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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.
That's almost a month's salary for a junior/mid-level programmer in this corner of Western Europe.
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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 :)
Mind me asking where most of their clients are located as well as themselves?
There was also an interesting post on HN a few days ago about the hurdles of management: https://medium.com/the-year-of-the-looking-glass/unintuitive...
Number one point from that post: "Imagine you spend a full day in back-to-back 1:1s talking to people. Does that sound awful or awesome?" If the answer is not and "long for the days when you were able to manipulate something directly — pixels, words, lines of code, bars of music — quietly and with headphones on", management is not for you and your management career will suffer.
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, but what the never-manifest possibility of what could have been. Maybe he would have been terrible at that kind of work. That doesn't matter, because in his head, he had the skills but made a bad decision. Instead of looking at what he has achieved in his life and career as a programmer, he is pondering what could have been in a reality that is not, never was and never will be.
This kind of thinking leads one astray.
>My sister started as a programmer 30 years ago but jumped into management [...] My sister has 10X the assets I have.
I just have to say this: So typically american.
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 :)
Mind me asking where most of their clients are located as well as themselves?
My particular friends (and me of old) are located in Slovenia, clients are in San Francisco. You can have a decent life in Slovenia for $20k/year. You can easily get a gig in San Francisco for $60k/year. Probably even easier for $100k/year because of the whole signaling thing.
I wasn't able to save as much as my friends are because of lifestyle inflation, but I sure had a lot of fun. My margin isn't as high now that I live in San Francisco, but my glass ceiling is higher. Tradeoffs :)
PS: as you can infer from above, you can also always move. Nobody says you have to stay in a bad economy.
Many of the things are so widely established, they can be learned by spending a little time reading a few books, talking to a few people. So I have to wonder what the obstacles are here.
An aversion to reading? Inflexible management dogma? Distractible lifestyles? Poor critical thinking in general?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not everyone works in SV. In southern Europe I can live comfortably on a programmer salary, but can't save huge amounts.
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 :)
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 some such.
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,…
I got sick at a similar time as the big IT death. I took time off to study organic chemistry and biochemistry. The subject really bored me in high school, but it really interested me after reading a pile of books.
I always felt a lack because I never studied something related to reality, just about abstract symbols. That I got a chance to go back to uni to study a second subject, real science, makes me feel grateful.
(And regarding 10X assets -- it was probably one of the worst decisions in my life if you consider only money. :-) )
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,…
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.