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Programming is a Terrible Job

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Re: Programming is a Terrible Job

#151

Post by _delirium »

joshlegs wrote: post #129
10098 wrote: post #126

Honestly, I can understand OP's frustration. I would be lying if I said I didn't think similar thoughts. But the truth is, you don't get do to what you want unless you're running your on company. Even if you are running your own company, you have to make sure you're doing the right thing in order to not go bankrupt. I think having hobby projects can help provide a nice balance between doing whatever the hell you want…

protip: every job is like this. I went into journalism because i LOVED reading and writing. Making it a career sapped the fun out of it. Now i'm coding professionally. It's much more fun than the pressures of journalism, but I do find myself sometimes thinking "this was more fun when I did it just for the heck of it"

Most jobs, yeah. I do know a few engineers (the non-software type) whose interests seem surprisingly closely aligned with their jobs. One is a chip-design/layout person, and another is a chemical process engineer.

Re: Programming is a Terrible Job

#152

Post by R_Edward »

Supermighty wrote: post #109
avenger123 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really agree with your sentiments here. I would say that if you work on a very large scale system with an explicit way of how things are done and there is extreme rigidity in doing anything differently than the job gets tedious quite fast. I would venture to say that most developers do not fall into this category and have more autonomy (even if that is just building a CRUD web app). Most code isn't peer reviewed an…

It took me a longer time than I liked to realize that the end user didn't care at all. To them it was magic and they just want it to work. And you're right, most shops don't care how it's coded either. Once I realized that it gave me some freedom to once again enjoy my work. I still get frustrated from time to time, but at least I know why and can shift my thinking when I realize I'm headed down a negative path.

Most users are as you describe, but I made it my mission to educate them on what they were asking for when requesting a software change, and why one change might take two or three days, while another takes a month or more. I'm not didactic about it, just providing good explanations in terms they can understand. This makes them better understand that I'm neither a wizard nor a plumber, but someone who uses the ability to break complex problems down into a collection of small, simple, eminently-solvable pieces, and builds the complex solution out of those simpler solutions, sometimes using a bit of insight, creativity, and mental brilliance to achieve economies of scale.

The bonus, for me, is that occasionally there will be a colleague who gets it, someone who doesn't get that glazed look on his or her face as my words pass in one ear and out the other, and who can become a true partner in the quest to maintain, improve, and extend the software's capabilities. When you find someone like that, it makes the effort seem worth it.

Re: Programming is a Terrible Job

#153

Post by mixmastamyk »

acuozzo wrote: post #117
nicpottier wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You guys need to take responsibility for your unhappiness and go find a job where you aren't treated as a cog. I say that with complete sincerity. Find a better job.

> Find a better job. Sure! Can you provide for my family while I do?

It doesn't take much time at all to look for a job if you spread the tasks over a year. Sounds like an excuse to me.

Re: Programming is a Terrible Job

#154

Post by pycal »

spion wrote: post #148

> It is now time to conclude this long-winded rant. > I would like to end with a piece of advice for those who > are thinking of becoming a software engineer. My advice > would be - do not become a "software engineer". I know > there is a lot of demand right now, but 1) the demand > won't last forever; 2) most of the "software engineer" > jobs are boring as shit. My advice is, make the boring things interesting by pr…

If one of the factors underlying the OPs sentiment is that they don't feel like their work is particularly useful or meaningful (which I DO struggle with), these points address that head-on.

Sometimes political or budgetary constraints can prevent projects like these from finding legs, but good points.

Re: Programming is a Terrible Job

#155

Post by randomdata »

rapind wrote: post #71
antocv wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If work was always enjoyable, then they wouldn't need to pay you to do it. Why do football players, musicians and movie actors get payed 1000x as much as the software engineers who made the technology to make possible their success? TV, Internet, radio, now all HD quality. So that some people can enjoy their work and earn millions while we who invent and produce the infrastructure should suck it up and call it work…

Apples and oranges. Only the top 1% of athletes, musicians, actors make a living off it. Compare them to the top 1% of programmers. Alternatively if you compare all aspiring athletes, musicians, and actors to all programmers, you may find that programming does pretty well.

A good point. When you look at the top richest people of the world, some of them are (were) programmers. None of them are sports or movie stars.

Re: Programming is a Terrible Job

#156

Post by gknoy »

jophde wrote: post #139
acuozzo wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Find a better job. Sure! Can you provide for my family while I do?

I get the suspicion that a lot of people tech startup circles, never had to worry about paying there own bills. At any stage of life.

That sounds harsh. I think it's more that there are many young, single people who have the freedom to accept financial hardship in the short term, in order to secure wealth.

Once you have kids, you can't as easily say, "well, we'll just sleep in the car for a year", or "I'll just stay at work ten hours a day and take advantage of their free meals" (or something). For most parents, our risk-taking preferences change dramatically once we have something to lose, and the pressure from our spouses makes it a little bit harder to take on risks of catastrophic failure.

