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I no longer build software

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Re: I no longer build software

#91

Post by silveroriole »

vbezhenar wrote: post #11
k33n wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dude lives in Indonesia. Not sure he ever saw much of a reward for writing software, sadly.

From my experience, writing software in 3-rd world country is a reliable way to get out of the poverty. Some example numbers for Kazakhstan: average salary for many low-skilled labour workers is around $100-$200 per month. Average salary for junior software developer is at least $500 and you would quickly reach $1000 and very skilled developers might get $2000+ per month. The same is true for Russia or Belarus or Ukr…

Out of poverty, but probably not into the incredible wealth that American software work can generate. For example, see the commenter saying their house is paid off and they can live off passive income. I’m not in a third world country so I don’t know for sure what salaries are there, but I find it hard to even imagine having so much money!

Re: I no longer build software

#92

Post by devwastaken »

nicbou wrote: post #64
devwastaken wrote: post #29

This is what Ive shifted to as well. Trades are much more useful in life, because you can't pay to get a job done right, and paying anyone else at all is far too expensive. For most people you have the reality of needing a 40 hour week job to live, and there's plenty of people who spent the 4 years to get a bachelor's in compsci and nobody cares to hire them. Software is volatile, you can spend plenty of time making…

I disagree. I really enjoy woodworking, but it's definitely not to save money. Same for working on motorcycles. The former is rendered useless by economies of scale, the latter by the cost of my garage and tools.

Woodworking is apart of a series of skills that transfer to other useful trades. Hard to make buildings if you don't know how the basics of how wood works.

Re: I no longer build software

#93

Post by kemiller2002 »

jb1991 wrote: post #20

Amen. Modern software development is frankly kinda sucky. The old days pre-2000 were arguably a lot more enjoyable. Today it's just digital plumbing and dealing with all sorts of issues that are not creative. The sheer complexity is frankly absurd as well. I've thought about moving on from software many times, and I know many who have. Just because you can do something doesn't mean it's best way to spend your short l…

I miss the old days from time to time. I will say though that everyone once in a while, you still get to do something "hardcore". It can still be fun, although it's not like it was. I do think we have as a field have done ourselves a disservices. Not to do the "back in my day," but I will say that with making many mundane tasks becoming easy, it's easy to slip into the mindset that there are no really complex things going on under the hood that sometimes you still need to tackle.

A lot of people just starting out don't see this immediately and it is often too late in a project when it appears. This isn't their fault, and it's sad people outside of the field don't recognize this at all. I think it puts a lot of undo stress on new people when non-developers expect them to build things effortlessly and quickly all the time and when something doesn't work, the developers ultimately blame themselves, because they've been led to believe it was easy too.

Re: I no longer build software

#94

Post by SXX »

SXX wrote: post #24
vbezhenar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience, writing software in 3-rd world country is a reliable way to get out of the poverty. Some example numbers for Kazakhstan: average salary for many low-skilled labour workers is around $100-$200 per month. Average salary for junior software developer is at least $500 and you would quickly reach $1000 and very skilled developers might get $2000+ per month. The same is true for Russia or Belarus or Ukr…

There is a lot of people from US here on HN so you should clarify that you talking about salaries after tax. E.g $1000 in Russia would be the same as $2000 in the US since employer pays 33-49% of salary as taxes. In my home town called Rostov-on-Don (10th largest city in Russia) I have friends who make $2500-3000 after tax for their software engineer and devops positions. Some of these people are far from being a roc…

Another interesting fact: if you're freelance software developer in Russia who work remotely for western company and register as entrepreneur then your efficient tax rate at most is 8% for fees and taxes. Then let's say 1% extra for banking and accounting, etc. So you basically keep more than 90% of income.

And there is even lower tax rate options available if you work alone and earn between $10,000-80,000 / year. You just pay fixed amount of taxes every year for special "patent" which cost e.g $400 / year in my home city. Then efficient tax rate gonna be like 1-5% depend on how much you earn. Though unlike when paying 7% of income this might require more detailed accounting since tax department can always ask you to show some documents. Officially "patent" allow you to pay $400 just once for income up to $600,000 / year but obviously in real life you gonna get some tough questions from tax department.

In any case tax rates for freelance software developers in Russia are very very low. Also unlike what western person might expect all government services are available online and accounting is no-brainer because Russia have some of the best fintech in the world.

