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6/10. I'm less than 3 years into my career, but I think I've worked for some of the best companies with great pay, benefits, environments, etc, including a tech

6/10. I'm less than 3 years into my career, but I think I've worked for some of the best companies with great pay, benefits, environments, etc, including a tech giant and two startups. End of the day though, work is boring. Its always work. Your time and effort is going towards making someone else rich and their priorities are more important than your own. The only things I really look forward to are vacations and events outside of work. Learning things is always exciting and sometimes its extremely rewarding getting a project (or even a feature) off the ground and seeing a company rise and beat projections. But then a few weeks later, its just back to work and nothings really different. Its a temporary victory at best, then expectations just get higher and more grind. The best you can possibly hope for is enjoying the people you work with and getting a couple good exits. I'm never married to my work and I would be incredibly depressed if I allowed it to define me as a person. It pays the bills, and generally pretty well. Even compensation wise, it peaks very early and probably won't get most rich without a ton of luck. Its depressing to make comparisons, but 99.9% of developers will never make half of what a specialized MD or successful lawyer or someone in finance might make. Granted, the barrier to entry is much lower in CS (sometimes nearly nonexistent depending on the line of work). edit: Reading some of the other comments made me realize how dissatisfied I am with this line of work. On average, the people really are incredibly boring, especially at large companies. It is true that it is dominated by men and many are socially awkward. Its even worse that I think being on a computer for so many hours a day for years at a time makes everyone a little less socially adept, at least compared to the sales folks who spend most of their days on the phone. I'm literally spending my weekends looking for the most reckless and dangerous things I can do (lately its been surfing 2-3x head high waves, before it was motorcycling through snow/ice storms) to compensate and its completely unhealthy.

