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

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

#261

Post by akurilin »

shmerl wrote: post #234

> Give me a profession remotely close to programming in the following ways: Little or no required education... > Programming is money for nothing. This is not called programming. It's called monkey job. Programming requires education (i.e. being a knowledgeable professional in computing, software engineering and so on) and it's not money for nothing by any means.

Agreed. You can do a lot in programming without much knowledge, but a lot of the really good opportunities and interesting work are reserved to those who have superior domain expertise.

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

#262

Post by lazyjones »

nostrademons wrote: post #173
bjourne wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"I haven't ever heard of any developers making ten times the average salary or even double the average." Programmers who are making that kind of money know enough to keep it quiet.

Here's your model programmer who makes a lot more, although you'll probably call it an unfair comparison:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Persson

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

#263

Post by bjourne »

noahc wrote: post #155
bjourne wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's pretty clear that top preformers don't look at averages. They look at what others have done and from there figure out how to get there in a reasonable time. A developer who makes 10x a regular developer happens often, but what they are doing is taking on a lot of the risk that companies take on and knock your salary for. Your project is 2x over budget and 4x behind schedule? Oh, that's just Software projects in…

The only way you can claim that a developer can make 10x the regular salary, is to have that developer do something other more profitable than development and claim that that makes him or her more excellent. It's a circular argument: "you are doing something that makes lots of money, therefore what you are doing is more excellent than someone making less money." No, making money is about being good at making money. Not to perform outstanding work.

The quote is right, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is for Communism, which has a different slogan than Socialism.

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

#264

Post by nandemo »

michaelochurch wrote: post #126
kfcm wrote: post #120

The author is a bit naive in his cheerleading, extrapolating his situation in his location to a nation-wide situation. That is just simply not the case. As a business-owner in my mid-40's, I travel around quite a bit. There are locations where the employment picture is similar to what the author describes. But what he describes is far from the norm in the places I travel to, or from what I hear from friends and old c…

This is depressing but a realistic depiction of "how the other half programs". What are your thoughts on what puts people into that programming underclass (which definitely exists)?

I don't know exactly what you mean by underclass (though I think I've seen a similar comment of yours), but one answer is what plinkplonk said in this thread: immigration restrictions, combined with the concentration of "elite" software companies in the US.

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

#265

Post by Retric »

nathan_long wrote: post #204
rayiner wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ageism I saw is why I decided I didn't want to be in software development for the long term and left the field. I personally think the mentality is stupid and probably quite inefficient. In my field, law, they don't even let you into the courtroom until you're 5+ years in. Practicing law is an art and people with 20 years of experience are just better at it than people starting out. I never understood why so many…

I wouldn't argue for ageism, but I would say programming is different from law because technology changes much faster than law. There aren't giant paradigm shifts in law every 10 years. A new technology may in fact be much more productive to work with than an old one. Does someone with COBOL experience have an advantage or a disadvantage in learning Python vs someone who is just starting? Which is larger, the amount…

Law has much faster changes than programming. In programming you can use 2 year old ideas and be fine, in law no so much. A single case before the supreme court can completely change what's legal. And just about every bill changes something significant for someone.

Ditto doctors, you are required to stay up to date, where programmers can come back after 10 years and learn on the job doctors need to pass a "Maintenance of Certification Exam" or break the law.

PS: Programmers do need to keep learning, but it's no where near as time consuming.

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

#267

Post by tinco »

rayiner wrote: post #242
jaxn wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also have the issue of "digital natives." In programming, there is a difference in someone who learned computers in college, someone who learned computers in high school, and someone who learned computers in grade school. Then the next wave was kids who grew up with the internet. I suspect it will continue with kids who grew up with touch devices. I don't think there is a similar parallel in other industries.

I don't really buy who "kids who grew up with touch devices" might make better programmers than the generation of people who built Windows, NeXTStep, etc, who are in their 50's and 60's right now. Hell, Knuth is 74. The fundamentals of programming, as an engineering field, haven't really changed since the 1980's.

Would you argue knuth is a good modern software developer? Have you ever used latex? It's an outdated unmaintainable piece of crap.. Did he develop anything we would call good software in the past ten years?

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

#268

Post by JamisonM »

nathan_long wrote: post #204
rayiner wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ageism I saw is why I decided I didn't want to be in software development for the long term and left the field. I personally think the mentality is stupid and probably quite inefficient. In my field, law, they don't even let you into the courtroom until you're 5+ years in. Practicing law is an art and people with 20 years of experience are just better at it than people starting out. I never understood why so many…

I wouldn't argue for ageism, but I would say programming is different from law because technology changes much faster than law. There aren't giant paradigm shifts in law every 10 years. A new technology may in fact be much more productive to work with than an old one. Does someone with COBOL experience have an advantage or a disadvantage in learning Python vs someone who is just starting? Which is larger, the amount…

Law I think is a field with unique responsibilities for their members to stay current and keep learning, things do change fast and you have to keep up to stay effective.

Paradigm shifts every 10 years? Not really. COBOL to Python ain't no paradigm shift.

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

#269

Post by padobson »

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…

Never did I suggest the world was fair or that trust fund babies don't have a better chance at a high income than someone born into a iron-workers family.

I was suggesting that there's good money to be made in every discipline - you may need some creativity and personality to get to that money, but no one should ever look at the field they're in and say "Oh, ho hum, I'll never be rich because of my field."

And your socialist quote was misquoted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_abil...

Finally, if your open source code is good in that it is solving problems for people, then you should have a very fertile network of possible consulting clients. Those who use their open source work to feed their consultancies can make very very good money.

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

#270

Post by whatshisface »

tinco wrote: post #267
rayiner wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really buy who "kids who grew up with touch devices" might make better programmers than the generation of people who built Windows, NeXTStep, etc, who are in their 50's and 60's right now. Hell, Knuth is 74. The fundamentals of programming, as an engineering field, haven't really changed since the 1980's.

Would you argue knuth is a good modern software developer? Have you ever used latex? It's an outdated unmaintainable piece of crap.. Did he develop anything we would call good software in the past ten years?

Knuth is not a developer, he is a computer scientist. The standard CS career path is not yet well trodden, maybe we are all supposed to turn into managers and high-level researchers as we get older?
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