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

8/10

Pros: - I get paid a lot of money doing what I did as a hobby when I was younger - I come in whenever I want and leave whenever I want - I can work from home whenever I want - My work is intellectually stimulating - My coworkers are smart and interesting - I get to play with dogs at work - If I don't like my job, I can get 5 other offers within a week

Cons: - I still make less than I would have if I pursued law, finance, or medicine - Most interviews are some sort of hostile, cargo-cult nonsense - Those 5 offers would not offer me anything significantly different from each other or my current job - Nearly all of my coworkers care more about playing with the latest technologies and building unnecessary frameworks than actually making things - The best companies/jobs are all in Silicon Valley or SF, whereas I want to live in NYC

I don't really like the "industrialized software development" model most companies follow. Wherever I work, I am 2-5x more productive than the average developer. When I start, I usually am on a team with people who are similarly productive. But, as our success grows, we hire more people who are less productive (against my wishes), and the people I used to work with either leave or get promoted to management, which means I don't get to work with them anymore. I also get promoted to management, which means that I spend less time programming and more time doing things I don't enjoy.

Yes, I get that it's hard to hire exceptional people. I get that companies would rather consist of many easy-to-replace mediocre people than a few hard-to-replace exceptional people. I get that, at a certain size, predictability matters more than speed, and having more people on the team allows their idiosyncrasies to cancel out.

I just wish that I could work on a small team of really smart, really well-compensated people. Does such a thing exist? Should I take Google's job offer (from what I hear, they over-staff every team)? Should I look into hedge funds (not super interested in building stuff I can't use)? Should I say "fuck it" and try to get a job as a quant or trader (I've gotten offers in the past)?

> You possess an either infantile and misinformed understanding of Marx, or you're just being ideological here.I don't understand what is offending you so much here. I am claiming that Marx does not understand Capital, and just because he claimed to have analysed the role of 'capital', it doesn't mean that he 'understood' it. A christian biologist writing about the role of fossils doesn't mean he understands it.

> His careful inspection did not reveal a conspiracy theory; instead, it elucidated the ways capital influences our material existence. Did Marx not say that the employer is able to claim a right to 'surplus labor' because the capitalist class (state being one of them) protects this right(property rights)?

Does he not claim that almost all property is acquired via theft and coercion of the labor class? I understand that conspiracy theory is a loaded term, but his idea of 'class interest' is nothing but a conspiracy theory. That somehow all the capitalist are conspiring against the workers, without being explicitly aware of it.

Karl Marx did not understand that Capital allows production but doing division of 'labor'(used here to mean 'tasks'). Workers don't need to invest their time in the production process, and wait for the revenue of a business to pour in, while a person specializing in saving, does the job of providing the wages.

That this is a necessary factor needed in any economy and it's impossible for any society (including the one recommending by Marx) to live by not having division of capital accumulation from labor.

8/10

Pros: - I get paid a lot of money doing what I did as a hobby when I was younger

- I come in whenever I want and leave whenever I want

- I can work from home whenever I want

- My work is intellectually stimulating

- My coworkers are smart and interesting

- I get to play with dogs at work

- If I don't like my job, I can get 5 other offers within a week

Cons: - I still make less than I would have if I pursued law, finance, or medicine

- Most interviews are some sort of hostile, cargo-cult nonsense

- Those 5 offers would not offer me anything significantly different from each other or my current job

- Nearly all of my coworkers care more about playing with the latest technologies and building unnecessary frameworks than actually making things

- The best companies/jobs are all in Silicon Valley or SF, whereas I want to live in NYC

I don't really like the "industrialized software development" model most companies follow. Wherever I work, I am 2-5x more productive than the average developer. When I start, I usually am on a team with people who are similarly productive. But, as our success grows, we hire more people who are less productive (against my wishes), and the people I used to work with either leave or get promoted to management, which means I don't get to work with them anymore. I also get promoted to management, which means that I spend less time programming and more time doing things I don't enjoy.

Yes, I get that it's hard to hire exceptional people. I get that companies would rather consist of many easy-to-replace mediocre people than a few hard-to-replace exceptional people. I get that, at a certain size, predictability matters more than speed, and having more people on the team allows their idiosyncrasies to cancel out.

I just wish that I could work on a small team of really smart, really well-compensated people. Does such a thing exist? Should I take Google's job offer (from what I hear, they over-staff every team)? Should I look into hedge funds (not super interested in building stuff I can't use)? Should I say "fuck it" and try to get a job as a quant or trader (I've gotten offers in the past)?

Yeah, that and a lack of responsibility sometimes attracts me. My whole career (+15yrs) has basically been in industries where things are not allowed to go wrong. Some days I wish I was a lumberjack or maybe a programmer in an industry where you don't kill people or cost millions of dollars with a bug... But at the end of the day I can't stop myself from programming and I want to work on things that make a difference, so I'll leave the wood-cutting to my spare time.

What a world we live in. Defending the security of a nation = laid-back, no stress. Writing yet another CRUD backend for a mobile app = crazy hours and ulcers.