61–70 of 549 posts
It's inside work with no heavy lifting, I get paid way above the median wage, and I get to intermittently learn new things, and build new stuff.
I'm not a constantly ecstatic ball of happiness, but that sounds more like a drug-induced dream than something that real people get to be. Instead I'm "mostly satisfied, with occasional peaks, and some bits that annoy me." - and that's a lot better than the non-programming jobs I've had.
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…
You are free to start your own business and get rich except it's not so easy, very few people can do it.
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…
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…
Happy. Broke, but happy. :) (I earn around $100/hr, but my life organisation skills are so miserable that I can't yet make the ends meet. And I have to travel around 50 times per year). Scala/Java.
to answer the op's question 10/10 I'm very gratefull.
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…
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…
On the other hands, it's turtles all the way down until you reach "well, we are still alive, at least that's something".
While some humility and reality check is good, aspiring to have something better (be it in the monetary terms or whatever drives you) is also important to make progress.
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…
It's important to cut through the 10x rockstar ninja buzzword bullshit and remind people--especially young people--that most coders are working for the weekend just like anyone else.
I have been programming for 22 years. There have been times where i hated it and wanted to get rid of my computers. However, presently I'm really happy working as a programmer. The key for me is curiosity. How do things work? How should i solve this problem? If I'm not curious then I'm not having fun, and if I'm not having fun I'm not happy. My job at present doesn't feel like a job because I'm learning all about Had…
How's the job market 20 years down the line? I'm ten years in the field and trying to switch into management, becase growth prospects and scarcity of senior opportunities scares the hell out of me. Basically I live in constant fear of the day I'll hear 'overqualified' at a interview
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.
There are many people working in these industries who didn't have much opportunity to get decent education, etc. For example, my parents. They are from rural areas from Soviet Union, where getting higher education was not something that goes by default as it is now (which might not be a great thing given the number of people with worthless law/business management degrees from the bottom 10% of universities... oh well).
Obviously, there's a segment of people who didn't give a crap and held an attitude that education is for losers / nerds (before the word 'nerd' was cool) and I don't have much for them sympathy.
So it's not fair to just disrespect everyone working in the retail as 'zero brains'.
By cushy I mean they have flexi time and let me work 100% from home even though the office is less than 10 miles away. The boss is not pushy about deadlines and the work is not challenging.
By badly paid I mean I make about half of what I should be at my level of skill and experience.
I live in a small town. I could move to a big city and get more money, but I think my happiness level would drop. I really like it here. Life is good.
Of course, at least once a week I start getting paranoid and thinking that the company will eventually go under (we've had a few rough patches) and I'll have to move. And then I'll have spent 10+ years being underpaid with nothing to show for it, and it won't look good to a potential new employer. I worry that I'll be too old to be employable. That I should move now for my families sake. But then, I wonder how many successful well paid programmers look back over a career and think "well, I'm glad I spent less time with my family, because now I have all that extra money"
As for the work, as I said, it's not challenging. I've been tinkering with computers since I was a child, and its been a natural career path for me. I really don't think I could have been anything else, it was always going to be code. There are moments when I think I'm wasting my life standing in front of a monitor for 8 hours a day, but there are worse jobs, and I have to put food on the table. And that's really a complaint about society in general, not an issue with my particular choices.
I code outside of work hours, making apps and web-services mostly for my own use. I've never been very good at making money off any of them, but that's not really the point. I do it because it's who I am. My worst nightmare (sad but true) is coming down with some kind of a medical condition that would prevent me from typing or looking at screens. It would kill me.