How To Have Good Work-Life Balance as a Software Engineer
Software engineering is an amazingly creative and exciting field to work in!
It can also be incredibly overwhelming 😰
Urgent features
Urgent bug fixes
Urgent meetings
All while facing the pressure of staying on top of the latest features and changes in the technology stack you’re working with.
Oddly enough though, the biggest stressor is typically not the work at all, but rather the expectations of others regarding how you do your work.
And given a typical corporate structure, the individual contributor software engineer is rarely empowered to outright reject a work task and instead has to execute on the direction set by their superiors.
Which means to manage their own schedule a modern software engineer has to be adept at enforcing professional boundaries in a way that does not disrupt that structure.
And practically, that means mastering the art of saying “No” while making others think you’re saying “Yes”
For example, next time you’re asked to do a task that
- you disagree with, or
- requires your unpaid overtime
