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Ask HN: How happy are you working as a programmer?

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Re: Ask HN: How happy are you working as a programmer?

#141

Post by raverbashing »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #73
anexprogrammer wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar background here, and complete agreement with you! Started out seriously with the Amiga and it was a delight - the OS was beautifully designed, and there were so many ideas that should have caught on. I'll name just one - datatypes. Work started out with C and Unix, and so long as you had K&R and W Richard Stephens you were good to go. Loved the design of this too until I got to the GUI - X was not fun. Messin…

I remember being 16 and forging teacher's noted to get out of study hall to go to the library. Why? Because they had a REAL computer there! A Commodore PET! With 4K of RAM and BASIC! I came in, sat down, and thought "what do I want this machine to do that would be cool?" And so I wrote a game. Other kids loved the game enough to fight over who could play it. That was pretty cool. But I look at programming now? Damn,…

> You can do a ton with just plain html, some css, and a bit of simple functional-like programming

Or, you know, you don't need a virtualenv running inside of docker running inside heroku running whatever to make your stuff run

Or setup 20 "automation chores" before you write a line of code

Yeah, things today look like 80% is nitpicking and 'best practices' (by whom?) and 20% writing some code that will fall off because of bugs in all those abstraction layers You don't need

Re: Ask HN: How happy are you working as a programmer?

#143

Post by dikdik »

zzalpha wrote: post #56
laxatives wrote: post #20

6/10. I'm less than 3 years into my career, but I think I've worked for some of the best companies with great pay, benefits, environments, etc, including a tech giant and two startups. End of the day though, work is boring. Its always work. Your time and effort is going towards making someone else rich and their priorities are more important than your own. The only things I really look forward to are vacations and ev…

Uhh... I have to ask: what, exactly, were you expecting? Exhilarating highs and a path to millions? It's a job. Most people don't have jobs that'll make them "rich". Be glad you aren't living paycheck to paycheck, or worse, are unemployed because the job you had was optimized away with computers. To be blunt, there's a sense of entitlement evident, here, that I have trouble grokking. You get to spend all day in a com…

This is a horrible comment. There is 100x more to a career than living a comfortable existence.

Personally, I want to feel purposeful at work and that I am contributing to a better world. I also absolutely require regular challenges or I end up severely depressed. Also, I have undertaken extensive education partially as a way of raising my standard of living and having a more enjoyable life outside of work.

THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE! Yea, it's not always going to be a party, but there's a hell of a lot more to it than sitting in air conditioning. And you're allowed to demand a hell of a lot out of your career as long as you are willing to put in the work to get it.

My search for a challenging and intrinsically and extrinsically rewarding career brought me to study the life sciences. Then I ended up in a healthcare company doing menial crap and then a graduate degree in bioinformatics. I'm looking through job-ad after job-ad, and while the occasional one looks challenging I am absolutely terrified that I am going to end up as a desk-monkey who doesn't interact with people and again gets no challenges.

I hope I am wrong and I can make this career work for me, but I am already looking at applying to medical school in a year if can't find a challenging and decently rewarding job in bioinfo. Sucks, because I had originally intended on being a doctor when I was in undergrad but went in another direction because I wasn't 100% sure about it at the time. Unfortunately, I am 100% sure I do not enjoy being a desk jockey.

Re: Ask HN: How happy are you working as a programmer?

#144

Post by jeletonskelly »

J-dawg wrote: post #126

I'm a programmer who doesn't really get to program. I work for a consulting company. Most development work is off-shored, which means most roles for UK staff are more client facing. Right now I'm building a web front end for a bloated piece of enterprise software. There's no technical difficulty, it's just frustrating and boring. I can't leave to work in 'proper' software development because I don't have the relevant…

If you want a path out of this, you're going to have to motivate yourself. There was a point in my career that I was falling asleep at my desk because I was so bored and no one cared about what I was working on. It's both a sad and funny memory now, but I'll tell you what I did to get out.

I remember stumbling into some blog posts by some great programmers who were doing some really interesting things and thinking to myself "how will I ever get there?" I was in my mid-late twenties, time seemed to be flying by and each year I was no better a programmer than last.

I decided to jump into the programming "scene." That's right, it's a scene just like punk rock. Started going to meetups for whatever, any language, any technology, and started meeting some intelligent motivated people. The people you meet at these meetups/programming groups will start to inspire you. You'll also find jobs with problems to solve. Companies go to these things to find motivated talent. They don't want the Java bean enterprise developer who punches 9-5 and calls it a day. The people who go to meetups and tech groups are constantly self-improving and learning; go to one, join, dive into the programming/tech culture, and live that lifestyle. Don't look back. Doors will open, opportunities will present themselves, and you will have the chance to solve problems.

Re: Ask HN: How happy are you working as a programmer?

#145

Post by SCdF »

I've been doing this for 10 years now and I can see myself trending away from it honestly. To stave that off I'm taking jobs which pay less are more interesting: firstly I did some functional stuff and now I work for a non-profit that does mobile healthcare for hard to reach communities.

