Programming Is a Dead End Job • Hacker News Board

Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job

#91

Post by tomasien » Sat, May 03, 2014, 7:02 PM UTC

atarian wrote: post #34

tomasien wrote: post #30

I'm about to stop programming at my company because I have too much to manage as a founder. It makes me really sad and also pretty scared. Anyone else experience this?

New Relic's CEO has some tips on how to keep coding: http://blog.newrelic.com/2014/03/11/sxsw-coding-ceo-recap/ 1. Surround yourself with amazing people. 2. Carve out specific times for development work. 3. Focus on high-value projects. 4. Make it clear why a coding CEO is good for the company.

Good advice! I still code at night, picking up some visible UX stuff that wouldn't make it on the road map otherwise. That way, we never have a week where it doesn't APPEAR that the product has gotten better just because whatever was on the road map wasn't visible or is taking more than a week. Seems to help relations with customers/investors/non-technical parts of the team and I enjoy it.

Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job

#92

Post by puppetmaster3 » Sat, May 03, 2014, 7:02 PM UTC

Another way to say it is as a game theory: 2 programers, if one becomes a manager it is an advantage.

I agree that pay starts well (but its earned), but in a real world scenario, programming is relatively tough work with limited upside, relatively. I agree w/ OP.

Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job

#93

Post by puppetmaster3 » Sat, May 03, 2014, 7:04 PM UTC

boolean wrote: post #20

Anyone who has transitioned from programming job to a managerial role, how did you do it? Do you recommend going back to school for an MBA? Would love to hear suggestions.

I think MBA is best way.

Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job

#94

Post by hatu » Sat, May 03, 2014, 7:10 PM UTC

pyrrhotech wrote: post #80

netcan wrote: post #46

This is silly. First, very few people become millionaire CEOs. If thats your standard for success, then every path likely leads to failure because no path reliably leads to that kind of success. Some paths are more likely than others, but none are very likely for the average person. Part of the reason for flat-ish career trajectory is that programmers earn more at the start than most. Some professions have more of a…

You can become a millionaire CEO if you are intelligent with at least a 10-20% success rate. Get 5 years work experience, ace the GMAT, go to a top 5 MBA, do consulting at 250-500k/year for 10 years for a company like Bain or McKinsey, then get hired as CFO of one of the companies you work for, 5 years later get promoted to CEO. Even if you don't make CEO, you can get to several multiples of an engineer's salary with…

Too bad the work is the polar opposite of a programmer so it's kind of a pointless thing to say in the article that programmers rarely become CEOs. Most people don't want to become CEO's, they're programmers because they love what they do.

Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job

#95

Post by quickpost » Sat, May 03, 2014, 7:18 PM UTC

This article reminds me a of a quote from Learn Python the Hard Way:

"Programming as a profession is only moderately interesting. It can be a good job, but you could make about the same money and be happier running a fast food joint. You're much better off using code as your secret weapon in another profession."

"People who can code in the world of technology companies are a dime a dozen and get no respect. People who can code in biology, medicine, government, sociology, physics, history, and mathematics are respected and can do amazing things to advance those disciplines."

"Of course, all of this advice is pointless. If you liked learning to write software with this book, you should try to use it to improve your life any way you can. Go out and explore this weird, wonderful, new intellectual pursuit that barely anyone in the last 50 years has been able to explore. Might as well enjoy it while you can."

http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/advice.html

Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job

#96

Post by k-mcgrady » Sat, May 03, 2014, 7:19 PM UTC

jamesaguilar wrote: post #67

netcan wrote: post #46

This is silly. First, very few people become millionaire CEOs. If thats your standard for success, then every path likely leads to failure because no path reliably leads to that kind of success. Some paths are more likely than others, but none are very likely for the average person. Part of the reason for flat-ish career trajectory is that programmers earn more at the start than most. Some professions have more of a…

Totally agreed. In the Bay Area, there are many companies where the most junior engineering tier earns more than $100k a year, only including cash compensation. To expect to grow by 20% per year on average for a decade given this starting condition is just not realistic. Honestly, to be in the top 95% of incomes at the entry level and then to complain that you're in a dead-end job . . . it just smacks of a lack of aw…

>> "In the Bay Area, there are many companies where the most junior engineering tier earns more than $100k a year"

It's important not to forget cost of living in that area is abnormally high.

Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job

#97

Post by tensor » Sat, May 03, 2014, 7:21 PM UTC

untog wrote: post #29

kumbasha wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, without all of the actual programmers you would have no product and no profits at all. Neither group can function without the other, and pay should reflect that rather than the ridiculously unequal spread we just automatically accept as normal.

Yes and no. It might be an unpopular opinion (and I'm a programmer myself) but 80% of programmers are relatively easily replaceable, particularly in large organisations. There are indispensable unique unicorns out there, but they tend to be well compensated. When a project is managed by one manager and coded by five developers, you could easily lose replace two of those developers with little impact. If you lost the…

I don't think they are useless, but I also do not think that the majority are particularly skilled. In many cases, it seems like teams succeed despite their managers interference. A lot of managers are more like secretaries and I think they should be compensated as such.

There are exceptions of course, but the unequal pay has nothing to do with skill as far as I'm concerned.

Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job

#98

Post by momoprobs311 » Sat, May 03, 2014, 7:22 PM UTC

This is not an apples to apples comparison. The writer is casting programmers as "commodity code producers", meaning the end goal of the code and the path to creation (e.g. what technologies to use, modules to create, etc) are already defined. That's trivially true. You could make this same argument for an artist if there were a market for people that could paint and draw things that others told them to paint using specific techniques. You could make the exact same argument for managers. If you created a perfect recipe for "motivating a team" and "evaluating a direct report's performance" and all these other nebulous ideas, and just paid for executing that recipe, you'd make management a "dead end job". If you create a recipe for someone, 99% of the work is done. The true value comes from the joining of the "what" and the "how" with the execution. Divorcing the two makes any job a commodity job because it assumes the goal and the path have already been determined. So comparing a "commodity code producer" with a full managerial position is not an equal comparison.

Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job

#99

Post by hatu » Sat, May 03, 2014, 7:26 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #59

I wouldn't call it "dead end" but outside of a few rare companies, programming has a fairly impenetrable salary/advancement ceiling. I loved software development, still do, but it's the kind of career where you max out your salary after about 4-5 years. So, I reluctantly moved in to various flavors of management. Still code little projects at home on the weekends, but unfortunately not as a job anymore. I'd love to g…

This is what most programmers-turned-managers keep telling me. The pay is a bit better but they miss programming.

Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job

#100

Post by the_watcher » Sat, May 03, 2014, 7:31 PM UTC

If your goal is to become CEO of a company that would be large enough to require an engineer to quit coding, it's a fairly universal truth that you will no longer be doing what you did at the beginning of your career. It's not simply that you no longer code - if you come from banking, you stop doing that. If you come from accounting/finance, you are no longer spending all day in Excel. If you come from sales, you may do a bit of it, I guess, but you are no longer regularly jumping on the phone with customers. If you come from marketing, again, you may do a bit, but you are definitely not spending time in AdWords or developing marketing campaigns.

Is there any job that this truth wouldn't apply to? Being a CEO is a full time job that has it's own requirements. It's not simply a title that you slap on a normal job.