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This. I keep bugging my friends and relatives to learn programming - I make way more than the local average, and I work from home, whenever I want. I don't tell

This. I keep bugging my friends and relatives to learn programming - I make way more than the local average, and I work from home, whenever I want. I don't tell them about it because I want to brag; I do it because, to quote Miles Vorkosigan, "if I can do it, you can do it". I want them to do better, they're my friends.

adrusi 11y ago
The point is that they're definition of "doing better" isn't necessarily the same as yours. Maybe their idea of a good job isn't one that pays well and allows a flexible schedule, it's one that's low stress: they show up, go through the straightforward motions that they do every day, and go home. If they're interested in something intellectually stimulating, they prefer to do it on their own time, without the risk of your entire income relying on it. That's just one example. It's natural to want your loved ones to be successful, and it's human to assume that your notion of success is universal, but it's wise to realize that it's not. That said, it wouldn't be at all surprising if your friends would be better off if they got a job more like yours. The goals of high income and flexible schedule are quite popular.
- mdpopescu 11y ago
  Yeah... it's not that they like their current job (the people I talk to mostly don't). It's that they seem to have this fixation with "it's too difficult"... my brother helps drug addict teenagers and he thinks programming is too difficult! It's driving me nuts.
  - codeisawesome 11y ago
    The mystique of "impossible" difficulty is a curious phenomenon of human thought. I am a programmer and I love to code. I definitely think creating Stock Market trading algorithms is difficult. In the absence of conscious exertion of the will to have faith in myself, I can easily slip down the slope of believing it to be impossible. Perhaps, "it's impossible" is used as a shorthand by people to state "it's impossible for me to expend the energy learning to do that". Perhaps what your brother is really trying to say is: "I think programming is going to take too much of my time and energy spent in acquiring the skill to do competently and professionally. This time and energy is better spent in analysing and helping heal the emotional landscapes of troubled young humans - because that is what appeals to my value system stronger. I wish you luck." I believe this is actually more benign and respectable than the people who think they are rockstar coders but commit toxic-waste laden mud into git repositories sometimes :-) Much respect to your brother and everyone else who follows their passion instead of what popular opinion or the media tells them is the "best thing" to do.
dinkumthinkum 11y ago
It's a little confusing view about bugging them to learn programming and you mention making more. Lately on HN, the general view of our community seems to programming is a fairly low rent blue collar position and all the salaries will be driven down to the third; it's weird fore to see that and also the "everybodyish should learn to program" view. In a way, it kind of speaks to this glorification of work in this article .... what's really the point engrossing one's self, in very unhealthy way by looks of the sons of these comments, a "professional" and complex field when it is barreling toward a "blue collar" status ? If that's even the case, I dunno.
- nostrademons 11y ago
  Programming is not by any means a "fairly low rent blue-collar position". It has a very odd wage curve, though, where the vast majority of your salary increases will come in the first 5 years of your career, and the technologies that you became an expert in will be obsolete within 5-10 years. If you don't retrain, you'll be very much obsolete. That's behind most of the complaints on Hacker News; these were people who tasted glory once, and then fell off the technology curve into irrelevance and don't want to hop back on it. Any profession where you can make $300-400K/year as an employee with ~5 years of experience, or over half a million as a consultant, would be considered fantastically lucrative by most of the world.
  - hiram112 11y ago
    These $300k+ salaries you speak of are no more common than any other field where maybe 1/1000 makes this. HN is quite heavy with Silicon Valley coders at Google, Facebook, etc. The 99.9% of the rest of developers are making $90k in the Midwest up to $150k in high cost areas on the coasts. Yes this is certainly better than most other jobs, but considering a developer will hit the inflation rate raises by about 30, while other professions like doctors and lawyers tend to continue seeing large raises, I really don't feel software is a great gig, all things considered. Mid thirties and I'm already seeing my first decades's go-to languages and frameworks becoming obsolete (Java, MVC, single RDMS, etc). Taking the massive amount of time to learn the new ones will not increase my pay one bit, but just give me another few years of employment. It was great at 28 making $90k while most my peers were still in grad school and / or making $40k in crappy positions. But now a lot them are getting into mgmt, making partner, have a good book of customers, and have caught up. Even a few Fed and state workers I know with liberal arts degrees are hitting six figures with the gov't, along with job stability, pensions, and guaranteed raises. Meanwhile we get more H1Bs and offshoring.

