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We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It

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Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It

#231

Post by meistro »

dylandrop wrote: post #206
pmichaud wrote: post #179

There are definitely amazing, luxurious aspects of programming. Something came into view for me recently though, that I never realized before: When I graduated from high school, I started my own little (tutoring) company, and did software from after that, so I never had the experience of a "normal", hourly job, like retail or coal mining or whatever. Recently I had an opportunity to do a job like that and the mood st…

> Yes, it's luxury in many ways. But it's also a coal mine of its own sort. Except you won't die from sitting home in your pajamas. You will, however, be very to die for a multitude of reasons in a coal mine. I'm a programmer. Yes, my brain is engaged constantly. But that's fun to me. It's not like I rue the day I became a programmer and I had to perform the terrible labor of sitting around with friends/acquaintances…

Many of my friends and family are coal miners. I worked at one for a summer. There are fatalities, but the frequency with which they happen is so small that driving to the mine is more dangerous than the actual job. With heavy machinery doing 95% of work in modern mines, and having worked in one, I can tell you that the constant grind of producing code is much harder than sitting in haul truck or laying explosives. On top of that, most programmers don't stop working when they go home. With the constant flood of new technology and best practices, it takes a lot of effort to even stay relevant. Coal miners don't go home and read about creating cheaper explosives or more efficient haul trucks (ok maybe some do, not many). Mining outside of US, is certainly a different story.

Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It

#232

Post by datalus »

pmichaud wrote: post #179

There are definitely amazing, luxurious aspects of programming. Something came into view for me recently though, that I never realized before: When I graduated from high school, I started my own little (tutoring) company, and did software from after that, so I never had the experience of a "normal", hourly job, like retail or coal mining or whatever. Recently I had an opportunity to do a job like that and the mood st…

Austin used to be such a chill place, now we've got these bros...

Comparing coal mining to working in your pajamas for $125/hr. Jesus.

Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It

#233

Post by conanbatt »

pmichaud wrote: post #179

There are definitely amazing, luxurious aspects of programming. Something came into view for me recently though, that I never realized before: When I graduated from high school, I started my own little (tutoring) company, and did software from after that, so I never had the experience of a "normal", hourly job, like retail or coal mining or whatever. Recently I had an opportunity to do a job like that and the mood st…

Don't confound price with value!

Software programmers and Engineers work an inmense amount to build things that are commercially unsuccessful. In fact, most projects are botched completely, let alone those that run at a loss, before you get the big wins.

There is a definite disproportion of price/value across all professions, and programmers are today in the spectrum where the expectations are rather low. 20 years from now, we could have so many engineers that there wont be much advantage in comparison with accountants, operations managers, sales or retail etc.

It is a priviledged position, albeit not as priviledged as lawyers or bankers (whose salary can vastly outpace their value). Classical service jobs dont have that luxury: you serve x burguers, u sell x products, you build y chairs.

Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It

#234

Post by benched »

pmichaud wrote: post #179

There are definitely amazing, luxurious aspects of programming. Something came into view for me recently though, that I never realized before: When I graduated from high school, I started my own little (tutoring) company, and did software from after that, so I never had the experience of a "normal", hourly job, like retail or coal mining or whatever. Recently I had an opportunity to do a job like that and the mood st…

Absolutely yes. I always have to be really polite to my friends who don't have technical jobs. Programmers have to offer up complicated things, that have to hold up when tested. A lot of jobs are mostly talking, or moving things around, or just whatever. Look at family physicians. I've seen them just look up stuff on Wikipedia on their netbooks, that everybody sort of knows anyway. Anything more demanding, they write down the name of a specialist. I used to have a customer service job that was like that, but I only made $14 (1998) an hour.

Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It

#235

Post by crpatino »

ahomescu1 wrote: post #177
crpatino wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but splitting "classes" in thirds is just ridiculous. The way the economy works is by concentrating wealth, so any class definition based on clustering according to income/net-worth cannot be linear. A logarithmic scale would make much more sense, by example: Poor:= 0-50%, Middle class:= 51%-75%, Upper class:=76-100%??? This model is extremely rough and inaccurate, but is a step in the right direction. The mai…

> Still, the "upper class" category lumps together the merely wealthy (smallish business owners, the most successful professionals) with the extremely rich, and all possibilities in-between. It also lumps in the high-income earners with the high-net worth people (the ones everyone thinks of when they say "rich").

agreed, you can only do so much when modeling a complex system with a single variable distribution.

Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It

#236

Post by parennoob »

adamdavis wrote: post #229
parennoob wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except you won't die from sitting home in your pajamas. Not sure this is true. Working alone from home in a sedentary job probably raises his risk for diabetes, heart disease, and depression and related diseases; and contributes to an earlier death. I don't have any data as to whether the average life expectancy of a programmer is less than the average life expectancy of a coal miner. Do you?

