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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?

#321

Post by id »

kendallpark wrote: post #290
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…

> Even compensation wise, it peaks very early and probably won't get most rich without a ton of luck. 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. Granted, the barrier to entry is much lower in CS (sometimes nearly nonexistent depending on the line of work). Med student here. Programmers don't have to t…

There a many countries where you don't have to borrow a single cent to study medicine. Instead, you even get paid a small support every month.

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

#322

Post by agentultra »

In a word, yes.

Is there an implication that work should be fun and fulfilling so as to make me happy? Work does not make me happy. It affords me the money I need to keep my family healthy and safe. Happiness comes from within: art, literature, mathematics, science, family, friends... life.

I just make money by selling some portion of my waking life to the pursuits of others by helping them realize their ideas in software.

The ideas I have are just not marketable. My curiosity hasn't led me to dream about ways I can extract rents from financial tools or make advertising more profitable. I find myself to have more in common with Donald Knuth or John Conway than Larry Ellison or Bill Gates. If I could find a way to work with hard, fundamental problems or pursue hunches that may have no fiscal utility I'd be happy as a clam at high water. Alas I never had the privilege and opportunity to pursue a career in academia and, given what I understand of the current climates there, probably wouldn't find it fulfilling either.

So I content myself with tinkering and following my own hunches and try to maximize the dollars-per-hour exchange I make so I can spend less time with the mundane world of markets and value and return to the land of whimsy.

Update To clarify, I don't want to put myself in the same esteem as my heroes, Knuth or Conway. What I do find in common with them is a curiosity and propensity for selecting problems merely because they are interesting and with disregard for external factors such as economic utility.

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

#323

Post by zzalpha »

hibikir wrote: post #223
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…

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…

Be realistic. 300k a year is waaay above the median for senior dev salaries save for a few very specialized niches (fintech and biotech spring to mind).

This is exactly the kind of misinformation that makes newbs to the industry think they're gonna be rich rockstars programming... stop it.

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

#324

Post by sciguy77 »

unknownknowns wrote: post #291
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.

I've enjoyed working in national security and defense. It's a laid-back environment and I can leave work at work without feeling stressed.

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?

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

#325

Post by klibertp »

andy9775 wrote: post #251
rjbwork wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can give you a little advice from seeing some non-degree-having peers make it. Have some idea what you're doing. Talking the talk is great, but you must be able to walk the walk. Apply to everything that sound like you can/want to do it, even if you don't technically meet the requirements. Those are mostly for HR pre-filtering since HR doesn't really know what they're talking about in 99% of cases - they're just lo…

Great thanks. I've built stuff before and have been learning/coding for the past ~4 years so I don't classify myself as a complete beginner. When applying without a CS background how tough are the technical interviews? Do they tend to expect more or are they more lenient and look more at fit and ability to grow?

> When applying without a CS background how tough are the technical interviews?

It's very rare, in my experience, to be asked a pure CS question in the interview. For some positions you may be silently expected to have some degree of familiarity with CS concepts, for other - especially entry-level - positions you don't need CS knowledge at all.

Being able to produce working and good looking code is all most companies want from fresh employees, I think. It's unfortunately still hard to find people with that skill, but if you have it you can learn everything else.

In short: apply everywhere, go to interviews and don't be afraid. You'll be pleasantly surprised (I hope).

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

#326

Post by ryandrake »

turnip1979 wrote: post #213
awjr wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would suggest looking in the mirror ;) Let's be honest. Freelancers are not there to find "interesting clients". They are a temporary resource that enables a client to get a job done they under-resourced. You have a choice as a freelancer 1) Become money focused. Earn as much as you can for as long as you can. 2) Become idea focused. Earn as much as you can until you have enough to bootstrap the idea. Rinse and rep…

Dumb question .. how does one go about getting started as a freelancer? Are there agencies or some other mechanism to get you started? Specifically, interested in how to get started in North America.

Not a dumb question at all. I've wondered the same thing myself. Say you're working full time and have $X/mo in fixed expenses. If you leave that job for freelancing, all of a sudden you're going to be making tons less than you were as a full-timer. How do you bridge that gap?

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

#327

Post by ryandrake »

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…

Thank you for pointing out the fact that software compensation peaks early, and you pretty much hit a ceiling unless you win the startup lottery. A lot of people see the early money and forget this. As a software developer, 20 years into your career, your buddies that majored in finance, marketing or anything else, really, will likely have eclipsed you in terms of compensation, as they'll be senior directors of this or vice presidents of that.

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

#328

Post by randcraw »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #114
Ronsenshi wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can sympathize with anexprogrammer and I think by working with your hands he might mean something like woodworking, metalworking, generally working "in the shop" making stuff. I'm not unhappy being a programmer, but from time to time I immensely enjoy fixing things at home myself - I see result of my work here and now. Being a programmer I may not see finished result of my work for a long time. I think it is quite…

I'm now in conservation and restoration, so a bit of all of those. I considered restoring old vehicles, but didn't want to end up "just" a mechanic. It was working on cars that was my trigger to get out - I felt so much more satisfaction from restoring a car than I ever did from meeting a ship date. I think because it has a tangible sense of progress and completion, and there's something to point at that's more "real…

There's a (fair) book on this very subject: "Shop Class as Soulcraft" by Matheww Crawford. He earned a PhD in economics and after working briefly in a Washington think tank he quit and opened a shop repairing antique motorcycles. (That was the plan anyway. I think he really makes his living writing.)

I can totally relate to the need to have a life outside the virtual world. I've been programming for 30 years (data analysis in R&D mostly), and while I love the intellectual stimulation from writing code to do something new, I also crave physical contact with the world. But it's still not clear to me how best to make that work. Can I do this as part of a job, or must this happen only after hours?

I considered working in robotics, since that seemed an ideal mix of the two realms, but I'd rather not feed the military maw, which is where 95% of the work is. Maybe I should just reorg my garage to add room for a workbench and join the ranks of shadetree mechs. Lord knows I have enough machinery that need wrenching...

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

#329

Post by ryandrake »

amatxn wrote: post #305

I've been programming for 15 years, since I was 21. It used to be my passion, work, and hobby. Over the last 3 years I've gradually shifted from development to managing projects and product development, and recently moved to the team leader/manager. Right now I really like the product and management side of the work, but the technical / programmer side I am very burned out on. I used to spend my free time consulting,…

Fellow project/product manager! I also programmed for 10+ years and got burnt out. But, I still program in my abundance (hah!) of spare time, and would gladly go back to programming for a living if the nature of the work fundamentally changed.

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

#330

Post by rifung »

sdgsfsfgfg wrote: post #60
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…

But the thing is I could have been an MD, lawyer or someone in finance - these things were well within my reach. But I was sold a false dream and now I am stuck in misery.

Why not just switch? Is it too late? You can always take out loans if it's money; that's what most people would have to do anyway I imagine.
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