Consider medical device software. Often embedded C code, needs to be rigorously documented and tested, has longer development cycles, and certainly no attitudes of "bugs are fine, ship it and we'll patch later."

A lot of what you talk about is just the bread and butter of software at BigCo, especially at a senior level. Unrealistic expectations, undocumented code, some firefighting, etc. are all just par for the course, and you need to have ways of dealing with that, staying cool and grounded, not letting it get to you, and not letting it stop you from showing some delivered results each week.

Figuring out, details, debugging, etc... yes, these need to happen, but you have to slot those in around delivering things, often without a complete picture.

My recommendation is to look at game companies. Those jobs are fewer, harder to get, sometimes pay more but usually less, and the work tends to be much harder. You will be writing code though. Game companies

Otherwise look towards jobs that require niche, less popular, languages or tend to require additional skills like an engineering, law, or medical background.

The ultimate goal is to find a work culture that values selflessness. Whether that means operations, product quality, or original problems to solve. When you are surrounded by self oriented people you will always get firefighting: that kind of environment where everything is an emergency and everything is tech debt and the primary goal is worship of some tool because all that matters is the tool user (the developers own desires) as opposed to the product users, the actual business target.

What are the sizes of the companies you’ve been working at? I much prefer and recommend small teams, those where you have interacted with every other person. And I do mean every person, not every developer.

undefined

[dead]