Re: Programming is a Terrible Job

#157

Post by stephencanon »

antocv wrote: post #55
nicpottier wrote: post #32

There's a reason it is called work and not play. If work was always enjoyable, then they wouldn't need to pay you to do it. I think the author is delusional if he thinks any programming anywhere doesn't have large swaths of time that are a bit mind numbing. And my experience has been the programmers who think themselves 'above that' are the ones that provide the least value. Our job is not to program, our job is to c…

> If work was always enjoyable, then they wouldn't need to pay you to do it. Why do football players, musicians and movie actors get payed 1000x as much as the software engineers who made the technology to make possible their success? TV, Internet, radio, now all HD quality. So that some people can enjoy their work and earn millions while we who invent and produce the infrastructure should suck it up and call it work…

> Why do football players, musicians and movie actors get payed 1000x as much as the software engineers who made the technology to make possible their success?

They don’t. The notion that they do is laughable.

Let’s look at baseball. Baseball players are known for having huge multi-million dollar contracts, right? But that’s only major league players. The vast majority of professional baseball players play in the minor leagues, where they earn just a few thousand dollars a month (and they don’t get paid in the offseason). And that’s not all; minor leaguers are still really really good at baseball. They’re all easily in the top 2-3% of baseball players. There are simply no jobs for the other 97%.

The average minor league baseball player making $15k a year playing baseball is a vastly better at playing baseball than the typical senior developer making $120k a year at $BIGCORP is at programming.

As for the couple hundred guys making multiple millions a year who you hear about all the time? Well, there’s even more engineers who have struck it rich with a startup, and no baseball player will ever come close to Zuckerberg-level wealth.

Re: Programming is a Terrible Job

#158

Post by Swizec »

joshlegs wrote: post #129
10098 wrote: post #126

Honestly, I can understand OP's frustration. I would be lying if I said I didn't think similar thoughts. But the truth is, you don't get do to what you want unless you're running your on company. Even if you are running your own company, you have to make sure you're doing the right thing in order to not go bankrupt. I think having hobby projects can help provide a nice balance between doing whatever the hell you want…

protip: every job is like this. I went into journalism because i LOVED reading and writing. Making it a career sapped the fun out of it. Now i'm coding professionally. It's much more fun than the pressures of journalism, but I do find myself sometimes thinking "this was more fun when I did it just for the heck of it"

protip: Be a very picky freelancer and only work on projects that interest you.

Re: Programming is a Terrible Job

#159

Post by mooreds »

Sarien wrote: post #89
pilif wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I know (I also said so in my comment). And that's why I consciously try to distribute the interesting work between my coworkers and I. That way everybody gets a nice mix between "job" and "fun". Does that mean that sometimes I have to do crap? Yes. Does that mean that everybody gets to have fun at times? Yes. If I can help it at all, I will not be the person responsible for somebody to write the rant that OP has p…

Very well put, a nice mix between "job" and "fun". Except that most employers want their employees to do the "job" part of everything and do any "fun" parts in their spare time.

I think that good employers want their employees to enjoy their jobs (and hence, have some 'fun'). I manage a few folks, and want them to enjoy their work.

Of course, it's not all sunshine and puppies--there's grunt work that just has to get done, and everyone takes their share.

Crappy employers of programmers just want to exploit employees, just like crappy employers of other kinds of workers.

Re: Programming is a Terrible Job

#160

Post by SomeCallMeTim »

joshlegs wrote: post #129
10098 wrote: post #126

Honestly, I can understand OP's frustration. I would be lying if I said I didn't think similar thoughts. But the truth is, you don't get do to what you want unless you're running your on company. Even if you are running your own company, you have to make sure you're doing the right thing in order to not go bankrupt. I think having hobby projects can help provide a nice balance between doing whatever the hell you want…

protip: every job is like this. I went into journalism because i LOVED reading and writing. Making it a career sapped the fun out of it. Now i'm coding professionally. It's much more fun than the pressures of journalism, but I do find myself sometimes thinking "this was more fun when I did it just for the heck of it"

Yes, a day job will require of you things you wouldn't CHOOSE to do. Yes, doing something as a job is less fun than just doing something for fun in your spare time.

BUT: Speaking only of programming, which is what I choose to do, that extra work can be extremely fulfilling. No, you can't just be working on what you want all the time, but honestly most projects that are driven entirely by people's spare time end up incomplete. The list of exceptions is long, but the list of projects that are incomplete, in features or documentation or in handling of corner cases, is far, far longer.

I love open source, but there are some domains that all the open source options suck. I think a big part of that is the amount of real, un-fun work required to really finish a project. And yet, when creating a project for a job, you (sometimes, at least) need to really finish it: Add the features your users need, handle those corner cases, write up that documentation.

And having really completed a project and seeing the feedback from hundreds of users that find it to be awesome? THAT is amazingly fulfilling. Even if it's not fun every step of the way.

I assume journalism can have similar benefits, but I can't speak to that.

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