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Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

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Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#121

Post by brabel »

lastangryman wrote: post #102

I find it surprising (in a good way) the author could be a programmer for 26 years at Apple. A lot of corporate places I've worked at are always pushing you to progress in to leadership positions; if you aren't moving upwards then you are "managed out" which I always find really sad, the idea that simply being good at your job is now no longer enough. Good on Apple if they don't follow this type of thinking.

An experienced programmer may not be able to write a lot of code faster than an intermediate programmer, but will know to NOT write code or waste time on things they know (from experience) are not required, or desirable... and focus on those things that really matter. This is worth so much for a company. Developers in the middle of their careers are dangerous: they can achieve a lot, but they can easily veer off on a tangent and spend months on some interesting challenge instead of on what the business needs.

If every developer moved "up" to management after a few years, only mediocre programmers would be actually writing code (which is partly true). I've become chief engineer recently, but I had already been leading other developers for a while... but I keep writing lots of code, despite frequent interruptions to assist others... I can see how others often go in undesired directions if not guided back to focus on what is important. I am very glad my company has recognized that I can do that but knows me well enough to understand my strong point is coding, not managing. I am sure Apple and many other companies are also aware that a very experienced developer still writing code with others is worth a lot more than in some miserable (for them) management position.

Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#122

Post by catdog »

nordsieck wrote: post #29
shubhamjain wrote: post #10

> The respite from programming though lasted maybe about four months after retiring. I started a small project , in part to learn Python, in part to play with e-ink displays. I was back programming (back abusing git) but of course the pressure was off. It both was and wasn’t like the day job I had left behind. This is one reasons I got disillusioned with FIRE and the concept of early retirement. Programming was my fi…

> This is one reasons I got disillusioned with FIRE and the concept of early retirement. I think it's totally reasonable to be disillusioned with the "retire early" part of FIRE, but the "financial independence"? That part is golden for everyone. Being financially independent means you're not scared of being laid off. It means you can walk away from bad bosses or bad companies. It means you can try out a startup if y…

Agree but you can get there with much less sacrifices if you leave out the "retire early" part. Then, it boils mostly down avoiding lifestyle inflation.

Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#123

Post by saagarjha »

paganel wrote: post #104
rubicon33 wrote: post #52

> I am not sure though if this is still the case for software engineers. Are there younger engineers, new to the career, for whom programming is not merely a job but something they can imagine doing in their spare time? I think I met a few as I was winding down my career. I do feel though that back around 1988 or so when I started getting serious into programming that all fellow programmers I met were also doing it w…

What's there to love nowadays when it comes to software? I'm genuinely asking. What's there to love in making a company worth $2 trillion into becoming, what? A $3 trillion company? What's there to love in helping with making a tech dystopia more and more a reality each and every day? The dream of the '90s - early 2000s is well and truly dead, even in Portland.

Some believe that they’re working against that, however misguided it may be.

Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#124

Post by nly »

strken wrote: post #70
rubicon33 wrote: post #52

> I am not sure though if this is still the case for software engineers. Are there younger engineers, new to the career, for whom programming is not merely a job but something they can imagine doing in their spare time? I think I met a few as I was winding down my career. I do feel though that back around 1988 or so when I started getting serious into programming that all fellow programmers I met were also doing it w…

I think there's a number of hours a week I want to spend writing code, but while it's more than 10 it's less than 40. Above and beyond that, I love software, but I don't love Zoom calls, on-call shifts, unnecessarily annoying processes that I'm not allowed to automate, Slack messages, KPIs, objectives that combine vagueness about what we're doing with strict rules about what we're not allowed to touch, horrific dynam…

I work for 40 hours a week but I'm pretty sure only 2 are writing code.

That's the problem. I'd happily write code for more hours

Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#125

Post by onion2k »

rubicon33 wrote: post #52

> I am not sure though if this is still the case for software engineers. Are there younger engineers, new to the career, for whom programming is not merely a job but something they can imagine doing in their spare time? I think I met a few as I was winding down my career. I do feel though that back around 1988 or so when I started getting serious into programming that all fellow programmers I met were also doing it w…

The lack of enthusiasm and genuine interest is replaced by a clock-in and clock-out mentality.

In my experience people who treat programming as a job rather than a passion often build better apps (note that this is different to saying they write better code..). They don't try all the latest shiny things, they treat things like tests and docs as a boring necessessity rather than something they can ignore, they go for simple solutions they can think about less over complex abstractions that require lots of time. They're also happy to stick with something a bit dull like maintaining an old app so long as their pay keeps coming.

