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My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

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Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#151

Post by BatFastard »

woofyman wrote: post #121
buserror wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likewise here. I'm 47, been programming since I'm 12. I'm very good at it. I also know I'd be a bad manager, unless I work with /very/ good people. And yes, Ican relate to the article; I've seen (I still see) junior managers who can barely tie their shoes make more money than excellent engineers with 25y experience, but that's the way the world is... Basically 'engineer'/'programmer' is a calling for some; it is for…

I'll be 57 in 3 months. I've been coding professionally for 35 years.

Noob, 58 and 40 years under my belt! I have been down the VP route, started my own successful company (at someone made a lot of money from it, not me). But I choose to program, I sleep well at night, I feel great about what I do (usually, every once in awhile I hit some problem that is incredibly frustrating). And I love to create things! I worked as an electrical engineer for a few years, but the turn-around time on my creations was weeks if not months. With software ware its hours or days. What is it about flo? That your life goes by so quickly, but you feel so good about it?

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#152

Post by wainstead »

daxfohl wrote: post #139
buro9 wrote: post #68

My biggest regret is not shipping more. Sometimes the cause of that is management, and I long to be on that side defining the missing specs, building out the absent project plans, speaking to customers, allocating resource, championing it all and pushing it forward. At those times I despise being a programmer because being a programmer isn't enough to get product shipped. Other times (but it feels less frequently) th…

So true. I think a lot of programmers (myself included) fall into the pit of wanting to perfect their code too much. As you look back on your career, you realize ten shipped projects with decent code would've been better than three shipped projects with perfect code. (This is probably true of more than just programmers and code too).

Seventeen years ago a programmer much senior to me told me: "Don't let the best be the enemy of the good." It's probably the best programming advice I ever got, and I should look him up and thank him.

More formally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#153

Post by UK-AL »

Swizec wrote: post #42
not-much-io wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for a international company, mainly based in the US. I get paid what a local developer gets paid, our chinese employees get paid what the local norm is there etc. Do other companies just outright decide salary based on where the company HQ is? Call me cynical, but I'm a bit skeptical that a company would pay more than they had to. Note: Assuming of course your role is not super vital for the whole company or s…

If you are as valuable as a local developer, then they will pay you as such. It's a business. They pay for value. And no, your salary/rate isn't defined by where the company HQ is. That part defines their price tolerance. The price is defined primarily by how much you ask for and what you can offer in return.

Its set by supply and demand. You need competitive markets to reach your value.

If you have no other opportunities and no one is offering anything better than you have to accept that. Than they capture the rest of the value.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#154

Post by BatFastard »

petewailes wrote: post #67
Zelmor wrote: post #24

He would have been unhappy with the other choice as well, because then it is the programming side he would be missing out on. I would advise everyone to read The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173536 You chose one option out of many, and the others may no longer be a possibility. However, the writer's unhappiness does not spawn from his inability to be successful at what he does,…

At the risk of being "that guy", this actually misses the point of the poem. Quoting: "Though as for that the passing there/Had worn them really about the same/And both that morning equally lay" The poem states that the two roads are basically the same. Further points of interest... "I shall be telling this with a sigh/Somewhere ages and ages hence:/Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—/I took the one less traveled by…

Take the path that lets you spend more good time with your family and friends. Those experiences add to the fabric of life more than money does.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#155

Post by brianwawok »

forgetsusername wrote: post #145
Zelmor wrote: post #24

He would have been unhappy with the other choice as well, because then it is the programming side he would be missing out on. I would advise everyone to read The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173536 You chose one option out of many, and the others may no longer be a possibility. However, the writer's unhappiness does not spawn from his inability to be successful at what he does,…

> My sister has 10X the assets I have. That gave me pause as well. Work 10x as hard for 10 assets? Not worth it for everyone.

Do you think his sister worked 10x the hours? So say a 400 hour week?

