Coding as a Career Isn't Right for Me
bipolarco.de
bipolarco.de
I wouldn't be so critical of your feelings but you whine about how society didn't let you do what you want to do on your terms. Change your circumstances. No one is just given everything. Its a combination of motivation and luck. And that luck comes from generating opportunities for yourself. So it all up to you.
I hope you get your debt paid off. Move to the cabin, but if you ever want to come back, just remember that society has her dues.
In high school I was hacking on silly personal projects. In college I was solving cool algorithms, puzzles, and games. But in the real world most programming roles are pretty menial / not a super exciting domain / consist largely of process, code reviews, QA, debugging.
Step-father-in-law is a truck driver, makes only slightly less than money than me.
There's always someone doing worse than you do. I'm a programmer now but in a previous life I fed conveyor belts. I did menial jobs most of my life until I migrated and graduated (and, yep, got a student loan to repay). I thought I had it bad, but I once saw a video of a boy diving into a midden with a stick to unclog it. No joke- he dove into a big hole in the ground filled with shit. He had a rope tied round his waist and a stick.
So what do you say to that boy? "Stay where you are because think of all those countless minions who don't even have a stick"?
No, people will always want to do better. We'll always want our every working hour to be productive and fullfilling. And as well we should. We should strive to achieve that.
So, speaking as one of those countless minions, I'm glad that I could escape the Hell of One-Thousand Soul-Crushingly Meaningless Tasks, and I don't wish anyone to use my sojourn there to keep anyone in their place.
I'm 26. I'd much rather work on my own stuff than my company stuff. I have this plan after my current job to burn up some of my savings and spend a couple of years to build something I'm excited by. I've been paying off student debt.
I think I'm okay with working a 10.30-6.30 job. The pay-check is what will grant me my freedom. Every week I work, I save 3 weeks of expenses. I've already enough savings to pay off my student debt two times over. After another year I'll have enough savings to live as I do currently for 5 years. (Can double that if I don't take the train every day & eat out during office hours).
The product is important. Does it help someone? Does it make their task easier? Are the bugs in it tolerable? At all three of my big boy jobs, I've been so far removed from the user that I have no clue if the product helped them or not. This hurts and it hurts a lot.
You're writing test automation. Think of your users as your colleagues. You're not saving random people time. You're saving time of people you go out to lunch with. All you have to do is ask "Are my tests saving you time?" And that's something.
> I want to get away from coding for you and code for me.
> I don't like coding for you. I don't think any of us do.
I've found my enjoyment in taking such companies and teaching them how to produce quality code without compromising on speed. I've found my enjoyment in encouraging such companies to take on young coders who i can then teach, and see flower into excellence they could otherwise only reach with years of investment.
And occasionally there is the one or two projects that are just for fun, or really touch many many customers.
Don't give up and blame the world. Look harder. Maybe even change your language. I mainly do Perl, which gets a bit of a bad rap by people who don't use it. But compared to companies doing e.g. Java or PHP i find a marked difference in culture. Maybe you're just stuck with the wrong focus in your skill set?
Or, if you feel brave: Maybe your problem is that you keep getting into the kind of company that wants an employee. Maybe you can change your situation by becoming a freelancer. Keep in mind that as a freelancer, you eventually, if you're good enough, end up in the position where you may fire clients. You also tend to see a lot more projects of much more variety.
I enjoy writing Python. Javascript isn't that thrilling to me. Not super excited by the countless FooJS libraries and Promises and async everything. In Protractor if I want to get the text of an element in the DOM, that's a promise. I mean come on? .getText() should not return a promise. I'm not a Javascript expert, so this will sound whiney-ish, but I think Promise hell is a thing just like Callback hell is.
Perhaps you could aim for something similar. There's employers out there (eg. RedHat) that will happily pay you to hack on open source if you can show that it's in both of your best interests. That way you get to choose what you're working on going in. Even just specialising a bit more might make things more interesting as you'll be hired to work on <thing you actually quite like> instead of some random stack put together by someone who may not have a clue.
Good luck in your search :)
Also, if you want something challenging, but not quite C, maybe give Rust a chance. I hear lots of companies with fun stuff are using it.
> And then I want to get away from coding for you and code for me. I don't like coding for you. I don't think any of us do.
Too many people think of coding as only a career...thus, we shouldn't teach coding to non-comsci-majors because not everyone should be a programmer as a job.
Programming is an intellectual and productive pursuit in it of itself, and there is a huge difference between programming for someone else, and programming for your self and for what you care about. It's no different from writing prose. You could love to write for yourself, or for your own novels and projects...while having a writing job (technical writing, journalism) that you dislike. But it's not the writing itself that's the problem.