onion2k 11y ago
Its depressing to make comparisons, but 99.9% of developers will never make half of what a specialized MD or successful lawyer or someone in finance might make. Why not make a much less depressing comparison and compare developer wages to manual labourers or retail staff? Compare a typical developer to a typical retail worker and we get way more money for way less stress. We're not at the top end of the scale, but we are nowhere near the bottom either. We get to sit in comfortable offices, working on interesting projects (mostly), building things that make a difference to people, without getting dirty or abused by the public, and we're pretty well paid for it on the whole. And there's always the possibility that we might hit on an idea that returns literally billions of dollars. Or work for someone else who had that idea and walk away with literally hundreds of millions of dollars. Most people don't have that sort of opportunity. I've been a professional developer for over 20 years, and I've enjoyed most of it. It afforded me the opportunity to do my own startup for a while, and when that failed it was easy to get back in to work with a job that pays quite well. I certainly wouldn't want to do anything else.
- sdgsfsfgfg 11y ago
  But the thing is I could have been an MD, lawyer or someone in finance - these things were well within my reach. But I was sold a false dream and now I am stuck in misery.
  - rifung 11y ago
    Why not just switch? Is it too late? You can always take out loans if it's money; that's what most people would have to do anyway I imagine.
  - endzone 11y ago
    working conditions in all of those industries are terrible compared to almost all software jobs. and the work in finance and law is tedious. you're dreaming.
- timwaagh 11y ago
  its not a good comparison since retail takes absolutely sero education or brains.
  - gedrap 11y ago
    While I see your point (and I agree a bit), it's not exactly fair to put it this way. There are many people working in these industries who didn't have much opportunity to get decent education, etc. For example, my parents. They are from rural areas from Soviet Union, where getting higher education was not something that goes by default as it is now (which might not be a great thing given the number of people with worthless law/business management degrees from the bottom 10% of universities... oh well). Obviously, there's a segment of people who didn't give a crap and held an attitude that education is for losers / nerds (before the word 'nerd' was cool) and I don't have much for them sympathy. So it's not fair to just disrespect everyone working in the retail as 'zero brains'.
    - timwaagh 11y ago
      I'm saying the job requires zero brains or education. I did not mean to imply people who work in retail have no brains or even less than average. in my country it's not really a legit career choice. it's mostly high school kids or people under 23 who do it as it's compensated below adult minimum wage. after a certain age you either get promoted or fired.
zzalpha 11y ago
Uhh... I have to ask: what, exactly, were you expecting? Exhilarating highs and a path to millions? It's a job. Most people don't have jobs that'll make them "rich". Be glad you aren't living paycheck to paycheck, or worse, are unemployed because the job you had was optimized away with computers. To be blunt, there's a sense of entitlement evident, here, that I have trouble grokking. You get to spend all day in a comfortable office working with no more than your hands and brain making double to triple what a day labourer pulls in with a hell of a lot more effort. And your complaints are, what, you have to hammer someone else's nails, the work is repetitive, and it isn't a fun party every day while you amass untold riches? Look, I get being dissatisfied. Humans love looking at that greener grass on the other side of things fence. But appreciate what you have. Seriously.
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  A lot of the loudest voices in tech are people who appear to be rapturously happy and fulfilled working 10-12 hour days. It's easy for young people to get the message that good coders love working all the time, with the obvious corollary that if you don't feel that way, you're not a good coder. It's not an accident--spreading that idea makes it easier to buffalo people into the ruinously long hours that some parts of the industry are infamous for. It's important to cut through the 10x rockstar ninja buzzword bullshit and remind people--especially young people--that most coders are working for the weekend just like anyone else.
  - zzalpha 11y ago
    This, right here, is a brilliant comment. The pop culture obsession with the valley tech industry, and the resulting insane expectations folks hold when entering the industry, is a disservice to us all. I love the work I do. It's not life changing. It's not going to make me rich in money or in spirit. It's a cushy lifestyle job that gives me the time and monetary freedom to do the other things I'm passionate about. But that doesn't align with the fantasy of the valley, or frankly, the American protestant work ethic.
- dikdik 11y ago
  This is a horrible comment. There is 100x more to a career than living a comfortable existence. Personally, I want to feel purposeful at work and that I am contributing to a better world. I also absolutely require regular challenges or I end up severely depressed. Also, I have undertaken extensive education partially as a way of raising my standard of living and having a more enjoyable life outside of work. THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE! Yea, it's not always going to be a party, but there's a hell of a lot more to it than sitting in air conditioning. And you're allowed to demand a hell of a lot out of your career as long as you are willing to put in the work to get it. My search for a challenging and intrinsically and extrinsically rewarding career brought me to study the life sciences. Then I ended up in a healthcare company doing menial crap and then a graduate degree in bioinformatics. I'm looking through job-ad after job-ad, and while the occasional one looks challenging I am absolutely terrified that I am going to end up as a desk-monkey who doesn't interact with people and again gets no challenges. I hope I am wrong and I can make this career work for me, but I am already looking at applying to medical school in a year if can't find a challenging and decently rewarding job in bioinfo. Sucks, because I had originally intended on being a doctor when I was in undergrad but went in another direction because I wasn't 100% sure about it at the time. Unfortunately, I am 100% sure I do not enjoy being a desk jockey.
sumedh 11y ago
> Your time and effort is going towards making someone else rich You are free to start your own business and get rich except it's not so easy, very few people can do it.
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  Unless you're rich to start with then you'll still end up making either your investors or your landlord rich. Do it right and you get rich too. But then you're often still perpetuating the system by then employing people who work making you rich. Start a cooperative, forget about being rich and seek the fulfillment of all its members.
  - sumedh 11y ago
    You know this cooperative(aka socialism :) sounds good on paper but it does not work most of the time in real life. If someone takes a risk to build something valuable, he/she deserves to get rich.
    - 1stop 11y ago
      Paying people the same value they contribute is not socialism. It's called: Being a good person. Capitalism seems to have made us all think it's completely okay to exploit someone else's surplus labour. How is the risk the founder takes that different to Employee #1's? Their payout is usually vastly different, but their contribution not so much.
      - sumedh 11y ago
