I no longer build software • Hacker News Board

Re: I no longer build software

#421

Post by burntoutfire » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 2:51 PM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #184

burntoutfire wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know why this was downvoted. As someone living in Europe, this comment is exactly why I stay in my cushy, very well paying and super boring and frustrating backend job. In the backend world, there are dozens of employees who would be happy for me to come work for them, while market for interesting work with similar is very shallow here (a very limited selection of FAANGs, what else?). I don't want to move to th…

Where do you live in Europe if I may ask that pays well enough for backend dev as not to work until you're 60? Genuinely curious as I'm open to a move.

I'm from Poland. Of course, everything depends on the conditions of the retirement that you're comfortable with. For me, it's 5000 PLN ($1300) a month till I'm 85 years old + paid-off house. The 5k PLN should be very comfortable assuming no children, which I don't want. Assuming ultra-safe investing to only protect the principal (i.e. no return above inflation) and wanting to retire at 40, you'd need around 2,500,000 PLN ($650,000) to achieve that + buy the house to retire in. Let's call in 3,000,000 PLN ($780k) in total.

If you look around a bit, as an in-demand (meaning - chasing the latest tech fads, maybe some tech lead experience as well) senior backend developer, you can get take home 250,000 PLN per year on a long-term (meaning usually multiple years) contract basis. Assuming 60,000 PLN of that goes to living expenses, it takes less than 16 years to save up the required 3m PLN to retire. And, if you're really hot in terms of CV, you can take home much more than 250k per year. Also, there are options to contract in Western Europe or get six figure remote US job (this one's harder than the other options) for more pay.

Re: I no longer build software

#422

Post by Havoc » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 2:52 PM UTC

katsume3 wrote: post #114

I find myself writing less code these days, not because I'm lazy, but because I can borrow so much already-written code from people now, thanks to things like Github and the Internet in general. I am a firm DRY[0] enthusiast, and also, a /Don't Repeat Other's Efforts/[1] enthusiast and it pains me to solve an already-solved problem. Sadly there are people out there calling me a 'Stack Overflow developer' in that I co…

I’d say don’t repeat it if you could do it yourself. Tinkering and learning invariably involves covering some ground others have trodden on before

Re: I no longer build software

#423

Post by stan_rogers » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 2:52 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #300

coldtea wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we've mostly solved trivial non-problems if/not regressions? People lived in 1990 and didn't feel that bad to have to call a travel agency to get a ticket, or, god forbid, to actually meet friends and not in VR space... I'll give you "self driving cars" -- well, I would if they could work today, which they don't...

> or, god forbid, to actually meet friends and not in VR space... These technologies really do solve problems for some people. Ignoring the temporary problem it’s solving for most-everyone right now, VR lets quadriplegics and house-bound invalids go places that aren’t accessible, e.g. the middle of the jungle. And VR is also useful for assisted visualization in the treatment of PTSD and other associated disorders. Th…

Most of that VR and AR stuff, which while being eminently more suitable for people with real accessibility issues (either due to physical disabilities or environmental constraints), is locked up behind almost entirely unaccessible interfaces in a gamers' world. Why? Because you can sell more that way. The technology and the people who can build it certainly exist; the desire to do something useful with it rather than something cool and highly profitable isn't.

Re: I no longer build software

#424

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 2:53 PM UTC

notacoward wrote: post #125

Totally on board with not building software any more. In fact, at 55 this is my last week of it. For real. Basically, everything sucks more about building software nowadays more than I remember it sucking before, from the mere mechanics of navigating through an obscenely large pseudo-object-oriented codebase to the WRONG constructs/idioms people use to build distributed systems to the way software is packaged and dep…

[deleted]

Re: I no longer build software

#425

Post by pbronez » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 2:53 PM UTC

jlangenauer wrote: post #278

matthewmacleod wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes without saying that your feelings are personal ones, totally valid, and nobody can really question them. I'm 20 years behind you, and I don't know what effect that will have on my views. But I don't really recognise the picture you're painting. Compared to the first steps I took as a developer about 15 years ago, almost everything about software development seems better to me. I find developing software to be…

I think you are right to say that the methods are vastly improved, but the ends to which those methods are applied have become ever more uninteresting (for a lot of people), and often morally suspect. We have built exquisite tools, but we use them to extract profit, to manipulate behaviour and often for no discernable purpose at all. Programming has become joyless. There are ever-shrinking spaces where a developer ge…

There are some economic theories about non-monetary compensation that try to explain this. Basically:

Total Compensation = Salary + Benefits + Intangibles

Those Intangibles can be things like working environment or commute, but they can also include your affinity for the organization’s mission. People are willing to take smaller salaries when they’re working on something they love & respect. It takes more money to convince people to work on boring or undesirable things. It’s the exception to be paid well for something you like.

Re: I no longer build software

#426

Post by StillBored » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 2:55 PM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #338

david_draco wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There used to be telephones (with buttons). You could order all of the above through it, given a credit card.

