Ask HN: How happy are you working as a programmer? • Hacker News Board

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

#281

Post by nilkn » Mon, Feb 01, 2016, 3:41 PM UTC

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…

Why do you think most developers should be paid similarly to a highly specialized doctor?

First of all, you might be thinking of doctors like neurosurgeons. Less than 1% of practicing physicians in the US are neurosurgeons, and some neurosurgeons make as little as $250k (often ones with special academic appointments). Not all of them make $1M/year or even $700k/year.

Second of all, you might in general be overestimating doctor compensation. See this report:

http://www.medscape.com/features/slideshow/compensation/2015...

Primary care doctors earned an average of $195k in total compensation. Half that is $97.5k. There are many developers who make more than that -- certainly far more than .1% of developers. That is, in fact, the median pay for software developers:

http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Computer-and-Information-Technology/S...

Granted, you did say specialized doctor, and we see from the MedScape report that they make $280k on average. Half of that is only $140k. There are fresh college graduates who make more than that in total compensation. I've even known relatively new developers making $250k once bonuses and vesting stocks are taken into account. Either way, $140k in total pay is not uncommon at all for an experienced senior developer. Again, certainly far more than .1% of developers are in that income bracket.

Finally, and perhaps more importantly, I think you might underestimate the difficulty of becoming a specialized doctor. It's certainly much harder than becoming an average programmer. The educational requirements are vastly higher and more rigorous. The debt load is in the six figures for all but children of the rich. And the time investment is at minimum 11 years (4 undergrad + 4 medical school + minimum of 3 residency). But since we're talking about specialized MDs, the residency will actually be longer than that, as long as 7 years for a neurosurgeon, plus an extra 2-3 for a fellowship if desired. After all that, the doctor will potentially work twice as much as the programmer.

It's not fair to compare the average heart surgeon to the average programer, because the heart surgeon is by definition vastly above average among doctors in both education, grades, and pay. It would really only be fair to compare the heart surgeon to, say, a senior engineer at Google (or similar), where a total compensation exceeding $250k is common.

As for lawyers, many law school graduates I know don't even have a job. The days are long gone where a law degree was automatically a golden ticket. It's certainly true that the top lawyers make a large amount of money, but becoming a partner (say) at a large firm is just not comparable to becoming a programmer. These days, it's like winning the lottery.

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

#282

Post by LesZedCB » Mon, Feb 01, 2016, 3:42 PM UTC

marknutter wrote: post #269

LesZedCB wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enjoy X, but 'working doing X' is infuriating. I would bet that most people feel this way. Maybe we should consider alternatives to wage labor that better meet the needs of people instead of the needs of the capitalists...

Why do so many threads always have to devolve into a bizarre condemnation of capitalism? If you don't want to code for a living, then don't code for a living. Do it for fun and make money some other way. If you're upset that you have to work to survive, well, then maybe you need to have a reality check.

It's not bizarre. There is a long historical culture of criticism of capitalism. It's just been squashed in recent decades.

I am a particularly privileged individual because I have a choice of what labor I can do, and even how much to an extent. Most people don't have the choice of just switching careers because they feel like it, and even fewer have the option of even realizing that there is some sort of activity that would be more fulfilling than what they do to survive.

I believe the reality check needs to occur in the people who are too used to their own comfort that they can't even lift their blinders to look outside their own social environments and see the injustice that is happening on a massive scale in the world.

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

#283

Post by knodi123 » Mon, Feb 01, 2016, 3:42 PM UTC

Amezarak wrote: post #163

dagw wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm 45 minutes late for work 3 days in a row with no good excuse, no one gives a fuck. Retail worker shows up 45 minutes late one day and they're most likely fired. I also don't have to worry about people fucking around with my shifts and thus how much money will be in my next paycheck. Having even a modicum of job and financial security removes so much stress from your life.

> If I'm 45 minutes late for work 3 days in a row with no good excuse, no one gives a fuck. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way for all developers. At my last job there were continual reminders and reprimands for being even five minutes late.

you've heard of "code smell", right? that right there is a "career smell".

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

#284

Post by AndrewUnmuted » Mon, Feb 01, 2016, 3:43 PM UTC

dev360 wrote: post #276

johnnyfaehell wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're problem was going for a start up and not going for Enterprise. Majority of start ups have no idea what they're doing.

There is still something to be learned from startups. I worked enterprise for most of my career and it was always the same story. Ambitious projects, large teams, lots of red tape + politics, inferior technologies; and by and large 'UX' that was largely an afterthought. I'm still incredibly thankful for the experience, but the lesson was not in actually learning how to do things right. Instead it instilled in me a de…

This is a very insightful comment. I found myself realizing daily, during my 2015 adventure, that the likelihood of success for me would have dropped precipitously if I did not already have a solid idea of how to handle version control, test-driven development, etc.

The speed at which startups move is a cause for concern, however, because many of the people with which I worked were simply "lean in" types, and would have been able to get a job doing just about anything. The problem was that many of these ninja rockstar 10x efficiency evangelists didn't really work with Git well and didn't really value the command line. Linux knowledge was very minimal.

I worked for four startups, and found that only one of them had ONE employee who had a solid computer science background.

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

#285

Post by knodi123 » Mon, Feb 01, 2016, 3:44 PM UTC

dizzystar wrote: post #91

spacecowboy_lon wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less stress? Retail workers turn up a 9 leave at 17:30 - they dot get called up outside of work in an emergency to fix some one elses code that causing a problem.