        You misunderstood me, I am not saying you should exploit your workers, pay them fair wage. What I am saying is that founder who took the risk should enjoy the fruits. > How is the risk the founder takes that different to Employee #1's? Employee #1 will probably be getting a salary, if the company fails he can get a job somewhere else. Meanwhile the founders who worked on the idea probably used their savings initially not to mention quitting their jobs and working on the idea and facing humiliation if the company fails. That takes courage which everyone cannot do which is why founders deserve to get rich if they build something valuable, employees not so much unless they are willing to stick it out till the end.
shubhamjain 11y ago
> Your time and effort is going towards making someone else rich I don't mean to harsh but I don't understand this sentiment. Will any serious company exist if everyone thought like this? Why would a builder put another brick if he thought he is getting paid very less compared to million dollar building he is creating? Will any sales guy put so much of effort if he thought he is getting minisicule % of what he is selling?
- beatpanda 11y ago
  Yes, lots of serious companies would (and do) exist; they're called worker-owned cooperatives, wherein all members of a firm share the risk and reward/of running the business, instead of one or two individuals paying themselves an arbitrary "risk premium" that workers have no say over.
dagw 11y ago
Its depressing to make comparisons, but 99.9% of developers will never make half of what a specialized MD or successful lawyer or someone in finance might make. What percentage of people with law or finance degrees to you think actually make what you seem to think people with law or finance degrees make?
- verbify 11y ago
  Not to mention that by being a developer, I started earning money in my early 20's, without hefty university debt. Less risk (plenty people study for the bar and fail) and upfront costs. There's also less chance of getting a casual 9-5 environment in finance.
  - JBReefer 11y ago
    I'm having a tough time finding it, but there was a really good article that analyzed median performance of law school grads and found that, if law school was a security, it would be below a junk rated bond.
- raverbashing 11y ago
  How many would be specialized MDs dropped out during the course/residency? I'm sure something similar happens to top finance positions. Also, developers have a nice chance of making it big by either starting up or getting equity.
  - scalesolved 11y ago
    Nice chance is overstating it by a HUGE amount on the 'making it big part', yes quite a few developers in the start up world can get equity, the former rarely happens.
- ac166 11y ago
  In fairness, I work in the U.K. and most of my friends that I went to uni with, now in Law or Finance (including PAs) make more than I do.
lucaspiller 11y ago
> End of the day though, work is boring. Its always work. Your time and effort is going towards making someone else rich and their priorities are more important than your own. I feel exactly the same. I've been in the game for nearly 8 years now, and it doesn't get any better. At the end of the day, as you say work is work, I don't think I would feel any better working in another career. I like programming, I just don't really like working as a programmer :D For the last two years I've been contracting which helps as I get to pick and choose projects a bit more, and if I get bored, contracts are only usually a couple months at a time so it's easy to get out ("I can't renew, I've already got another contract"). I'm focussing on saving to buy a small property outright with no mortgage, so once I am living there my living expenses will be greatly reduced and I'll have more freedom to explore my interests outside of work.
abalashov 11y ago
On average, the people really are incredibly boring, especially at large companies. I wrote a post recently that is tangentially related to this. Don't want to shamelessly plug myself, but I think you might enjoy it: http://likewise.am/2016/01/22/more-lessons-from-my-twenties-on-the-travails-of-an-amateur-literator-in-tech/ http://likewise.am/2016/01/22/more-lessons-from-my-twenties-...
yourapostasy 11y ago
If you miss excitement, social connection, and orders of magnitude higher compensation cap in your life, while you still like coding, then I suggest you consider sales. Not just technical sales (though that gets your foot in the door), but eventually landing strategic sales accounts. It is pretty thrilling cold-calling people to establish your bona fides with a new customer; only a tiny fraction of the population finds it and public speaking (which you will also be called upon to perform in sales) not paralysis-inducing terrifying. You have to genuinely like people and be interested in them to really excel at sales. At the high-end of sales, where you lead sales organizations, sales-metric-based compensation plans will easily exceed that of nearly all programmers save the ones exiting unicorns with founder-level equity positions intact. You are constantly learning both technical and non-technical subject matter. There are grind-y parts, sure (every job has that), but I've never seen in sales the kind of grind programmers routinely endure. Once you establish a successful sales record, you wield enormous influence upon product direction and implementation. If you keep your coding chops up to that point, then it is not inconceivable for you to be able to throw your weight around and pick and choose both what to code and actually implement it. Of course, if you aren't good at coding, then the engineering lead will continue to hate your guts. They will all hate your guts at first regardless of your skill level and ability to smoothly work with their teams, but if you are really, really good you can earn the respect of most after awhile. Very good sales people who are still top 20% coders are an extremely rare combination. It would be difficult NOT to stand out in the crowd. That's good and bad. The Great Filter in my suggestion is getting out and meeting people trying to connect with them. There are lots and lots of programmers, even "brogrammer"-types, who claim they are very extroverted, etc., who I find will freeze when faced with a list of contacts or a room of strangers and tasked with establishing connections. The vast majority of people, extroverted programmers included, are extroverted with people they know; it's human nature. Of those who can manage to overcome that nature, even fewer will come back with a systematic collection of facts and data about their contacts that you can work with as the start of a sales funnel. Of THAT population, even fewer will actually follow through the sales funnel. Out of THAT, anyone who can continue following up prospects and re-running them through a sales funnel under different campaigns is a unicorn. This is why sales is often broken up into pieces and parceled out to different people. But programmers possess a systems-thinking background that uniquely positions them to excel at sales if their personality really fits it.
anthonybsd 11y ago
>Even compensation wise, it peaks very early and probably won't get most rich without a ton of luck. Its depressing to make comparisons, but 99.9% of developers will never make half of what a specialized MD or successful lawyer or someone in finance might make. Software engineers in Finance can make a pretty good living though. Definitely not as high as specialized MD or M&A specialists, but rivaling some successful lawyers for sure. Then again even for people with top business degrees M&A is a top tier which takes quite a bit of luck to get into. My 2c.
gizi 11y ago
> but 99.9% of developers will never make half of what a specialized MD or successful lawyer or someone in finance might make. It is exactly the other way around. Mark Zuckerberg is a PHP programmer, not an MD or a lawyer. Same for Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and another host of lesser known billionaires and millionaires. In other words, an MD or a lawyer could impossible make what a successful programmer might make.
- ryandrake 11y ago
  You're talking about the 0.1% of programmers who became millionaires and billionaires. The parent comment was specifically about the other 99.9% (and he/she even specified the number).
