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I don’t want to be a software developer anymore

• fgjjgutjvnu 9y ago
  Imagine having to work to pay the bills. Truly offensive, and women seem to be disproportionately affected (judging by the amount of complaints).
• staticelf 9y ago
  Maybe live in a country that has a better work life balance? Or find an employer that is willing to give that benefit?
  • derwiki 9y ago
    Moving to another country might not be as easy for everyone as you make it sound.
• jaymzcampbell 9y ago
  I feel like we as an industry can sometimes forget just how good we have it. Many of my friends do not work in tech, they are low paid, they have stressful jobs with little autonomy, they are not challenged at all and they feel little personal accomplishment in their day today. I appreciate the author alludes to this but having seen friends recently job hunting (outside of tech) I am reminded that even on the worst days I have it many times better than a lot of people. > If I won the lottery would I still code? I would, but it would not be like work. It would be projects I enjoyed. And it would be fewer hours. But wouldn't we all love to do that no matter our vocation? Until basic income comes along I think we have to just get over it. Most jobs aren't going to provide you with fun for 8 hours a day. I feel like the older I get the more I understand that a job is a way for me to trade time for money, I don't have to (or should expect to) like it.
  • watwut 9y ago
    I have quite a lot of autonomy now, but most programing positions don't have much autonomy. Between scrum, code review, management and architects, there is very little that is "on you".
    • Buttes 9y ago
      Seriously tons of programmers just churn through tickets written by other people all day, its 100% process, they're part of an assembly line.
  • tboyd47 9y ago
    You don't have to like your job, but it's perfectly reasonable to expect equitable treatment and a non-hazardous work setup. Injuries from bad ergonomics are real. I am dealing with a pinched nerve in my neck from 10 years of this and some days can barely sit up straight. I get that there are people starving in China. It's not an issue of wanting a perfect job. I actually used to really enjoy my work before the pain started, and it all could have been avoided. I don't blame my employers for my injury, but I do wish ergonomics had more importance in dev culture.
    • selectodude 9y ago
      The number of $1000+ Herman Miller chairs and standup desks I see tells me that they pay more than lip service to ergonomics.
      • tboyd47 9y ago
        Your company sounds like an exception, although I'd argue that "just stand up, then" is more of a cop-out than a solution.
    • retSava 9y ago
      The author says she didn't bring it up since she was afraid it would negatively impact her career. While I can certainly understand this is a real fear that is grounded in reality, I also feel that she has a responsibility to lift the issue internally to get appropriate furniture, tools (eg ergonomic keyboard), and treatment.
      • tboyd47 9y ago
        You can only expect to be taken seriously for requests like that if you have been diagnosed with a medical condition. By then, you've already experienced significant pain, so the damage has been done. Ergonomics for developers is difficult. Damage sets in so slowly that you don't really notice it until it's too late.
        • 9y ago
  • state_less 9y ago
    That sort of comparative thinking is the sort many managers or shareholders would love to hear. “Put up with it, it could be worse.” The next section about BMI is a better response since you’re starting to expect more and well we all should, considering the planets wealth is increasing. Sabbaticals, 4 day work weeks is what we ought to be passionate about otherwise our passion is directed into the wallets of those who can convince us how great it will be to be passionate about adding value to their product. In short labor should ask for more, since wealthy corporations are sitting on massive piles of money.
    • jaymzcampbell 9y ago
      Sorry if I sounded like an apologist for management. I am a believer in better working conditions and reduced hours and flexible time for everyone and anyone. The article struck a nerve with me as friends have been recently looking for jobs and the way they are treated has been terrible. I have done long hours in bars, worked on building sites and temped and it was not good. It makes me very aware of what my work day is like compared to say my father who has spent 35 years in a factory. There is something I think to be said for thinking of the job as just a paycheck and forgetting about pretending to have passion. When I stopped worrying about "the company" when things were bad and doing my hours and getting out of there I was a lot less stressed about feeling unfulfilled. I really do wish the world would change in favour of the worker and not the 1% but things like the Paradise Papers have me assuming nothing much will change anytime soon so I should at least take comfort in the fact I could have it a lot worse. That doesn't stop me from wanting better conditions for my friends in their own working lives.
      • Clubber 9y ago
        I think the point the OP was making is don't fall into the trap that capital wants you to fall into. They pay you what they pay you because you are worth it, then then subtract quite a bunch of what you are worth because they employ tactics to do so. Sometimes it's as simple as offering you less and seeing if you'll balk. Don't compare yourself with factory workers, compare your self with doctors and lawyers and you'll get a better appreciation of your negotiation position.
