Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50? • Hacker News Board

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#141

Post by speleding » Sat, Oct 06, 2012, 6:03 PM UTC

_yosefk wrote: post #15

tatsuke95 wrote: post #11

> "The fact is that your material well-being is rarely in jeopardy because of a missed deadline, so your reaction is fully up to you. " Much of what the author says is true, currently. This is a fantastic market for programmers, and anyone being born into this era is lucky. But the forces of supply and demand will sort this market out in the future, to which the author seems ignorant. Name another profession that req…

Why isn't the field extremely competitive now? The demand has been strong for a decade and a half; it seems like a lot of time. (I'm not sure I have an explanation myself, really; perhaps it's something innate in people and perhaps it's something about education, but the fact remains that the world still hasn't churned out enough programmers even though the incentives have been there for a long time. One possible exp…

People smart enough to be programmers have more options than being a programmer. Most of the people in my CS class ended up as managers, 15 years after graduation.

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#142

Post by andrewflnr » Sat, Oct 06, 2012, 6:03 PM UTC

bjourne wrote: post #136

padobson wrote: post #112

Money is about being good at something. I know of lawyers that barely scrape by on insurance law suits because all they know how to do is prey on the fear and pain of injured people. Such lawyers have to buy $500 suits and drive BMWs and belong to country clubs to stay presentable, and thus have to scrape by on 80-100k a year. Similarly, I know carpenters and plumbers who will get the job done - and make a lot more t…

Hogwash. For every skilled craftsman you can find, I can find ten other idiots making ten times as much money thanks to being born in the right family. Skilled developers recognize that rockstar developers can be ten times as productive as average ones. I haven't ever heard of any developers making ten times the average salary or even double the average. Stock brokers are regularly getting beaten by monkeys when it c…

He's not trying to make a point about the justification of society's wages in general, he's describing what an individual can do, which may or may be representative of general trends. Do you deny that it's possible for an individual to reach a point where they're well-compensated for being a skilled craftsman?

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#143

Post by pacala » Sat, Oct 06, 2012, 6:03 PM UTC

dpark wrote: post #114

Karunamon wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Do something you love" is a myth. As someone who is currently working his dream job, this statement couldn't be further from the truth.

A dream job is still a job . There are still parts that are tedious, and frustrating (if you're not encountering anything frustrating, you're not doing anything important), and annoying. That's why they pay you. And that's why "do what you love" is a myth. You can't always do what you love. Sometimes you have to do things you do not love, and just be happy that part of the time you get to do what you enjoy. Far too m…

Life. There are still parts that are tedious, and frustrating (if you're not encountering anything frustrating, you're not doing anything important), and annoying.

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#144

Post by encoderer » Sat, Oct 06, 2012, 6:08 PM UTC

dmethvin wrote: post #99

_yosefk wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said "little or no education" compared to other fields. I'm a grad school dropout, so my bet is that my CS education is above average for a working programmer. A hiring process considered "demanding" (such as Google's) is basically testing if you know the stuff they learn in the first year and a half of an undergraduate program. Contrast that to the amount of training and test-taking that a doctor must go through a…

In that case I think "little or no certification" would be more appropriate. It does seem kind of strange that doctors, lawyers, electricians, plumbers, and barbers all have to take tests to get into (and sometimes remain in) their professions, but a programmer can write the software for a missle system, voting machine, or power plant with no certification whatsoever.

The litmus test is not the complexity or impact of the product a professional is working on, but rather: how savvy are the customers and do they need the protection of regulation?

All of the professions you named are people who hang a shingle and sell services to low-information customers.

Missile systems, voting machines, and power plants are all "sold" to high-information customers that need less gov't protection.

Other engineers do need certification and do face legal culpability if they are negligent in their work, but it's inherently different I think. We can talk more about that if you're interested, would like to hear your take.

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#145

Post by hga » Sat, Oct 06, 2012, 6:09 PM UTC

colinb wrote: post #59

cynicalkane wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One piece of the puzzle is that programming education is not very effective. Most computer science programs teach you almost nothing about software engineering, partially because many CS profs know almost nothing about it.

I think one of the problems with software engineering is that [almost] no one knows anything about it. I've been a working programmer [or software engineer if I've just met you at a party and I think you're cute] for long enough to work on >5 multi-billion dollar projects. Of these, one was delivered on time and according to spec. That company went down the toilet within four years. I've read fairly widely in the sof…

WRT to those hugely expensive projects: for a while I've thought the real secret about offshoring is that it's simply a cheaper way to fail. Since most projects fail (outright canceled, declared a victory when they aren't, or over budget and time and generally far from feature complete), a cheap way to pretend you're doing software development has its attractions.

