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My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

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Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#301

Post by existencebox »

grif-fin wrote: post #275
existencebox wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can only speak for myself, but I found it instructive. There is significant complexity to ones life experience, but I found myself echoing many of his statements and situations, and find myself at a similar crossroads (IC vs Manager). The fact that our long term desire (to impact positive change) is aligned, and he found himself unable to accomplish that to a sufficient degree as an IC, certainly weights my so-to-s…

I am indeed in the same situation as you and him. But I struggle to conclude anything valuable from his story. Should I get encourage to go for management because another person who maybe different side of the coin compare to me has regretted it in his senior age? Just curious, how did his story change your view on making decision for your fork road?

For me, the combination of the experiences of the people I've met/heard from firsthand which I feel enough subjective similarity to does provide a contributing weight to my decision making process, alongside a really shifting number of personal judgments and extrapolations. In this instance, this has made me more willing to seek out/accept a management position to see if I can address similar feelings of powerlessness that he expressed.

(To respond to the child since the respond window isn't up yet and I'm about to go heads down on some stuff, it certainly is a matter of "this is a push", that's what I mean when I say I weight it alongside other things, it tipped the balance meaningfully. As to why I give it this weight, it's another entirely subjective judgement that as I said earlier enough statements he makes echoing with me)

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#302

Post by riazrizvi »

arturadib wrote: post #172

Obviously this is a very personal matter - i.e. if you don't enjoy managing people and prefer to tinker with, learn, and build things, pursuing a management career is the worst choice you can make from a happiness standpoint. It's also not generally true that managers (even those with fancy titles) are more financially successful than engineers. By definition, there are far fewer VP/Director level positions than ther…

Above all, observe the #1 Rule of Business, similar to the #1 Rule of Dating: Always Be Successful. Then his choice would have worked out well no matter which path he would have taken.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#303

Post by tamana »

RodericDay wrote: post #189
scandox wrote: post #45

"I can still feel the regret of not seeking the challenge of just leadership." He's right. Programmers need to get into leadership, because they have a chance of knowing what "just leadership" might look like. When non-technical people lead technical people, the chance of getting into a good flow is less (though by no means impossible). The problem is that many technical people are not "people" persons. Part of that…

This is pretty ridiculous. Lawyers, Bankers, and Doctors get to play in intellectual sandboxes, and they get paid really handsomely for it, even if they are completely anti-social people. The reason we get paid less is that we don't have any of their safeguards: - Lawyers aim to become partner. It's very socialist-y this way. The goal working in a firm is to become an owner of the firm and share in its successes. - D…

You are the first person who ever described the lawyers' dog-eat-dog up-or-out competition for parter as "socialism" -- unless you meant it as a sarcastic analogy to Chinese Communist Party

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#304

Post by temarsden »

kdamken wrote: post #174

I think this guy may actually just be dumb. Yes, C-Suite positions make more money, and get to make more decisions. If he wanted to do that, it sounds like he could have at any time. Of course just being a programmer would earn you less. > Being a programmer for nearly 35 years... > I doubt I will ever be able to really retire. How do you have a good paying job like being a programmer/the other high level gigs he men…

Exactly my feelings after reading the article. He's either not making smart investments or not investing for retirement at all.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#305

Post by lerpa »

nunez wrote: post #223
jt2190 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, the only way to fix this is for conscientious programmers to go into management, where they will have the power to actually change things.

The issue though is that many (most?) developers/engineers avoid management like the plague since it involves having to actually deal with people

Not just dealing with people but it's a waste, why become sometimes at best a mediocre manager when you are already a decent developer.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#306

Post by naasking »

dccoolgai wrote: post #282
naasking wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only truly terrible part of JavaScript is all the implicit coercions around equality checking. It would actually be a decent language if it reported type errors instead. There are a few other smaller issues that are nuisances, like not being able to actually check if a value is a number, but I think coercions cause the most headaches for discoverability and debugging.

| It would actually be a decent language if it reported type errors instead. The Web would also probably stop working and be much more of a pain to code if JS acted that way: http://i.imgur.com/76Wtthy.jpg

It would stop working if you did it NOW. That's irrelevant to the point that that's how JS should have worked from the beginning. Also, they can add these semantics to JS now too with a new type of strict mode without breaking anything.

As for how painful it would be, your claim is a total fabrication. Other dynamically typed languages are a pleasure to program in without implicit coercions everywhere. JS is widely considered a pain. Coincidence it is not.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#307

Post by ryandrake »

Starsgen wrote: post #4

As a programmer, this kind of reads like a sore lottery loser. I as well didnt score big working at one of these companies, nor did I engage in leadership roles, but thats the way the ball bounces. Also, I know programmers making 50k, more than those making over 100k, but I live in the midwest. Cant save much, but I can take care of my family and that is what is important to me.

The frustrating fact in technology is that your career is pretty much a lottery. I know people I went to undergrad with who lucked into the right company and are now independently wealthy. Most of the rest of us are still slogging away, having worked for a string of non-rocketships. Nobody at that time (late 90s) knew which company would mean early retirement, and which ones would go bust. It was a total crap shoot.

Try browsing the "Who's hiring" threads here. If you're looking to join a start-up, 99% of them are companies you've never heard of. One of them will be the next Facebook, and if you go work for it, you'll end up set for life--but there's no way to know and chances are you're going to pick one of the many who will go bust or just sputter around without making money for a few years.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#308

Post by thegayngler »

jt2190 wrote: post #164
thegayngler wrote: post #157

Im of the belief that technical people and managers should really be at the same level financially and otherwise quite honestly. That's really the only way I can see the whole manager/programmer thing can work out for the benefit of everyone. When you have non-technical managers or technical-managers who's skills are out of date making decisions on behalf of the programmers you end up with a mess. That is often the c…

Ironically, the only way to fix this is for conscientious programmers to go into management, where they will have the power to actually change things.

You can't be all things to all people. I realize businesses want the perceived efficiency but it's a trade-off not a productivity gain. You it's hard to be great a two jobs at the same time. Programming and Management require work "at work" and outside of work.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#309

Post by StephenConnell »

drumdance wrote: post #213
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in my late forties and have been a professional developer for 25+ years. I agree with what you said in your comment, but this stood out: "You might be dead tomorrow; you might as well enjoy today." This is not a bad way to live, but as I get older I am increasingly aware that there will be a day when I'm dead tomorrow. And for that reason I'm increasingly less interested in spending time in the state where "time…

I'm about the same age as you. The passage of time is shockingly fast unless I do things to slow it down. I remember moments from my college days that I can pinpoint to the year they happened. That thing that happened sophomore year? I know it happened sophomore year because I did it with my roommate at the time. But nowadays I'll watch a movie on Netflix thinking it came out just in the past year or two, only to dis…

Having kids speeds it up... Totally worth it though.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#310

Post by tamana »

nunez wrote: post #294
pmontra wrote: post #23

There are many more jobs as programmer than as CTO/CIO/VP. Furthermore, what makes you think that you would be as good at politics as you are at coding? People in management positions are often in competition with each other on a kill or be killed basis. OK, not that extreme but you get the idea. Politics is important in that game. There was also an interesting post on HN a few days ago about the hurdles of managemen…

If you have 1000 jobs that pay $100/hr each and 100 jobs that pay $1000/hr each, and you qualify for both (the former more easily than the latter), which would you rather try for?

And there are 999 people competing for a $100/hr job, and 1000 people competing for a $1000/hr job
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