hibikir 11y ago
You are less than 3 years into your career, and you think you have worked for some of the best companies, and yet you are unhappy. How do you know you have worked for some of the best for you? You are going by names. My guess is that you are talking about hot valley companies, and guess what? In those, someone with little experience will not get to work on anything fun, because they have enough talent that almost everyone is batting below their weight. You see similar things in startups where there is no challenging technical component to the business: If all you need to do is scale an app that is just a bunch of forms, then guess what? it will be boring. Go work at a company that is doing science instead, and then tell me it's boring. You complain about compensation peaking early, as if that's a bad thing. In the US, 300K is not insane for senior devs, and that doesn't count miraculous exits. Many doctors don't make that, and they had to pay for a lot more education, and handle the terrible life of the resident before they can get to real money: And let's not forget, the top of the market for doctors involves getting your own practice. How long does it take to save the money, and have the name, for the practice to be that profitable? There are a lot of people with law degrees that wish that, at 45, they made the money that anyone with a breath makes in SV when they are 22. I have seen finance: You don't have a life when you work for a big hedge fund. Not even close. And let's not forget, you don't have to live in San Francisco to get paid very well writing software. I have a 4 bedroom house that is worth about 200K. I work from home. It's not hard to amass major savings when you don't have a $5000/mo mortgage. And if I am sick of the place, I can spend a month working from Puerto Rico, or an island in Georgia, go to conferences in Europe. How many doctors can say that? How many lawyers? And I am no early googler: I have never made a dime in equity. As far as people being boring: Different people have different ideas of boring. For instance, I find the classic "I work in software, but look at my unique outdoorsy activity" profiles that most of SV seems to follow to be very boring. Yes, you can enjoy your rock climbing, or your kayaking, or whatever else you do, but it's not something that is really any fun to hear about: People with different activities like that just get to vomit information onto the other. At the same time, many people find the things I do, like reading literature, history and philosophy, to be boring as hell. There's nothing wrong with that. Also, in America, we hide the things that might make us interesting, different from the crowd. When instead of belonging, we try to fit in, we do what everyone else does. For someone to be really interesting, they have to be different. To be different is to take personal risks of being disliked, because what will make you interesting for one person will make you a weirdo to another. In my experience, the more you get to know about someone, the less boring they are, precisely because of all the little things that we couldn't see before, when all they were to us was a role at a company and some clothes.
nilkn 11y ago
Why do you think most developers should be paid similarly to a highly specialized doctor? First of all, you might be thinking of doctors like neurosurgeons. Less than 1% of practicing physicians in the US are neurosurgeons, and some neurosurgeons make as little as $250k (often ones with special academic appointments). Not all of them make $1M/year or even $700k/year. Second of all, you might in general be overestimating doctor compensation. See this report: http://www.medscape.com/features/slideshow/compensation/2015/public/overview#page=2 http://www.medscape.com/features/slideshow/compensation/2015... Primary care doctors earned an average of $195k in total compensation. Half that is $97.5k. There are many developers who make more than that -- certainly far more than .1% of developers. That is, in fact, the median pay for software developers: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Computer-and-Information-Technology/Software-developers.htm http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Computer-and-Information-Technology/S... Granted, you did say specialized doctor, and we see from the MedScape report that they make $280k on average. Half of that is only $140k. There are fresh college graduates who make more than that in total compensation. I've even known relatively new developers making $250k once bonuses and vesting stocks are taken into account. Either way, $140k in total pay is not uncommon at all for an experienced senior developer. Again, certainly far more than .1% of developers are in that income bracket. Finally, and perhaps more importantly, I think you might underestimate the difficulty of becoming a specialized doctor. It's certainly much harder than becoming an average programmer. The educational requirements are vastly higher and more rigorous. The debt load is in the six figures for all but children of the rich. And the time investment is at minimum 11 years (4 undergrad + 4 medical school + minimum of 3 residency). But since we're talking about specialized MDs, the residency will actually be longer than that, as long as 7 years for a neurosurgeon, plus an extra 2-3 for a fellowship if desired. After all that, the doctor will potentially work twice as much as the programmer. It's not fair to compare the average heart surgeon to the average programer, because the heart surgeon is by definition vastly above average among doctors in both education, grades, and pay. It would really only be fair to compare the heart surgeon to, say, a senior engineer at Google (or similar), where a total compensation exceeding $250k is common. As for lawyers, many law school graduates I know don't even have a job. The days are long gone where a law degree was automatically a golden ticket. It's certainly true that the top lawyers make a large amount of money, but becoming a partner (say) at a large firm is just not comparable to becoming a programmer. These days, it's like winning the lottery.
kendallpark 11y ago
> Even compensation wise, it peaks very early and probably won't get most rich without a ton of luck. Its depressing to make comparisons, but 99.9% of developers will never make half of what a specialized MD or successful lawyer or someone in finance might make. Granted, the barrier to entry is much lower in CS (sometimes nearly nonexistent depending on the line of work). Med student here. Programmers don't have to take out 200K in loans. Also, when you do something like medicine, you're basically giving up a DECADE of you life before you actually start making the big bucks. Residents make less than the average programmer. Med students make negative $$. Debt compounds. But seriously, if that's what you want, stop romanticizing and just do it. Though I have to say, do law school. Doctors that became doctors for the prestige and money are really the worst.
- id 11y ago
  There a many countries where you don't have to borrow a single cent to study medicine. Instead, you even get paid a small support every month.
  - kendallpark 11y ago
    That's true. I have heard that in these countries the docs typically don't get paid as much, though I don't have a source for this.
    - id 11y ago
      That's somewhat true, but they are free to go wherever they want to.
ryandrake 11y ago
Thank you for pointing out the fact that software compensation peaks early, and you pretty much hit a ceiling unless you win the startup lottery. A lot of people see the early money and forget this. As a software developer, 20 years into your career, your buddies that majored in finance, marketing or anything else, really, will likely have eclipsed you in terms of compensation, as they'll be senior directors of this or vice presidents of that.
- varjag 11y ago
  There's not enough director or VP positions in the world for every buddy out there.
  - ryandrake 11y ago
    Tell that to my buddies :-)