It's very easy to get jaded. It's very easy to stare at the bespoke insurance application you and 6 other people have built (or slotted together from hideous technologies your client has already purchased) and wonder what the point of it all is.

Writing code for something you're passionate about helps.

Working out how to do things--not even important things, but just _other_ things--outside of work helps.

Remembering that the effort / money ratio in programming (esp if you live in fancy parts of the states, which I do not, or want to sell your soul to the London bankers, which I also do not) is really pretty fantastic helps as well.

Re: Ask HN: How happy are you working as a programmer?

#146

Post by sumedh »

1stop wrote: post #83
sumedh wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know this cooperative(aka socialism :) sounds good on paper but it does not work most of the time in real life. If someone takes a risk to build something valuable, he/she deserves to get rich.

Paying people the same value they contribute is not socialism. It's called: Being a good person. Capitalism seems to have made us all think it's completely okay to exploit someone else's surplus labour. How is the risk the founder takes that different to Employee #1's? Their payout is usually vastly different, but their contribution not so much.

You misunderstood me, I am not saying you should exploit your workers, pay them fair wage. What I am saying is that founder who took the risk should enjoy the fruits.

> How is the risk the founder takes that different to Employee #1's?

Employee #1 will probably be getting a salary, if the company fails he can get a job somewhere else. Meanwhile the founders who worked on the idea probably used their savings initially not to mention quitting their jobs and working on the idea and facing humiliation if the company fails.

That takes courage which everyone cannot do which is why founders deserve to get rich if they build something valuable, employees not so much unless they are willing to stick it out till the end.

Re: Ask HN: How happy are you working as a programmer?

#147

Post by Udo »

cgag wrote: post #9

I just want to note that there's strong social pressure to not to claim that you don't love working as a programmer on this site. The odds a future boss or coworker is an HN regular is extremely high, and "passion" is high valued. Weigh the responses accordingly.

If you're scared of putting your actual opinions on here, why do it in the first place? Why even have an account? I'm sure if you searched through most people's comment history here, including mine, any given future boss could find something they take offense with, if they only looked hard enough.

I also find your implication that everybody here is (or should be) lying about their experiences reprehensible.

Disagreement is natural, and so is having different life styles. There are lots of people on here who view programming just as a means to a (business) end, or who only learned it in college and see it as a job skill, as opposed to a creative outlet. These people don't generally have problems getting hired, and I can see how some jobs and bosses would even prefer them.

I'm in the "programming as a passion" camp, and I can see lots of reasons why bosses would prefer not to hire some opinionated old neckbeard who thinks he's a creative snowflake.

Re: Ask HN: How happy are you working as a programmer?

#148

Post by wr0ngway »

zzalpha wrote: post #56
laxatives wrote: post #20

6/10. I'm less than 3 years into my career, but I think I've worked for some of the best companies with great pay, benefits, environments, etc, including a tech giant and two startups. End of the day though, work is boring. Its always work. Your time and effort is going towards making someone else rich and their priorities are more important than your own. The only things I really look forward to are vacations and ev…

Uhh... I have to ask: what, exactly, were you expecting? Exhilarating highs and a path to millions? It's a job. Most people don't have jobs that'll make them "rich". Be glad you aren't living paycheck to paycheck, or worse, are unemployed because the job you had was optimized away with computers. To be blunt, there's a sense of entitlement evident, here, that I have trouble grokking. You get to spend all day in a com…

Working with your brain takes just as much effort as working with your muscles. Think back to taking a multiple hour exam in school, and how knackered you'd feel at the end of it. Now imagine doing that for 8+ hours every day, trying to solve problems that you don't even know have a solution. Yes, your body may still be ready to go, but there's nothing left upstairs to make it happen.

Re: Ask HN: How happy are you working as a programmer?

#150

Post by edem » 

    6/10. I'm less than 3 years into my career, but I think I've worked for some of the best companies with great pay, benefits, environments, etc, including a tech giant and two startups. End of the day though, work is boring. Its always work. Your time and effort is going towards making someone else rich and their
    priorities are more important than your own.
    The only things I really look forward to are vacations and events outside of work. Learning things is always exciting and sometimes its extremely rewarding
    getting a project (or even a feature) off the ground and seeing a company rise and beat projections. But then a few weeks later, its just back to work and
    nothings really different. Its a temporary victory at best, then expectations just get higher and more grind.
I can second this. I have been working in the industry for 10 years and I figured that while I work for (probably big) companies and code someone else's ideas I'm stuck. Not to mention that the bigger the company the more enterprisy the software.

That's why I started to do my own development on my own ideas at home. Ever since I started to do so I'm feeling much better. I regularly contribute to GitHub projects as well. I also feel rejuvenated by being LEAN and using the fewest possible 3rd party libraries. Now I know the code I'm using since I can see the source of all libraries I use and they are much simpler than the enterprise stuff. I'm sure that after a number of successful side projects I will be able to work on my stuff full time. This is my primary focus at the moment and the thought of achieving this makes me more happier now reaching a 7/10.

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