In retail, you don't get free food / liquid. You have to stand on your feet all day. Customers are allowed to scream at you and you have to figure out how to make them happy. Bosses are more than happy to fire you because, let's be honest, there are 1,000 others that can do your job. No guarantees of a 40 hour work-week. No paid holidays, no benefits. Raises are like 25c, and that is only if the boss really likes you…

> shifts well past midnight on Friday and Christmas Eve.

Haha, try working as a developer supporting a retail-based operation! Our company pulls all-nighters on black friday and christmas eve.

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

#286

Post by CaptainAmerica » Mon, Feb 01, 2016, 3:44 PM UTC

turnip1979 wrote: post #213

awjr wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would suggest looking in the mirror ;) Let's be honest. Freelancers are not there to find "interesting clients". They are a temporary resource that enables a client to get a job done they under-resourced. You have a choice as a freelancer 1) Become money focused. Earn as much as you can for as long as you can. 2) Become idea focused. Earn as much as you can until you have enough to bootstrap the idea. Rinse and rep…

Dumb question .. how does one go about getting started as a freelancer? Are there agencies or some other mechanism to get you started? Specifically, interested in how to get started in North America.

You know I've been wondering this lately too. I haven't done any freelance work but I want to get into it. I'm still not sure the answer, but I started by turning on the 'Hire Me' buttons on my Codepen and GitHub accounts. I just launched a portfolio website (last night actually) that showcases a few of my projects and lists my contact information. I think my next step would be to check out sites like elance etc. But I'd love to hear other ideas from successful freelancers.

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

#287

Post by agentultra » Mon, Feb 01, 2016, 3:45 PM UTC

LoSboccacc wrote: post #124

onion2k wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its depressing to make comparisons, but 99.9% of developers will never make half of what a specialized MD or successful lawyer or someone in finance might make. Why not make a much less depressing comparison and compare developer wages to manual labourers or retail staff? Compare a typical developer to a typical retail worker and we get way more money for way less stress. We're not at the top end of the scale, but we…

> compare developer wages to manual labourers or retail staff apples to oranges. we're highly specialized knowledge workers. well most of us are, so it is more fair to compare with bankers, lawyers, medics, architects, politician and middle managers which can count on a year to year income growth instead of having to playing idea lottery.

I'd compare us only superficially to capital-P Professions like lawyers, architects, engineers and the like. There are no bar exams to get a license to practice programming in the industry; no liability -- it's really easy for people to misrepresent themselves and for companies to take advantage of us.

Comparing us to retail workers has some merit. We're not professions, have no collective representation, and can be easily replaced (despite current myths about how difficult it is to hire programmers there are hoards of new graduates and self-taught individuals making the leap from other careers and professions because of the money and cushy benefits -- most hiring processes seem to be designed to keep the majority of people out).

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

#288

Post by dev360 » Mon, Feb 01, 2016, 3:45 PM UTC

bsenftner wrote: post #265

Been coding professionally 37 years. Started as a self taught video game developer back in the Apple II, Commodore era. I loved it at first. University had me working at a 3D graphics research lab with Mandelbrot himself, later on I was an OS developer for the 3DO and the first PlayStation. I worked on tons of high profile video games, and later transitioned to VFX for film, and worked on a ton of popular blockbuster…

>>> Our career is create on demand on schedule.

Spot on. Lately, I've started questioning if agile development isn't the worst thing that has happened to my overall happiness :)

Waterfall had severe drawbacks, but in any reasonably sized organizations, you'd have a lot of time on your hands in between projects, QA testing and acceptance testing. I still miss being able to hack on small stuff on work time without anybody breathing down your neck.

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

#289

Post by JoeAltmaier » Mon, Feb 01, 2016, 3:45 PM UTC

vinceguidry wrote: post #250

LoSboccacc wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> compare developer wages to manual labourers or retail staff apples to oranges. we're highly specialized knowledge workers. well most of us are, so it is more fair to compare with bankers, lawyers, medics, architects, politician and middle managers which can count on a year to year income growth instead of having to playing idea lottery.

I wouldn't exactly call developers highly specialized. Specialized developers work in a tiny niche and make lots of money by being one of the very few in that niche. Any of us could potentially become specialized, but very few of us actually are. Hell, most of us could jump fields without losing steam. Systems administration, security, database administration, all of these can be done by a decent developer.

At some level. But I would never hire a developer to do security, or sysad. Because they have the wrong mindset for it. I want some OCD single-minded person keeping my network safe. Not someone who like to just 'get it done' as efficiently as possible. Totally different goal, and to be really good at it takes a different person.

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

#290

Post by kendallpark » Mon, Feb 01, 2016, 3:46 PM UTC

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…

> Even compensation wise, it peaks very early and probably won't get most rich without a ton of luck. Its depressing to make comparisons, but 99.9% of developers will never make half of what a specialized MD or successful lawyer or someone in finance might make. Granted, the barrier to entry is much lower in CS (sometimes nearly nonexistent depending on the line of work).

Med student here. Programmers don't have to take out 200K in loans. Also, when you do something like medicine, you're basically giving up a DECADE of you life before you actually start making the big bucks. Residents make less than the average programmer. Med students make negative $$. Debt compounds.

But seriously, if that's what you want, stop romanticizing and just do it. Though I have to say, do law school. Doctors that became doctors for the prestige and money are really the worst.