Comment by elteto | Hacker News Reader

Comment by elteto | Hacker News Reader

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> It's not a bad job if you have what it takes, but the reason we're paid a lot of money is that many couldn't force themselves to do it even if they wanted to.

You make it sound like we toil away every day, almost as if we were breaking rocks or hammering iron. We don't. We have cushy and sedentary jobs that many could do and even more would die to have. Most LOB software development is not special and not that complicated. We don't create unique works of art in every project we work on, although the occasional piece of code does tickle the brain.

There are many software developers working on much more complex things (compilers, OSs, high-performance computing, firmware, rockets, etc) but those are in the minority. And I firmly believe that anyone with enough training and experience can write OS code, or compiler code, or firmware, etc.

> There's a lot of responsibility, uncertainty and frustration.

I'm not going to say there isn't because there's certainly a lot of that, but it's a small price to pay for how good we have it. We also, as an industry, don't deal with more or less BS than other white-collar, office jobs.

I recently had a conversation with a friend going through her (medical) residence: 12+ hour shifts several days in a row, combining hospital work with lectures. Nurses have it even worse. We (software developers) should be very grateful.

Our jobs might not be physically demanding, but many of us are mentally exhausted every day. I don't work an insane number of hours, but the expectation is always that I'll figure out a way forward with limited information and a team comprised of both competent and incompetent people who mostly want to be told what to do. In the vast majority of software engineering jobs, writing the actual code is trivial.

But the same could be said of any white collar job with a modicum of complexity, no?

I’m not denying what you are saying. I’m just not convinced it’s different from other professions.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with both mechanical and electrical engineers. They deal with the same office politics and other BS we deal with.

I think in most organizations/teams, there are a small number of people who are doing most of the thinking, so yes, it is probably the same in all kinds of professions. My objection is mostly to the idea that jobs that aren't physically demanding are all comfy and not exhausting.

I never said they weren’t! My objection is to the idea that, somehow, software development is _more_ demanding or exhausting than other white collar professions.

> We have cushy and sedentary jobs that many could do and even more would die to have.

Wrong, are you a manager in disguise?

Having worked various jobs, from general physical labor, to technical but still physically demanding, to office jobs, my software jobs have been by a fairly wide margin the most cushy and well-paid. This isn't to say they are easy or stress-free, but I think the OP is saying it's relative. I'm sure there are plenty of easier jobs, but I don't know that negates the general premise.

Far from it. Are you a web developer by any chance?

True, it's more mentally demanding than anything else.

And it is a good job, no doubt.

Point still stands though.

> True, it's more mentally demanding than anything else.

This is just not true. Going back to my example, doctors and nurses have more mentally _and_ physically demanding jobs.

> Point still stands though.

It doesn’t. There are harder jobs, both mentally and physically. And most software development is generic and not that complex work that a lot of people could do.

We are only snowflakes in the sense that we think we are special, and that comparatively we have very nice salaries (at least in the US).

most doctors and nurses work off of mostly rote knowledge, software developers not nearly as much.

it's an apples and oranges comparison.

Maybe most bad doctors and nurses. It's like saying most SWEs just copy something from StackOverflow to do their jobs.

Good MDs and RNs know how to take in the full context of a patient to make a diagnosis. That takes complex understanding, not just rote memorization.

That’s a fairly common and wrong misconception of how doctors practice. In reality, there’s a lot of analytical work and “debugging” of symptoms. But even if you were correct, I fail to see how it makes it apples to oranges.

Do you _really_ believe coding up some CRUD SPA web page is the most mentally demanding job in the world?

I said mostly for a reason.

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