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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

#191

Post by moffkalast »

awongh wrote: post #155
aeturnum wrote: post #25

For me, at least, programming is simply the most profitable articulation of an underlying personality trait that involves productivity, play, mischief, sardonicism and critique all together. This is what people mean when they point out that "hacking" isn't about software. The tantalizing just-out-of-reach articulation of a compelling concept. Satiating.

How is sardonicism involved in programming? It is a trait many in tech have, I'm not sure if you're saying that it's positively involved in doing programming....

It's a very effective coping mechanism for dealing with constant problems would be my guess. Here's what GPT 4 has to say on the matter, I think it's pretty hilarious:

"Programmers have such a sunny job, full of rainbows and unicorns, that they've taken to leaving little love notes in the form of sardonic comments within their code. It's their way of whispering sweet nothings to the universe about the sheer joy of tracking down that one pesky, elusive bug at 3 AM, or the pure elation they feel when the system crashes for the hundredth time for no apparent reason. They do it with such grace, wearing a smile that's as bright as their computer screens in a dark room. Indeed, who wouldn't want a slice of that pie?"

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

#192

Post by wiz21c »

doppel wrote: post #133
irrational wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Technical leadership is very expensive to find though, and once you find one you don’t let them go back to the production line. I have a friend at our company who is a gifted programmer. He was moved into a management position. He discovered that he hated working in a leadership position. He tried to get them to move him back to an individual contributor position. They refused. He said, move me back or I quit. It t…

I feel it's completely acceptable to wish to stay in an IC position, but to refuse outright to give advise or share the experience (it's hard to tell from your short paragraph) seems... odd? It's acceptable to want to stay in a specific role, but I am not certain I feel it's acceptable to eschew an increasing responsibility or mentoring role as you gain experience. That way lies the "genius programmer that works alon…

> , but to refuse outright to give advise or share the experience

I think there's mentoring and leadership. These are different. I sure can mentor and help people to better think/program but don't ask me to push a team to meet a deadline they don't want to meet because they warned the marketing department 2 months before that they wouldn't do it. Been there, done that. Once in that position, you're pushing people, you become the bad guy and you have to explain that it's "for the good of the company, because they have to see the big picture, etc", IOW "screw you, I'm the boss". For that you need to be crazy enough to think that what you want is more important than what other humans-like-you are. OK, leadership is not always that and most often, you have to gather enough trust from your team so that from time to time, you can be a pusher. But if you don't have trust and you are always pushed to push, well, welcome to hell, and say goodbye to your health.

It's very different than "let's work together to find the best possible way to solve a problem, taking all the necessary time to produce something reliable".

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

#193

Post by andruby »

marktolson wrote: post #177
kstenerud wrote: post #142

In 2 days time I'll mark my 27th year as a professional programmer (and just over 40 years since I started programming). I've worked in small companies, big companies, and mega-corporations. I've been a programmer, manager, team lead and CTO. And in doing so I discovered that I don't like managing people, I don't like meetings, and I don't like paperwork. I like long periods of focus. So I'm a software dev/architect…

Same path, but for the last 10 years i've been a CTO. Right now i'd kill for fewer meetings and more focus time. Starting to take its toll.

Make the changes you'd love to see. The CTO role is vague and broad and is defined differently in most companies anyway. You can delegate things to an engineering manager or director. Or if the company is large enough to a VP.

find a cross-section of what is valuable for the company and what you like doing

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

#194

Post by DanielHB »

teirce wrote: post #86
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…

There are a few old-adage counterpoints here, such as: don't make your passion/hobby your job, have hobbies outside of your work, etc. But you also touch on something that has surfaced as the money in tech has grown and become much more loud in the last few decades. > Bootcamps have just become farms for people who need a job, but not those who really want this job. This isn't exclusive to bootcamps - they just happe…

> Despite liking it, I still find little desire to tinker on things outside of work. A large part of it is that it _is_ my job. I don't want to work, then go home and 'work' for 'fun'.

