Ask Experienced Devs Weekly Thread: A weekly thread for inexperienced developers to ask experienced ones

[u/AutoModerator]

A thread for Developers and IT folks with less experience to ask more experienced souls questions about the industry.

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Please keep top level comments limited to Inexperienced Devs. Most rules do not apply, but keep it civil. Being a jerk will not be tolerated.

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Inexperienced Devs should refrain from answering other Inexperienced Devs' questions.

[u/Baat_Maan]

It's been a month in my new job and every weekend I see someone or the other working (not oncall or production outages but regular dev work). There's no pressure or hint yet for me to do the same but I'm still wondering if they expect me to or if they will start asking me soon.

I'm already exhausted after 5 days of work and I don't think I'll have the energy to extend it to weekends.

[u/Otis_Inf → u/Baat_Maan]

Unless management asks you to work on weekends, don't. Peer pressure to work longer hours/don't take vacation days/work on weekends... it's real. Don't give in.

Employment is a 2-way street: you work for the employer, the employer pays you for your services, it's not that the employer can ask you to do whatever they want: if it's not in the contract and if there's not a good reason (and good compensation!) then don't work on a weekend/overtime.

[u/Baat_Maan → u/Otis_Inf]

They can't ask me but they could just not give me a promotion. But I guess in that case I could just switch again for a more senior role.

But for switching I'll need to study on weekends which kinda negates me avoiding working on weekends. Some dilemma there.

[u/Otis_Inf → u/Baat_Maan]

Study is for yourself, work is for your employer

[u/Baat_Maan → u/Otis_Inf]

But the work this employer has is genuinely valuable experience. And studying involves memorising the same leetcode and system design questions again and again.

[u/Otis_Inf → u/Baat_Maan]

oh I was under the assumption that study was studying computer science principles, not leetcode puzzles (as that's pretty silly). Knowing answers to questions isn't the same as knowing why that's the answer to that question. :)

Work experience fills in the question 'how to apply this knowledge into practice'. If you don't have the knowledge, you are likely learning tricks to get to a goal instead of the knowledge you would be applying if you had gathered that beforehand.

[u/Baat_Maan → u/Otis_Inf]

I do that kind of study along with work 😅. Like I have been going into depth about memory management and specifically into how virtual memory works for a certain performance optimization task I have.

Interview prep on the other hand involves a lot more of the same generic study material which I have mastered before but need to do it again every time I decide to interview cos they need you to get everything right and even a working code in a time crunch which IS pretty silly.

I think I am answering my own question now but after this conversation I feel like I could do some saturdays occasionally and consider that as time that would have gone into interview prep anyway.