Вікторія Горбік Work 12 December 2024, 17:06

"If I had been born Prince Charles, I would never have thought about work either." IT-guys told why they do what they don't like

HR Generalist Oksana Mentyshinova often hears during interviews that specialists perform tasks that they do not like. And although she understands that this is a part of any work, she still wondered how long a person can do what he does not like, and at the same time stay at the same place of work, for how long and for what purpose. Here is what IT-guys think about this.

All or nothing?

Of course, in every job there are tasks that you don’t really want to do, but you have to. And most of the experts, like Solar Projects Development Manager at Atmosfera Nadiya Samko, relate to this with understanding. The girl says that she worked in the previous company for 8 years and always had tasks that she did not like to perform. «It was pouring, but the weather was not bad. However, when you coped with the next such task, and you could devote yourself to your loved ones, it was a separate portion of satisfaction,» she emphasizes.

For the most part, the people of IT agree that it is still necessary to understand, and exactly what «does not like». In particular, Oleksandr Viter, Senior Python Developer at SoftServe, believes that a gradation of this state is needed, namely:

I’m just a little uncomfortable, but generally normal;
I don’t feel excited, but I don’t feel negative emotions either. I’m just neutral — I don’t like it, but there’s no hatred either;
I don’t like it very much, I want to change my job.

«In my current job, there are times when I need to do front-end tasks. I don’t like the frontend (that’s why I became a backend developer), but doing such tasks once a month is perfectly fine, it’s not a reason to change jobs,» he gave an example from his own experience.

In another example, the situation looked different.

«If they told me: 'From this day on, you are a full-stack developer, you will do backend tasks and frontend in a 50/50 ratio,' then I wouldn’t like it so much that I would start looking for a new job,» notes Oleksandr Viter .

There are other levels of «dislike», for example, as told by HR expert Oksana Kozlova:

«don’t like» — that is, boring, not interesting, not clear for what, too simple, or requires more effort, etc. — and there’s nothing wrong with that, except that we have to make sure that it’s not 100% work,
«dislike» is at the level of values. And here is the problem. Because this leads to burnout and psychosomatic health problems, and can lead to alcoholism and other addictions. Accordingly, the risks for business are much higher.

There is such a word — must

«If, performing tasks that one does not like, a person has in mind his direction as a whole, that is a problem. If it is only about the fact that she does not like a certain part of the work, which takes somewhere 10-20% of the time, there is no problem,» notes Senior Software Engineer Dmytro. In his case, it is writing some types of tests, because it is quite monotonous work for a long time. «But that’s the fate of developers, not only to write code, but also code that will test that code,» he adds.

HR manager Victoria Tornado agreed with him, with the only remark that in her case it was filling out tables. «I don’t like it because it’s boring, but I understand that it’s necessary and it’s in my interests,» she says.

Feelings or money

There are also specialists who focus primarily on money, and only then on job satisfaction. IT-consultant at ARTJOKER Evgeny Chvertkov can do various tasks for as long as he wants, including those he doesn’t really like, because the only thing that matters to him is how much he can earn from it. It is this approach that satisfies his ambitions in work. «When you understand that only because you don’t like it you can achieve ambitious goals, then this is one of the reasons why it doesn’t matter if you like what you do or not, the main thing is the result. And the result is money that can be further directed to your goals,» the specialist explains.

«If I had been born as Prince Charles, I would never have thought about work either,» answers C# .NET Software Engineer Vitaly Yarema to Oksana’s question. In all other cases, according to him, the specialist simply weighs whether it will be profitable for him to do what he does not like or not.

What the business will get

Considering the issue when employees do work that they don’t like from a business point of view, iOS Developer Artem Zinkov sees the risk only in the fact that a person can leave or do a poor job because he had no interest in understanding it.

HR expert Oksana Kozlova reflected on a different view of business. According to her, a person who can do what he «doesn’t like» for a while, if necessary, is an additional factor of stability for business. Because situations are different, and it is better when employees, realizing the need, roll up their sleeves and do what is necessary, rather than resign at the first feeling of discomfort,» the expert explains.

If you don’t like it, run

However, there are cases when «dislike» is just a signal for change and it is worth paying attention to it. Full Stack Developer Vitaly Horbenko gave such an example from his own experience.

«When a fairly smart guy came to the position of personal assistant and during the probationary period, I often heard from him that before that he worked as a PM in an outsourcing company and that he was enjoying working as a PM, but now here… I heard this more than 10 times in a week, after which he decided that he is interested in working with me, but he clearly does not like the field of activity and he constantly mentions it. So I talked to him about it. The next morning, he came to me with the words: „You know, you’re right… Probably, without me.“ And as far as I know, everything is fine with him now, and at that time I found an assistant with whom I was very comfortable working for more than two years,» the developer said.

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