As for methodologies, perhaps getting everyone to actually use one is the biggest problem; that's been my experience. I have myself found about 4 things that seem to work:

The project should have a specifications document of one or two pages, no matter how complex. This is to try to get everyone on the same page, as it were, it has goals and requirements, must do N transactions/second, must run on X, etc. As much what and as little how as possible.

Further project documentation efforts must factor in the Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY) principle, i.e. the code is the only truth, and attempts to duplicate it are going to get out of sync unless you work really hard at avoiding that.

From OOSE/RUP: do short ("several week", 2-4) iterations and get your complete software and systems stack into a "Hello, world!" end-to-end state very early in them.

Otherwise, yeah, I've read a lot about software engineering beginning within the first month or two I started programming in the fall of '77 (sic) and while I think there is such a thing, it's indeed not really engineering as we otherwise know it. There's something there, but you learn it as much by doing as by more formal methods (classes, reading books) and there's no substitute for a serious amount of experience.

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#146

Post by guard-of-terra » Sat, Oct 06, 2012, 6:09 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #103

I think this is a bit cynical (and dangerous) but agree with the premise that currently the number of programming opportunities continues to exceed the number of programmers. However there are signs that this is changing. I do know a programmer who became an IP attorney (doing well at it too) and a couple of programmers who have gone off to do entirely different things (one is a guide in Africa, another drives a tugb…

OP is a Russian-speaking israeli and Bogdan is a fine slavic name (rooted as God Given, I guess)

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#147

Post by hga » Sat, Oct 06, 2012, 6:14 PM UTC

niels wrote: post #131

I'm a software developer (MS Comp. Sci.) in my late thirties. I've always had the impression that software development was really well paid. But lately many of my friends (doctors, lawyers, MBAs) has started to make way more than I can get as a regular employee. And for the doctors it's all part of their standard salaries. They don't need to demonstrate any particular high level of competence. And from here on their…

Just wait until you hit 40 and getting a full time salaried job becomes asymptotically more difficult (unless you're in a special field like embedded or one that requires clearances).

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#148

Post by creamyhorror » Sat, Oct 06, 2012, 6:14 PM UTC

niels wrote: post #131

I'm a software developer (MS Comp. Sci.) in my late thirties. I've always had the impression that software development was really well paid. But lately many of my friends (doctors, lawyers, MBAs) has started to make way more than I can get as a regular employee. And for the doctors it's all part of their standard salaries. They don't need to demonstrate any particular high level of competence. And from here on their…

This is interesting. I've heard mentions of very large numbers for bankers, lawyers, doctors as they move up the career ladder, but normally involving starting their own businesses or being made partner. Do they really outearn developers significantly, even as employees? Maybe I should've stuck to trying to get into finance...although once the entrepreneurship bug bites, it isn't quite so easy.

I'm in a country where the wage difference between the protected professions and the rest is pretty large, and programmers are pretty much commodity employees with little advancement opportunities. The only way to break out seems to be entrepreneurship, but the local market isn't big enough to support big or even medium exits. I guess that's why so many people try to get into medical and law school or into i-banks.

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#149

Post by dpatrick86 » Sat, Oct 06, 2012, 6:16 PM UTC

bjourne wrote: post #136

padobson wrote: post #112

Money is about being good at something. I know of lawyers that barely scrape by on insurance law suits because all they know how to do is prey on the fear and pain of injured people. Such lawyers have to buy $500 suits and drive BMWs and belong to country clubs to stay presentable, and thus have to scrape by on 80-100k a year. Similarly, I know carpenters and plumbers who will get the job done - and make a lot more t…

Hogwash. For every skilled craftsman you can find, I can find ten other idiots making ten times as much money thanks to being born in the right family. Skilled developers recognize that rockstar developers can be ten times as productive as average ones. I haven't ever heard of any developers making ten times the average salary or even double the average. Stock brokers are regularly getting beaten by monkeys when it c…

To be fair s/he did include marketing of your services among the set of things that were requisite that you be good at to pull it off.

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#150

Post by guard-of-terra » Sat, Oct 06, 2012, 6:26 PM UTC

lutusp wrote: post #93

Just a few comments on a well-written article that makes some good points: > No health or legal risks On the contrary -- the health risk arises primarily because of the sedentary lifestyle. It's hard to imagine anything so hard on one's health and longevity prospects as sitting and typing all day. As to legal risks, they're certainly on the upswing, as people who can't program try to steal the work of those who can,…

Quite a few professionsnow require you tositall day looking at the screen, but they differ in compensation while sharing health risks. And I don't see many occupations where the risk is much milder.