adrusi 11y ago

The point is that they're definition of "doing better" isn't necessarily the same as yours. Maybe their idea of a good job isn't one that pays well and allows a flexible schedule, it's one that's low stress: they show up, go through the straightforward motions that they do every day, and go home. If they're interested in something intellectually stimulating, they prefer to do it on their own time, without the risk of your entire income relying on it. That's just one example. It's natural to want your loved ones to be successful, and it's human to assume that your notion of success is universal, but it's wise to realize that it's not. That said, it wouldn't be at all surprising if your friends would be better off if they got a job more like yours. The goals of high income and flexible schedule are quite popular.

mdpopescu 11y ago
Yeah... it's not that they like their current job (the people I talk to mostly don't). It's that they seem to have this fixation with "it's too difficult"... my brother helps drug addict teenagers and he thinks programming is too difficult! It's driving me nuts.
- codeisawesome 11y ago
  The mystique of "impossible" difficulty is a curious phenomenon of human thought. I am a programmer and I love to code. I definitely think creating Stock Market trading algorithms is difficult. In the absence of conscious exertion of the will to have faith in myself, I can easily slip down the slope of believing it to be impossible. Perhaps, "it's impossible" is used as a shorthand by people to state "it's impossible for me to expend the energy learning to do that". Perhaps what your brother is really trying to say is: "I think programming is going to take too much of my time and energy spent in acquiring the skill to do competently and professionally. This time and energy is better spent in analysing and helping heal the emotional landscapes of troubled young humans - because that is what appeals to my value system stronger. I wish you luck." I believe this is actually more benign and respectable than the people who think they are rockstar coders but commit toxic-waste laden mud into git repositories sometimes :-) Much respect to your brother and everyone else who follows their passion instead of what popular opinion or the media tells them is the "best thing" to do.

dinkumthinkum 11y ago

It's a little confusing view about bugging them to learn programming and you mention making more. Lately on HN, the general view of our community seems to programming is a fairly low rent blue collar position and all the salaries will be driven down to the third; it's weird fore to see that and also the "everybodyish should learn to program" view. In a way, it kind of speaks to this glorification of work in this article .... what's really the point engrossing one's self, in very unhealthy way by looks of the sons of these comments, a "professional" and complex field when it is barreling toward a "blue collar" status ? If that's even the case, I dunno.

nostrademons 11y ago
Programming is not by any means a "fairly low rent blue-collar position". It has a very odd wage curve, though, where the vast majority of your salary increases will come in the first 5 years of your career, and the technologies that you became an expert in will be obsolete within 5-10 years. If you don't retrain, you'll be very much obsolete. That's behind most of the complaints on Hacker News; these were people who tasted glory once, and then fell off the technology curve into irrelevance and don't want to hop back on it. Any profession where you can make $300-400K/year as an employee with ~5 years of experience, or over half a million as a consultant, would be considered fantastically lucrative by most of the world.
- hiram112 11y ago
  These $300k+ salaries you speak of are no more common than any other field where maybe 1/1000 makes this. HN is quite heavy with Silicon Valley coders at Google, Facebook, etc. The 99.9% of the rest of developers are making $90k in the Midwest up to $150k in high cost areas on the coasts. Yes this is certainly better than most other jobs, but considering a developer will hit the inflation rate raises by about 30, while other professions like doctors and lawyers tend to continue seeing large raises, I really don't feel software is a great gig, all things considered. Mid thirties and I'm already seeing my first decades's go-to languages and frameworks becoming obsolete (Java, MVC, single RDMS, etc). Taking the massive amount of time to learn the new ones will not increase my pay one bit, but just give me another few years of employment. It was great at 28 making $90k while most my peers were still in grad school and / or making $40k in crappy positions. But now a lot them are getting into mgmt, making partner, have a good book of customers, and have caught up. Even a few Fed and state workers I know with liberal arts degrees are hitting six figures with the gov't, along with job stability, pensions, and guaranteed raises. Meanwhile we get more H1Bs and offshoring.