My Biggest Regret as a Programmer • Hacker News Board

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#31

Post by Swinx43 » Wed, Apr 06, 2016, 9:11 AM UTC

ddorian43 wrote: post #22

Swinx43 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mind me asking where most of their clients are located as well as themselves?

Example you work for NewYork/SanFrancisco/etc company and live in Italy. You make $80K and save half of that. Depending on how good you are as a developer + finding better clients you can live in a cheaper country, say Bulgaria/Albania/etc and make more than 80K+(ex Salvatore Sanfilipo though he's special). Usually the more you get paid by the clients, the better they treat you as a human/professional. The clients wh…

Thank you very much for the reply. Yes if you move to (or live) in an area in europe that is cheaper than say London, Paris or the other big cities (and most places in Scandinavian :) ) then this is an option.

At the moment really good developers in London can hit £80k+ per year in full-time salary but living costs locally are insane. If you are contracting in London you can make good money but you are still hindered by the high living costs. One big drawback is that I have seen very little remote work opportunities for London companies to anyone not living locally. This gets more pronounced the closer you move to the Data Science / Business Intelligence space, but even for Web Dev etc it looks to be not that common. So as you say it might have to be the big cities in the US as it seems the US are much further in accepting remote work than where I currently am.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#32

Post by NhanH » Wed, Apr 06, 2016, 9:15 AM UTC

tomp wrote: post #29

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,…

10X the assets => retire 10 times sooner => program when you're retired => no missing out

Retiring at 6 years old?

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#33

Post by kluck » Wed, Apr 06, 2016, 9:15 AM UTC

Management has always politics involved. And politics get ugly fast, strange personalities fighting over small stuff with minimal importance.

Now exchange "Management" in the first sentence with "Programming in a team" ;)

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#34

Post by ansgri » Wed, Apr 06, 2016, 9:15 AM UTC

gtirloni wrote: post #19

pavlov wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone wants to contribute to open source projects. I can see two reasons: 1) Major open source projects are usually sponsored by a corporate parent that employs full-time programmers on the projects. The company steers the project. Independent contributors tend to be young people trying to fill up their GitHub profile because a blog told them that's how you do a résumé these days. 2) Small open source projects…

Start your own project.

Either nobody will use it, or you have to be good in marketing. Speaking of which, you'd earn a ton of money being a good programmer with good marketing skills. These can be good consultants.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#35

Post by fsloth » Wed, Apr 06, 2016, 9:15 AM UTC

gtirloni wrote: post #19

pavlov wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone wants to contribute to open source projects. I can see two reasons: 1) Major open source projects are usually sponsored by a corporate parent that employs full-time programmers on the projects. The company steers the project. Independent contributors tend to be young people trying to fill up their GitHub profile because a blog told them that's how you do a résumé these days. 2) Small open source projects…

Start your own project.

If the goal is to gain leverage on the day job and financial security, statistically speaking that is a poor advice.

If the goal is to learn about public projects and write something one needs and feels important, then, sure, that's awesome.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#36

Post by studentrob » Wed, Apr 06, 2016, 9:16 AM UTC

> all I will be until I croak is what I am now

Aw, this is a sad story. I'm sure there are more positive things in life this guy could look back upon. Starting his own company sounds cool to me and he is obviously a caring brother.

> So yes I regret not taking that choice and seeing where it would have led me, yet I would have missed all the fun of writing code and the soul-draining jobs that often come with it where you can’t really fix anything.

I believe there will more often be good jobs than soul-draining ones for programmers in the future. Tech people will become better leaders and create better positions for young programmers. Even janitors are sometimes very happy in their positions. It depends on management and your state of mind.

I have a little bio myself on the subject of being "just a programmer" [1]. Everyone makes mistakes and wonders how life would've been different. The trick is to not dwell on them. Stay curious, take breaks, read some self help books, seek out new friends and activities, etc. It's not easy but a little hard work to get out of some bad habits can feel great.

[1] http://robhawkins.info/

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#37

Post by askyourmother » Wed, Apr 06, 2016, 9:16 AM UTC

Regrets as a programmer: 1. Every piece of unpolished, unfinished code that management decided should ship to the customers regardless 2. Ever using node and npm. 3. Seeing and living through the train wreck of J2EE and the XML horrors that ensued. 4. Not seeing the beauty in simple functions early on. Not everything needs to be a class or module. 5. Most business problems are political/social - regret every time we were called in to try and provide a "technical" band aid to those same problems. 6. Again, any project with node and npm.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#38

Post by dcw303 » Wed, Apr 06, 2016, 9:16 AM UTC

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,…

I'm still coding after almost 20 years in the job, and have no intention of stopping. I tried some other options - teacher, artist, entrepreneur. None of them give me the thrill that I get from programming. I still get locked into a flow where time shifts, and before I know it hours have passed.

The only other activity that does that is Civ, and no-one is going to pay me to play that ;)

If 10x assets is what drives you, more power to you. For me, being happy right now is more important that any imagined future happiness that a fat bank account could provide. And let's be honest, you can still make a pretty decent salary as a developer.

You might be dead tomorrow; you might as well enjoy today.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#39

Post by Ma8ee » Wed, Apr 06, 2016, 9:17 AM UTC

byw wrote: post #26

I keep hearing stories of non-technical managers making elementary mistakes when it comes to technical decisions. 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?

Those things that we don't know that we don't know. If the managers don't have have appreciation for that what their underlings do require some skills then they won't bother to try to learn.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#40

Post by Swinx43 » Wed, Apr 06, 2016, 9:17 AM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #25

Swinx43 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mind me asking where most of their clients are located as well as themselves?

Exactly what ddorian43 said. 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 m…

Thanks for the reply and the info provided. My personal opinion regarding the ability to move from a bad economy is that this is not always as easy as it looks. Even if you are european with an EU passport you are very likely to come up against some high language barriers etc. Although that could be a challenge some people might jump at.

For example I know that the UK (and mostly London) is extremely tolerant of non native English speakers. However from experience I know this will count against you when people are looking to hire (I was on the hiring side at one point so know how my managers perceived this.)

Germany is again another example where unless you speak really good German you will have some pretty tough challenges. I had a friend who grew up speaking German as a second language, who completed his masters in Germany, be told by his boss to go for German writing classes if he wants to get anywhere in their company.

Europe might be one big open job market but Language honestly makes it far more difficult than it seems at first. This also goes for settling into your new country even if you are working for US or UK companies as your day job.