the product that defines the business. Or work on enterprise platforms - Salesforce, SAP, etc. Such platforms tend to need work more along the lines of configuration, scripting, and data updates, which results in a different type and pace of work.

[devwithanxiety]

Hey thanks for the tips!

> Don't accept a job where teams do Scrum.

Yeah I haven't enjoyed working under points and sprints. There just never seems to be a logical end to your work or even a pause.

> Find a place where you are helping the business run, but not directly producing the product that defines the business.

I like this a lot and it makes perfect sense. Thank you very much.

[s1gsegv]

As a concept it feels like it should be obvious, you can’t expect a runner to sprint consistently, sure in a world where the farther they run the more money you make its ideal if they could but it just isn’t how the human body works, they will eventually slow down or otherwise call it quits.

I fundamentally believe the same is true of SWEs, you can’t get more out of people than they have long-term by telling them they ought to be “sprinting,” yet if you ask me that’s the concept being pushed.