Coding as a Career Isn't Right for Me

Everyone deserves everything. We live in a society that is capable of creating a post-scarcity economy (and in many cases, such as media and software, has) yet is putting itself through ever more convoluted contortions to make sure poor people don't get to have anything. Eff. That. Noise. Work is not a moral imperative.

I've been at it for 11 years now, and i wouldn't consider myself experienced enough to make the kind of judgement calls you make in your post.

I reached the same conclusion recently. I'm about the same age, but instead of going through college to get there, I was one of the early "bootcamp" grads (though I took issue with my so-called bootcamp).

Yes, we should be glad to have these high paying jobs doing knowledge work. But there is something thoroughly dissatisfying about writing another meaningless CRUD app that spins the cogs just a little faster. More efficiently? Who knows. Besides, it probably does one of three things: ecommerce, ads, or glorified coupons. What's the point?

Coding isn't the right career for me, either. I do think it's a useful tool, but I think I've got to do something else with my life. I wish you luck figuring what that something else is, as well.

You remind me of me.

I'm 26. I'd much rather work on my own stuff than my company stuff. I have this plan after my current job to burn up some of my savings and spend a couple of years to build something I'm excited by. I've been paying off student debt.

I think I'm okay with working a 10.30-6.30 job. The pay-check is what will grant me my freedom. Every week I work, I save 3 weeks of expenses. I've already enough savings to pay off my student debt two times over. After another year I'll have enough savings to live as I do currently for 5 years. (Can double that if I don't take the train every day & eat out during office hours).

The product is important. Does it help someone? Does it make their task easier? Are the bugs in it tolerable? At all three of my big boy jobs, I've been so far removed from the user that I have no clue if the product helped them or not. This hurts and it hurts a lot.

You're writing test automation. Think of your users as your colleagues. You're not saving random people time. You're saving time of people you go out to lunch with. All you have to do is ask "Are my tests saving you time?" And that's something.

'One says to me, "I wonder that you do not lay up money; you love to travel; you might take the cars and go to Fitchburg today and see the country." But I am wiser than that. I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot. I say to my friend, Suppose we try who will get there first. The distance is thirty miles; the fare ninety cents. That is almost a day's wages. I remember when wages were sixty cents a day for laborers on this very road. Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night; I have travelled at that rate by the week together. You will in the meanwhile have earned your fare, and arrive there some time tomorrow, or possibly this evening, if you are lucky enough to get a job in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be working here the greater part of the day. And so, if the railroad reached round the world, I think that I should keep ahead of you; and as for seeing the country and getting experience of that kind, I should have to cut your acquaintance altogether.

'Such is the universal law, which no man can ever outwit, and with regard to the railroad even we may say it is as broad as it is long. To make a railroad round the world available to all mankind is equivalent to grading the whole surface of the planet. Men have an indistinct notion that if they keep up this activity of joint stocks and spades long enough all will at length ride somewhere, in next to no time, and for nothing; but though a crowd rushes to the depot, and the conductor shouts "All aboard!" when the smoke is blown away and the vapor condensed, it will be perceived that a few are riding, but the rest are run over- and it will be called, and will be, "A melancholy accident." No doubt they can ride at last who shall have earned their fare, that is, if they survive so long, but they will probably have lost their elasticity and desire to travel by that time. This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once. "What!" exclaim a million Irishmen starting up from all the shanties in the land, "is not this railroad which we have built a good thing?" Yes, I answer, comparatively good, that is, you might have done worse; but I wish, as you are brothers of mine, that you could have spent your time better than digging in this dirt.'

Probably my favorite passage from Walden...