Being passionate about software development can help you be a better developer- but it's not a prerequisite by any means.
Also, I think that pursuing happiness in and of itself is quite boring and demonstrates a lack of agency that we have as human beings... We need more than just the feeling of constant pleasure in order to have a fulfilling life. One very basic example: if you were happy all the time, how would you actually know? Being aware of the contrast between various emotional and psychological states provides a lot more fulfillment versus always residing in a single mode of existence.
I have this long-standing argument with a friend, who's also a programmer, because I say the exact same thing you say, that for me writing code is like writing prose. I even edit my code in the same way I used to edit my writing, way back when.
Btw, I don't think that the fact I like to code makes me better at it. Frx, I like music, but I would suck at it and I know lots of people who are in the same position; except that many don't seem to understand it.
I've also seen people do completely stupid things with their code exactly because they like to code. They want to show off their shiny techniques and overengineer something to death, for no good reason.
Actually, I've done that myself now I think about it. Many times. We'll see if I learned not to do it again.
"At all three of my big boy jobs, I've been so far removed from the user that I have no clue if the product helped them or not." Even during the second job at a "small startup with 15 employees, 5 developers, no testers." ? Hard to believe.
"I don't like coding for you. I don't think any of us do. We only do it because you pay us way too much money and we have loans to pay off." Feel free to write whatever you want about your point of view, but leave the rest of us out of your vast generalization.
Something is wrong that salaries never seem to rise with demand in Silicon Valley. We know there was a secret deal to help suppress wages at one point, but it's not obvious why it's been so successful. Is it new graduates, immigration abuse, internationalization, illegal price fixing?
A programmers union could probably force tech companies to double salaries. They all could afford to pay it.
The issue is, they hit pay-ceiling very quick, unless they go into management position. And really, who wants to be an IT manager? It's probably the second worst job in IT after IT project manager. chuckles
A 30 year old sr. software engineer will be paid not much less than a 40 year old one, even if 40 year old is much more talented, and deserves to get paid twice as much.
I suppose the same issue exists for pharmacists. Out of school, you're expected to make $110k; pretty much the same exact salary as RPh with 20 years of experience.
I really doubt a union would succeed unless you suddenly get a lot of programmers on board very quickly. Tech giants are big and if they chose to fight, they have a ton of cash to do it with.
For example, if cool software engineer goes from $100k to $200k, then his boss, Mgr #1, is going to want like $300k, well, just because she's a boss. And, her director is then going to want $400k because people with power titles should make the most.
(Oh, and, by the way, everyone knows that Mgr #1 is probably the best programmer at the company, but she's 40 now, and her salary got too high, and therefore she would have had to move under R&D director PostDoc. But, he only allows PhDs with the title of 'principal' to work for him. So, now she has to be a mediocre manager.)
Yes, we should be glad to have these high paying jobs doing knowledge work. But there is something thoroughly dissatisfying about writing another meaningless CRUD app that spins the cogs just a little faster. More efficiently? Who knows. Besides, it probably does one of three things: ecommerce, ads, or glorified coupons. What's the point?
Coding isn't the right career for me, either. I do think it's a useful tool, but I think I've got to do something else with my life. I wish you luck figuring what that something else is, as well.
During that job, I made and shared two side projects for the first time in my life.
But the 9 to 5 hell was impossible to deal with.
Fast forward to now, I'm remotely working with a company that pays me a great salary. I live in South East Asia and that means my savings are fantastic. Bonus is that the company is amazing. Dreamt of joining it since 2012. But I digress.
Here's where I get to the point. Try and find this kind of remote work, and come live around here for a short while (Sri Lanka). Heck. I'd be happy to talk to you about it. Put it in perspective, with a salary of say 80k USD, you'll pay off your student loan in one year guaranteed if you live a little frugally. Hope this helps
'Such is the universal law, which no man can ever outwit, and with regard to the railroad even we may say it is as broad as it is long. To make a railroad round the world available to all mankind is equivalent to grading the whole surface of the planet. Men have an indistinct notion that if they keep up this activity of joint stocks and spades long enough all will at length ride somewhere, in next to no time, and for nothing; but though a crowd rushes to the depot, and the conductor shouts "All aboard!" when the smoke is blown away and the vapor condensed, it will be perceived that a few are riding, but the rest are run over- and it will be called, and will be, "A melancholy accident." No doubt they can ride at last who shall have earned their fare, that is, if they survive so long, but they will probably have lost their elasticity and desire to travel by that time. This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once. "What!" exclaim a million Irishmen starting up from all the shanties in the land, "is not this railroad which we have built a good thing?" Yes, I answer, comparatively good, that is, you might have done worse; but I wish, as you are brothers of mine, that you could have spent your time better than digging in this dirt.'