onion2k 11y ago

Its depressing to make comparisons, but 99.9% of developers will never make half of what a specialized MD or successful lawyer or someone in finance might make. Why not make a much less depressing comparison and compare developer wages to manual labourers or retail staff? Compare a typical developer to a typical retail worker and we get way more money for way less stress. We're not at the top end of the scale, but we are nowhere near the bottom either. We get to sit in comfortable offices, working on interesting projects (mostly), building things that make a difference to people, without getting dirty or abused by the public, and we're pretty well paid for it on the whole. And there's always the possibility that we might hit on an idea that returns literally billions of dollars. Or work for someone else who had that idea and walk away with literally hundreds of millions of dollars. Most people don't have that sort of opportunity. I've been a professional developer for over 20 years, and I've enjoyed most of it. It afforded me the opportunity to do my own startup for a while, and when that failed it was easy to get back in to work with a job that pays quite well. I certainly wouldn't want to do anything else.

sdgsfsfgfg 11y ago
But the thing is I could have been an MD, lawyer or someone in finance - these things were well within my reach. But I was sold a false dream and now I am stuck in misery.
- rifung 11y ago
  Why not just switch? Is it too late? You can always take out loans if it's money; that's what most people would have to do anyway I imagine.
- endzone 11y ago
  working conditions in all of those industries are terrible compared to almost all software jobs. and the work in finance and law is tedious. you're dreaming.
timwaagh 11y ago
its not a good comparison since retail takes absolutely sero education or brains.
- gedrap 11y ago
  While I see your point (and I agree a bit), it's not exactly fair to put it this way. There are many people working in these industries who didn't have much opportunity to get decent education, etc. For example, my parents. They are from rural areas from Soviet Union, where getting higher education was not something that goes by default as it is now (which might not be a great thing given the number of people with worthless law/business management degrees from the bottom 10% of universities... oh well). Obviously, there's a segment of people who didn't give a crap and held an attitude that education is for losers / nerds (before the word 'nerd' was cool) and I don't have much for them sympathy. So it's not fair to just disrespect everyone working in the retail as 'zero brains'.
  - timwaagh 11y ago
    I'm saying the job requires zero brains or education. I did not mean to imply people who work in retail have no brains or even less than average. in my country it's not really a legit career choice. it's mostly high school kids or people under 23 who do it as it's compensated below adult minimum wage. after a certain age you either get promoted or fired.

zzalpha 11y ago

Uhh... I have to ask: what, exactly, were you expecting? Exhilarating highs and a path to millions? It's a job. Most people don't have jobs that'll make them "rich". Be glad you aren't living paycheck to paycheck, or worse, are unemployed because the job you had was optimized away with computers. To be blunt, there's a sense of entitlement evident, here, that I have trouble grokking. You get to spend all day in a comfortable office working with no more than your hands and brain making double to triple what a day labourer pulls in with a hell of a lot more effort. And your complaints are, what, you have to hammer someone else's nails, the work is repetitive, and it isn't a fun party every day while you amass untold riches? Look, I get being dissatisfied. Humans love looking at that greener grass on the other side of things fence. But appreciate what you have. Seriously.

