Of course, these days it is the opposite problem: people know that there is money in software so they base their career on it despite not having any real interest.
But, over time I got to love writing software and the entire industry as such. About 3 years in, I couldn't think of doing anything else. So yeah, there's no harm in pursuing something for the sake of money, because the odds are you will eventually fall in love with that path, assuming some of your qualities are suitable for that career.
But, not everyone finds happiness or satisfaction in a path that they chose for money and I think majority of them will be wishing they never had to be in that career.
I say this as a person who never had to worry a day in my life about money, because I thought programming was super interesting, and learned C when I was 12, and made more money than both my parents combined by the time I was 18. It was never about money for me, but I wouldn't blame anyone for doing it for the paycheck.
Falling in line with conventional viewpoints rarely gets you kudos, since it is what most people do.
I wonder if your manager feels the same way you feel about code, but about meetings. Maybe they wish you'd chosen a career that paid less because you don't enjoy meetings. You probably drag their working day right down by not finding meetings super fun.
Anyways, their manager can stick their opinion where the sun doesn’t shine, just OP does probably since it’s anticlimactic to express opinions like that.
I have some genuine interest and it won't be ling until I'm able to write small to medium programs. At that point working in an unrelated field is a bottleneck because I don't have time to spend programming. Hence I need a job so I can focus my time on actually doing it. Any advice? How I prove I'm good enough for entry level even though I'm "old" without a relevant degree? Avoiding employers that will push bad coding habits on me?
You can work in a skyscraper, and not find a single one.
Off you go to the other skyscraper. There's a whole bunch.
People might become a dentist but then start to hate it, but the $$$ is too good and how is he or she going to start as a newspaper cartoonist for $13,000 per year because that is their interest?
If you don't know what you want, and don't have any real absorbing interest in too much, if nothing really turns your crank, why NOT go into the highest paying job that you can get? Nothing wrong with that?
I think these days way too much emphasis is put on the whole "Do what you love" thing. Who loves being a convenience store clerk, or a gas station attendant or movie ticket taker?
But people do it, for the sole reason that they need money. And do it year after year, for a lifetime.
It's the real high-end problem when you decide between being an investment banker, a programmer for google, a lawyer at a top 10 law firm, or a brain surgeon that graduated from Harvard med school.
Personally, I have no interest in anything. I've "explored" all kinds of areas, more than most. I'm one of those people you read about that's done 489 different jobs (hyperbole, but not much, I don't think). Nothing turns my crank. What am I supposed to do? So, I just keep going from industry to industry, lacksadaisically, wandering aimlessly through life. Am I supposed to have a goal? Am I supposed to only work one job, one career for 60 years? Those are not real questions, because I don't really care too much.
Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do and be a robot, go to work, go through the motions, and collect your paycheck. No dancing girls in your office every day, no $5 million gold sink in your private office, no live concert by Miley Cyrus in your personal office, how rude, how can I live without being catered to my every whim and being so, so, so happy? I MUST be happy, I MUST have a real interest....snnnnooooore. Get real, people.
The only ones whose world is their oyster are people who graduate from a top 10 school, they truly can do anything. The rest of us hacks that graduated from anything below that, or god forbid a middling or low end university with a C average, we take what scraps that fall on the floor. Let alone high school graduates, or worse, those who never finished high school.
Count your blessings.
After reading this post, I certainly do!
For those of you living in your bubbles of trouble-free personal fulfillment, welcome to the real world for a vast majority of the world's population. The people that handle your menial needs don't always do so out of pure love of the job, but yes, they still find some imperfect avenues for happiness in life. There's nothing innately wrong with that either.
My life is VASTLY better, because my profession I do 9-5 is something I dearly, dearly, love.
I'd read it as:
"Find something to work in that you love. Or Else."
Just because you swallowed that pill doesn't mean that others should do the same.
It's precisely when the odds are stacked against you (be it education/age and/or whatever) that success it most impressive.
It's not about me. I don't think that you read what I wrote.
Are you saying that someone who didn't finish high school can get into Harvard medical school?
Most people in the world have zero choice.
What would you do if you were born in some place like, oh, East Saint Louis or South side of Chicago, and your mom was a prostitute on crack and you never knew your father. All the role models that you saw were criminals, and all your peer group that you grew up with were into crime, and when you were 13-, 14-,15-years-old, you were arrested 8 or 10 times. Your school was rickety, teachers were terrible, you never got 3 meals a day so you couldn't concentrate in school.
Or you were raised in Bengladesh and don't even have access to electricity, let alone a computer.
What if one just doesn't have the brainpower? My in-laws taught in schools in very nasty areas, and there were kids that they spent hours with trying to teach them how to add two 2 digit numbers and the student just couldn't do it - things that would take you 2 minutes to understand, some cannot understand at all.
What if you work in some town in the middle of Nebraska and there is only one significant employer in the area. You have no university degree, but scraped oneself up to being a plant manager making $120K per year, but you HATE it, abhor it, your superior treats you like trash. But you have a wife and 5 children, and you live in a huge 5 bedroom 6 bathroom house with 5 acres in the best area of town. Your wife loves living there and your children love their schools and are successful in them. And your wife's parents live nearby, and they both have Alzheimers Disease, so she takes care of the daily. But you hate the job. and there is only that one employer. Are you suggesting that the person, with a high school degree, sell their home for $500K, moves to SF and buys a 1 bedroom condo in Palo Alto for $800K and all of them live in the one bedroom, including the wife's parents? And the guy goes out with his high school degree and find a job as a computer programmer working at Google, which is harder to get into than getting into Harvard University? No. The man has to stay in his job, and hate it. But get his happiness from having a happy family, a nice home. Stuff outside of work. Work is not the main goal in life. Family and friends are.
You really don't have too much experience in life, or have not really thought it through.
There is money in surveillance, data collection and advertising. Are those practices synonymous with software.