Another software engineer/consultant (these seem to be overrepresented on Hexbear), but I also ended up in a position where I'm busting my ass all the time too. It's relative of course because I can still find time to post. The work comes in waves, basically I'm just given a mountain of huge deadlines 5-10 months out, and every moment I spend not doing it is shooting myself in the foot. If I work harder then I get more work as a reward. But again it's relative, my days are usually 9-10 hours 5-6 days a week.
Does my job help people? I'm not sure, I guess so, a few million people would start to be affected by various services going down if I didn't help build/maintain them. But it's very indirect. I don't ever see who I've helped, except for early in my career when I got to visit a location and talk to end users.
Another software engineer/consultant (these seem to be overrepresented on Hexbear), but I also ended up in a position where I'm busting my ass all the time too. It's relative of course because I can still find time to post. The work comes in waves, basically I'm just given a mountain of huge deadlines 5-10 months out, and every moment I spend not doing it is shooting myself in the foot. If I work harder then I get more work as a reward. But again it's relative, my days are usually 9-10 hours 5-6 days a week.
Does my job help people? I'm not sure, I guess so, a few million people would start to be affected by various services going down if I didn't help build/maintain them. But it's very indirect. I don't ever see who I've helped, except for early in my career when I got to visit a location and talk to end users.