PhasmaFelis 11y ago
A lot of the loudest voices in tech are people who appear to be rapturously happy and fulfilled working 10-12 hour days. It's easy for young people to get the message that good coders love working all the time, with the obvious corollary that if you don't feel that way, you're not a good coder. It's not an accident--spreading that idea makes it easier to buffalo people into the ruinously long hours that some parts of the industry are infamous for. It's important to cut through the 10x rockstar ninja buzzword bullshit and remind people--especially young people--that most coders are working for the weekend just like anyone else.
- zzalpha 11y ago
  This, right here, is a brilliant comment. The pop culture obsession with the valley tech industry, and the resulting insane expectations folks hold when entering the industry, is a disservice to us all. I love the work I do. It's not life changing. It's not going to make me rich in money or in spirit. It's a cushy lifestyle job that gives me the time and monetary freedom to do the other things I'm passionate about. But that doesn't align with the fantasy of the valley, or frankly, the American protestant work ethic.
dikdik 11y ago
This is a horrible comment. There is 100x more to a career than living a comfortable existence. Personally, I want to feel purposeful at work and that I am contributing to a better world. I also absolutely require regular challenges or I end up severely depressed. Also, I have undertaken extensive education partially as a way of raising my standard of living and having a more enjoyable life outside of work. THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE! Yea, it's not always going to be a party, but there's a hell of a lot more to it than sitting in air conditioning. And you're allowed to demand a hell of a lot out of your career as long as you are willing to put in the work to get it. My search for a challenging and intrinsically and extrinsically rewarding career brought me to study the life sciences. Then I ended up in a healthcare company doing menial crap and then a graduate degree in bioinformatics. I'm looking through job-ad after job-ad, and while the occasional one looks challenging I am absolutely terrified that I am going to end up as a desk-monkey who doesn't interact with people and again gets no challenges. I hope I am wrong and I can make this career work for me, but I am already looking at applying to medical school in a year if can't find a challenging and decently rewarding job in bioinfo. Sucks, because I had originally intended on being a doctor when I was in undergrad but went in another direction because I wasn't 100% sure about it at the time. Unfortunately, I am 100% sure I do not enjoy being a desk jockey.

sumedh 11y ago

> Your time and effort is going towards making someone else rich You are free to start your own business and get rich except it's not so easy, very few people can do it.

pbhjpbhj 11y ago
Unless you're rich to start with then you'll still end up making either your investors or your landlord rich. Do it right and you get rich too. But then you're often still perpetuating the system by then employing people who work making you rich. Start a cooperative, forget about being rich and seek the fulfillment of all its members.
- sumedh 11y ago
  You know this cooperative(aka socialism :) sounds good on paper but it does not work most of the time in real life. If someone takes a risk to build something valuable, he/she deserves to get rich.
  - 1stop 11y ago
    Paying people the same value they contribute is not socialism. It's called: Being a good person. Capitalism seems to have made us all think it's completely okay to exploit someone else's surplus labour. How is the risk the founder takes that different to Employee #1's? Their payout is usually vastly different, but their contribution not so much.
    - sumedh 11y ago
      You misunderstood me, I am not saying you should exploit your workers, pay them fair wage. What I am saying is that founder who took the risk should enjoy the fruits. > How is the risk the founder takes that different to Employee #1's? Employee #1 will probably be getting a salary, if the company fails he can get a job somewhere else. Meanwhile the founders who worked on the idea probably used their savings initially not to mention quitting their jobs and working on the idea and facing humiliation if the company fails. That takes courage which everyone cannot do which is why founders deserve to get rich if they build something valuable, employees not so much unless they are willing to stick it out till the end.

shubhamjain 11y ago

> Your time and effort is going towards making someone else rich I don't mean to harsh but I don't understand this sentiment. Will any serious company exist if everyone thought like this? Why would a builder put another brick if he thought he is getting paid very less compared to million dollar building he is creating? Will any sales guy put so much of effort if he thought he is getting minisicule % of what he is selling?

beatpanda 11y ago
Yes, lots of serious companies would (and do) exist; they're called worker-owned cooperatives, wherein all members of a firm share the risk and reward/of running the business, instead of one or two individuals paying themselves an arbitrary "risk premium" that workers have no say over.

dagw 11y ago

Its depressing to make comparisons, but 99.9% of developers will never make half of what a specialized MD or successful lawyer or someone in finance might make. What percentage of people with law or finance degrees to you think actually make what you seem to think people with law or finance degrees make?

verbify 11y ago
Not to mention that by being a developer, I started earning money in my early 20's, without hefty university debt. Less risk (plenty people study for the bar and fail) and upfront costs. There's also less chance of getting a casual 9-5 environment in finance.
- JBReefer 11y ago
  I'm having a tough time finding it, but there was a really good article that analyzed median performance of law school grads and found that, if law school was a security, it would be below a junk rated bond.
raverbashing 11y ago
How many would be specialized MDs dropped out during the course/residency? I'm sure something similar happens to top finance positions. Also, developers have a nice chance of making it big by either starting up or getting equity.
- scalesolved 11y ago
  Nice chance is overstating it by a HUGE amount on the 'making it big part', yes quite a few developers in the start up world can get equity, the former rarely happens.
ac166 11y ago
In fairness, I work in the U.K. and most of my friends that I went to uni with, now in Law or Finance (including PAs) make more than I do.