  • ironjunkie 9y ago
    This. I find it very difficult to complain as a coder given the conditions at the moment. Companies battle to hire people and the pay is globally extremely good. Most of the time it is easy to get time off or to accommodate "errands" during the day. As you said, I think a lot of us are out of touch about what it is to get a job outside of tech (and a couple other high demand privileged examples). You want to work from home one day a week ? Need 2 approvals of your N+2 manager. Coming late 3 times in a row? Let's talk about your "behavior". That coffee you just took over there ? It will be 1$ deduced from your paycheck. I feel a lot of us live in the utopia that a job must be fun at all time and that we should always do what we like. Sorry but the world doesn't work like that. Edit: I'm not saying that we shouldn't demand good condition. It is an "offer and demand" economic system after all. We should get what we can negociate to get in the market. I wanted to make the point however that >90% of regular jobs are not pleasant and fun at all time.
    • tboyd47 9y ago
      The churn rate is also high on most software teams. In some cases, successful companies struggle to find candidates because all the good people have worked there before and ran away. One of the brightest developers I've worked with quit after 3 weeks at my company because they were underpaying her and wouldn't give her a raise. This same company complained regularly of not being able to find good talent. Employers think they hold all the leverage and can treat developers how they want. They really don't. Why do you think half of software projects fail to deliver?
      • sidlls 9y ago
        > Why do you think half of software projects fail to deliver? A number of reasons: 1. Bikeshedding over the tech stack 2. A glut of CS grads who see a bunch of nails to hit with their textbook and data structures and algorithms knowledge failing to engage in a proper engineering process 3. Poorly defined requirements (blame aplenty to go around here: product development giving insufficient thought to the product details, sales over promising, and "engineers" failing to contribute by treating partnering with these folks as an onerous chore rather than a necessary task) 4. Insufficient resources And many more, I'm sure. Developers aren't blameless, here. In fact over the last couple of years I've come to see them as being at least as much to blame as non-technical people, perhaps even more so.
  • jameskegel 9y ago
    > Until basic income comes along I think we have to just get over it. Most jobs aren't going to provide you with fun for 8 hours a day. I feel like the older I get the more I understand that a job is a way for me to trade time for money, I don't have to (or should expect to) like it. This is something I think is a fault of my generation (née 1985), when we started to create this fairytail narrative of participation trophies, and tech-places covered in brightly colored toys and snacks, where every developer constructed their cube from Mountain Dew and Surge cans. This is not reality, and for a while we were able to fool our minders into believing that this is just "the silicon valley way" but increasingly, those few that just 'buckle down' and work hard in a normal setting are outperforming the ones that took ridiculous valuations and then squandered them on perishables and amenities. I think what we're witnessing here is the maturation of our industry; it's not so much the wild west anymore, and nobody is generating breakthroughs in tech every week like we were in the 90's, everyone should act accordingly. These are jobs, we do our jobs then we go home, if we like our homes and things and activities, we need to go back to our jobs. There is a balance that must not be disturbed.
    • sillysaurus3 9y ago
      These are jobs, we do our jobs then we go home, if we like our homes and things and activities, we need to go back to our jobs. There is a balance that must not be disturbed. It would be interesting to peek ahead a few centuries and see how much they agree with this.
      • jameskegel 9y ago
        Luckily "a few centuries ahead" is not the setting for this article, this discussion, or the current period. I'm not sure what relevance this has, when I'm sure the 'theys' from centuries before would have quite a few things to say about the way we live today, and it would be an opinion equally irrelevant.
        • sillysaurus3 9y ago
          There's no such thing as "a balance that must not be disturbed," and such beliefs tend to lead people into an unfulfilling life. Throughout this thread, there is an undercurrent of "Shut up and put up with it, you have it pretty good." But everything is a balance, and the balance can swing both ways. There is huge variation between developers' paychecks. I've seen devs who can barely afford food, let alone expensive toys. And not because they're unskilled. Also, not everyone can simply go to a job and then go home. Some are forced to do remote work for medical reasons. There are valid reasons to speak up.
  • indubitable 9y ago
    There's another side of this story as well though. The consequence of having more intellectually challenging work to solve is that by the end of the day you're brain fried. For most people the only way you're really going to get anywhere in life is by staking it out on your own at some point. If you're not earning enough money to save away a sufficient stash, that means you need to be working your day job while also starting up your own project at home. In some cases this might be impossible due to the absurd contracts some companies expect devs to sign (all your work, even on your time off, belongs to them) and even when it's possible, it's made extremely difficult by the draining nature of more interesting work. Less interesting jobs may not be as satisfying in the short run, but can leave you with more energy to pursue what you actually want to do in the long run.
