Seeing promotions as your only form of career advancement is a little misleading. In management the only way you can increase your income/status is directly through your employer (or switching jobs). In programming, you're a builder. You can make templates, assets, etc. to sell. Your income increases can come from applying the skills you honed at work in the world around you
Programming Is a Dead End Job
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Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job
#12I disagree. In France it's the case, if you want to get a promotion and you're a programmer, you hate to move and become a manager or something else. But don't get it wrong, programming and managing or marketing are very differents positions. You can't be good at programming and bo good at managing. Like any other jobs, programming is a real one. Not just one you start with and then move to management or something else, to get more money.
I am realistic and I know most of company think programmers are replacable. But I think it can change if everybody does.
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.
Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job
#13I 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 mas…
Being able to combine programming with communication, sales, and analysis skills can be incredibly valuable, though. That 1000 line/day programmer, if he looks around and observes the functioning of the org, could probably easily find several areas where those 10 programmers are writing 100 lines/day that could easily be automated away. If he can then write a solution that does this and sell it to upper management, he's clearly been more productive than all of them combined. This is where you find the programmers who get paid several million a year.
Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job
#14Managers can't change jobs and are under total control of their bosses. Developers can change jobs at any time but won't make as much money as the management cartel (which, suprise, decides that management should get all the comp). Both jobs kind of suck in their own way.
Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job
#15I think "Coding" as a job can be best analogous to an old job called "Samurai".
A good samurai's aim is to be the best at skills. His all work is dedicated towards a "kingdom". Every samurai doesn't wants to become a king. They just want to server their king.
And the King's duty is to take care of its army and people. I think king's jobs is highly overrated. In real life its difficult to be a king. In the end its just a job with lots of responsibilities.
Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job
#16No mention of finance? Working for the devil sure, but if you know your stuff they will pay and pay and pay for top class programmers. Also depends on your idea of a dead end salary.
If you enjoy what you do and can make £50k out of it then you should be pretty happy with your life.
Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job
#17Programming is hardly unique in this regard. In fact, I'd wager that the vast majority of professions are like this. There's a simple reality at work: when you are programming code there's only so much effect it will have. That effect is greater when the organisation is small (i.e. a startup) but there's a limit.
Once you become a manager in charge of five developers you're suddenly able to affect 5x (well, not quite, but..) the change within a company. And yes, yes, I know - you're not actually doing the change, but you are responsible for planning, organising and maintaining it, which in many ways can be more valuable to the company.
Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job
#18I 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 mas…
If there is an economic cap on the value of a developer, it doesn't derive from how much code they produce.
Value differentials for programmers derive from knowing the right code, not typing up any code that suffices, and I think pay reflects that. 1 KLOC of the right code can easily be better than 10 KLOC of the wrong code, even if the 1 KLOC is buggy and the 10 KLOC has no bugs.
I think programmers are valuable in a power law way, and this can be based on intelligence, domain knowledge, experience, math skills, and other things.
You can command a much larger salary if you either have technical/math abilities that almost no one else has (like a Google search engineer), or you can have an economically valuable product sense (like a proven, high-paid early start-up engineer), or you can know a domain in an economically useful way (many technical founders).
Programming is an army-of-one kind of job, even if you work in a larger team. Insightful programmers are better than dogged ones by orders of magnitude. I look for programmers who are creative, self-driven, and knowledgeable.
EDIT: I ended up editing this for the first 18 minutes it was live. Premise is the same, but I wanted to work on how I said everything.
Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job
#19It'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 a…
Disagree that its well-written. The rambling feel of it was kind of distracting from the point he was trying to make. The anectodes are kind of generic (sister, hawaii), I felt like they were just thrown in there as some kind of "proof"
Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job
#20Anyone who has transitioned from programming job to a managerial role, how did you do it? Do you recommend going back to school for an MBA? Would love to hear suggestions.