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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?

#391

Post by joesmo »

pikzen wrote: post #381
joesmo wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wi…

I wasn't comparing, just simply pointing out your error.

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

#392

Post by rifung »

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…

I don't know how old you are, but I have a similar experience level with the person you're responding to and I think I and many of my peers relate in some ways. I think the parts he said about getting rich are a bit silly; that's probably more of a personal regret of his/hers then anything else.

On the other hand, I think many other people I've talked to who have only worked for a few years kind of feel lost. I guess in a way we've been so busy with school and constantly pressured into finding a good paying job and that it would all be worth it that we didn't take enough time to experience life and find out what actually makes us happy. In fairness, it's also a bit difficult to know if you'll enjoy a job until you actually do it for a while.

I like my job, don't get me wrong, and I really do appreciate all the opportunities it gives me. I think the real question is whether that job enables you to do what you truly want to do, or handicaps you instead. I am fortunate enough that my job is the former, but I've certainly taken jobs where it was more the latter.

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

#393

Post by xenihn »

dota_fanatic wrote: post #378
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 an…

Great comment, I feel the same way sometimes :(

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

#394

Post by Urbanxassassin »

hellameta wrote: post #331
dev360 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Meh. I used to work as a carpenter and still do occasionally because physical labor always feels more rewarding to me.

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

#395

Post by steven2012 »

I've been programming for ~25 years and I still love programming. Last night I resurrected my old Xeon 8-cpu server and spent all night trying to install centos on it. Turns out my specific bios needed special settings to boot from USB.

My goal is to learn vagrant and spin up vms to handle variable load tasks. I want to be able to process website data using Hadoop and store the various outputs to my database. It's not novel but it's all new to me and I'm excited.

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

#396

Post by pjaytipp »

5/10. Finally working on my dream project, a medieval rpg. Was scared off by Breshenham's algorithm to doing web stuff in the noughties, followed by small iOS titles this decade. Slowly getting to be a competent 2D game developer. Taught myself graphics and am proud of every small victory. Love the programming aspect and the literary aspect of story & world creation. Why only 5/10? Because ...life, bills, health, taxes,drama etc.

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

#397

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

hellameta wrote: post #331
dev360 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

This is an extremely narrow view of the human experience.

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

#398

Post by zbarnes »

I've only been doing this about a year but I have to say it was the best decision I have ever made. Like some of the other here have said, I have never found an industry quite like it. Not only is the profession lucrative, exciting, and in constant demand, but it also has the best community around. I mean how many other industries have an open-source community like we do where we actively try to help each other. Every other profession I have seen is basically dog eat dog.

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

#399

Post by Kluny »

timwaagh wrote: post #63
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…

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

Retail managers certainly act that way, but I wish it weren't so. The one thing that has the potential to bring me to a brick and mortar store instead of buying online, is the chance to talk to an employee who is an expert on the product. Sadly it doesn't happen too often. Usually you get someone with enough brains to operate a cash register and no more than that. Ask a good question, you get a blank stare in return. Or they tell you to google it. And because they get paid garbage money, they often can't even afford to buy the product they're selling, so they don't have firsthand experience with it. Could be so much better...

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

#400

Post by robertcarter »

dacracot wrote: post #333

I'm 33 year veteran of programming. I'm more or less 7 years from retirement. I've worked as a civil servant, at two startups, a large corporation, and for a three letter government agency. I made a decision early in my career not to move into management, but to advance to the "team lead" position at most. I love and hate my job every day. I have no better time than when I am coding, but I hate frameworks pushed in l…

I'm at the start of my career but am starting to notice some of the downsides you've experienced. Any advice on how to avoid some of the trappings?
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