    • quotemstr 9y ago
      For me, intellectually challenging work is invigorating. I don't feel "brain fried".
    • internetman55 9y ago
      I have this problem as well. I would see people who sit in meetings and send emails do very low-effort work all day, and think they were working hard. When a former manager started cracking down on developers walking outside to cool down and think or spending any idle time, I started putting the similar amount of thought and mental effort into my job, to get 8 full hours of 'work' done without burning out. During this period, I got basically nothing that wasn't super routine done. Any minor hinge in development would take days or weeks to work through instead of a few hours. Said manager was perplexed and began complaining constantly about how the pace of development was slowing down and that milestones were being missed.
  • Bahamut 9y ago
    All this was sort of my impression too. I always reflect on the anniversary of my first job in tech (hitting the 5 year mark in a few days) - I still remember the days where I didn’t have enough money to eat, and I would have to ration out oatmeal for a week just to survive. I remember my days in the Marine Corps in infantry, sometimes with days where I only had 2 hours of sleep, and any mistake negatively reinforced with less sleep - I remember being the recepient of all the shit jobs and low sleep for a field op because I lost a PEQ-16 on a night op, and we ended up combing the field for it (thankfully I remembered the right information to find it, and didn’t get written up). I gladly do menial tasks, and go above and beyond at my craft - I don’t take things for granted because I hated life where I had to depend on the kindness of friends to live. That said, I very much enjoy what I do given that context - I get to solve problems, and make any necessary changes to help make development experience nicer. It’s not as difficult as when I was in grad school, and it pays exceedingly well. I don’t have many complaints, unless management strangles our ability to deliver/have unrealistic expectations (expecting more than 40 hours a week as a rule, not an exception - I’m happy to work more sometimes, but on my terms). I don’t have that problem with my current job, and hope to not deal with it again.
  • zzzcpan 9y ago
    Some people in the industry in certain countries are definitely lucky, but as an industry we don't have it good. I mean most people can't get jobs in large corporations in the US and save enough money to leave in 5-10 years.
  • pasquinelli 9y ago
    if you have to work for money, it's important to find a job you enjoy doing. not find a job doing something you enjoy, that's one of the worst things you can do. in my experience, that just turns something you enjoy into another chore. but finding a job you enjoy doing is important. i spent years as a programmer just feeling sick. programming is something i enjoy, but not a job i enjoy doing, and working that job made me miserable in all the ways you're assigning to non-tech work. now i'm a janitor and i feel like a human being again. it's less money, but it's totally worth it. trouble is, you need to work a job to know how apt you are for it. but then, to get into most classes of work, you need to spend the money to train yourself, with help from the general public perhaps. maybe you'll get a job, maybe not; maybe it'll be good for you and you for it, maybe not. it seems like a pretty sweet deal for the job creators though-- but i'm straying off-topic.
• draugadrotten 9y ago
  > Also once in a while some jerk will be like “if women really were paid less why wouldn’t companies hire more women to save money?” I’m pretty sure they already do this and that recent lawsuits will reveal it is a common practice. My experience is companies are thrilled to hire women, it makes them look good AND they can usually pay them less. It’s not about quotas. This misandristic conspiracy theory distracted me from the other message in the article.
  • nickthemagicman 9y ago
    Lol, messed up but it makes an interesting point. Why don't people hire mostly women and save a bunch on payroll? Does the wage gap exist because companies pay women less due to being sexist or because of other confounding factors?
    • pfarnsworth 9y ago
      It could easily be explained by the sentiment, which I do not share or agree with, that “male programmers are better, but we are forced to hire women so let’s pay them less”.
      • arkh 9y ago
        I'd go with the usual Apex fallacy. One guy gets 20% more money than me! What? The other one who gets 20% less? Nah he's invisible. It's like the usual "men are in power". Yeah, some men. A lot are in shitty dead-end job with no prospect to get a better life. The death-at-work gap, the fact being a Father at Home is still frowned upon: don't care. If there is an earning gap maybe the fact men have to earn more for their family and can't rely on welfare when they lose their job is an incentive to work more and negotiate harder. Call me a sexist but worst case scenario a woman can always decide to marry a provider.
        • nickthemagicman 9y ago
          Yes! Thank you! Men overwhelmingly populate traditionally low status dangerous jobs.