This is not something you can order: > I can land in a completely foreign city and get step by step directions to wherever I need to go.

All these apps/etc work fine in, large top tier urban cities across the world. They fail miserably everywhere else, there are huge swaths of the US, where you don't be able to hail an uber. In those cases your falling back on the same methods used in the past.

So, its still fairly common to see people hawking guiding/etc services inside or just outside of airports in central/south America, Africa, etc.

If your going to places where the cell phone service is spotty, or your going outside the the main urban areas hiring a guide/translator might be the only way to get around.

Re: I no longer build software

#427

Post by vmception » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 2:56 PM UTC

jlangenauer wrote: post #278

matthewmacleod wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes without saying that your feelings are personal ones, totally valid, and nobody can really question them. I'm 20 years behind you, and I don't know what effect that will have on my views. But I don't really recognise the picture you're painting. Compared to the first steps I took as a developer about 15 years ago, almost everything about software development seems better to me. I find developing software to be…

I think you are right to say that the methods are vastly improved, but the ends to which those methods are applied have become ever more uninteresting (for a lot of people), and often morally suspect. We have built exquisite tools, but we use them to extract profit, to manipulate behaviour and often for no discernable purpose at all. Programming has become joyless. There are ever-shrinking spaces where a developer ge…

check out crypto, especially the “defi” space

building there is a creative process and it pays better than big tech

The onchain codebases arent that big because they cant be.

Re: I no longer build software

#428

Post by klodolph » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 2:56 PM UTC

neya wrote: post #317

matthewmacleod wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes without saying that your feelings are personal ones, totally valid, and nobody can really question them. I'm 20 years behind you, and I don't know what effect that will have on my views. But I don't really recognise the picture you're painting. Compared to the first steps I took as a developer about 15 years ago, almost everything about software development seems better to me. I find developing software to be…

> Compared to the first steps I took as a developer about 15 years ago, almost everything about software development seems better to me. If you mean this is better, I hardly agree with you: https://twitter.com/thomasfuchs/status/810885087214637057?la...

Honestly, this IS better.

Separating the HTML, JS, and CSS is an approach that works up to a certain size/complexity app. When I’m working on some functionality, I need to be able to understand the relevant parts of the HTML, JS, and CSS. With a smaller app, one person can more or less grok the code base well enough to find everything they need. With simpler apps, you might have fairly uniform or boring styling and not a ton of CSS rules. If I’m setting something up with Bootstrap and just getting it working, I can probably ignore CSS for a LONG time.

If you’re working on something larger and more complicated, you really want to have all of the HTML, JS, and CSS for a particular piece of functionality right in the same place so you don’t have to go searching for it. It’s how you survive in large/complex apps. You’ll think, “The margins in this box are too large” and you want to be able to fix that without trying to grok some massive set of CSS rules, and when you do get the CSS rules that you want, you want to know that they’ll be delivered to the client—something that is easy if you deliver all of your CSS rules to every client, but hard if you want to split your CSS.

I think the only real tragedy here is that too many people are copying “the way Facebook does it” without wondering if Facebook might have a completely different set of priorities than they do.

Re: I no longer build software

#429

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 2:56 PM UTC

Bahamut wrote: post #393

TeMPOraL wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm ~23 years behind GP, and I feel the same way as them already. Goes to say, this may be a matter of personality. There were few and brief moments in my career as a software developer when I was truly happy at my work. Most of those involved implementing an architecture or algorithm I figured out from scratch, or took from scientific literature - either as prototype or directly in the product. Sometimes as "hold my…

I suspect it is all about perspective - I entered software development out of desperation for any career tract job out of grad school 8 years ago, experiencing 2.5 years of a desperate job search while enlisting in the Marine Corps Reserve in the interim. I was ecstatic that I entered a profession where I can solve problems, and I’m still very happy I can do so today, even while having grinded up to senior at a FAANG…

[deleted]

Re: I no longer build software

#430

Post by CydeWeys » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 2:57 PM UTC

bluebit wrote: post #28

jb1991 wrote: post #20

Amen. Modern software development is frankly kinda sucky. The old days pre-2000 were arguably a lot more enjoyable. Today it's just digital plumbing and dealing with all sorts of issues that are not creative. The sheer complexity is frankly absurd as well. I've thought about moving on from software many times, and I know many who have. Just because you can do something doesn't mean it's best way to spend your short l…

Honest question, what is a great career pivot for someone that's been in development all their life? It seems that nothing pays as well as building software, unless you go into management which most developers would enjoy even less than digital plumbing.

My plan is to bank enough money from software jobs to be financially independent at a high standard of living (I'm well on my way to that). Then afterwards, just retire and do all sorts of hobbies without trying to make them into a career or earn career-equivalent amounts of money from them.

If you're currently on that trajectory (i.e. you're able to save a large percentage of your income every year) then I'd recommend it. If not, then yeah, you might need a second career if you want to get out of development soon. My plan is not to need one.