lucaspiller 11y ago

> End of the day though, work is boring. Its always work. Your time and effort is going towards making someone else rich and their priorities are more important than your own. I feel exactly the same. I've been in the game for nearly 8 years now, and it doesn't get any better. At the end of the day, as you say work is work, I don't think I would feel any better working in another career. I like programming, I just don't really like working as a programmer :D For the last two years I've been contracting which helps as I get to pick and choose projects a bit more, and if I get bored, contracts are only usually a couple months at a time so it's easy to get out ("I can't renew, I've already got another contract"). I'm focussing on saving to buy a small property outright with no mortgage, so once I am living there my living expenses will be greatly reduced and I'll have more freedom to explore my interests outside of work.

abalashov 11y ago

On average, the people really are incredibly boring, especially at large companies. I wrote a post recently that is tangentially related to this. Don't want to shamelessly plug myself, but I think you might enjoy it: http://likewise.am/2016/01/22/more-lessons-from-my-twenties-on-the-travails-of-an-amateur-literator-in-tech/ http://likewise.am/2016/01/22/more-lessons-from-my-twenties-...

yourapostasy 11y ago

If you miss excitement, social connection, and orders of magnitude higher compensation cap in your life, while you still like coding, then I suggest you consider sales. Not just technical sales (though that gets your foot in the door), but eventually landing strategic sales accounts. It is pretty thrilling cold-calling people to establish your bona fides with a new customer; only a tiny fraction of the population finds it and public speaking (which you will also be called upon to perform in sales) not paralysis-inducing terrifying. You have to genuinely like people and be interested in them to really excel at sales. At the high-end of sales, where you lead sales organizations, sales-metric-based compensation plans will easily exceed that of nearly all programmers save the ones exiting unicorns with founder-level equity positions intact. You are constantly learning both technical and non-technical subject matter. There are grind-y parts, sure (every job has that), but I've never seen in sales the kind of grind programmers routinely endure. Once you establish a successful sales record, you wield enormous influence upon product direction and implementation. If you keep your coding chops up to that point, then it is not inconceivable for you to be able to throw your weight around and pick and choose both what to code and actually implement it. Of course, if you aren't good at coding, then the engineering lead will continue to hate your guts. They will all hate your guts at first regardless of your skill level and ability to smoothly work with their teams, but if you are really, really good you can earn the respect of most after awhile. Very good sales people who are still top 20% coders are an extremely rare combination. It would be difficult NOT to stand out in the crowd. That's good and bad. The Great Filter in my suggestion is getting out and meeting people trying to connect with them. There are lots and lots of programmers, even "brogrammer"-types, who claim they are very extroverted, etc., who I find will freeze when faced with a list of contacts or a room of strangers and tasked with establishing connections. The vast majority of people, extroverted programmers included, are extroverted with people they know; it's human nature. Of those who can manage to overcome that nature, even fewer will come back with a systematic collection of facts and data about their contacts that you can work with as the start of a sales funnel. Of THAT population, even fewer will actually follow through the sales funnel. Out of THAT, anyone who can continue following up prospects and re-running them through a sales funnel under different campaigns is a unicorn. This is why sales is often broken up into pieces and parceled out to different people. But programmers possess a systems-thinking background that uniquely positions them to excel at sales if their personality really fits it.

anthonybsd 11y ago

gizi 11y ago

> but 99.9% of developers will never make half of what a specialized MD or successful lawyer or someone in finance might make. It is exactly the other way around. Mark Zuckerberg is a PHP programmer, not an MD or a lawyer. Same for Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and another host of lesser known billionaires and millionaires. In other words, an MD or a lawyer could impossible make what a successful programmer might make.

ryandrake 11y ago
You're talking about the 0.1% of programmers who became millionaires and billionaires. The parent comment was specifically about the other 99.9% (and he/she even specified the number).

hibikir 11y ago

You are less than 3 years into your career, and you think you have worked for some of the best companies, and yet you are unhappy. How do you know you have worked for some of the best for you? You are going by names. My guess is that you are talking about hot valley companies, and guess what? In those, someone with little experience will not get to work on anything fun, because they have enough talent that almost everyone is batting below their weight. You see similar things in startups where there is no challenging technical component to the business: If all you need to do is scale an app that is just a bunch of forms, then guess what? it will be boring. Go work at a company that is doing science instead, and then tell me it's boring. You complain about compensation peaking early, as if that's a bad thing. In the US, 300K is not insane for senior devs, and that doesn't count miraculous exits. Many doctors don't make that, and they had to pay for a lot more education, and handle the terrible life of the resident before they can get to real money: And let's not forget, the top of the market for doctors involves getting your own practice. How long does it take to save the money, and have the name, for the practice to be that profitable? There are a lot of people with law degrees that wish that, at 45, they made the money that anyone with a breath makes in SV when they are 22. I have seen finance: You don't have a life when you work for a big hedge fund. Not even close. And let's not forget, you don't have to live in San Francisco to get paid very well writing software. I have a 4 bedroom house that is worth about 200K. I work from home. It's not hard to amass major savings when you don't have a $5000/mo mortgage. And if I am sick of the place, I can spend a month working from Puerto Rico, or an island in Georgia, go to conferences in Europe. How many doctors can say that? How many lawyers? And I am no early googler: I have never made a dime in equity. As far as people being boring: Different people have different ideas of boring. For instance, I find the classic "I work in software, but look at my unique outdoorsy activity" profiles that most of SV seems to follow to be very boring. Yes, you can enjoy your rock climbing, or your kayaking, or whatever else you do, but it's not something that is really any fun to hear about: People with different activities like that just get to vomit information onto the other. At the same time, many people find the things I do, like reading literature, history and philosophy, to be boring as hell. There's nothing wrong with that. Also, in America, we hide the things that might make us interesting, different from the crowd. When instead of belonging, we try to fit in, we do what everyone else does. For someone to be really interesting, they have to be different. To be different is to take personal risks of being disliked, because what will make you interesting for one person will make you a weirdo to another. In my experience, the more you get to know about someone, the less boring they are, precisely because of all the little things that we couldn't see before, when all they were to us was a role at a company and some clothes.

