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What’s the end goal for you programmers?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: What’s the end goal for you programmers?

#31

Post by unnouinceput »

DanUKs wrote: post #21
__s wrote: post #12

This might surprise you, but some us enjoy programming I was programming for free for years. Then I was programming for practically minimum wage for a few years. Now I'm programming for a nice salary. I get paid to wake up & do what I want

That’s great at your parents house but when you have kids to feed and a mortgage to pay, doing it for free is off the cards, no matter how much you love it.

I would never stop programming. It is a joy for me to do little utilities that makes my life easier. Even with billions of dollars in bank account I would still hack away at an ESP32 to stick it in a flying helicopter toy for example. And lucky for me this field is highly dynamic, I would never get bored learning new technologies. For me programming is like a kid with his shiny toys, every day another one. And I am pretty sure plenty of programmers feel the same way.

Re: What’s the end goal for you programmers?

#32

Post by spacemanmatt »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #27
__s wrote: post #12

This might surprise you, but some us enjoy programming I was programming for free for years. Then I was programming for practically minimum wage for a few years. Now I'm programming for a nice salary. I get paid to wake up & do what I want

I program for free, nowadays. I made enough, as a manager (which I hated ), to be able to retire early, at a fairly humble level (which was a good thing, because no one wants to hire "olds"), and I do work on nonprofit stuff. The project I'm working on now, would make a lot of Fortune 100 companies green with envy, and I'm doing it for free.

My career seems to be doing better because I'm crowding 50. I was expecting worse.

Re: What’s the end goal for you programmers?

#33

Post by immigrantheart »

Make a lot of money, then maybe create a business.

If everything goes well I will be rich, and maybe one day go back to my home country to do politics, do business as well there, building the country.

The end goal, hmm, if possible, maybe I want to be the president.

Re: What’s the end goal for you programmers?

#34

Post by kojeovo »

DanUKs wrote: post #14
gerad wrote: post #4

How about “make the world a better place?”

100%. Very Elon Musk BUT even Elon himself had looked after his own and made his own millions before trying to tackle that.

Why does making the world a better place make you think of Elon? I think of something much smaller scale. Helping my community, elders, people around me. Something at a much smaller scale where I get 1-1 human interaction out of it.

My passion is in fitness. I want to be active in my 60-80s (weight lifting / marathon running shape). I ultimately want to help others do the same and lead a better quality of life through their old age.

Re: What’s the end goal for you programmers?

#36

Post by spacemanmatt »

lezojeda wrote: post #25
rr888 wrote: post #15

Developers in their 20s are definitely overpaid. Whether this will continue will be interesting to see. Currently I see so many people trained in other fields becoming developers I'm almost worried about the future of the economy. Social Media, online retail, advertising - just how many people really can work in these fields? So yeah I expect wages to crash in the next 10-20 years. I think most high earning young peo…

>Developers in their 20s are definitely overpaid Why?

The 5 or 10 years experience they might have is pretty thin unless they have had extremely good mentoring. It takes more than a senior project and a few years as a junior dev to be worth much. I consider junior devs incubation projects. Some of them turn out nicely.

Re: What’s the end goal for you programmers?

#38

Post by toolz »

DanUKs wrote: post #29
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #22

I just like making useful stuff that helps people, and is a joy to use. For me, it's about the journey, more than the destination, but I still like completing all my projects. Part of the joy, is watching my work being used (and, sometimes, ab used) by others.

I love the idea of this but you read so many stories about the owners of open sourced projects not making a penny, whilst millions use their work and benefit financially. It’s difficult to do this when there’s belly’s to fill.

I doubt any maintainer of a sufficiently popular open source project isn't making a lot of money in tech. Open source can open a lot of doors for employment opportunities and greatly increases your marketability to demand higher wages.

Of course, don't do open source if you don't enjoy it - because I doubt the time spent is optimal for getting the most money, but if you do enjoy it then it can very much help increase your income indirectly.

Re: What’s the end goal for you programmers?

#40

Post by kojeovo »

rootsudo wrote: post #19

This is a great question - it depends, for me it is FIRE. But the path to FIRE is hard, can you put away a decade of your life to "work" to retire? When should you start? Are you too late? I also enjoy this line of work because it is more liberating, if in a right environment. It's fun to learn, it's amazing to be paid to learn and even better. I'm not aware of any other career progression which leads to as much free…

Most people started working on FIRE seemingly during a bull run. Wonder how it's going now..
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