• johnrichardson 9y ago
  In my experience, it's counterproductive to code more than 4-5 hours per day. At a certain point you start introducing bugs/inadvertent complexity whose negatives outweigh any feature contributions you're making. There's lots of research which bears this out. E.g., https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/why-working-more-than-40-hours-a-week-is-useless.html https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/why-working-more-than-4...
  • tonyedgecombe 9y ago
    I've been working 3-4 hour days for years now, however the only reason I can do this is because I work for myself.
    • derwiki 9y ago
      The other option is to show up at your job for 40 hours/week but only put in 15-20. Especially in software, where one engineer can be 10x more productive than another, one can easily get away with this. (I’m not advocating this, just pointing out that it is a strategy I’ve seen employed)
      • tonyedgecombe 9y ago
        I think that's probably quite common.
    • ikeyany 9y ago
      Are you hiring?
  • arkh 9y ago
    That's why I encourage coders to document things. Code and test for 4 hours, document what is not, maybe work on easing on-boarding on your projects or even other's. And read. Developing software is about a lot more things than the code. If you are making things for other departments of your company, don't hesitate to go check how your "clients" use your software and what the pain points are. Check what is done in other technologies so you can get new ideas. If you think software programmer is sitting at your desk churning code don't complain you are not paid enough and have shitty health. Also if you're paid less than other people at your company and they don't do anything more than you it is time to ask for a raise while looking at other jobs.
• MrGilbert 9y ago
  I basically lost my hobby (writing desktop applications) by turning it into a profession. I successfully compensated that with game dev. I started writing little games, working on game engines, and tinkering around. I'm pretty happy with that now. I guess that happens to a lot of people when turning your hobby into sth. you do for your living. And I also realized that humans are simply not made to sit 12+ hours a day. (Count the work time + spare time). So some kind of activity is recommended, I guess. //Edit: However, it took my quite some years to figure out why I hadn't fun coding Desktop applications in my spare time any longer...
• tboyd47 9y ago
  The thing that kills me is that these problems don't have to exist. A company that can afford to hire a developer full-time can also afford a decent ergonomic setup and equitable salaries for women. It's just that we have collectively made this kind of treatment okay, as evident in the majority of these comments.
• johnnymonster 9y ago
  It's hard for me to read articles like this. If you don't like working at a high paying tech job, please quit and dig trenches, drag brush, or pick lettuce for minimum wage and no benefits. Then come tell me how much it sucks to write fragments of code while sitting in your air conditioned office.
  • SapphireSun 9y ago
    Of course, we could fight for those people instead of dividing the working class but I digress.
  • Clubber 9y ago
    It still sucks if you are passionate about it. Coding was a hell of a lot funner 20 years ago, before the dark times, before the MBAs.
    • UncleEntity 9y ago
      ...before the grammar police.
  • pmoriarty 9y ago
    "If you don't like working at a high paying tech job, please quit and dig trenches, drag brush, or pick lettuce for minimum wage and no benefits." Those trench diggers, brush draggers, and lettuce pickers are actually lucky and should be grateful for the jobs they have. If not, they should try picking through garbage to make their living, working in toxic mines, or defusing bombs. There are always worse jobs than the one you've got. That doesn't mean your job doesn't suck, that you shouldn't complain or try to get a better one.
    • jasonmaydie 9y ago
      her job doesn't suck and frankly it doesn't get any better than what she has. The article pretty much boils do I have to do something unexciting because I need money. Welcome to the real world
• watwut 9y ago
  The realization that people I considered friends never really have been after that memo got to me too. They might like my presence, but I don't really count as a women should be to them and they never considered me good as they pretended to. Good thing I don't always get subtle social clues I guess. But the rest sounds like burnout. Old programmers I see around had all learned not to let companies burn them out.
  • gjvc 9y ago
    > "Old programmers I see around had all learned not to let companies burn them out." Great observation. Did you ever have any of those "old programmers" offer you any advice in this respect?
    • arkh 9y ago
      "The only pressure you get is the one you accept". Just learn to say no. I think that's the most important thing women and shy people need to learn. No. "You should work late to show your commitment". "No". "We over-promised so it is crunch time". "No". "Here is a company phone so we can contact you easily in case of emergency". "No". And sleeping enough every day is one of the most important things you can do. And finding a job in a good company even if you earn a little less.
      • walshemj 9y ago
        "Here is a company phone so we can contact you easily in case of emergency". Id say ok what's the rate for 1/4 and of course I will be paid a minimum of 4 hours for any call out at OT rates (or the equivalent in TOIL)
      • derwiki 9y ago
        Really good advice. I think the perception is that if we say no we’ll be screamed at and fired. In reality your manager is more likely to become more flustered than you.
