I am a really opinionated/principled developer who cares deeply about my work.

I quit my last job because I could tell my boss had perverse incentives that he wouldn't admit to. I knew the codebase needed a refactor desperately and he insisted I work on something else (because he was leaving and didn't want to rock the boat). I can't work under those conditions. Turns out I was right... After I left, he announced he was leaving... right after his RSU's vested.

I am a developer like you, but I feel that it is my moral responsibility to let an employer feel the pain of bad code.

When customers start to leave because they hate the way things work, that's when the business bow downs to a refactor.

Dude you know YOU will take the heat in that case. NOT your boss. This is why I had to quit. If I can't stand behind my damn work and you not get out of my damn way, I'm leaving.

And if you've never clashed with your boss over ideological or philosophical issues (either productively or destructively), then I dare say you may not care very much about your work. (Or maybe, not far enough along in a career to have enough to say about it yet. I've been doing this for 18 years. I think that if you get to the point I got, where you care more about your work than your next paycheck... that that is a good thing.)

There were actually MANY times when I clashed productively with this guy. I respected him and he respected me. In fact I know that in the final battle we were both simply acting rationally. The directions were just completely at odds. And that is why I harbor no grudge or ill will towards that guy. Hell I'd probably have a beer with him still. I bet you that guy still respects me. It was just time to go.

But if you are the developer it's your fault, not the boss fault. This is why many leave before it bites them.

I don't know about nausea but if that doesn't cause some kind of anger or disgust you've got problems.

I wouldn't say "problems"... just different motivations.

We can start an entire conversation about how some people care more about their careers than their paychecks and about how some people don't, and about how still OTHER people can't even afford to care more about their careers than their paychecks.

I don't judge. I just know how _I_ felt.

"Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?"

I don't mind people going faster or slower than me as long as they're in the right lane.

Work and life purpose, not far from marriage and family in the hierarchy of things, depending on your beliefs.

It doesn't seem too unbelievable. I often feel physical symptoms from emotions, and judging from idioms (butterflys in the stomach, etc) it's not unusual.

That a business tactic based not on making a better product but instead hurting the market would shock someone unused to such matters seems perfectly reasonable. To feel you were supporting that would just make it worse.

While the parent post was probably referring to this figuratively, when we think of something repulsive we actually activate the same part of the limbic system in brain that we use to feel repulsed when we smell something rotten. In a way, our frontal cortex is hijacking the legacy "run away from smelly stuff" system instead of recreating it from scratch. This also extends to other systems as well: when someone is "hungry for success" they are using the same part of the brain that makes you hungry for food.

I was going to revisit use of that word but going back... yeah, it was seriously at least a little like that. I started to dread going into work. I perhaps wasn't full-on going to retch, but it was definitely inducing.

It was also my first job out of college and I was wet behind the ears and perhaps not aware that the real world can be a cold and harsh place.

They didn't say it figuratively caused them nausea, so...

Didn't you know? In the 21st century, the word 'literally' means figuratively. If he meant to mean literally, he would have said... well, I honestly don't know how to indicate that something is to be interpreted literally rather than figuratively now. What a world.

If only there was someone to restore balance to the universe ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jh4Mpgbi4A

:-D

Ideology's a hell of a drug.