How do you cope with stress as a software dev?

[Hamster]

I worked a year's worth of overtime in 4 years. Some of those stints included working at the client's office in PTA, working through the night over weekends, public holidays, difficult tooling at times and at one stage we worked 300 hours in 3 weeks. There was a phone on rotation which meant you were available to the client's OPS team 24/7 for a week at a time.

After 7 odd years of working like that and sitting in traffic I packed up my stuff and went looking for work closer to home that has a more relaxed environment.

So call me old school but I think a lot of "stressed" devs out there are just a bunch of whiners. If you can't cope with it go work for a company that aligns more with your character/needs. It's not like you are in the line of work where jobs are scarce so there's no real excuse to be "stressed". You're literally one email away from being lined up for interviews and that's if the email doesn't find you first.

EDIT: granted, some guys have it very bad the first 2 or so years of their careers and end up with douchebag bosses that forget to pay you on time, make ridiculous promises to clients etc.

 

[Ancalagon]

So call me old school but I think a lot of "stressed" devs out there are just a bunch of whiners. If you can't cope with it go work for a company that aligns more with your character/needs. It's not like you are in the line of work where jobs are scarce so there's no real excuse to be "stressed". You're literally one email away from being lined up for interviews and that's if the email doesn't find you first.

I don't know if that is old school thinking or not - looks more progressive to me.

But in any case, I agree with you. Devs will stay in one place and whine and whine and whine, but not do anything to fix their environment. Sure, if you had been there for 6 months I can understand if you want to stick it out - although even then, there are things that I would not put up with, even after 6 months.

But then you have guys who stay in jobs for 3, 4 years, getting the same abuse, whining about it, and not changing.

We would have better working conditions if developers moved sooner rather than later. I don't mean leave after 6 months, but if you have been there for more than 2 years, and you are unhappy, then move. Or shut up and stop complaining.

Why would conditions be better? When management figures out how expensive it is to hire replacements, they would treat people better.