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Comment by cableshaft | Hacker News Reader

By having an immediate boss that's very nice, knowledgeable about tech, and flexible, and gotten lucky about hiring a pretty solid group of employees.

But that only goes so far. The money isn't really where I want to be, the work isn't too interesting anymore, and I don't see much room for advancement, so I'm not sure how much longer I'll stay here.

Company vision and mission statements mean very little to me, since they're almost always meaningless crap to put on a letterhead and not much more.

Oh, also my commute is just over 15 minutes. That's nice too. I can stop by the house for lunch sometimes and see my puppy. So that helps.

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It sounds like not providing a way or opportunity to advance your knowledge and career is hurting you and your culture. Do you think you would stay if your employer would provide more opportunities to work on newer projects or more cutting edge stuff?

I know for me that if I am not learning new tech or driving something that really motivates me forward every month than I become antsy and look for new things I can learn.

No, probably not. They're really not aligned with the type of work I'm trying to get back into. I'm wanting to get back into mobile or move into VR space, and they're making web and phone apps for healthcare and insurance companies. I don't see that getting aligned ever.

I am actually learning new things and working on new projects right now, that might keep me a bit longer, but not too long. I'm not in a hurry to leave, but I'm starting to reboot and refresh my knowledge in the other fields again.

I know for me that I broke off into my own side projects and contracting work that interested me. I found that being able to tackle a contract that I want or a side project that could possibly bring me some money in or teach me some new things has kept me on the tip of my toes.

Well...my big hobby right now is board game design. That's taking a lot of my free time and not leaving as much to keep sharp on programming tech (although I have been spending some time on that, just not hours a night).

I'm hoping to get my first one or two board game designs signed this year. I have a meeting with a publisher scheduled in June (hopefully more soon) and I'm trying to get everything polished and playtested for that.

That is awesome! Do you have a community within work that supports this hobby? I know that we take time to support peoples hobbies and lives outside of the scope of our product and jobs. This can be a huge motivator and brings us a lot of joy and bonding for the team. We are people first and we take pride in our different skills and hobbies supporting each other any way we can. We would love to play test a board game!

Not really, no. There's a couple of coworkers that play board games, but other than that, about the most support I get is "How are those games coming along?"

I don't actually try to talk about it that much, just in case someone gets it in there head that board games are somehow a conflict of interest with web development (large corporate environment).

But that's alright, there's actually a decent game designer scene in the region with some regular meetups, and a few friends of mine will happily help me tear apart my designs (a couple are designers themselves).

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