Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Don't call yourself a programmer, and other career advice (2011)

kalzumeus.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 176 posts

Re: Don't call yourself a programmer, and other career advice (2011)

#141

Post by jbay808 »

bitwize wrote: post #111
klabb3 wrote: post #49

This whole article is great advice for playing the career game, or “how to fit in and not get bullied at school”. Note that it comes at a cost, and that cost may or may not be worth it to you. Note also that playing a game for a long time you forget that you are playing a game, and you start incorporating the rules of the game into your mind. Some people are more resistant to this effect than others, and some people…

Playing the game is an important life skill. Go for that pile of money early. Compound interest over years means it can make the difference between just making ends meet for the rest of your life, and actually having something substantial to retire on. Apply to FAANG or whatever it is these days if you're smart enough. Prove you're smart enough by grinding leetcode and doing mock interviews. Don't faff about with hom…

Maybe. I've never hired for FAANGs but from the other side of the interview table, I'd much sooner hire someone overflowing with energy and enthusiasm for homebrew game consoles or hacking a TI-83 calculator, than someone who has practiced the right exercises but has no passion for the work, doesn't remember when they stopped loving tech, and would have pursued a different major if the big bucks were elsewhere.

It's not hard to tell.

Re: Don't call yourself a programmer, and other career advice (2011)

#142

Post by endymi0n »

bruce511 wrote: post #123
klabb3 wrote: post #49

This whole article is great advice for playing the career game, or “how to fit in and not get bullied at school”. Note that it comes at a cost, and that cost may or may not be worth it to you. Note also that playing a game for a long time you forget that you are playing a game, and you start incorporating the rules of the game into your mind. Some people are more resistant to this effect than others, and some people…

>> If you have the privilege to choose what game to play, I recommend picking not by the rewards of the game – but based on how you like the rules of the game. It's kinda both though isn't it? Sure we all want to play the game with the "right rules", but at the same time I also care deeply about the rewards - I want time with the family, I don't want to worry about money every night, and so on. But I agree, rules fir…

You both have a point. For my own career I found the advice of Oliver Burkeman helpful, who put it in a very apt and actionable sentence:

> When stumped by a life choice, choose “enlargement” over happiness.

The good part is that there‘s still a lot of jobs out there who both enlarge you and make good money. They‘re just harder to find.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/sep/04/oliver-...

Re: Don't call yourself a programmer, and other career advice (2011)

#143

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

It itches me when programmers call themselves engineers. Actual engineers have licensing requirements, they have responsibility, they even can go to jail if a bridge they designed falls down. Have you heard of any of Tesla AI "engineers" going to jail after people died in self-driving crashes?

Re: Don't call yourself a programmer, and other career advice (2011)

#144

Post by qolop »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #143

It itches me when programmers call themselves engineers. Actual engineers have licensing requirements, they have responsibility, they even can go to jail if a bridge they designed falls down. Have you heard of any of Tesla AI "engineers" going to jail after people died in self-driving crashes?

It itches me when people get pedantic about what to call things and take it upon themselves to define what an "actual" engineer is.

From Wikipedia: Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limitations imposed by practicality, regulation, safety and cost.

What part of this does not apply to software engineers? They can't go to jail therefore they're not engineers? What bullshit gatekeeping.

Re: Don't call yourself a programmer, and other career advice (2011)

#145

Post by doix »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #143

It itches me when programmers call themselves engineers. Actual engineers have licensing requirements, they have responsibility, they even can go to jail if a bridge they designed falls down. Have you heard of any of Tesla AI "engineers" going to jail after people died in self-driving crashes?

It depends on the country/state/laws/industry/field etc. In the UK, everyone is an engineer. The guy who checks your gas meter readings is a "gas engineer". In the US, I think it's "professional engineer" that is the protected term (depends on the state I'm guessing).

I used to work in the semiconductor industry, no one gave a shit about licensing, but I would still call it "real engineering".

Going to jail isn't a prerequisite for something being an engineering discipline. I think software can be "engineering", depending on the process used to develop it. But the "move fast and break stuff" philosophy is pretty anti-engineering, in my opinion.

This becomes almost a philosophical discussion about what engineering entails and the definition of words. Personally, I don't care that much if people call themselves engineers or consider what they are doing engineering. Even if all they do is copy-paste code from SO to glue together npm libraries.

Re: Don't call yourself a programmer, and other career advice (2011)

#146

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

OrvalWintermute wrote: post #6

> Engineers in particular are usually very highly paid Cost Centers, which sets MBA’s optimization antennae to twitching disagree completely with this. I view scientists, engineers, programmers, and system administrators as a part of the profit center because they are intrinsically tied to value creation and value amplification.

I think this article is an insult to MBA's intelligence. Today, they know perfectly well the value of code monkeys aka programmers.

Re: Don't call yourself a programmer, and other career advice (2011)

#147

Post by kodah »

bqmjjx0kac wrote: post #129
bruce511 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If you have the privilege to choose what game to play, I recommend picking not by the rewards of the game – but based on how you like the rules of the game. It's kinda both though isn't it? Sure we all want to play the game with the "right rules", but at the same time I also care deeply about the rewards - I want time with the family, I don't want to worry about money every night, and so on. But I agree, rules fir…

> For reference, I've spent my whole career building boring Crud apps in a language you've never heard of. Well now I have to guess. ColdFusion?

I feel like a lot of programmers on here have probably heard of ColdFusion. Allaire (and Macromedia after they bought them) built one of the best IDEs back in the day. It was a strong competitor to Komodo.

Re: Don't call yourself a programmer, and other career advice (2011)

#148

Post by alkonaut »

> It does not matter to the company that the reporting form is the world’s simplest CRUD app, it only matters that it either saves the company costs or generates additional revenue.

This is my advice for young programmers too, but with a different takeaway. Most software will be mind crushingly boring CRUD.

If you do programming for the love of the craft then try to find something that isn’t that. Find something that solves interesting problems in an interesting way. It might pay less and you may not be able to jump jobs every 4 years - but you won’t be bored to death writing code which is basically 90% fluff and plumbing and deployment.

Finding jobs with actual programming joy at the core is like finding gold.

Re: Don't call yourself a programmer, and other career advice (2011)

#149

Post by Tade0 »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #143

It itches me when programmers call themselves engineers. Actual engineers have licensing requirements, they have responsibility, they even can go to jail if a bridge they designed falls down. Have you heard of any of Tesla AI "engineers" going to jail after people died in self-driving crashes?

It says "Bachelor of Engineering" on my diploma though.

Also not all engineers have licensing requirements and responsibility - chip designers are one example. Engineers in every sense of the word, but no obvious licensing requirements nor responsibility on the scale e.g. civil engineers have. Generally much closer to what we do as software engineers.

Re: Don't call yourself a programmer, and other career advice (2011)

#150

Post by BlargMcLarg »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #146
OrvalWintermute wrote: post #6

> Engineers in particular are usually very highly paid Cost Centers, which sets MBA’s optimization antennae to twitching disagree completely with this. I view scientists, engineers, programmers, and system administrators as a part of the profit center because they are intrinsically tied to value creation and value amplification.

I think this article is an insult to MBA's intelligence. Today, they know perfectly well the value of code monkeys aka programmers.

Do they? Plenty of places still put IT down as a "cost center" first and foremost, using that as a basis tobproactively run their staff barely above the level required for maintenance alone.

Conversely, they also tend to believe their value calculations are better than those of dev teams, going as far as to ignore proposals. You think MBAs are able to consistently guess better than someone actively doing the work?

Post reply on HN