    • derwiki 9y ago
      Not sure if I’m considered an “old programmer”, but a few things I’ve learned: * don’t use work email on your smartphone unless it’s required * don’t take your work laptop home unless it’s required * have something else going on in your weekdays. For me it’s the gym/yoga, for my (programmer) wife it’s taking ceramics classes
• jameskegel 9y ago
  I read the article; I'm not sure this is so much a criticism of the industry as it is an examination of this developer's personal anecdotal experience. As developers, we lead a very charmed life that others sometimes aren't even born with the chance to intellectually compete for; the author neglects to address how lucky we are to be able to do this at all, let alone to then find employment in it. If it's not an industry that benefits you holistically, find something you love that doesn't strain your neck or involve gender-politics- dentistry for example, or maybe upholstery or culinary arts. Personally, it's the hundreds of days spent in a dish pit, and burning my hands on a hot grill for 12 hours every night that gives me the ability and patience to appreciate this opportunity we have, and all of the different elements of it. I've had very few experiences in life that afford me this type of luxury or time to examine my surroundings and then have time to compose them in words for others to read. This doesn't make the author wrong, this makes our perspectives different, and perhaps a tour of duty in other professions would benefit the author.
  • tboyd47 9y ago
    It's not too much to ask for equitable pay or a non-hazardous environment. Gratitude for something doesn't necessitate being blind to ways that thing could be improved.
    • vlehto 9y ago
      Equitable pay = Equitable job security Look at any unemployment chart since 80's and women have better job security than men. And the difference typically increases a lot in economic depression.
    • golemotron 9y ago
      However we do live in a world where we have to prioritize because we each have finite time. The social issues of tech work will never be as dire as issues of poverty, child welfare or health care. Our privilege blinds us to this.
      • tboyd47 9y ago
• dep_b 9y ago
  It's kind of weird how people in the US seem to struggle with work life balance. I'm constantly working for US companies remote from outside the US and I can work +/-40 hours per week without any problem.
  • da02 9y ago
    What kind of applications or work do you do for them?
    • dep_b 9y ago
      Mainly iOS development.
  • ironjunkie 9y ago
    It took me a while to understand this also especially in the US where everyone complain all the time they work 80 hours a week, especially in tech. In my experience, only a very small fraction of those claiming to do >45hours a week are actually working that much. I think for a lot it provides them a subconscious feeling of importance, and/or an excuse for failed goals in their personal life.
    • tonyedgecombe 9y ago
      The trouble with programming is it is virtually impossible to measure. If I employ a brick layer I can count how many bricks they lay and whether the wall is straight. Management in our industry doesn't have this luxury and programmers realise it. The inevitable result is people start to measure how long your seat is kept warm and use that as a poor proxy for productivity. You also start to see politics seeping into everything. If you are lucky with your employer you might be able to avoid it but I think that is unusual.
    • derwiki 9y ago
      I think some 45+ hr/wk employees really don’t know what else to do with their time, and working longer hours is the “easy” way out.
• folknor 9y ago
  I really struggle to find anything worth reacting to in this blog post. It sounds to me like the story of every individual worker in every economy. Most of what she says is entirely self-evident, except for the anecdotes about pay/equity, for which she presents zero evidence. Where is the substance? Why is this interesting? Every dad in the world knows that a hobby is different from work, and that turning your hobby into work is not always ideal, because you lose your hobby, you lose your steady salary, and your dreams do not always work out. I postulate at least that every dad knows this inherently. Most people have way more taxing jobs than IT. I've been in construction for 3 years, and that work is no joke. Outside in rain/snow/storms, lifting tons of material on a normal day, for little pay, and no "worker satisfaction" or "team building" events, etc. I only did it for 3 years - one of the people I worked with was over 70, and had done it since he was 13. Is it because she postulates that companies are hiring more women because they think that they can pay them less? And I'm not saying I think that's true/false (she presents no evidence), I'm just asking if that's the reason the blog post is interesting.
  • skybrian 9y ago
    I think this is a mismatch in expectations. It's one woman blogging about her personal work experience, not a news article or a novel theory of life as a software developer. It's interesting to the extent that reading about other people is interesting. Just take it for what it is.
  • mynameishere 9y ago
    No great analysis needed: People enjoy complaining. You could make this person empress of the universe and she'd be complaining still.
