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Don't Call Yourself a Programmer

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Re: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer

#151

Post by philwelch »

rdl wrote: post #147

I'm kind of terrified of "At the end of the day, your life happiness will not be dominated by your career." Hopefully he means that primarily for employees, not for startup founders, and even then, I know a lot of people who work in research, engineering, etc. where career is by far #1.

Early in life, or as a means to an end, that's not entirely incompatible. Career success can give you a great leg up in terms of attracting a life partner or supporting a family. But the simple, sad fact is that most work that actually needs to get done is just work. There are aspects of it one can enjoy, and aspects of it one merely tolerates as a means to an end--be it the fulfilling parts of the job itself, or just making a living. It's not necessarily a healthy or fulfilling place to focus one's passions and build one's life around.

Even Steve Jobs said that having kids was more fulfilling than starting companies and creating products. If you're a startup founder, there's a few ways you can go. You can spend a few years working very hard in the hopes that you get rich. Then you have financial independence, which solves a lot of problems and allows you to focus on doing fulfilling but less lucrative things with your life. If you're not going for a huge liquidity event, you can spend a few years working very hard in the hopes that you can create a successful and sustainable business which, hopefully, you can happily spend a good long time working at in a role you created to suit your own skills and interests, like "CEO".

There are always exceptions, and there's a romantic appeal to figures like Erdos, but it's a huge disservice and a huge sense of entitlement to expect a career, of all things, to take a central place in a happy and balanced life.

Re: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer

#152

Post by eitally »

Confusion wrote: post #149
sutro wrote: post #75

Back in the day, John Carmack would micro-blog on the finger protocol ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_protocol ). finger johnc@idsoftware.com got you Carmack's .plan file, a well-written and, for a time, frequently-updated journal of whatever programming challenges he happened to be facing at the time. finger @idsoftware.com got you the id corporate directory, a simple list of about 20 names and titles. The onl…

When you have become sufficiently well known for your technical expertise, you can once again call yourself a programmer. If you're lucky, you may have gotten there while calling yourself a programmer. Patrick's point is that most people can more easily get there by not calling themselves programmers.

This is because -- with the exception of computer scientific research -- the impact programming parts of one's contributions nearly always pale in comparison to the product or service one has created. Feel free to call yourself a programmer, but be prepared to answer the questions "of what" and "to what end"?

Re: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer

#153

Post by Someone »

nickknw wrote: post #87
kamaal wrote: post #43

One of the things that I see among hardworking smart people is they somehow tend to use 'difficult work' as a yardstick to measure 'good work'. Difficult work need not necessarily be good work. Unfortunately if you fall for this, you will end up wasting a lot of time, effort and energy over years and at the end wonder why you are not as rich as someone who does has half the difficult work as you do. 'Good work' or so…

> "One of the things that I see among hardworking smart people is they somehow tend to use 'difficult work' as a yardstick to measure 'good work'. Difficult work need not necessarily be good work. Unfortunately if you fall for this, you will end up wasting a lot of time, effort and energy over years and at the end wonder why you are not as rich as someone who does has half the difficult work as you do." A connection…

Not that I disagree with the statement, but chess tournaments typically have prices for the most beautiful game. For example, http://main.uschess.org/content/view/10961/616 mentions a €500,- daily prize for such a game (in one of the strongest tournaments in the world)

Re: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer

#154

Post by kamaal »

mattmiller wrote: post #126
m0th87 wrote: post #115

> If you really like the atmosphere at universities, that is cool. Put a backpack on and you can walk into any building at any university in the United States any time you want. Backpacks are a lot cheaper than working in academia. You can lead the life of the mind in industry, too — and enjoy less politics and better pay. You can even get published in journals, if that floats your boat. (After you’ve escaped the min…

You missed the point of the article. You can do cool thing even at large companies iff you put yourself out there and look for opportunities that interest you. You can also get paid for it if you are smart.

I think you have put it very well. This is something that I have always wondered. Leave alone some bad places, lets take the example of a good place. Consider a large corporation which is a pretty good place. But you also have a your usual large organisation crowd-control policies.

If a person can't make use of good opportunities, experiment and learn in such a place, I doubt whether the same guy will do any good at a reputed place(like big web shops today) or even a start up.

Or more appropriately, only people who are capable of doing good in large corporates can do well in a start up. Or vice versa. If you can't do well in big company without any thing stopping you, you are not likely to do well in a start up either.

Start up's are not some magical places of congregation which will give you edge over your career without any considerable effort. Wherever you are, you've got take personal interest and steps to learn, work and make your mark.

Re: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer

#156

Post by div »

blumentopf wrote: post #150

Many asked how to know what programming language or stack to study. It doesn’t matter. It does matter in so far products come and go and you don't want to accumulate knowledge on a product that's going to disappear from the market. I worked with SGI IRIX from 1991-1996. The company has since gone bankrupt twice and IRIX has disappeared from the market. All the knowledge I accumulated on IRIX is worth nothing because…

The programming language or stack does not matter to whoever is hiring you.

The fact that you knew IRIX was a good indicator that you'd be able to pick up Linux.

It's also today a good indicator that you'd be able to pick up Windows if you set your mind to it.

Your advice is solid from an engineer to engineer point of view, but Patio's advice takes an egineer to business perspective.

Re: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer

#157

Post by Jach »

icebraining wrote: post #135
Jach wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a programmer. I program things. What, specifically, changes pretty frequently still. Going into detail can be useful when trying to score social points from the smalltalk question of "So, what do you do?" But depending on what you program, I think for most people "programming" is sufficient compared to "I currently write software to manage an elastic computer server farm running data analysis jobs for people." In…

I think the point is to make your job description less technical, not more. You're not a programmer, you're "the guy who made $X for your company last Y".

That's a good point, it's not just about what you do, the effects matter. But again it fits into the scoring social points game and making yourself look extra important to companies.

Re: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer

#160

Post by div »

motters wrote: post #144

Not very good advice. It's basically an accountants view of engineering, which can be summarized as follows: - Only be interested in increasing profit or reducing cost - Don't care about what you do unless it conflicts with the above - Treat people you meet as commodities - Produce cruddy code, because "good enough" is all that matters - Good engineering is not a "profit center" - Don't bother keeping up with new pro…

You may disagree with those views, but if they are predominant among the people who have final say in hiring you, and at what salary, then the advice is good.

The whole point of the article is to force a typical engineer to look at how most of the world perceives him, and work with that.

If you have to talk to another engineer as part of a hiring process, talk all the shop you want. If you're talking to business people, try to talk about the business advantages of what you do.

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