Programming Is a Dead End Job
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Programming Is a Dead End Job
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Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job
#2If you expect to get rich working for someone else, you will be disappointed. Everywhere I've worked, things start out great. You get to work on new and exciting projects.
Then, new management comes in or your boss makes crazy development decisions and your project becomes a sinking ship. I just dropped a contract that was exactly this. I got tired of being forced to make bad decisions, which I know will lead to the failure of the project/company.
This is why I started my own company. There are no limits to my salary.
Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job
#3If you expect to get rich working for someone else, you will be disappointed. Everywhere I've worked, things start out great. You get to work on new and exciting projects. Then, new management comes in or your boss makes crazy development decisions and your project becomes a sinking ship. I just dropped a contract that was exactly this. I got tired of being forced to make bad decisions, which I know will lead to the…
I also own my company, there is a limit to your salary in one direction, Zero.
Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job
#4If you expect to get rich working for someone else, you will be disappointed. Everywhere I've worked, things start out great. You get to work on new and exciting projects. Then, new management comes in or your boss makes crazy development decisions and your project becomes a sinking ship. I just dropped a contract that was exactly this. I got tired of being forced to make bad decisions, which I know will lead to the…
I also own my company, there is a limit to your salary in one direction, Zero.
I also own my company, zero is not a limit.
Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job
#5"Whatever you do, you have to find a balance between doing what you love and making enough money to live the life you want, or what your family needs. It's not always an easy choice."
If you love to program the choice is easy. It's not like programmer wages are so low you have to live under a bridge.
Personally I'm psyched that people will actually pay me to program, because if they wouldn't, I would still be programming.
Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job
#6It depends on the company. I worked at a large software company and the promotion track for software engineers went all the way up to something like Fellow Engineer or Principal Engineer. Almost no one got to those roles because they were so high up the track. After the several levels of Senior Engineer, they had Expert Engineer. One person I knew made it to that level (after some 20-30 years experience) and still programmed every day.
Edit: that said, I don't consider it a dead end job if you have to switch out of programming to keep advancing because often to become an engineering manager at companies they want you to have programming experience. I think a dead end job is one in which your experience serves no purpose or as no pre-requisite for better paying jobs.
Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job
#7I respond really negatively to the notion of 'dead end.' Programming isn't a dead end job any more than welding is a dead end job or painting. But it is a trade.
What is more, managing is a different job than programming. Not a lot of programmers really internalize that until they try out being a manager. Architecture, and technical leadership in general, is still another job. It takes the ability to internalize massive amounts of detail, organize it into some coherent frame work and then communicate that framework as needed to various levels in the language they understand. So for programmers they need to know how the parts fit together, for managers they need to know how the parts integrate with the business process, for sales they need to know how the parts make them better than the competition (or equivalent to).
From an economic standpoint, being able to generate 1000 lines of syntax error free code per day, is perhaps the best possible programmer you could be, but its never worth more than 10 programmers generating 100 lines of syntax error free code a day.[1] So yes, there is an economic limit on your pay.
The good news is that generally that economic limit is much higher than the cost of living, and you can run at that limit for a decade or more, so you can be reasonably expected to save enough to retire and not have to work any more.
Dead end jobs are jobs that will never pay you enough money to save for retirement. Programming isn't one of those jobs.
[1] Yes the 9 women, one month joke applies for short sprints but in general not for longer coding projects.
Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job
#8Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job
#9It's a well-written essay (I say this as someone who has been a journalist/editor/manager and is now doing quite a bit of programming again for Recent.io). But really you could say the same thing about many other jobs:
* Do you love to report the news? In most jobs as long as you continue to be a reporter you will likely have a limited set of promotions you can get...
* Do you love woodworking? In most jobs as long as you continue to be a carpenter you will likely have a limited set of promotions you can get...
* Do you love photography? In most jobs as long as you continue to only take photos you will likely have a limited set of promotions you can get...
Even in you look at areas like law, the top 10% of earners in the profession are not the ones who do all of their own legal research and brief writing. They're the GCs at publicly traded companies or equity partners at large law firms, where they're responsible for the work output of tens or hundreds of lawyers. Which means, yikes, they're managers too.
Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job
#10Yes, it's true. My solution was to find a job programming at an excellent place to work, so that I can make sure I do valuable things and still be done with my day around 1-2pm most days. Take my dog for a walk, read, learn, whatever after that.
If they're not gonna pay you in gold get 'em to pay you in some other way. All the prestige stuff ("a seat at the table", job titles, authority, etc) isn't actually worth much anyway.