Probably my favorite passage from Walden...
And what's that I hear, about getting a pension in your 40s'? Wasn't that what the Greeks did wrong, that they wanted to get a pension in their 40s, and that's why their economy died?
By and large, programmers generally make great employees. Many brilliant people are able to knock out their assigned and existential objectives by solving complex problems and are handsomely rewarded with hefty checks. But, if you ask them questions outside their comfort zone about, for example, running a business, designing for the user, or marketing, most would be quick to point out that those aren't responsibilities that fall on their plate.
To me, it sounds like you have a fervor for being more than just an employee. You want to take ownership of your work. You want to use your brain for your own benefit, not for some other corporation to rent out. You want the grittiness of taking on multiple roles and welcome being side by side with your users.
There are many of us out here, coding as self-starters, founders, freelancers, remote workers, and small business owners. It isn't for everyone, and if you are happy or content with your full time job, then it's probably not for you. That's ok.
But for those of us who have found ways to make it work outside of what can feel like the soul-crushing environment of a typical full-time workplace, the devs building on their own, grinding out client work, doing remote year, making products - ask any of them, and you'll find that coding as a employee wasn't right for them, either.
I'd encourage you to read my post on the way I fell into this line of thought, but for me, I was coming from a job that I actually really liked: http://davekiss.com/getting-started-with-passive-income/
You don't need to code as an employee to code as a career. Be honest with yourself; are you an employee, or a founder?
Alternatively, there are plenty of places to work that won't make you feel like a small cog in a giant machine.
Self improvement comes from, improving your situation. No one will do it for you.
Freelancing is hard. It's especially difficult to get into a part time situation. Most clients don't want a consultant, they want an employee they don't have to file HR paperwork for. But if you network enough, you'll get there and it will be fine.
I think, if you can get out of the soul-crushing chasm of despair that is wage employment, you'll find that software development is indeed your calling. You just don't like being treated like a child in that calling.
Actually, you don't even have to quit. Just knowing that you can quit, if you're not happy, changes how you interact with your employer. Don't like what you're doing? Do something else, either there or at a different company.
I think if I KNEW this, I'd have a significantly different perspective on things.
If you're good, and can prove it, you ought to have the potential to work on things that excite you.
Your experiences thus far can be seen as learning experience teaching you about what you want/need in a job. You want to engage the customer. You don't like test. You don't want to be at the whim of marketing and bosses who've never programmed.
You've already discovered it's not programming you're tired of, and that's valuable to know.
Just to throw out an idea, there's B2B software companies that employ engineers as consultants to work with client companies. You probably wouldn't like doing this for mega-enterprise, but if the client companies are small they will have a human face.
When you're dealing with load issues, ops, reporting, i18n, logging, and concurrency, you realize why the infrastructure is there and why it's a lot of work to push out a new feature.
The fact that you're not excited by it is why they're paying you, and NO, you cannot do it solo, not without a team behind you.
Before you say it's all in the cloud, most EC2 admins have to deal with unexpected outages, and it's not exciting in a good way. Fundamentally, 99% of everything is a glorified CRUD app.
You mentioned you wrote a game. Game programming might be something you like and not every place is a sweatshop, although you have to be discerning.
Embedded/low-level programming is cool too. I used to write router firmware, and I also worked on a sql engine for a time. Neither job had anything to do with "like" buttons or CRUD.
So maybe the issue boils down to equating "programming" with "web app".
That project could have been a blast, but it was put off until the last minute and then rushed and then the signs were hung at the transit station before we had a chance to interact with them and toggle some switches inside so we had to do that on a ladder in the cold oh and by the way my test sign was not exactly like the sign that was actually installed. So as usual, another project ruined by rushed managers who didn't involve me sooner and just started buying stuff and doing things.
Hey. Lay off the COBOL, especially if you haven't actually done it (I don't know if you have).
I've done web dev for the last four years, since graduating. I now learn mainframe development, with COBOL and JCL (and also REXX recently). It's fun. There's a lot more actual, honest-to-god, programming to do in a mainframe job than there is in web development. At least you don't spend your every waking life trying to shake the angle brackets out of your eyes (XML, right?).
Most of my web dev work was in back-endy stuff btw, primarily C# and a little bit of RoR and Java. Which means 60% configuration, 40% actual coding and even then, the actual coding is implementing some framework interface. That sucks the life right out of "programming" (because it really isn't).