Re: I no longer build software

#95

Post by axegon_ »

Strangely enough, to a degree I envy this guy. I've been at my current job for over 8 years and up until a few months ago I was pretty happy. However politics caught up and I decided to leave. At the moment I have a few offers on the table, one of which is from a company somewhere in the FAANG realm. Senior software engineer, awesome conditions, very generous paycheck, lots of benefits. So tempted by all this I said I'd take it. A few days later I got an email from a third party company, which had been tasked to do a background check on me. Which is fair - employment history, criminal records, education history - sure, I can understand that. However I got really suspicious when I saw their form and how much detail they required for what are otherwise simple checks. I decided to investigate the company before I move forward and it turns out their background checks involve a lot of... Background. As far as digging through social networks and message boards and pulling comments and likes on things which can be considered "inappropriate" and "offensive". That alone is enough for me to turn down the offer and move on with the next one. But looking at the extreme alternatives in this scenario, I take chopping off my finger in a heartbeat - at least I get the chance to keep my pride and dignity.

Re: I no longer build software

#96

Post by vlovich123 »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #81
lukaszkups wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how? SAP/ERP consulting?

Embedded programming i.e. automotive, industrial, aerospace. The problem is they pay poorly in comparison to web dev but are a lot more stable long term.

I have done almost 0 web development at 3 of the FAANGs and am quite satisfied with the pay. I don’t think web would have paid better. I’ve done OS type work (system daemons, libraries etc), embedded, mobile, etc.

Then there are people who work on compilers, image recognition, AI, browsers, server work of all kinds, etc etc. the variety, depth, and scale of work is much larger than web and can pay better as it can require a deeper level of expertise. I’m sure there exist web developers who make more than people who work in these spaces just as the converse is true. I don’t think it’s possible to say which pays more. Web dev may be an easier avenue to break into things with a low amount of experience though.

Re: I no longer build software

#98

Post by vbsteven »

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #62
jb1991 wrote: post #20

Amen. Modern software development is frankly kinda sucky. The old days pre-2000 were arguably a lot more enjoyable. Today it's just digital plumbing and dealing with all sorts of issues that are not creative. The sheer complexity is frankly absurd as well. I've thought about moving on from software many times, and I know many who have. Just because you can do something doesn't mean it's best way to spend your short l…

> Today it's just digital plumbing and dealing with all sorts of issues that are not creative. The sheer complexity is frankly absurd as well. Is this not a contradiction to you?

I feel the same way. The plumbing required has become so complex these last few years (if you use new technology).

10 years ago we uploaded the server/backend binary to a VM, installed postgres/mysql and configured nginx/haproxy as a reverse proxy/ssl termination.

Now, if you want to deploy a modern SPA while using some buzzwords like k8s and devops you need:

* complex frontend build process with things like webpack which have huge config files

* Build docker images for all components (each microservice, frontend, etc)

* Build zips for deploying your lambda functions

* Configure docker repository for storing images

* gitlab/bbpipelines/githubactions/whatever pipeline configuration for automating all this building

* Setup a production-ready k8s cluster

* Write the kubernetes yaml files for describing your services

* Figure out how to hookup a cloud load balancer to your kubernetes ingress

* Figure out letsencrypt certificate renewal and make your ingress aware

* Figure out CDN configuration (and invalidation) because apparently we don't serve the frontend from the backend server anymore

* Some network config so your lambdas can access the backend

* Since we're using microservices we're going to need some service discovery, and depending on which SD solution we choose we might need to build this into each individual microservice (Consul)

* And probably lots more as I haven't even touched service meshes, or JWT authentication, caching and cache invalidation

Re: I no longer build software

#99

Post by ccozan »

secondcoming wrote: post #27
busterarm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add me to the list of software developers who desires to switch to woodworking/machining.

I too would love to do it. It irks me to this day that I was taught nonsense such as latin in school instead of woodwork or metalwork.

To be completly honest, we had a lot of classes of metalworking, woodworking, textiles, etc in our school before the '89 Revolution in Romania.

I really enjoyed it and it made me love working with materials and building physical things.

Still writing software...But renovating my house was a nice way to remember all that lost skills.

Re: I no longer build software

#100

Post by peterwwillis »

pliftkl wrote: post #8

This made me laugh, because I actually am planning on making a transition to woodworking. My house is paid off, and I can live on a fairly small income that I can probably generate mostly from passive income. If I can actually supplement that with building furniture, bonus. If not, then I still get to build furniture.

Damnit, that was my plan too, only I have no passive income, so customers (or contracting) would be important. Hopefully this trend doesn't continue to become a glut of Silicon Valley woodworkers...
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