11–20 of 241 posts
Yeah, stopped reading at this point. Your "intersectional social justice theory" is just casual sexism and racism to me.
>>One could think that having kids or building a family is a choice. Even assuming this is true (it really isn't)
I am not one to take offense easily so I will just say this is plain stupid. I have chosen to not have kids nor build a family. It was something I was thinking about for many years and decided I will be happier that way. Most of my friends have chosen otherwise and I suspect most of them will be happier with their choices. How it's not a choice I don't know, it's one of the most ignorant things I've read recently.
>>Neglecting your partner and kids in order to build a pet project? Seriously? Is a pet project more valuable than seeing your kids grow or sharing your life with people you love?
It isn't. It doesn't change the fact though that people who don't value those things and spend more time coding/learning/experimenting are going to be better at programming with all other factors staying equal.
>>Destroying your social life, abandoning all your hobbies, quitting working out just to contribute to open-source? Will this make you happy in the long term?
No, it will make you not as good as people who do that though. (assuming they are equally disciplined and organized)
>>So what can we do?
Understand that you will not be elite and anything you do in life unless you dedicate your whole life to it. That's how it is. You don't need to be at the top to be very good, make tons of money, have fulfilling career and contribute a lot to projects you work on. There will always be people better and more productive than you because they have chosen to sacrifice other things you are mentioning like children, families, social life etc.
There are two different goals:
1)lead a happy balanced life
2)be one of the best at something
You can't have both, have some respect for people who has chosen differently than you. There is no need to throw insults like:
>>Who can afford to keep coding after an 8-hour work day of coding? Who doesn't get harassed in the open-source community? 20-year-old white guys with no responsibilities and/or with enough income to "buy" more free time (i.e: nannies, cleaners, good healthcare, a car to commute, etc.).
Or you know, people who prioritize contributing to open source over for example having kids. Have some respect, the world is a better place because of them.
I guess next time there will be complaining how you can't be an elite basketball player without dedicating your life to basketball or elite musician without practicing for hours to no end.
Why are we making a special case for software developers, on points we would agree on in other professions? Let's say you're making a movie, and you're hiring your music composer. Both candidates have nearly identical CVs/experience/recommandations. - Candidate 'A' says "I'm only doing this for money, I can't show you any of my work because of NDAs". - Candidate 'B' says "I spend a lot of time composing in my freetim…
I'd also think musician NDAs are in place while the project is not out, while developer one are usually longer
I disagree. If you want to be the best and be highly successful, then you have to work hard. If you don't, someone else will. There are plenty of companies and positions where you can have a great work/life balance, but if you want to be the best, just as in everything else in life, you have to work harder than everybody else.
It's those poor non best suckers who have to work hard to keep up. It's an odd definition of a winning state that includes "must work harder than everyone else"
Why are we making a special case for software developers, on points we would agree on in other professions? Let's say you're making a movie, and you're hiring your music composer. Both candidates have nearly identical CVs/experience/recommandations. - Candidate 'A' says "I'm only doing this for money, I can't show you any of my work because of NDAs". - Candidate 'B' says "I spend a lot of time composing in my freetim…
Do you ask your doctor if he does charity work? I'd also think musician NDAs are in place while the project is not out, while developer one are usually longer
Maybe the fact that my work has fairly deep domain knowledge requirements and I know my stuff pretty well puts me in this category - but I don't know.
I like coding in my free time as a way to explore subjects though, so I do this anyway (but nothing that could be considered good software engineering, good engineering is grueling work while fast prototyping is fun.)
If you mean "the skill of actually programming", then no, that's absurd.
Would you tell someone they can be a "top sports player", if they have a life outside of playing that sport? A world class chef who doesn't give themselves over to cooking? Anything that actually involves skill? A musician? A painter?
Because if that's the case, then no. I'm sorry, you're battling against reality. There's a little thing called opportunity cost, and whether we like it or not, how far you can walk down a particular skill-set is DIRECTLY RELATED to how much time and work you put into it.
What's perhaps a better message is both: a) employers, you aren't actually hiring superstar coders, and if you want to, you'll either pay for it, or better make your workplace the kind that attracts them. And b) developers, you're probably not going to be the best in the world at what you're doing...and you know what...at least from a personal psychology perspective...that's ok.
Now from an economic perspective, if you're worried that you're not going to be able to hold down a well paying job because they demand too much...well, there you've either got a problem with reality (skills take a long time and hard work an practice to build), or the economic system, cause maybe there's a lot of desperate people out there who can code for peanuts and will take shitty conditions...and capital is being amassed into fewer and fewer hands and increasingly has no interest in paying to upskill you or whether you can have a reasonable life outside of work. :P
While you might have to work hard to convince your employers to let you move from part of the stack to another, no one can dictate what your side projects are except yourself.
Working after work is what "saves" a programmer's resume from listing "20 years in using until the company I worked at for 20 years shut down".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you ask your doctor if he does charity work? I'd also think musician NDAs are in place while the project is not out, while developer one are usually longer
No, but on the other hand, do you think Jordan became what he became just by merely showing up for team training every day?