Hope things improve mate.
If Zuckerberg can be a billionaire CEO running a huge company at 30, you can make some judgement calls about your job in your mid 20s.
If you're passionate about something, there's bound to be a couple of companies that are working in that field. Find one that shares your values and code for them. It can still be frustrating, but you move forward every day because you care about what you're doing.
At my lowest point, I used to pick up a large $5 dollar cheese pizza to go, a tomato and onion from a street vendor (for toppings on my pizza), and stretch 4 meals out of it.
You should be grateful you have the opportunities you have, and that you're able to work a job that would allow you to pay off your student loans so quickly.
As a programmer, you have one of the best jobs that exists. You have a low stress job and you make a lot of money. (The median programmer makes more than twice the median wage - 37 versus 17/hr - http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm ) - your financial freedom will come much more quickly to you than it will for most others.
You ought to do your best to learn to find meaning in your work and be grateful you have so much self-direction in your work when so many others don't.
Also, this stuff: "I didn't care how my code read, or if it was maintainable, or if it was DRY, or if it was tested, or how long it'd take me to write, or if features were separated into logical chunks"
Right at the beginning is where you lost me, because even when I was in grade school, I still made my code maintainable and separated into logical chunks because I had to read and maintain it whenever I got a chance to get back to it. My side projects are all built with these things in mind.
It is good that you have decided that coding isn't the right career for you, but I wonder what is? I would also be careful of making harsh public criticisms of your employer. It's easy to figure out where you work, and these are the types of concerns that your employer should be able to work with you to address.
Best of luck.
So it really seems like you are giving up a piece of your mind whenever you program for someone else. For an example of what I'm talking about, see XKCD 664.
It is only fair that your are, in theory, not allowed to reuse the code who wrote for them at your next gig. And to be clear, we all do it. If you've implemented it once you can redo it in no time.
I wish there were more programming jobs that were similar to photography -- you get hired to do a shoot, the customer gets a copy, but you keep the copyrights.
I think you have:
I'm fortunate to have had jobs since I graduated college.
Edit: I mean that it shouldn't be down to luck whether you have a job or not and how productive you can be in the limited time when you can be productive, in your life. It's rotten that not everyone can. We're doing human civilisation wrong, if it's down to luck whether you live a satisfying life doing fullfilling work, or spend your life in slavery.
Media and software are not examples of post-scarcity economy. They require hardware, which requires infrastructure, which runs on the expenditure of fuel and calories, and is built oftentimes with slave labor. The music needs to be composed, the movies need to be filmed, the games need to be designed. Storage media needs to be replaced. Programmers need to be educated generation after generation, and then everything rewritten in new languages when no one cares about the old ones. Factories need to keep building new models and old models keep filling landfills. The digital world is very much tied to scarcity of resources. Every bit flipped contributes to the inevitable heat death of the universe.
[0] http://www.founding.com/the_declaration_of_i/pageID.2423/def...
[1] https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CDOC-110hdoc50/pdf/CDOC-110hdo...
try going to the police and saying your right to happiness has been thwarted by the company paying your salary... see how far that gets you
Lets say there are two people who want a home, one person builds theirs and the other buys theirs via a loan.
Both are looking for a $200,000 price range. The one who is buying a prebuilt home is going for a 30 year fixed rate mortgage.
* Solar Panels - $1,000
* Building Materials - $10,000
* Land - $2,000
* Well Drilled On Property /w Electric Pump, Filter, and Tank - $10,000
* Backup Power Batteries - $1,000
* Composting Toilet, Sink, Kitchen Appliances (All top of the line) - $20,000 (You can save a LOT of money here by skimping on the stove and fridge)
* Nice HAM radio set - $1000
* Satellite internet hookup - $500
* Zoning, Permits, Safety inspections - $1,000
Total Approximate Cost: $46,500
This is with very heavy rounding upward. Granted, this home will be small, likely no basement, and two stories. But it will be very comfortable living if you build it yourself.
You will be able to maintain everything, no more rent, no more service fees, no more power/water bill.
So, just to give buying a home a better fighting chance, let's make this humble home a super humble home.
* Aerogel-Composed insilation: 40,000
* Super Efficient NAS/Server: 5,000
* Some more battery capacity: 5,000
* High efficiency HVAC system: 30,000
Added Cost: $80,000 Total Approximate Cost: $126,500
Now lets start going to where money can buy, but you just need a lot of patience.
