C'mon, quit with the 'software engineer'codswallop. We're programmers, p-r-o-g-r-a-mm-a-r-s, and the sooner we all come to terms with that, the more karmic our profession will be.
Ask HN: How happy are you working as a programmer?
501–510 of 549 posts
Re: Ask HN: How happy are you working as a programmer?
#502Pretty damn happy. I'm a little over 3 years into my career programming and I've just started at Google which has been a goal of mine for awhile. The challenge is pretty immense (in terms of having to learn so many new languages and pieces of tech) and the compensation is unbeatable. Years ago I never would have imagined I could make such a good life for myself programming. I have also met some wonderful friends and…
Ooh, new languages are always interesting to know about. Do you have any sharable things about the design or implementation? :D
I'm still at an early design phase but I intend to be loud about it when I am at a sharable point. I'm building it as a "rapid prototyping" language that combines some of the best (and to some, worst) features of J, Perl, and Ruby. One of the design principles is that every Project Euler problem will be a sub-80 character one-liner.
Re: Ask HN: How happy are you working as a programmer?
#503Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> I hope I am wrong and I can make this career work for me, but I am already looking at applying to medical school in a year if can't find a challenging and decently rewarding job in bioinfo. Sucks, because I had originally intended on being a doctor when I was in undergrad but went in another direction because I wasn't 100% sure about it at the time. Unfortunately, I am 100% sure I do not enjoy being a desk jockey.…
How did you make this transition? Did you take the necessary course work in school, or take time off of work? Where do you get meaningful recommendations after leaving school?
Re: Ask HN: How happy are you working as a programmer?
#5046/10. 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…
You are less than 3 years into your career, and you think you have worked for some of the best companies, and yet you are unhappy. How do you know you have worked for some of the best for you? You are going by names. My guess is that you are talking about hot valley companies, and guess what? In those, someone with little experience will not get to work on anything fun, because they have enough talent that almost eve…
I don't think this invalidates your argument, but your assumptions about my work choices are completely wrong. I have almost always been the youngest person at offices dominated by scientists and mathematicians. Most of my work before graduation was at a national lab in condensed matter physics. I joined my current job as the 7th hire because the team is mostly comprised of math and EE PhD's from MIT and Berkeley. I'm not working on creating "forms" that "scale". Its all data science and optimization models/machine learning and the related engineering.
At the end of the day though, the business isn't about how much you are learning and any early stage start up is going to conduct R&D based on short term returns. If I could work somewhere like Voleon, I might have greater freedom, but I don't have an advanced degree to get a foot in the door.
I agree about traveling. That is one of the only things that continues to excite me. I spent several months working remotely and plan to continue doing so once this company starts to get revenue (if ever). That's certainly one freedom working from a computer provides that most other occupations don't get to enjoy.
That being said, at the end of the day, its just work. And thats fine. Thats still better than most jobs. But this line of work has a relatively low ceiling (in terms of job satisfaction, not compensation) if you want more and I feel like sticking too it makes it only easier to accept that ceiling. Maybe this is too strong, but it almost feels like giving up and settling for something easy/cushy.
Re: Ask HN: How happy are you working as a programmer?
#505Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 th…
> 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. This is poisonous thinking. Programming is one of the most acces…
It's a double-edged sword, IMO.
On the one hand, yes, you can get the education to become a programmer for free.
On the other hand, programming requires a semi-decent computer, which can set someone back a few hundred dollars.
And of course it's time vs money: sure, you can spend a lot of time and zero money to become a great programmer, or you can spend a bit of money and much less time to become a great programmer.
Some people can't afford that money to save the time.
Re: Ask HN: How happy are you working as a programmer?
#506Any 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…
This is so true. It's human nature to take everything for granted. I need to constantly remind myself that even though I'm not rich, my salary as a frontend developer is definitely way above average. On top of it I work for a big corp with a lot of benefits and most important of all a healthy work climate with exceptional work life balance.
To really appreciate our situation one could try to take a month off, and try to live with a limited budget after paying off all the monthly fixed costs. If you have to decide between buying a fancy gadget or food, I think it will be easier to emphasize with people who have to work hard just to provide for their families.
I'm happy working as a programmer because I don't have to do repetitive work like for example selling something. Sure, it's not always as exciting as working on a green field project because there is enough legacy code to maintain but overall I like my work.
Re: Ask HN: How happy are you working as a programmer?
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have any advice for freelancers looking for interesting clients? I'm mostly able to find clients that either 1) want full-time employees or 2) are working on 'me-too' CRUDs (sometimes both).
Pick a niche (with good characteristics) and make sure to be good at things in that niche. From there on, the client or employer will obviously pay you in the way that you want (freelance or employee). The work will also be maximally interesting. I personally get a fantastic rate doing pretty much what I like from my home office.
Could you give an example of niches like that? I'm currently doing all sort of things, ranging from reverse engineering to wordpress websites (yeah, i'm a freelancer...), and I'm super curious to hear what people found out to be "good" niches and what were "bad" niches?
Re: Ask HN: How happy are you working as a programmer?
#508Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with this, except for the last line. Software Engineering is a great career in a lot of ways (interesting subject, smart people, flexible, relatively less bureaucratic, good pay etc) and sometimes I forget how damn good I have it compared to most folk. But at the same time there are lots of other things I enjoy and want to do in life beyond just software engineering. I think as an industry we get a bit obsess…
> smart people Uh, I'm not so sure about this. Programmers tend to have a bad habit of severely overestimating their own intelligence. This is one of the things I dislike about the profession: Everybody is so self-assured of their own brilliance.
Hmm personally the majority of people I've worked with are all of at least above-average intelligence and many of them are also very interesting. Met quite a few self-assured smart people at uni (I was one to an extent) but I think most of us grow out of it. Or maybe I've just been lucky where I've worked.
Re: Ask HN: How happy are you working as a programmer?
#509Earlier quoted context omitted.
Boy, you're right, it is hard. I guess that's good enough reason not to try.
Some people try. Some of them even succeed. It's worth to try, but let's not act surprised when the aggregate results look poorly. Issues like this are, like it or not, best viewed globally, not locally. If you raise the bar until, say, 20% of people can't handle it anymore, then you can go and preach about willpower all day long, but it won't change the fact that every fifth person simply won't have it, and it's not…
Hey, thanks for not taking the bait there and snapping back.
This sort of neutral, put-things-back-on-topic reply is a great example for all of us. You made it look easy!
Re: Ask HN: How happy are you working as a programmer?
#510I have mixed feelings about it.
I wanted an intellectual challenge and to serve my community, yet what I'm mostly doing is glueing libraries I don't even understand together and squeezing out performance and page impressions to make someone I don't care about richer.
I wanted to consider myself an artist, not an interchangeable cog in a materialistic machinery. A craftsman that truly cares about his work and learns from others, not blindly following imposed cargo cult and so called best practices with the ultimate goal of optimising for the lowest common denominator and promoting cheap labor.
I wanted to learn and discover new things that are truly useful, but what I see is an extreme focus on tooling. The latest new cool framework on the block while showing complete disregard for already existing knowledge and tools.
They said technology was to make our lives better, yet it has become a means to an end in itself. I wish for a more perennial school of thought in software, a back to the basis, and I'm not even 30.
But I have to pay my bills somehow.
Then again, we have it much better than other labor in the workforce.