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I don’t want to be a software developer anymore

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Re: I don’t want to be a software developer anymore

#41
I’ve held jobs where I was able to work on only greenfield projects with minimal oversight and the ability to put in 3-4 hour days if I wanted to, and I’ve held jobs like the blog post author’s, working on hellish enterprise CMSes.

I can say the former is incomparably better and makes you grow into a stronger, more fulfilled engineer. I think as long as I could support myself financially and keep living somewhat comfortably, I’d take a 30% paycut to work that way.

Re: I don’t want to be a software developer anymore

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, messed up but it makes an interesting point. Why don't people hire mostly women and save a bunch on payroll? Does the wage gap exist because companies pay women less due to being sexist or because of other confounding factors?

It could easily be explained by the sentiment, which I do not share or agree with, that “male programmers are better, but we are forced to hire women so let’s pay them less”.

I'd go with the usual Apex fallacy. One guy gets 20% more money than me!

What? The other one who gets 20% less? Nah he's invisible. It's like the usual "men are in power". Yeah, some men. A lot are in shitty dead-end job with no prospect to get a better life. The death-at-work gap, the fact being a Father at Home is still frowned upon: don't care.

If there is an earning gap maybe the fact men have to earn more for their family and can't rely on welfare when they lose their job is an incentive to work more and negotiate harder. Call me a sexist but worst case scenario a woman can always decide to marry a provider.

Re: I don’t want to be a software developer anymore

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are jobs, we do our jobs then we go home, if we like our homes and things and activities, we need to go back to our jobs. There is a balance that must not be disturbed. It would be interesting to peek ahead a few centuries and see how much they agree with this.

Luckily "a few centuries ahead" is not the setting for this article, this discussion, or the current period. I'm not sure what relevance this has, when I'm sure the 'theys' from centuries before would have quite a few things to say about the way we live today, and it would be an opinion equally irrelevant.

There's no such thing as "a balance that must not be disturbed," and such beliefs tend to lead people into an unfulfilling life.

Throughout this thread, there is an undercurrent of "Shut up and put up with it, you have it pretty good." But everything is a balance, and the balance can swing both ways.

There is huge variation between developers' paychecks. I've seen devs who can barely afford food, let alone expensive toys. And not because they're unskilled.

Also, not everyone can simply go to a job and then go home. Some are forced to do remote work for medical reasons.

There are valid reasons to speak up.

Re: I don’t want to be a software developer anymore

#44
post #17

Coming from a country with cushy laws on the side of employees etc (the Netherlands), and as a male, I can say that I can really identify with the opening paragraphs of this piece. When I started as all round IT guy 10 years ago it felt like a dream, getting payed for doing what I was doing anyway. And the first 4 years of turning in to a web developer was fun and challenging. But after a while the shine wears off an…

The number of ex-dev's i know who have started breweries is pretty high. Its like a career progression - software developer 10 years -> start micro-brewery

Re: I don’t want to be a software developer anymore

#45

I don’t agree with James Damore’s writing, but he never said that women were there because the bar was lowered. He said that the reason there are less women in tech is due to the fact that the way it’s set up right now makes it less interesting or desirable for most women, and he suggested ways to change the nature of programming jobs and how programming is done in order to naturally attract more women to the field.…

He didn't directly, but if you believe his main point that differences in gender balance of developers is due to preference and natural aptitude, then it's an unavoidable conclusion that a company trying to both hire the best developers in the world and have a 50-50 gender split has to lower the bar.

He didn't say it because he didn't have to, it's an unavoidable conclusion.

Re: I don’t want to be a software developer anymore

#46

I feel like we as an industry can sometimes forget just how good we have it. Many of my friends do not work in tech, they are low paid, they have stressful jobs with little autonomy, they are not challenged at all and they feel little personal accomplishment in their day today. I appreciate the author alludes to this but having seen friends recently job hunting (outside of tech) I am reminded that even on the worst d…

There's another side of this story as well though. The consequence of having more intellectually challenging work to solve is that by the end of the day you're brain fried. For most people the only way you're really going to get anywhere in life is by staking it out on your own at some point. If you're not earning enough money to save away a sufficient stash, that means you need to be working your day job while also starting up your own project at home. In some cases this might be impossible due to the absurd contracts some companies expect devs to sign (all your work, even on your time off, belongs to them) and even when it's possible, it's made extremely difficult by the draining nature of more interesting work. Less interesting jobs may not be as satisfying in the short run, but can leave you with more energy to pursue what you actually want to do in the long run.

Re: I don’t want to be a software developer anymore

#47
post #16

I really struggle to find anything worth reacting to in this blog post. It sounds to me like the story of every individual worker in every economy. Most of what she says is entirely self-evident, except for the anecdotes about pay/equity, for which she presents zero evidence. Where is the substance? Why is this interesting? Every dad in the world knows that a hobby is different from work, and that turning your hobby…

I think this is a mismatch in expectations. It's one woman blogging about her personal work experience, not a news article or a novel theory of life as a software developer. It's interesting to the extent that reading about other people is interesting. Just take it for what it is.

Re: I don’t want to be a software developer anymore

#48
post #15

I feel like we as an industry can sometimes forget just how good we have it. Many of my friends do not work in tech, they are low paid, they have stressful jobs with little autonomy, they are not challenged at all and they feel little personal accomplishment in their day today. I appreciate the author alludes to this but having seen friends recently job hunting (outside of tech) I am reminded that even on the worst d…

You don't have to like your job, but it's perfectly reasonable to expect equitable treatment and a non-hazardous work setup. Injuries from bad ergonomics are real. I am dealing with a pinched nerve in my neck from 10 years of this and some days can barely sit up straight. I get that there are people starving in China. It's not an issue of wanting a perfect job. I actually used to really enjoy my work before the pain…

The number of $1000+ Herman Miller chairs and standup desks I see tells me that they pay more than lip service to ergonomics.

Re: I don’t want to be a software developer anymore

#49
After graduating college, I really wanted to be a CS teacher, but the finances and logistics just didn't make sense at all. My current goal is to save up enough money where I don't have to rely on a teacher's salary (or have to worry about getting fired should I not bow down to an administrator), and then start looking.

Re: I don’t want to be a software developer anymore

#50

I feel like we as an industry can sometimes forget just how good we have it. Many of my friends do not work in tech, they are low paid, they have stressful jobs with little autonomy, they are not challenged at all and they feel little personal accomplishment in their day today. I appreciate the author alludes to this but having seen friends recently job hunting (outside of tech) I am reminded that even on the worst d…

This. I find it very difficult to complain as a coder given the conditions at the moment. Companies battle to hire people and the pay is globally extremely good. Most of the time it is easy to get time off or to accommodate "errands" during the day. As you said, I think a lot of us are out of touch about what it is to get a job outside of tech (and a couple other high demand privileged examples). You want to work fro…

The churn rate is also high on most software teams. In some cases, successful companies struggle to find candidates because all the good people have worked there before and ran away.

One of the brightest developers I've worked with quit after 3 weeks at my company because they were underpaying her and wouldn't give her a raise. This same company complained regularly of not being able to find good talent.

Employers think they hold all the leverage and can treat developers how they want. They really don't. Why do you think half of software projects fail to deliver?

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