* Why not launch a small satellite in geosynchronous orbit? $100,000
* More HAM equipment for tracking satellites. $5,000
* Underground bunker underneath your home. $60,000
Added Cost: $165,000 Total Approximate Cost: $291,500
Both where able to get into their homes within 2 months, both started out with what was probably going to need some work over time.
The home buyer paid $340,427 in total, along with extra taxes. The home builder got a $291,500 and did some really cool shit if you ask me.
Yes, I am exaggerating a little. But you get my point. You can always make your dreams come true.
Programmers of the world, unite.
What was the point of any of that hard work? Maybe there was no point, maybe he/you made a mistake. From where do you derive entitlement?
If you live in the United States you're entitled to the _pursuit_ of happiness. Go, pursue it, but your career choices and mistakes are your own. No one owes you anything.
I'm owed what I was promised. I was promised "pass these tests, you can get into any grad school or company you want." That didn't happen. I was promised, "finish this project, and you'll get a raise and to run the next one your way." That never happened. I was promised a lot of things, and because I don't have a rich daddy to threaten people with a lawsuit for breaking those promises, I get told it's my fault for expecting anything.
As I said before. Eff. That. Noise. Your rules suck. I choose my own.
But you probably have your own reality? Great, just don't be surprised if you're the only one living in it.
Hell, give me a lobotomy and erase my education from me. In return, absolve me of my student loans. Let me start over and try again. I can't even do that because I'm in so much debt that switching careers is not even feasible. I have to program to pay these loans. I wouldn't survive without a programmers salary, but I don't even want the money. That's the part that kills me.
That's why this is about entitlement now. Because you said it is.
Seriously though. If you don't like the hand you're dealt, you try to change it. How is that unrealistic, or unlike what most people do?
And how is it unreasonable to fervently wish to have it better in life than what you do? Why is it entitled? There's nothing more common-sense, down-to-earth, than that. Otherwise, what the hell are you striving for?
When did I say you shouldn't try to change the hand you're dealt? Absolutely you should! If you don't like the status quo, turn it over! How do you confuse "No one owes you anything" with "you should not try to change anything"?
Hence "reality sucks". I don't see that I misread that.
I agree you didn't say anywhere that you shouldn't try to change the status quo, but to be fair, there's often a lot of confusion between "that's how things are" and "that's how things should be".
I don't have the patience for a lengthy discussion on this now- apologies.
Who exactly "stuck" you in that hole? If you're "at the top of the industry" then FIND SOMEPLACE ELSE if things are terrible.
Your boss is not a cruise director; just getting your paper and showing up is not a guarantee of happiness, any more than getting good grades in HS and then showing up at college was a automatic guarantee of academic success.
Me - I stay with a job (or side project or consulting) if it is fun and I am learning something. Pick and choose accordingly.
From the article -- "I write test automation to test the front-end" -- there were potentially interesting things here maybe some years ago, but he put himself into a position that frequently gets off shored and doesn't have a lot of room for growth/creativity.
Really, all these entitlement 20-something posts are basically the same in general content.
I read the post as simple as the field where he grew up with turned out to be a much different thing in a (industrialized?) setting.
1) I hate my job... but! 2) I do it because I need it
Ok. That's fine. Just shut-up if you need the job. No one needs to hear about your woes and whinings if you're conscionable about the contract you're entering in to.
It's downright childish if you don't reject/quit a job if you don't want it.
For fucks sake.
I'd love to see his CV.
Perhaps not $65k, but not too far off (depending on where you go). If you choose a cheaper school, there can be issues with getting a job or getting the salary you want (as I've heard it said, anyway).
However, just because I taught myself doesn't mean that it was free. I had a year of lost wages which is about 65K, so all in all it costed about the same amount for me.
And then there's the matter of a debt being an amount agreed upon by all stakeholders, whereas your "lost wages" are just a number you calculate in an arbitrary manner, which may or may not reflect reality. Maybe you did lose $65k by not working. Maybe if you hadn't gone to college you'd have been hit by a car and you'd have lost far more than that. Maybe you'd be unemployed. Who's to say?
Money is not money unless it's in your pocket (or bank account) or in an IOU.
Wow. I didn't realize Hacker News folks were like redditors.
The 65k comes from the fact that I had to pay tuition and living expenses. My family is from a small town. The nearest college was 2 hours away (Indiana University). 15k a year adds up fast.
I honestly didn't NEED the education, I think if I spent 4 years teaching myself I would have been just fine. I just felt that I needed the degree to get my foot in the door anywhere. Maybe I was wrong, but do you dispute that?
This and other of your comments break the HN guidelines. On this site, please comment civilly and substantively or not at all.