111–120 of 274 posts
Any idea who this person is?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A programmer, to me, is someone who is familiar with the entire process of software development. From gathering requirements, to designing interfaces, to writing code, to delivering and supporting the final product. I believe the term normally used to refer to someone who can only write code is code monkey.
You should get out in the real world more and especially talk to people who are not in software development. What you call a code monkey is what the rest of the world considers a programmer.
Most people in the real world have no idea what it takes to develop software. They believe if someone is a programmer, they can develop the entire thing from top to bottom and everything in between.
It is really only in the tech circles where people see why the job is separated out into different roles for different people. Some there equate programmer with "code monkey," but their opinion is not the norm. And one I do not agree with.
>>"Programmer" sounds like "anomalously high-cost peon who types some mumbo-jumbo into some other mumbo-jumbo." If you call yourself a programmer, someone is already working on a way to get you fired. I call myself as a programmer because I enjoy programming and do a lot of programming as part of my job. It is unlikely that I'll get fired because I run the (tiny) company I work for :). and customers seem to like the…
Once you run the company it doesn't matter what you call yourself. That is probably a great topic for another essay, assuming PG hasn't written it already. It might matter what you call the company or the product , however, since that is the brand that the people who pay you are seeing. Programmers are so literal. Let me try and translate: When Patrick says "don't call yourself a programmer" he isn't necessarily sayi…
In fact I think the former "programming" can give you more social cred--if you program things the other person can't comprehend an immediate use for, it may hurt you. "Oh you're one of those people that don't do anything useful." If they really want to know, they'll ask, and ask for more details if they care.
Of course, I agree in general that when whoring yourself out to the corporate world it's best to make yourself sound as important as possible as long as possible, which is basically what I got from Patrick's post. "Programmer" doesn't contain enough information to make you seem important enough in BigCo. It's fine for scoring social points.
I think Patrick is missing a niche segment of Hackers who have been making a lot of money in last few years.They are the independent Mobile App Developer(iOS/Android) If you choose this path then you dont even have to start a company,all you need to do is make awesome apps.It might be a little hard to start but in a year you should be making good enough money to go independent and then sky is the limit.It is not only…
If you are sufficiently skilled to create a popular iPhone app, you can sleepwalk your way into either $100k+ as a salaried engineer or $200+ an hour doing contracting work. The vast majority of app devs will not reach these numbers.
The degree of arrogance in this article is astounding. I've worked at Google, Microsoft, and IBM, and the work I've found most satisfying is in grad school.
To each his own. If you let something like this guide your life decisions, you have much bigger issues to deal with than finding a so-called "README.txt for your career as a young engineer".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You still miss the point, though. Patrick isn't saying that calling yourself a programmer is inaccurate or ignominious. He's saying that it's not going to have a desirable effect on the listener. He's saying you should talk about the value you create, rather than the effort you expend.
This is marketing 101- the issue is why would you work somewhere that you have to continuously market yourself just to keep your job? That's what the interview is for. Personally in my experience working with startups, everyone at the company knows why I'm there, what I do, and there's no question about the value I bring. What I call myself just doesn't matter. I would wish this type of experience for everyone.
"Want to get trained on Ruby at a .NET shop? Implement a one-off project in Ruby. Bam, you are now a professional Ruby programmer — you coded Ruby and you took money for it. (You laugh? I did this at a Java shop. The one-off Ruby project made the company $30,000. My boss was, predictably, quite happy and never even asked what produced the deliverable.)" Unless an employee actually gets permission to do this, this mak…
Technically, the employee would not be fired right away. He or she, however, would be red flagged for close observation by being put on a Performance Plan. Basically, a PP is required to legally fire you. For example, if you had a bad record of coming in at a consistent time, they could put you on a PP. In this PP (which you would have to sign as a condition of further employment), there would be a contract for comin…
Where are you talking about? Laws vary, even among the states in the USA.
I agree wholeheartedly. That's how I promote my consulting biz, "More money for your business." It is amazing how devs think that dollar value should equal effort. It does not. And this doesn't just apply to software. It applies to anything and everything. The value of something is what someone is willing to pay for it in that one split second when they click "charge my card".
I think most consultants and contractors reach a point where this clicks. At first they think, well this will take me X hours, so it's worth Y dollars. Later they think, this is apparently worth X dollars to the client, so I'll bill Y dollars, where Y is way closer to X than any how-long-it-takes calculation.
It's the difference between "hard work should be rewarded" and "value should be rewarded."
> If you call yourself a programmer, someone is already working on a way to get you fired. If you work at a place like that, I feel sorry for you. Even the owner of my company lists himself on Twitter and his blog as just Programmer at RAD Game Tools. Besides being the sounding board for us when we have problems and ideas, he still writes more code than most of us can regularly muster.
Also, people have been saying this about programmers longer than 10 years. "Don't go into programming, you will soon be redundant". But the super general purpose code generating AI is still developed yet... Software is everywhere and we need more programmers than ever. I think a lot of other jobs will still be automated away before it's our turn.
And in that case, if computers can make those creative mind-jumps, even doctors are going to feel this, and lawyers. The end of the productive lifetime of humans will be very, very close and we'll have other things to think about such as rethinking the economic paradigm. And please let it be the arrogant MBA types for a change to be jobless. "Masters of the universe". Puke.
I think Patrick is missing a niche segment of Hackers who have been making a lot of money in last few years.They are the independent Mobile App Developer(iOS/Android) If you choose this path then you dont even have to start a company,all you need to do is make awesome apps.It might be a little hard to start but in a year you should be making good enough money to go independent and then sky is the limit.It is not only…
Everyone knows I pay my rent by making bingo cards for elementary schoolteachers and bear no ill will for small businesses, right? If you are sufficiently skilled to create a popular iPhone app, you can sleepwalk your way into either $100k+ as a salaried engineer or $200+ an hour doing contracting work. The vast majority of app devs will not reach these numbers.
Personally I would choose 80K a year building my own awesome apps ,making a name for myself,travelling the world ,meeting awesome people than making 200K at xyz corp where I spend my day exchanging bullshit emails with upper management.