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#156

Post by was_boring »

not-much-io wrote: post #27
Swizec wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest [tough] question: Why don't you work for clients that pay more? Just because you're in Southern Europe doesn't mean the person paying the invoices has to be. I have friends who save ungodly amounts (in the 40k/year range) and their employers/clients still think they're damn cheap. Income arbitrage. Look it up :)

I work for a international company, mainly based in the US. I get paid what a local developer gets paid, our chinese employees get paid what the local norm is there etc. Do other companies just outright decide salary based on where the company HQ is? Call me cynical, but I'm a bit skeptical that a company would pay more than they had to. Note: Assuming of course your role is not super vital for the whole company or s…

> Call me cynical, but I'm a bit skeptical that a company would pay more than they had to.

I think it also depends on the type of company and what they are after -- are they looking to save money by outsourcing or are they looking to expand their talent pool? If they are looking to expand their talent pool, it is more likely to get closer to what the company HQ is, minus some "remote work" discount.

After all, if I'm the manager of some San Francisco tech. company and I can get a great programmer (even by San Francisco standards) for a 20% discount to local talent, which I know is a 20-30% rate above what they programmer will be paid in their community in a fly over state -- it's win-win for everyone involved and they are much less likely to leave.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#157

Post by thegayngler »

Im of the belief that technical people and managers should really be at the same level financially and otherwise quite honestly. That's really the only way I can see the whole manager/programmer thing can work out for the benefit of everyone. When you have non-technical managers or technical-managers who's skills are out of date making decisions on behalf of the programmers you end up with a mess. That is often the case. The people who you hired as experts are the ones the management should be listening to... not necessarily managers who really only function as a way to grease the communication channels.

I know at a lot of places I've worked managers only function is to keep programmers out of meetings so they can do the real work. Management is really a bad title. I think the mgmt structure needs flattening and the current system pits management against programmers... I think this has to change....as well as the whole management track vs technical track. The technical people are what you need to build the products. No amount of managers is going to get you a product without a programmer to build the products.

Companies are so obsessed with hierarchy that they lose themselves in the politics of it all. I think companies and people need to embrace the idea that programmers and communication people are at the same level in terms of financial benefits and in terms of treatment at a company and that technical experts should be making decisions not necessarily managers.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#158

Post by joshmanders »

woofyman wrote: post #150
buserror wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started working at 17. So that's 30 years for me! Darn, I should have some sort of celebration ;-) My very first paid project was designing the PA audio system in the Lille (france) metro. It was a fancy Mac SE/30 with a IEEE GPIO card. That was driving two big Revox Tape machines, and was playing one, rewinding the other etc. Occasionally it would also play a digital audio file (w000t!). It was all in Pascal at th…

My first program was written in Dartmouth Basic. The original version of Basic. In college, for the first 2 years I used punched cards. Then after college I programmed a jet fighter. Then realtime embedded avioinics stuff. I got tired of working with custom hardware which was challenging distinguishing between hardware and software bugs. After 20 years of Windows programming, I re-invented myself as a HTML, CSS, Coff…

Thanks guys, you all make me feel better about turning 31 in a month and a half and have been coding since 15.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#159

Post by pjmlp »

buserror wrote: post #143
woofyman wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be 57 in 3 months. I've been coding professionally for 35 years.

I started working at 17. So that's 30 years for me! Darn, I should have some sort of celebration ;-) My very first paid project was designing the PA audio system in the Lille (france) metro. It was a fancy Mac SE/30 with a IEEE GPIO card. That was driving two big Revox Tape machines, and was playing one, rewinding the other etc. Occasionally it would also play a digital audio file (w000t!). It was all in Pascal at th…

I started coding at the age of 10 with Timex Basic, Z80 and everything evolve from there.

On my first internship after high school while waiting for university applications to come out was done in Clipper and Access/Visual Basic. Also starting OS/400 backup jobs.

Not the set of languages that I already enjoyed most, but it kept myself busy during the Summer.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#160

Post by mason240 »

iopq wrote: post #11
jareds wrote: post #2

If you can't retire comfortably as a programmer where was all your salary going? I enjoy programming, but also realize I'm limited in how much I will make. I'm ok with knowing I won't own a 5000 square foot house or buy the newest laptop every two years because I'm putting money away for retirement.

Buying the newest laptop every two years is what like $2000 every two years? That's only $1000 per year, hardly a dent in a programmer's salary.

I'm still doing my home development on a $500 PC I bought in 2010.
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