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Comment by beej71 | Hacker News Reader

I tell students thinking of getting into coding that "you gotta want it". If you love that work, great. If you don't, you're going to have a hard time of it. Not impossible, but maybe something peripheral like tech sales would be better, etc. Same reason I'd have a hard time being an accountant.

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We are not talking about a “passion” career where someone can be working poor, yet fulfilling a societal function: teachers, social workers, special needs, etc.

Programming is one of the best career investment opportunities available at the moment. You cannot take a six week bootcamp course and become a MD commanding a six figure salary. Yet that is a common enough story in this industry. Someone took bare minimum of training and is now making significantly more than traditional career opportunities.

Loving your job is great, but it is a luxury afforded to few. Might as well do the most you can to keep food on the table.

What you're writing was true a couple of years ago, but right now six week bootcamp isn't going to get you a job at all in Western world. In my country even new grads with 5 year CS degrees struggle to find jobs, especially if they don't program on their spare time. Meanwhile doctors can pretty much choose their workplace, and earn at least twice as much as average dev.

I would never recommend any technical role in this field for anyone who has no genuine interest in it. Sales, project management etc might work better.

Bad advice. Most people are not deciding between coding and some other great job that they’re passionate about. I’m not passionate about coding at all and never have been but I can’t imagine anything better. Pay and work life balance are way too good

I agree with the other guy in this thread. Loving your job is a luxury that most people can’t afford

I lost most of my passion for coding when I started doing it for a living. It pretty quickly became just a job. Still one that I like doing, but I don't think about code outside of work very much.

Every once in a while I'll hear about something that sounds interesting and get into it. I taught myself Erlang/OTP but have never used it professsionally, for example. But that's like a once-every-5-years kind of thing, and it's been more than 5 years already since I did that.

Yeah, I think it's a form of self-flattery or gatekeeping for programmers to say that you need passion or drive to have a career in tech--outside of the upper echelons, you clearly don't. In this respect it's a mundane occupation like most others, and I wouldn't expect coders to be any more passionate about their work than nurses or plumbers or accountants.

My argument is that you had a harder time of it than someone who was passionate about it. I said it wasn't impossible. And I trust you wanted it enough to get it.

Edit: I've seen many students who apparently have better things to do with their time than study CS. I'm not judging. Like I said, I have better things to do with my time than study to be a CPA.

That is a very generic piece of advice, I think. Applies to (almost?) anything. And it at (anything?) not necessarily true. I know many many people that certainly do not love their job, even almost hate it, but the money and “work/life balance” is such, that they like it “all in all”. Just anecdotal evidence, but still…

> I tell students thinking of getting into coding that "you gotta want it". If you love that work, great. If you don't, you're going to have a hard time of it. Not impossible, but maybe something peripheral like tech sales would be better, etc. Same reason I'd have a hard time being an accountant.

i hear/see this all the time here on hn. it does not reflect my experience in

1) elite school

2) FAANG

first of all, an enormous number of people (undergrads) i met while doing my phd in cs at xyz-elite school did not love cs and they were almost all uniformly excellent. the ones i kept track ended up in FAANG or quantfi or whatever tough/challenging software engineering role.

second of all, not a single person/manager/intern/etc i met during my several internships in FAANG ever professed a love of the job. they all professed a love of money/prestige/benefits. they were almost all uniformly excellent.

> Same reason I'd have a hard time being an accountant.

i wonder who you think enjoys being an accountant, or a lawyer, or in IB, or whatever other professionally and intellectually demanding role that's highly compensated? a similar question: who do you think enjoys leetcode? yes i'm aware there are a few CP people around but that vast majority of people that have cleared the LC gauntlet aren't that.

there's a word for this: it's called grind. i know, it's shocking and hard to believe, but some people can muscle through a terrible job that they hate, and still be good at it, purely for the money.

so i tell students, the job sucks, it's stressful, it's tedious, you'll be surrounded by people that don't relate well with others, etc etc etc and then i ask them: what's your pain threshold? because the higher it is, the more money you can make in software, and you don't need a cert/MS/PhD/MD/JD/etc. that last bit is what makes it unique amongst the other highly-skilled labor jobs.

EDIT:

i'm gonna say something that'll borderline get me cancelled: there's an implicit bias in the "you gotta love it" trope. it's enormously colored by a US/western centric perspective. I'm american and white but I'm friends/friendly with many chinese/indian immigrants in tech (you know - the huge number we're all surrounded by...). not a single one of them has ever said they picked this job because they love it. many of them say they picked it because either it was a way out of their country or a way to help their families. again: uniformly excellent engineers. you might say it's because they've made it through two filters (finishing an engineering degree and being good enough to land a US job) but nonetheless.

> an enormous number of people (undergrads) i met while doing my phd in cs at xyz-elite school did not love cs and they were almost all uniformly excellent. the ones i kept track ended up in FAANG or quantfi or whatever tough/challenging software engineering role.

These sound to me like people who "wanted it", and probably had a harder time than people who loved the work.

> i wonder who you think enjoys being an accountant

I admit to only knowing two accountants, but they love it. For me, accountancy books are good as a general anesthetic.

Let me put it this way, instead: if you hate programming with a passion, you're going to have a lot of trouble motivating to put in the work to get good at it.

> These sound to me like people who "wanted it", and probably had a harder time than people who loved the work.

yea all of these elite engineers at FAANG had a harder time than all of the lisp/hobby/gamedev/etc coders that just love it. totally.

> if you hate programming with a passion, you're going to have a lot of trouble motivating to put in the work to get good at it.

i absolutely hate programming. i hate it more than any other job i've done. i put in the thousands of hours over the last ~2 years getting good at it and i am very very good at it. and i'm not talking about research code, i'm talking clean, production quality, engineering code. the reason i did this is because i knew i'd get paid a fat signing bonus/RSUs/cash base at the end. simple.

so you're just wrong.

I guess so. You hate it with a passion but you're totally motivated to do it; you get up in the morning rearing to go and spend every waking moment considering how to improve the craft. Well done you.

> you get up in the morning rearing to go and spend every waking moment considering how to improve the craft

Are you unfamiliar with the concept of money?

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