I live in Japan and have friends and family members who work in large companies as programmers. None of them started out to be programmers. None of them parti

I live in Japan and have friends and family members who work in large companies as programmers. None of them started out to be programmers. None of them particularly wanted to be programmers. One of them was the secretary. One day her boss dropped a whole bunch of books on her desk, "You're the new programmer". Rationale? She could type. Which is not to say that there aren't great programmers here. There are. But the average view of a programmer at large companies (not high tech), is that it is a pretty junior position.