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

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

#381

Post by pikzen » Mon, Feb 01, 2016, 5:25 PM UTC

joesmo wrote: post #312

pikzen wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come on. Working with your brain is a breeze. Yes, you get mentally exhausted. Eat some damn sugar, problem solved. You know what you don't get, that manual workers do ? Crippling disabilities, having no energy left once you get home, a terrible salary, dangerous work conditions. We have it easy. Stop lying to yourself.

You've obviously never heard of repetitive stress injuries like carpal tunnel and others. Your brain doesn't do the typing/pointing and such crippling injuries are fast becoming the norm in most long-term tech workers. For some, it's putting them out of a job or even out of a career. Easy my fucking ass.

Boo hoo hoo

Now, I hate the "but other others have it worse" logic, but let's go ahead. I have a family member who was a mason. Started at 16. He is now 45, is unable to do anything properly because his back is completely busted.

I'd love to say that this is an isolated case. I'd love to say that the other construction workers I know are in better health. And I'd love to say that percentage of construction workers with health problems is extremely low. But they're not. Their job is physically hard. They're laying bricks, moving things, moving around on roofs. The body can take it, but not for too long. And they can't take breaks, because their job doesn't allow it. Their body is perpetually being used, and all they can do is reduce the rate at which the damage is done.

Now let's compare with the average developer, which can do regular wrists exercises, sits in a comfy office chair and can perfectly well go exercise after work. Whee, such danger. Take care of your body at least 30 minutes every day.

And yes, carpal tunnel sucks, and can put you out of a career. It can't put you out of 80% of jobs because your back, or your leg, or your shoulder is busted.

Compare both, and tell me the construction worker doesn't have it a thousand times harder than the dev, I dare you.

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

#382

Post by unknownknowns » Mon, Feb 01, 2016, 5:26 PM UTC

logfromblammo wrote: post #350

sciguy77 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It depends on the contract. For the most part, the scrutiny of government auditors ensure that you actually can't work more than 40 hours in a single week. Sometimes the contract also ensures that the work cannot be done outside of a government-controlled facility. So if you're the actual do-the-work peon instead of someone in any of the several tiers of useless middlemen, you work regular 8 hour days, get 10 or 11 p…

Are you in SIGINT? If you're not in SIGINT, I agree with everything you've said, otherwise my experience has been pretty different likely because I'm in SIGINT. Most of us are employees and the work can be pretty satisfying and rewarding, especially when you can see the effects and/or results when you're just a small cog in the machine.

It's possible we're in different countries, though :-).

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

#383

Post by hipsters_unite » Mon, Feb 01, 2016, 5:27 PM UTC

logfromblammo wrote: post #350

sciguy77 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It depends on the contract. For the most part, the scrutiny of government auditors ensure that you actually can't work more than 40 hours in a single week. Sometimes the contract also ensures that the work cannot be done outside of a government-controlled facility. So if you're the actual do-the-work peon instead of someone in any of the several tiers of useless middlemen, you work regular 8 hour days, get 10 or 11 p…

11 or 10 paid holidays? Do you mean that's the total number of holiday days you get in an entire year? Does that include public holidays?

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

#384

Post by brandontreb » Mon, Feb 01, 2016, 5:30 PM UTC

dev360 wrote: post #258

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 joke with programmer friends that we should become gardeners instead. I guess the appeal of physical labor is you get to leave work at work.

This must be a common joke amongst programmers. We often joke that we should all become potato farmers. Being outside, watching things grow, working with something physical. I totally get the appeal.

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

#385

Post by xyzzy4 » Mon, Feb 01, 2016, 5:30 PM UTC

dev360 wrote: post #258

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 joke with programmer friends that we should become gardeners instead. I guess the appeal of physical labor is you get to leave work at work.

I actually got fired once because I didn't work crazy hours. Now I work at another company where it's much more laid back. I don't do any work when I get home or on the weekends.

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

#386

Post by estefan » Mon, Feb 01, 2016, 5:31 PM UTC

aerovistae wrote: post #370

estefan wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely agree. Try taking a job that pays minimum wage (if you have one), or work in a shop, as a builder, or find friends who have to work all hours to survive and you'll realise how damned lucky you are.

No. Just because "it can be worse" doesn't mean someone doesn't have the right to be unhappy. It's a totally specious argument. "Your kid died? Well, what if BOTH your kids died? You have a lack of perspective..." Yes, they would no doubt prefer their high-paying job over a minimum wage job. But that doesn't mean that they no longer have any right to be unhappy with their lives. This is exactly the point of the hedon…

> "Your kid died? Well, what if BOTH your kids died? You have a lack of perspective..."

