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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?

#371

Post by ido »

softawre wrote: post #337
hellameta wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The appeal of physical labor? People only do physical labor because they are either unlucky or simply lack the knowledge to choose another path. I don't expect that to be the popular perspective on "PC" hacker news but that is the real world for you. Show me a gardener who wouldn't want to make 6 figures instead of breaking their back day in and day out for close to if not minimum wage? Appeal? Yeah right.

You are right. But... I'd be a gardener. If it paid me the same I make now. At least for 3 months a year? I worked at Lowes in college hauling lumber and I miss it dearly (rose colored goggles and all). I was in the best shape of my life, I didn't think about work (lumber?) at home. It was a simpler life.

I wonder if you'd have enjoyed it as much if you weren't as young as you probably were at the time (late teens/early 20?)

That sort of work can really wreck your body as you get older.

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

#372

Post by rifung »

dikdik wrote: post #143
zzalpha wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

While I agree with many of your feelings, I think you should try to think of this in a more positive way. Many other people go into med school without really having any professional experience at all or knowing what they are signing up for. You on the other hand now can be pretty confident that if you do go to med school, it's what's best for you.

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

#373

Post by NDizzle »

sciguy77 wrote: post #324
unknownknowns wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've enjoyed working in national security and defense. It's a laid-back environment and I can leave work at work without feeling stressed.

Woah, can you expand on this? Are you a contractor or a government employee? What makes it laid back? Are the deadlines just more reasonable?

I have a good friend who lives in Alabama and works for one of the many DoD contractors.

When he leaves work at 5pm he actually can't access his work email. Nobody can send him anything from work on an unsecured line.

When he leaves work at 5pm on a Friday, nobody can contact him about work related things until he is on site at 8am on Monday morning.

He's a senior level unix admin. That can't ever be paged. I'd say that's pretty okay.

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

#375

Post by lolptdr »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #114
Ronsenshi wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can sympathize with anexprogrammer and I think by working with your hands he might mean something like woodworking, metalworking, generally working "in the shop" making stuff. I'm not unhappy being a programmer, but from time to time I immensely enjoy fixing things at home myself - I see result of my work here and now. Being a programmer I may not see finished result of my work for a long time. I think it is quite…

I'm now in conservation and restoration, so a bit of all of those. I considered restoring old vehicles, but didn't want to end up "just" a mechanic. It was working on cars that was my trigger to get out - I felt so much more satisfaction from restoring a car than I ever did from meeting a ship date. I think because it has a tangible sense of progress and completion, and there's something to point at that's more "real…

Ah, I agree, we all need to see progress and potential eventually. I was previously working in semiconductor and it would take 3-8 months to see any effect of my work. That long cycle time pushed me away. Now I am a front-end developer and love it. The feedback of aesthetics, no matter how small, reminds me that I can still have an impact. Thank you for sharing your new found love!

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

#376

Post by liquidise »

marknutter wrote: post #275

Any time I catch myself complaining about my career I do my best to jolt myself out of it. That's not to say I have nothing to complain about or that aspects of my career and my job can't be improved, but my god, is there really any other profession in the world that is as lucrative, open, and challenging as programming? There are no bullshit certifications to go through, the best tools and resources are free and ope…

> the only real downside is that there aren't enough hours in the day to do it

I opened this comment section just to write that line. When your hobby becomes your job, you never work a day in your life.

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

#377

Post by naveen99 »

I love programming. I started programming to automate my work as a radiologist in residency. I don't get paid for programming, but i think it helped me get a nice academic job when market for radiologists was bad. I program mostly as a hobby and as a way of life. But i help out my colleagues by sharing some of my software tools or sometimes just solving their data problems from time to time. Most of the time i am collecting computing power, bandwidth, storage capacity, and ofcourse collecting and learning from data...

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

#378

Post by dota_fanatic »

marknutter wrote: post #275

Any time I catch myself complaining about my career I do my best to jolt myself out of it. That's not to say I have nothing to complain about or that aspects of my career and my job can't be improved, but my god, is there really any other profession in the world that is as lucrative, open, and challenging as programming? There are no bullshit certifications to go through, the best tools and resources are free and ope…

Indeed.

But what about everyone else? The longer I work in this field and the more I understand about optimization and physical processes, the worse I feel about the work I do and the work of most programmers. Not "but it's just a social app?!" people, but the people in medicine, law, education, small business, hardware, logistics, etc, all pushing business forward bit by bit, automating away the repetitive pieces and making it easier for those in monetarily advantageous positions to capture the flag.

It's hard for me to be too happy when I see ubiquitous animal suffering in a system I'm helping to persist, seemingly towards the end of life on earth altogether. Why do I do it? I need money, and I'm only so strong for now. How can I cooperate when the biggest and greatest are of a world of defectors? Selfishness wins? It's all too easy to conclude, "I can't make a difference, not really", and the probability of making a difference drops to 0, prophesy fulfilled. After all, rent is due, student loan is due.

Count me in as someone who, given the support of basic income, can and will live frugally and give my working self 100% towards ethical objectives, as I understand them. In the meantime, this whole "but we have it so great compared to everyone else!!" just makes me feel even worse, over-burdened. If I can't make a difference with all these advantages, without seemingly herculean efforts, then who?

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

#379

Post by emergentcypher »

andy9775 wrote: post #229
49531 wrote: post #199

I worked in landscaping and then as a custodian making $7/hr before I started learning to code. Working as a programmer has transformed my life. I've got a lot of autonomy in my days, I enjoy solving technical problems, I get to work from home and see my 2yr old grow up. Yeah it sucks when your manager puts heavy deadlines on your team, or having to do things you don't necessarily agree with, or navigating corporate…

I have a side question, did you end up pursing a CS/Engineering degree? I'm trying to get a dev role and have a business background and looking for some advice on getting in.

The majority of the CS degree isn't very useful to dev work. Most of what you'll use in your day job you'll learn on your own, or on the job. A CS degree is mostly academic, and also mostly a sampling of a bunch of different domains to whet your appetite.

However there are a few topics I consider essential... operating systems, algorithm runtime/performance, data structures, basic software engineering/design patterns, memory management (seriously, everyone should have a course in C or C++) and functional programming (like Haskell).

Even hacking away at a PHP or Node server, there are times when a bit of knowledge of Big-O runtimes can save you from creating a script that never finishes.

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

#380

Post by chilicuil »

dfraser992 wrote: post #181

After 25 years of this, I now see the logic in communism (though it is idealistic). So no more working for suits and getting nothing while they extract the profit from the surplus labor I produce. Capitalism is all about exploiting or being exploited, and I haven't the temperament for it, given that I've taken too many red pills by now. So ... it's going to be contribute to OSS (because the creative part of still wor…

Completely agree, I'd prefer working in OSS full-time and accept a minimum wage to keep looking for gigs to maintain my basic necessities.
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