Ikigai for software developers

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Common sense says you need more than a paycheck to be happy, but happy work won't more likely pay your bills. Ikigai is about finding a balance between what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for.

You might enjoy the rat race more with more money, but at the end of the day, you will still feel empty. If you don't enjoy what you do, you are missing a lot. If you are happy in your job and you think you can do this for the rest of your life (and not just till retirement, that is the key difference), congrats! You might have found your Ikigai. If not, you need to find a purpose.

Image from https://hyperisland.com/en/blog/thought-leadership/feeling-drained-at-work

I have a project where I have a free hand. I am very lucky. The client trusts me and I have a week to build something they want, but in a way I think it will best fulfill the goal. I presented my solutions to the client and so far he always loved it. I can sell my passion there and the job satisfaction there is extremely high. But I also had a client, where my boss was a micromanager king, changing priorities constantly, telling me how I should do my job (without any actual developer experience on his own), asking for status updates multiple times per day, doing 10 slide presentations of all the developer's responsibilities and expectations, constantly focusing on some bureaucracy crap. Asking for shortcuts and blaming you for everything. Killing all creativity, motivation, best practices, hopes, and dreams. Nightmare. It paid the bills, but I couldn't do it anymore. When it starts affecting your health, it is time to find a different job. Avoid everything with a negative impact on your health.

You have to understand what brings you joy. For me it is:

• designing a simple app with intuitive intuitive user interface
• adding value for the users by improving their flow or saving them time
• refactoring crappy code to an elegant solution
• create a new data model
• create something innovative or something with an impact
• making code significantly faster
• solving a tough issue
• working with cutting-edge tech like Oracle APEX
• support teammates and help them grow

Be passionate about the things you do. That is hard to do without embracing continuous learning and skill enhancement. No matter if you want to be a specialist and dig deeper in one or a few techs, or if you want to jump from one tech to another and be the jack of all trades, you have to learn. I have written a few speeches about this topic:

• Pitfalls of full-stack developer, #thuglife
• Sharpen the saw

If you are too comfortable (lazy) in your work and you refuse to learn things outside of your working hours and your current assignment, you might enjoy your work for a while (and get even more lazy), until you realize you have so much to catch up (and thanks to the laziness you will give up). You can be a good developer only if you embrace the learning.

So the key is to make yourself comfortable learning regularly. Enjoy exploring new things, go deep on topics that interest you, and create apps to solve your problems (or even better the bigger problems). When you become comfortable with learning, you won't feel the pressure and it becomes something you actually enjoy. Start small. Read books, and blogs, watch Youtube channels for developers, but try to get your hands dirty. If you don't try it yourself, you won't remember it.

Try talking to the users. Not through your managers, directly. Connect with them if you can. That way, you can listen to them and solve their real problems. It will give your work a meaning, you will get a motivation booster. Developers enjoy avoiding users, managers tend to hide behind specifications and they are super scared of scope creep. But without talking to users, you are creating a waste. I don't enjoy wasting my time on building useless things. Do you?

I always recommend this to the juniors, but it is relevant for any seniority. Explore the sample/packaged APEX applications. Pick one you like, explore how it is done, try to build something like that yourself or improve it. Try to use learned concepts in your apps. Then present it to your team or others.

When you share what you have learned with others, when you try to explain things, it will help you to grow even more and your teammates will benefit from that too. Appreciate that. Imagine what you can do as a team if every team member helps others daily, if you share the knowledge and keep pushing forward in the same direction.

Flowers don't grow in space. Take care of your environment, take care of your team and you will become a wolf pack! Hungry for knowledge. Successful. You will bring more innovative and effective solutions to your clients (and users). And you will not need any artificial team building activities, just help each other and you will feel the difference.

You live in an age where you can have friends on the other side of the world. So if you are stuck with a team where nobody cares about this and you can't leave, you can connect with basically anyone anywhere.

Ask for a code review. Give one. Instead of blame or shame, show how you would do it. If someone has a different opinion, be open-minded. Try it yourself. If someone helps you (or gives you any feedback), show gratitude. You spend time helping someone today, he might help you tomorrow. Many times I got good ideas from juniors. When you contribute, you will feel needed. You will feel the purpose.

It is very rare when an employer supports you with some time allocated to learning, personal projects, open-source contributions or assists you in any way with attending a conference or paying even for a cheap online workshop. They don't see the benefits behind it. Your boss doesn't care about your mental health, your life goals, or your Ikigai. Don't wait for it. Act. It is your life.

A popular saying is: you have to earn or learn, if neither, quit. With Ikigai, it has more depth. Disclaimer: I am not encouraging you to quit your job, you have your own brain, use it.

You have to find your own Ikigai, but I believe the path always goes through continuous lifelong learning and enjoying the little things. Do what makes you happy. Do something with meaning. Be curious. Be positive and surround yourself with positive people. And never give up.