Glass half full vs glass half empty. The hedonic treadmill has nothing to do with it. It's about being thankful and making the best of things. That's the antidote.

However you look at it being a programmer in today's society has the potential to give you an amount of choice and wealth enjoyed by very few other industries. You can make your own luck by simply being motivated enough to learn, and the initial outlay to create a massively profitable business is tiny compared to many other fields. So make the best of it. You could work for 3 months a year and do what you love for the other 9.

Are you really telling me you can't make that work? It is about perspective.

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

#387

Post by hipsters_unite » Mon, Feb 01, 2016, 5:33 PM UTC

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.

I'm self-taught and I got my first job through going to user groups and scoping out what was going. Second job was with a much more difficult problem domain, but I'd taught myself some CS from textbooks during my first job so in the interview I came with lots of examples of work (both day job and freelance) and piped up about CS topics where I knew about them, and admitted when I didn't but stressed that I wanted to learn. I beat several other people to the job even though I was the most junior.

A lot of devs even at a mid or higher level have little curiosity for the theory side of things, and eventually you'll run into problems that require knowledge of it, so being enthusiastic (and a bit self-starting) in that area pays dividends in my experience even if you're not the most experienced dev going for a job.

The only caveat is that both were/are small companies, so no HR apparatus to go through.

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

#388

Post by solotronics » Mon, Feb 01, 2016, 5:34 PM UTC

VLM wrote: post #204

timwaagh wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its not a good comparison since retail takes absolutely sero education or brains.

Meaningless class based prattle Hardest management job I ever had - working night shift manager at a food store while going to college during the day. Like surviving a hurricane while running a marathon while the building's on fire, every single night. I lived roughly a decade of "real" management in my senior year. Cashiering required a surprising amount of memorization of obscure procedures and policies and item co…

Anecdotes like this make me wonder what will people in the bottom 1/4 of the bell curve do for a living in the future?

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

#389

Post by hardwaresofton » Mon, Feb 01, 2016, 5:36 PM UTC

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…

If I'm reading you right, "realistic shot" = 1 in 10 succeed right? I'm not saying that's right or wrong, good or bad, but just to let people know that's generally the statistic that gets thrown around for becoming profitable as some new tech startup trying to make it. I am unsure if that stat is VC-funded only or contains bootstrapped startups and VC-funded ones.

I absolutely agree with your post. This is what I feel when someone asks me "how's work". Any time someone talks to me about wanting to switch careers, I recommend tech for those very reasons -- there are few other high-earning career/profession that can compare.

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

#390

Post by geebee » Mon, Feb 01, 2016, 5:36 PM UTC

dev360 wrote: post #288

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 anyb…

I wouldn't want to go back to waterfall, but my experiences with "on demand on schedule" (a very astute phrase, that) have caused me to realize it did have advantages.

Good software usually doesn't result from massive upfront requirements analysis, design, and scheduling, and the iterate and repeat approach has huge benefits (provided you've done some planning about where you're going).

However, waterfall did have one big advantage, in that it forces the business side to be clear about what they want. This is an impossible and unfair task, and of course the business side will need to change, amend, modify, limit and expand scope, and so forth. The advantage is that it's unfair to everyone. I know this will sound terribly cynical (and every time I say it, someone asks, not unreasonably, "why do you even work where you work!?"), but waterfall is a contract that puts everyone in breach. The all too common corruption of agile turns into a situation where only the developer is failing to make deadlines or deliver on promises, with a daily standup reminder of this fact.

I'm only partly cynical here. Software is a big, confusing, chaotic mess, and that's ok, it's the nature of the craft. However, people, especially on the outside, get frustrated. I think that the business side perceives the impossibility of truly estimating and planning software better when they try (and fail) to do waterfall. It puts them in the position of coming to the developer or technical team and saying "sorry, I know we sent you those specs, but it isn't working, we need to change our minds." With (corrupted) "agile", they are cleared of this responsibility, and they can just show up every day (or every few days), think about nothing but a very specific task, ask the dev for a time estimate, and then wonder why it hasn't gotten done (yet).

When agile works well, it's when the entire team is ok with measuring progress by the value of working software, released frequently. Those have been rare occasions for me, but that has been the best experience, the happiest one, for me. Corrupted agile has been the very worst. Waterfall is somewhere in the middle.