I am the same way, but when I take 5-week long vacations I usually start to tinker with stuff on week 3. So it takes me about 2 weeks to detox from job grinding

Funny to realise the best thing my job could do for employee training is to just give me more vacation. Not like they give me any official training though. They let people occasionally go to conferences but I don't really like those, so I don't

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

#195

Post by visarga »

ryandrake wrote: post #149
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…

> It saddens me to say but if I were starting over today I might not enter the field professionally. Most modern development is gluing components together and wrangling packages. It's so far removed from the machine and the distance is only growing. I don't know what's sadder: That this kind of programming is becoming a lost art, or that nobody seems to care. I got my first job out of college partially because in the…

I have known programmers who don't know how a float is represented in memory. I just can't comprehend how they can gloss over basics like that.

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

#196

Post by stavros »

Charlie_Black wrote: post #169
totorovirus wrote: post #157

What I've seen in the past two years, a lot of people who have seemingly no fit to a life of a programmer have joined software industry. In my experience the best devs were the people who self-taught programming for pure joy of building a software, making a glimpse of imaging to something real through writing code. The others who were on this job because the compensation was hefty - they were likely to opt out to a m…

The best engineers I know all started coding for fun too. Not to build "real-life" usable software, but to solve algorithmic puzzles.

My fun is building real-life usable software and seeing people getting value out of them, so I guess YMMV. I'm very lucky that I really like doing this, as it makes work as fun as my hobby, and my personal portfolio has a bunch of finished (if generally small) products in it.

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

#198

Post by haspok »

bboygravity wrote: post #168
tm-guimaraes wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying “no” is the correct answer. It’s the same as not solving chat request bypassing prioritization. The company is full of incentives to ask that guy for guidance/things, if he doesn’t say no most or all of the time, he simply won’t have time for his IC role, and would remain a lead just not in name. It’s hard that it comes to that extreme measure, but if his requests aren’t being heard, it’s either that or leavin…

Another simple trick if you don't like saying "no": become a freelancer. It will never ever occur to anybody in the company that a freelance software dev could possibly be put into a management role, so they won't ask. As opposed to an employed software dev. Bonus if you're in the EU/UK: in most countries in the EU this will even lead to tax breaks and higher before-tax hourly rates. To the point that you'll make (wa…

> It will never ever occur to anybody in the company that a freelance software dev could possibly be put into a management role...

If by "freelancer" you mean "contractor", then this statement is false. I had worked at multiple places in the UK where this happened, I suppose mostly because paying these people a salary would have required an disproportionate amount of money (as opposed to a standard daily rate) - UK taxes are very high in the top bracket.

If by "freelancer" you mean a real freelancer (the guy who has multiple short gigs at the same time, and needs to be constantly on the lookout for new opportunities) then that is already half of a management position, even if you don't have anyone reporting for you.

It is true though that as a contractor one can reasonably easily avoid management duties, and enjoy not having to worry about company politics. The downside is that it is easy to end up in a place where you have to accept that comparably junior people dictate architecture and some tech decisions which you discarded 10 years ago as ineffective, stupid, fad, or all of the above (TDD being a typical example). The upside is that your time at each place is limited anyway, and there is always something to learn...

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

#199

Post by tombert »

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 get frustrated by how much "math" is a dirty word in engineering circles.

There have been plenty of times where I have felt that utilizing formal methods would benefit some problematic patch of code, but when I suggest something like TLA+ or Isabelle, every engineer in the room will wince at me and act like I asked them to solve the wave equation. It'll usually be dismissed in some form of "we don't want to force every engineer to learn all that math".

It's frustrating to me because, I mean, we're engineers. Any high school kid can learn to program for free on YouTube these days. If we're not utilizing theory, then what exactly are we doing to earn our ridiculous salaries?

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

#200

Post by gymbeaux »

totorovirus wrote: post #157

What I've seen in the past two years, a lot of people who have seemingly no fit to a life of a programmer have joined software industry. In my experience the best devs were the people who self-taught programming for pure joy of building a software, making a glimpse of imaging to something real through writing code. The others who were on this job because the compensation was hefty - they were likely to opt out to a m…

I think I’m conditioned to have reduced respect for managers because in my experience they are former devs who were “promoted” out of touching the code. As a result, when they offer technical advice, it’s bad technical advice, or at best merely “unhelpful”, usually because it’s obvious (e.g. “did you try {first thing I tried}?”

I pose that such people shouldn’t be devs or managers, but “manager” is a role that tends to be forgiving of under-qualification… because ultimately the good devs don’t need to be “managed.”

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