> If I were to do it over again, I would rather be an Alaskan fishing boat operator than a software engineer doing 99% of the stuff that paid programmers have to do.

I usually find your comments thought provoking but as somebody who is familiar with this industry I assure you that this is not the case.

No need to even go into the conditions, which are probably more horrible than you imagine (in terms of the work itself, workers' physical safety, interpersonal interactions that usually range from unfriendly to physically abusive, and overbearing managers which we all know you despise). Those are obvious. But if you think that VC's exercise undue influence on the tech industry, and if you chafe against this kind of control (as it seems you do), you would not enjoy an industry where people doing the actual labor and putting their lives on the line (really) make very little compared to the extremely large companies that bankroll the operations and distribution.

A nitpick, I know, but... software development is still not a bad industry to be in compared to most.