  • fpisfun 9y ago
    It is pretty funny that she would insinuate they would hire more women to pay them less because a good developer is so much more productive than a bad one so, at least for an "on site "job where you're only pulling from local talent it would be horribly destructive to always hire people that are paid a bit less as most likely those willing to take less money will be substantially less skilled.
• ablomen 9y ago
  Coming from a country with cushy laws on the side of employees etc (the Netherlands), and as a male, I can say that I can really identify with the opening paragraphs of this piece. When I started as all round IT guy 10 years ago it felt like a dream, getting payed for doing what I was doing anyway. And the first 4 years of turning in to a web developer was fun and challenging. But after a while the shine wears off and getting up every day to make software for clients you are not interested in, with deadlines and promises that where not made by your self, it just drains you. After finding my own solution (starting up a beer brewery) another thing dawned, sitting behind a computer hours every day for work just is not good for your body or your mind. The money is great, the work can be fun, but at least for me, the best thing I have ever done is starting something totally non-IT (or other office job) related.
  • fiftyacorn 9y ago
    The number of ex-dev's i know who have started breweries is pretty high. Its like a career progression - software developer 10 years -> start micro-brewery
    • ablomen 9y ago
      Haha yes a lot of breweries have been started by IT people over here too. To be fair, brewing includes some science, a lot of self learning and creativity, so there is some overlap there. Not to mention the fact that until recently (over here at least) most beer festivals looked quite a bit like open source conventions, just with different stickers. And the "beer nerds" (including me) I know are just as in to beer as I was in to computers.
      • fiftyacorn 9y ago
        My degree was chemical engineering and brewing/distilling was part of that. So im the opposite and a developer now
      • sjg007 9y ago
        I think in craft beer their is definitely a taste race going on. In the beginning every American ipa tastes like Sierra Nevada.... now you get multiple styles and hoppiness. I’ve found myself unhappy with the maltiness of some craft beers now.
• Mattish 9y ago
  If you replace 'developer' with plenty of other job roles, then everything here still applies. There is /no/ job that allow you to ignore all risks a business has like a hobby does. That is the difference here. >If I won the lottery would I still code? I would, but it would not be like work. It would be projects I enjoyed. And it would be fewer hours. >I took the developer job because the medical bills piled up You want it to be a enjoyable job with lower hours, but you don't want deal with hardship that comes with it? You can't have it both ways.
• cup-of-tea 9y ago
  > I just found out some guy who does the same work as me is getting paid 20% more. Yeah and there's probably some guy getting paid 20% less than you for the same job and some woman getting paid 100% for an easier job. Maybe it's best to quit software if you don't even understand basic statistics. This is a great profession which pays very well and has very flexible hours. Go shovel shit if you want. The author just doesn't seem to want to work. That is all.
  • sp4rki 9y ago
    To make matters worse a lot of the times those situations are direct results of cultural and biological differences between the sexes. Every single woman I've ever heard negotiate a salary has done the research and tried for the market median. Most men ask for a bit above the median, but are willing to accept numbers under that. Men with stronger egos will, in general, start from the very top of the salary range and walk away if their ideas of self value are not entertained. I recently coached a fellow female coworker for a salary review. The main idea was that if she wanted the big raise, she needs a big ego. No one will give you a bunch of money if it doesn't look like you actually believe you're up there with the top performers. She actually got a couple of thousands more than the top number she had in mind. Now she eclipses all her male equivalents.
  • ssijak 9y ago
    From my experience, people comparing wages like that (without any analysis) are just angry people who are not satisfied by anything. If you would gave him 20% raise, he would find something else to complain. In my company I would cut lose from such people immediately.
    • cup-of-tea 9y ago
      I think so too. The disrespectful tone ("some guy") is very apparent in the article too.
  • Clubber 9y ago
    It's all about getting the most out of the employer when you are negotiating coming on. The raises after that first salary are typically negligible, especially at large companies. Always ask for more when you first come onto a company, that's your baseline for the rest of the time you are there. I was on the left side of that bell curve until I learned that.
• pfarnsworth 9y ago
  I don’t agree with James Damore’s writing, but he never said that women were there because the bar was lowered. He said that the reason there are less women in tech is due to the fact that the way it’s set up right now makes it less interesting or desirable for most women, and he suggested ways to change the nature of programming jobs and how programming is done in order to naturally attract more women to the field. If anything, OP’s blog post reinforces what James Damore was trying to accomplish, albeit in a misguided way.
  • zimablue 9y ago
    He didn't directly, but if you believe his main point that differences in gender balance of developers is due to preference and natural aptitude, then it's an unavoidable conclusion that a company trying to both hire the best developers in the world and have a 50-50 gender split has to lower the bar. He didn't say it because he didn't have to, it's an unavoidable conclusion.