I don't have any of that data either, but to suggest that the life as a programmer working from home is as dangerous as the life of a career coal miner seems a bit absurd to me. edit: Certainly no one's making the claim that a sedentary lifestyle doesn't have its own risks - but being a programmer working from home doesn't insist you live a sedentary lifestyle, however, the risks involved with being a coal miner aren…

> to suggest that the life as a programmer working from home is as dangerous as the life of a career coal miner seems a bit absurd to me.

As it does to me. But the idea that coal-mining jobs are dangerous is probably due to stuff you read, or the recent media coverage of trapped miners in Chile (well, a few years ago). Anecdotally, I also hear of a lot of people in desk jobs just dropping dead of heart attacks at relatively young ages (mid-60s), so I'm trying not to be influenced by that either.

I'm trying to keep a completely open mind. I do not know for sure what the risks of my job are, but I shouldn't assume that it's definitely in the low-risk region, because doing so would be unscientific. It could be that being a programmer is one of the jobs that leads to higher life expectancies, and if that were proven statistically, that would be great.

Also, you have to distinguish between a job being dangerous, and leading to a lower life expectancy. It could be true that the average miner needs to be on guard against life threatening situations 100% of the time, but could have a higher life expectancy than the average programmer who sits around all day and doesn't have any immediate dangers, but often dies earlier due to a myocardial infarction from all the Cheetos, soda, and pizza he consumed.

Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It

#237

Post by adamdavis »

parennoob wrote: post #236
adamdavis wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any of that data either, but to suggest that the life as a programmer working from home is as dangerous as the life of a career coal miner seems a bit absurd to me. edit: Certainly no one's making the claim that a sedentary lifestyle doesn't have its own risks - but being a programmer working from home doesn't insist you live a sedentary lifestyle, however, the risks involved with being a coal miner aren…

> to suggest that the life as a programmer working from home is as dangerous as the life of a career coal miner seems a bit absurd to me. As it does to me. But the idea that coal-mining jobs are dangerous is probably due to stuff you read, or the recent media coverage of trapped miners in Chile (well, a few years ago). Anecdotally, I also hear of a lot of people in desk jobs just dropping dead of heart attacks at rel…

I think the major difference, which I mention in my edit, is the risks that we're suggesting are dangerous to a programmer aren't a direct result of the occupation. In the general case, I don't believe that anything about being a programmer stops someone from exercising on a regular basis (edit: or maintaining a healthy diet).

Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It

#238

Post by Akujin »

conanbatt wrote: post #233
pmichaud wrote: post #179

There are definitely amazing, luxurious aspects of programming. Something came into view for me recently though, that I never realized before: When I graduated from high school, I started my own little (tutoring) company, and did software from after that, so I never had the experience of a "normal", hourly job, like retail or coal mining or whatever. Recently I had an opportunity to do a job like that and the mood st…

Don't confound price with value! Software programmers and Engineers work an inmense amount to build things that are commercially unsuccessful. In fact, most projects are botched completely, let alone those that run at a loss, before you get the big wins. There is a definite disproportion of price/value across all professions, and programmers are today in the spectrum where the expectations are rather low. 20 years fr…

I don't really see us getting many more IT/CS engineers anytime soon. The amount of businesses that actually need a programmer / tech person on staff keeps increasing while the amount of engineers out there stays relatively the same. That's why we can charge so much for our hours. It's a seller's market. Even if the country decided to make programming part of the elementary school curriculum it wouldn't necessarily translate into more engineers because computer science & IT people tend to be nerds/geeks who like to tinker in their free time and as a percentage of the population they stay relatively the same from year to year. If anything the kind of programming curriculum that most programmers dream of might actually create more of a demand for them because finally everyone who's not a programmer will realize the potential value of having a good programmer on staff.

The amount of office drones I see messing around with giant Excel sheets for hours doing the same task day in day out that could easily be automated by a simple application is astounding.

Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It

#239

Post by jtoeman »

benched wrote: post #234
pmichaud wrote: post #179

There are definitely amazing, luxurious aspects of programming. Something came into view for me recently though, that I never realized before: When I graduated from high school, I started my own little (tutoring) company, and did software from after that, so I never had the experience of a "normal", hourly job, like retail or coal mining or whatever. Recently I had an opportunity to do a job like that and the mood st…

Absolutely yes. I always have to be really polite to my friends who don't have technical jobs. Programmers have to offer up complicated things , that have to hold up when tested. A lot of jobs are mostly talking, or moving things around, or just whatever. Look at family physicians. I've seen them just look up stuff on Wikipedia on their netbooks, that everybody sort of knows anyway. Anything more demanding, they writ…

FWIW those people "talking" or "whatever" are quite likely creating some of the business opportunities for your code to sit in and make you the money. The number of times when coding=(lots of)money without some of the "whatever" involved is fairly rare.

Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It

#240

Post by jtoeman »

pmichaud wrote: post #179

There are definitely amazing, luxurious aspects of programming. Something came into view for me recently though, that I never realized before: When I graduated from high school, I started my own little (tutoring) company, and did software from after that, so I never had the experience of a "normal", hourly job, like retail or coal mining or whatever. Recently I had an opportunity to do a job like that and the mood st…

You related to Tom Perkins?
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