Programming Is a Dead End Job

  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.

If all you ever do is code functionality that other people dream up, in a system design that someone else specifies, then I agree completely. For a lot of engineers, that's how they operate. Maybe that's how they want to operate, maybe that's the best way for them to operate.

For other coders, and this depends as much on the company and corporate structure as it does on the individual, they are the ones dreaming up new products, new approaches to old problems, layout solid foundation that 100s or 1000s of engineers can build upon, or specifying an approach and methodology which ships the product 6 months sooner with twice the functionality or half the bugs. They are the engineers that make your entire organization not only more efficient, but literally capable of things that they weren't capable of before. That's when you start getting into the same type of ROI from that programmer as that SVP is supposed to be providing.

The problem is most organizations simply aren't organized to promote and reward these engineers, and that's the "dead end". The last time I worked for a company I didn't own, literally the only way I could find to make any real money was to do my programming inside the sales organization, so I could be paid on commission for writing code for "major accounts" which would only later be taken up by the core engineering team and become a full-fledged product line.

Being a quota carrying engineer, with variable compensation and benefits like 'Presidents Club' was living in a different world from the engineering org. What I found was that, when working for someone else, in order to justify significantly higher pay, I had to be more directly driving increasing sales. Doing the exact same work inside of the engineering org, even with the same sales impact, would have paid significantly less.

> You can't be good at programming and bo (sic) good at managing.

I don't think they are mutually exclusive. Sure, being good at programming doesn't imply you'll be good at managing. But there are plenty of great programmers who successfully

> Programming is not a dead end job, if every company like google, atlassian or github does, I mean paying well their developers and treating this as a real profession.

I don't buy this. Even at Google, there is a psychological cap on how much engineers can make—you'll never see a programmer pulling in, say, $10M a year. That's the point: as a programmer, there is a society-wide cap on your pay, some level at which you will eventually plateau. As a manager, there is no such cap: you can eventually be the CEO.

Like being good with makeup can help you be more attractive, learning how to persuade managers that you are valuable is a skill of its own. You don't have to be a manager to have this skill, although it is a subset of the management skillset.

What's the problem making a good living doing what you like?

Here's a spoiler - most people will not be rich.

This is absolutely a problem, and a dilemma I try to cope with. I'd like to think that I'm a pretty good programmer, but I know that if I continue down this path I will reach a plateau at some point.

The hardest part for me to cope with is that the y-intercept of programming is significantly higher than that of business, but the slope is much less. So while I might be making twice as much as my business peers when I first graduate, they will eventually overtake me.

Makes me wonder if maybe I should be switching my major to economics... does anyone have resources for people who have successfully transitioned from programming to management/business?