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Programming is not a Glamorous Job
11–20 of 46 posts
Re: Programming is not a Glamorous Job
#12Most lawyers don't fight exciting cases that expose a complex web of deceit. Most police don't get into firefights with mastermind serial killers. The families of martial arts masters have a homocide-by-mobsters rate that is in line with the general population. Aliens do not invade very often. None of these facts make for good entertainment.
Biggest disappointment of my teenage years: no induction into a secret cadre of American ninjas to go along with my black belt to help our master avenge his murdered wife.
I blame it on our instructor not having a murdered wife. Just a wife few would miss if she were.
Re: Programming is not a Glamorous Job
#13I hate these broad sweeping titles on HN. Speak for yourself. I love my job, I work from home in an amazing home office I designed. I filled it with plants, little bonzai trees, art on the wall, inderect lighting for the evenings, and all the best work equipment money can buy. My environment is pretty much an extension of me. I have awesome clients that invite me out for events, I go to programming conferences and ha…
How many hours do you usually work per week ?
Re: Programming is not a Glamorous Job
#14I get to work with highly intelligent people, doing work that impacts tens or hundreds of thousands of people.
My day-to-day involves taking the most powerful and complex invention in history, and bending it to my will in ever more elegant and sophisticated ways.
For my efforts I'm paid X times the average US wage and receive regular kudos from strangers on Twitter and blogs.
My friends and family assume I must be a genius to be able to do what I do. On my best, most satisfying days, I'm not so sure they're wrong.
I'm just an ordinary programmer at an ordinary startup, but from where I sit this job is amazingly glamorous.
Re: Programming is not a Glamorous Job
#15I don't do this for the glamor. I do this for myself and the users. Everything else is gravy.
Re: Programming is not a Glamorous Job
#16I hate these broad sweeping titles on HN. Speak for yourself. I love my job, I work from home in an amazing home office I designed. I filled it with plants, little bonzai trees, art on the wall, inderect lighting for the evenings, and all the best work equipment money can buy. My environment is pretty much an extension of me. I have awesome clients that invite me out for events, I go to programming conferences and ha…
How many hours do you usually work per week ?
Depends, really. Speaking in terms of hours per day, some days 1-2, some days 12 or more.
Re: Programming is not a Glamorous Job
#17As someone who worked more than a dozen jobs that no movie has ever depicted as glamorous before becoming a professional programmer, I can say the pay, benefits, relative career security are amazing.
Not to mention, the feeling I get from solving problems and creating things others (and myself) find useful (and fun) for a living.
Quit programming for a month and work as a menial worker. See how you feel. I dare you.
Re: Programming is not a Glamorous Job
#18I hate these broad sweeping titles on HN. Speak for yourself. I love my job, I work from home in an amazing home office I designed. I filled it with plants, little bonzai trees, art on the wall, inderect lighting for the evenings, and all the best work equipment money can buy. My environment is pretty much an extension of me. I have awesome clients that invite me out for events, I go to programming conferences and ha…
I agree with your level of enthusiasm. As I am in the same field, I can relate to the bad and the good sides of being a developer/contractor etc. There are downsides and frustrations that I encounter on regular basis, and while I have learned to avoid and cope with them, they do exist.
Managing relationships in your team, building a rapport with your management and teammates, delivering products that match or exceed expectations, contribute to the bottom line profit pool and balance it all with a healthy time schedule and proper nutrition. All these can be flipped to be negative, which can turn a career into a miserable chore. Notice that I'm aiming to dissociate the programming aspect from the that list. I believe that a programmer doesn't face a unique set of problems.
Re: Programming is not a Glamorous Job
#19Could be worse. Could be an artist and therefore free to starve to death in a garret any where in the world, so that your agent can become rich when you're dead. Or as others have said, pick your profession. To paraphrase C&W, "What's glamour got to do with it?"
Re: Programming is not a Glamorous Job
#20Is this just another form of the lament of geek culture going mainstream? Because the idea that software engineering could or should be represented realistically in media is completely ridiculous. Of course they over-glamorize it because that's what media does. Point me to a profession that is not glamorized, villified or otherwise sensationalized by television and I'll show you a really boring job. So no, programmin…
It's the ultimate irony. People of all walks of life will tell you that the way their profession is depicted in the media is unrealistic and silly. And yet we all seem to share the equally silly misconception that those who work in the media are attempting to depict us realistically and failing.