    • pfarnsworth 9y ago
      That is absolutely incorrect. First off he never said anything about natural aptitude. That is patently false. You didn’t read the article or you read it poorly. He said change the nature of programming jobs. Make it more social, more collaborative (ie pair programming), better work life balance, etc. Having people sitting in a chair for 8-10 hours a day 7 days a week with high stress and terrible work life balance is the type of job that many women will naturally not be attracted to. It’s exactly what OP was complaining about. Take the types of jobs that naturally appeal to many women and change the nature of programming jobs to fit those attributes and how you can achieve 50/50 balance.
      • zimablue 9y ago
        This is a pretty aggressive tone, and it's kind of unwarranted. I did read it, and well. Saying that women have higher innate neuroticism is saying that they have less natural aptitude for stressful jobs. Saying that men have a wider bell curve in abilities is saying that you'll find less women at the extreme end of the aptitude curve necessary to work at Google (and be as good as the mean). There will never be a time that working at Google or whatever the Google equivalent is isn't stressful and doesn't require off the end of the bell curve ability (which he's saying will be much rarer in females). He also explicitly refers to a risk of lowering the bar. Here: https://firedfortruth.com/ https://firedfortruth.com/
• lkrubner 9y ago
  In one of his essays, Paul Graham remarks that the startups at Ycombinator who fail have several traits in common, and one of those traits is that they don't listen. He meant they don't listen to him, but I would make it general -- these failed leaders often don't listen to their own teams. I've been surprised at how often I have an important insight about a business, and my clients/managers feel uncomfortable with my insight. The most common reaction I get is "We need to stay focused on ideas that deliver real business value." But I can think of examples where that response couldn't possibly be an honest response, since the top leadership felt the company was in crisis, and they were trying to brainstorm new ideas for moving forward. I was present for cases where software developers push for a new way of doing things, and the top management pushes for the status quo -- and this happens even when the top leadership feels the company is in crisis and the status quo is untenable. The most rational explanation for this behavior is that the top leadership is worried that a new idea will take too much time, or cost too much money. The tech team might say "We have this brilliant idea, and it will take 3 months to implement" but the top leadership is worried that it will really take 6 months to implement. But this is really the same as saying that the company doesn't have the right leadership. If the status quo is untenable and the leadership lack the skills to properly evaluate alternative strategies, then new leadership is needed. But it is obviously difficult to get the top management to agree to this. I say "obviously" though in some sense it is surprising how many leaders would rather cling to power, and oversee a spectacular failure, than step aside and let someone else save the situation. Why does top leadership drive the software developers so hard? There are several reasons. Fear of failure. Fear of unknown risks. Fear of uncontrolled costs. Fear of unexpected expenses. Fear of having to rely on something that one doesn't understand. Demanding long hours, and implementing rituals such as Agile or Scrum, are seen as ways of reducing risk. And then of course, there is the simple fact that the top leadership can do this -- the USA has weak labor unions, the tech industry has almost no labor unions, therefore the government allows harsher working conditions than what you find in France or Germany or Sweden.
  • codingdave 9y ago
    This sounds like a very one-sided perspective. Because while we devs might not want to admit it, incremental improvements in product quality don't have a huge business impact. There are 3 states of a product -- Not Working, Works OK, and AMAZING. Not working --> Works OK is the initial dev of a product, so you are likely already past that. Now, if your improvements don't move the product from OK to Amazing, or if your product is already amazing, but the business has other problems... then your organization is at a point where devs simply don't have the business impact that a refactoring of sales/marketing/strategy can have. This is not a bad thing -- it means the devs did their job, and everyone else needs to step up. But unless you understand the bigger picture of the business, it can seem like they are ignoring you. The truth is, they aren't rejecting your idea... they just think it isn't making the leap to amazing.
• deleted 9y ago
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• randcraw 9y ago
  It's difficult to know if the OP now dislikes her life in software or her life in general. Unless she can identify an activity or role she does like, a place where she clearly would rather be, it's hard to know whether her specific objections with tech are truly causal to her ennui or just attempts to explain how she got where she is today. Perhaps her physical ailments and career ennui are actually symptoms of a general sense of disengagement with life outside of work as well.
• johnwheeler 9y ago
  I’ve held jobs where I was able to work on only greenfield projects with minimal oversight and the ability to put in 3-4 hour days if I wanted to, and I’ve held jobs like the blog post author’s, working on hellish enterprise CMSes. I can say the former is incomparably better and makes you grow into a stronger, more fulfilled engineer. I think as long as I could support myself financially and keep living somewhat comfortably, I’d take a 30% paycut to work that way.
