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Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?

#131

Post by a-saleh »

scarface74 wrote: post #122
oAlbe wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, where do you find accurate and up-to-date data about market size, number of jobs, and average pay for programming languages? I could definitely use this information to better plan my next career move.

It’s more nuanced. It’s not the absolute “market size” it’s whether the market is large enough. I can keep up with that from talking to former managers, former coworkers, my network of local recruiters, recruiters job listings, LinkedIn posts, Indeed job listings, etc. For example. Let’s say from all over those sources I see the following trends. Senior consultant positions (in my case AWS). There are relatively few…

Interesting w.r.t Go-lang. Where I live, we have RedHat working on kubernetes, and several startups in the "lets-turn-everything-to-golang-microservices-on-kubernetes" phase of hype-cycle, that pay premium, so my cost-benefit analysis looks different ;)

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?

#132

Post by croh »

naikrovek wrote: post #87

Learn to not need motivation in order to get work done. This is what my father and his father called "work ethic." In short, the memory I always think back to went something like this: me whining about digging a ditch, followed by: "I'm paying you to dig a ditch. I don't care if you're motivated about digging the ditch. Dig it, and I'll pay you." It's the same with anything. If you can't work without motivation then…

> Once you surpass the need to be motivated, you really start to get good at something, in my experience.

Great sentence !

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?

#133

Post by naikrovek »

croh wrote: post #132
naikrovek wrote: post #87

Learn to not need motivation in order to get work done. This is what my father and his father called "work ethic." In short, the memory I always think back to went something like this: me whining about digging a ditch, followed by: "I'm paying you to dig a ditch. I don't care if you're motivated about digging the ditch. Dig it, and I'll pay you." It's the same with anything. If you can't work without motivation then…

> Once you surpass the need to be motivated, you really start to get good at something, in my experience. Great sentence !

Thanks! I should have worded it a bit differently, I think, and it's pretty great as-is.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?

#134

Post by probinso »

scarface74 wrote: post #128
probinso wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

study things that aren't trends / frameworks if you don't want to follow the latest trends. learn stan (still relevant technology despite being one of the oldest in its domain). learn image processing. learn database administration.

“Database Administration” is a bullet point for most companies not a complete job. Specializing in it definitely doesn’t give you the optionality of a wider range skillset like a developer who also knows about database administration. How many companies need someone who specializes in “image processing”? Soon, if it’s not already a commodity library that any company can leverage.

not many companies, but the hiring pool is also much smaller.

If you want to be a general hire, then you will suffer competing with generalists (this is not a bad thing just a different strategy). You can choose to become an expert on a general skill (or trendy framework). This is useful and highly marketable, but your competition pool is also larger and the technology is still likely to dissolve over time.

Also, for DBA , I think i'm internally thinking Data Engineering instead. I perhaps misspoke by title.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?

#135

Post by croh »

naikrovek wrote: post #133
croh wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once you surpass the need to be motivated, you really start to get good at something, in my experience. Great sentence !

Thanks! I should have worded it a bit differently, I think, and it's pretty great as-is.

It is indeed good and very inspiring, at least for me.
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