Passionate and enthusiastic devs are definitely more fun to work with, but if I'm going to be on a team with 6 or 7 others for a couple of years I would rather not come in to work to be faced with someone's 'clever' idea that they opened a PR for at 2am every day.

Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#126

Post by onetimeusename »

kweingar wrote: post #61
rubicon33 wrote: post #52

> I am not sure though if this is still the case for software engineers. Are there younger engineers, new to the career, for whom programming is not merely a job but something they can imagine doing in their spare time? I think I met a few as I was winding down my career. I do feel though that back around 1988 or so when I started getting serious into programming that all fellow programmers I met were also doing it w…

I had this attitude in college. I wasn’t a CS major, but I really enjoyed programming. I was floored by how many CS majors seemed to not enjoy the discipline. My interest in computers and programming hasn’t waned. But with every passing year, I have become more invested in my relationships, obligations, health, and other hobbies. So programming is a much smaller slice of the pie these days. I still think of myself as…

The CS degree became the most popular at my school in a short period of time. I was told as recently as 25 years ago, hardly anyone was in the program so it's reasonable to assume that CS itself didn't change but the demand did.

My take on students in the program is that a CS engineering degree is viewed the way a business degree might have been for a different industry like finance. It's a ticket into a high paying, tech job. From there, many want to climb the corporate ladder and move into management. There are people who like the topic but also quite a few who treat it as a corporate credential. I think this second group is a very recent development that only started happening in the last decade or so.

Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#127

Post by linguae »

sawyna wrote: post #108
linguae wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand this point of view. Unfortunately, for those who entered computing out of a passion for it, it’s difficult to work for employers or managers where computing isn’t a passion. This leads to all sorts of practices that suck the joy out of programming (e.g., Leetcode, meetings, KPIs, PIPs, certain design decisions, etc.), reducing it to a corporate “monkey dance.” Maybe I have rose-colored glasses, or maybe…

I hear you and share the sentiment (for the most part). I don't understand what's with leetcode. Granted it's not the best for way to judge the capabilities of a programmer, but then what is? A design round can be gamed as much as an algorithmic round can be. At least with leetcode, people become aware of different ways of thinking. By different ways, I don't mean different algorithms. I mean, given a base set of cap…

It’s not Leetcode in of itself that I hate; in fact, I enjoy programming challenges such as Project Euler and Advent of Code, and I occasionally read my Knuth volumes for fun. It’s the interview process that sucks the fun out of it, where you have to compete against those who just seem to eat, sleep, and drink Leetcode. It reminds me of my high school days when I stressed out over grades and SAT scores. I understand that for highly-desirable companies there needs to be some mechanism for culling the mass number of applications they receive, but when just about every company seemingly asks difficult Leetcode questions even if the job doesn’t require sophisticated algorithms, it’s very demoralizing. I’m getting tired of monkey dancing and I’m researching alternative ways of making a living.

Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#129

Post by rustybolt »

rubicon33 wrote: post #52

> I am not sure though if this is still the case for software engineers. Are there younger engineers, new to the career, for whom programming is not merely a job but something they can imagine doing in their spare time? I think I met a few as I was winding down my career. I do feel though that back around 1988 or so when I started getting serious into programming that all fellow programmers I met were also doing it w…

As much as I am a programming enthusiast, since I started working I really think 40-50 hours of staring at a screen is enough (if not way too much).

Especially if you're overweight, spending more time sitting behind a desk is just a poor life choice.

Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#130

Post by nasmorn »

xupybd wrote: post #60
hgs3 wrote: post #49

> But there is something becoming more familiar to me as I go back to the wild west of C programming (where very little happens behind the scenes I might point out - no garbage collection here!). I share this sentiment. I pursued computer science because of the romanticized notation of tracking every bit and byte and talking directly to the hardware. I know I'm not alone given the popularity of old-school fantasy con…

The most unfulfilling days for me are when my dependencies seem to fall over. I have a project that only builds in one version of Visual Studio on my machine. I know it's bad, I know I should get to the bottom of it before it becomes a real problem, but it's soul crushing work.

Interestingly as frustrating as this sometimes is I tend to become obsessed with not letting the computer win. So it feels much less like work than some kind of mythical quest with a very shallow plot.
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