nilkn 11y ago

Why do you think most developers should be paid similarly to a highly specialized doctor? First of all, you might be thinking of doctors like neurosurgeons. Less than 1% of practicing physicians in the US are neurosurgeons, and some neurosurgeons make as little as $250k (often ones with special academic appointments). Not all of them make $1M/year or even $700k/year. Second of all, you might in general be overestimating doctor compensation. See this report: http://www.medscape.com/features/slideshow/compensation/2015/public/overview#page=2 http://www.medscape.com/features/slideshow/compensation/2015... Primary care doctors earned an average of $195k in total compensation. Half that is $97.5k. There are many developers who make more than that -- certainly far more than .1% of developers. That is, in fact, the median pay for software developers: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Computer-and-Information-Technology/Software-developers.htm http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Computer-and-Information-Technology/S... Granted, you did say specialized doctor, and we see from the MedScape report that they make $280k on average. Half of that is only $140k. There are fresh college graduates who make more than that in total compensation. I've even known relatively new developers making $250k once bonuses and vesting stocks are taken into account. Either way, $140k in total pay is not uncommon at all for an experienced senior developer. Again, certainly far more than .1% of developers are in that income bracket. Finally, and perhaps more importantly, I think you might underestimate the difficulty of becoming a specialized doctor. It's certainly much harder than becoming an average programmer. The educational requirements are vastly higher and more rigorous. The debt load is in the six figures for all but children of the rich. And the time investment is at minimum 11 years (4 undergrad + 4 medical school + minimum of 3 residency). But since we're talking about specialized MDs, the residency will actually be longer than that, as long as 7 years for a neurosurgeon, plus an extra 2-3 for a fellowship if desired. After all that, the doctor will potentially work twice as much as the programmer. It's not fair to compare the average heart surgeon to the average programer, because the heart surgeon is by definition vastly above average among doctors in both education, grades, and pay. It would really only be fair to compare the heart surgeon to, say, a senior engineer at Google (or similar), where a total compensation exceeding $250k is common. As for lawyers, many law school graduates I know don't even have a job. The days are long gone where a law degree was automatically a golden ticket. It's certainly true that the top lawyers make a large amount of money, but becoming a partner (say) at a large firm is just not comparable to becoming a programmer. These days, it's like winning the lottery.

kendallpark 11y ago

> Even compensation wise, it peaks very early and probably won't get most rich without a ton of luck. Its depressing to make comparisons, but 99.9% of developers will never make half of what a specialized MD or successful lawyer or someone in finance might make. Granted, the barrier to entry is much lower in CS (sometimes nearly nonexistent depending on the line of work). Med student here. Programmers don't have to take out 200K in loans. Also, when you do something like medicine, you're basically giving up a DECADE of you life before you actually start making the big bucks. Residents make less than the average programmer. Med students make negative $$. Debt compounds. But seriously, if that's what you want, stop romanticizing and just do it. Though I have to say, do law school. Doctors that became doctors for the prestige and money are really the worst.

id 11y ago
There a many countries where you don't have to borrow a single cent to study medicine. Instead, you even get paid a small support every month.
- kendallpark 11y ago
  That's true. I have heard that in these countries the docs typically don't get paid as much, though I don't have a source for this.
  - id 11y ago
    That's somewhat true, but they are free to go wherever they want to.

ryandrake 11y ago

Thank you for pointing out the fact that software compensation peaks early, and you pretty much hit a ceiling unless you win the startup lottery. A lot of people see the early money and forget this. As a software developer, 20 years into your career, your buddies that majored in finance, marketing or anything else, really, will likely have eclipsed you in terms of compensation, as they'll be senior directors of this or vice presidents of that.

varjag 11y ago
There's not enough director or VP positions in the world for every buddy out there.
- ryandrake 11y ago
  Tell that to my buddies :-)