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This tallies with my pet hypothesis about programmer career paths. It is commonly observed that programming is a young person's game: there are lots of teenage

This tallies with my pet hypothesis about programmer career paths. It is commonly observed that programming is a young person's game: there are lots of teenage and twenty something programmers but fewer and fewer as you look at older and older age groups. This is sometimes blamed on age discrimination, and sometimes on the idea that programming is an exceptionally terrible career. My hypothesis is that the "problem" with programming is that it has too much upside potential: If you learn to program, have a couple more skills than just programming and can keep your wits about you, you can find lots of business and professional opportunities... most of which carry job titles other than "programmer". You move up to "software engineer", and then you become "manager of X" or "founder of Y" or maybe you're just "the guy who does Z" where Z is something that makes money for the company, like marketing or strategic research or manufacturing operations. The most significant piece of code I ever wrote was written when my official job title was "product engineer", which kind of means "troubleshooter". My job title and description had nothing to do with software; software just happened to be what I did all day, every day, (not to mention a fair number of nights) in order to help make the company millions of dollars by finding manufacturing bugs more quickly.

patio11 16y ago
I agree, strongly. It is the same story in languages, too -- the difference between a "translator" and a "international business consultant" is a better suit and about, oh, $200~300 an hour.
dawsdesign 16y ago
This is because we become managers :)
dkersten 16y ago
you can find lots of business and professional opportunities We (Python Ireland user group members) recently held our own PyCon and I got chatting to a recruiter who confirmed what I was already thinking: that the "recession" hasn't really affected software devlopment jobs. Apparently there are loads of development jobs out there that pay above average. But, like you said, few of them have "programmer" job titles.
- rmc 16y ago
  Yes there are loads of programming jobs in Ireland, which should help since I'm looking for a python job soon myself!
  - dkersten 16y ago
    Were you at PyCon Ireland last weekend? If you were, I was the guy that looked passed out form lack of sleep :-D If not, you'll be happy to know that the Python job market is growing. A lot of the government type organisations seem to be switching from legacy systems to Python-based web apps. For example, a friend works for the Royal College of Surgeons replacing their legacy systems with a Django based web app.
    - rmc 16y ago
      No, alas I wasn't at PyCon, I was at the Ubuntu-ie geeknic instead. I'm glad to hear python jobs are available, should make a change from all this PHP at the moment.

patio11 16y ago

I agree, strongly. It is the same story in languages, too -- the difference between a "translator" and a "international business consultant" is a better suit and about, oh, $200~300 an hour.

dawsdesign 16y ago

This is because we become managers :)

dkersten 16y ago

you can find lots of business and professional opportunities We (Python Ireland user group members) recently held our own PyCon and I got chatting to a recruiter who confirmed what I was already thinking: that the "recession" hasn't really affected software devlopment jobs. Apparently there are loads of development jobs out there that pay above average. But, like you said, few of them have "programmer" job titles.

rmc 16y ago
Yes there are loads of programming jobs in Ireland, which should help since I'm looking for a python job soon myself!
- dkersten 16y ago
  Were you at PyCon Ireland last weekend? If you were, I was the guy that looked passed out form lack of sleep :-D If not, you'll be happy to know that the Python job market is growing. A lot of the government type organisations seem to be switching from legacy systems to Python-based web apps. For example, a friend works for the Royal College of Surgeons replacing their legacy systems with a Django based web app.
  - rmc 16y ago
    No, alas I wasn't at PyCon, I was at the Ubuntu-ie geeknic instead. I'm glad to hear python jobs are available, should make a change from all this PHP at the moment.