  • tzahola 9y ago
    >I was able to work on only greenfield projects with minimal oversight I'm pretty sure those enterprise CMSes started out like this too...
    • johnwheeler 9y ago
      What does that have to do with anything?
      • convolvatron 9y ago
        I think thats an important point. As someone on the back end of a career in software I look back at all the projects I was proud of and thought I crafted well, and in the end they turned out just like all the other large unmaintainable swamps that everyone complains about. Not completely clear about this, but the industry seems structured in such a way that (most) everything ends up being a horrifying mess of hacks over time. For any codebase, you can see it fall over the cliff. Poorly chosen compromises are made. People lose track of whats going on. A simple joy with boundless possibilities turns into a pointless daily slog. A rewrite would be too expensive and risky. An incremental refactoring too unjustifiable. The passionate people leave, and the interns are left running the asylum, hating every minute. I don't know what the answer is, but no one seems to want greenfield development anymore, probably for good reason. The prospect of picking up someone else rotten excreta is pretty unappealing. So yes, I think its salient to point out that that terrible bloated CMS you're stuck trying to mush into shape was once someones bright and shining future.
• misingnoglic 9y ago
  After graduating college, I really wanted to be a CS teacher, but the finances and logistics just didn't make sense at all. My current goal is to save up enough money where I don't have to rely on a teacher's salary (or have to worry about getting fired should I not bow down to an administrator), and then start looking.
• fpisfun 9y ago
  To be honest I had started to hate programming and the industry overall until I started learning functional programming and about category theory, etc. It turns out I've been working on crap my whole career, at least in my opinion, and that's why most of my time has been spent fixing bugs, slowly adding new features while working around horrible design. Working on crappy software with crappy design and crappy developers is terrible but this isn't how it has to be. Now I don't ever see myself getting out of the industry as, even if I'm managing my own company or working as a manager for someone else, I'm always going to do some coding and manage things at the code level because it's fun when you're doing things right and it's also extremely important.
  • en-us 9y ago
    I couldn't agree more. I've read that the people most satisfied in life are craftsmen who dedicate themselves to mastering a craft. There is not much craft in managing deadlines and customer commitments and such. It is necessary work but it is not creative. On the other hand, crafting code is a creative activity. Even for the simplest projects you can appreciate the structure, and learn about the varying tradeoffs in complexity that are made by any particular design pattern. This type of thing is a very rich craft, and very satisfying to master. The good news for us is that mastering this craft translates into satisfied deadlines and confidence in ability to deliver on customer commitments. We can be master craftsmen and be nearly guaranteed success in the knowledge economy, which is not a luxury of other crafts like art and writing.
• fapjacks 9y ago
  I dunno. I spent a bunch of years shooting at people and getting shot at, literally, and I can't tell you how much that has helped me not take this dreamlike existence for granted. This post serves as a reminder that the biggest problem some people will face today is that someone at Chipotle forgot they didn't want guacamole on their burrito. We should be grateful for the opportunity. Meanwhile, just open really any history book or newspaper. Most people are living or have lived hard lives.
• jorgemf 9y ago
  First of all. It is called Software engineering for a reason. Engineering means to handle big problems in a way they can be solved by a company in an efficient way. Second, women earn 20% less in average, yes, but for the same position the earn the same as men. The problem is women in top positions. That is why companies don't go crazy to hire women because they are not cheaper (otherwise the company would be in a big legal problem). Said so, maybe the author would be happier working for smaller companies with smaller products where she can have a bigger impact on the final product. Even so, it is very unlikely a single programmer would be in charge of product specification, design and development. Those are very different things, and even in a small startup there are specific roles for those positions.
  • wyclif 9y ago
    The problem is women in top positions. That is why companies don't go crazy to hire women because they are not cheaper That is not why women earn 20% less than men. It is because men work longer hours over longer periods of time than women do.
    • Y7ZCQtNo39 9y ago
      Anecdotal, but my experience has been women working much harder than men. And I say that as a male.
    • jorgemf 9y ago
      If you work longer hours that is your problem. You are paid to work a fixed amount of hours and the salary is linked to it, it doesn't matter what gender you are. So sorry to tell you but you sound like the typical guy women don't want to work with (neither me).
      • dang 9y ago
        This crosses into personal attack, which is not allowed here. Please don't do it again.
        • 9y ago
• iamleppert 9y ago
  I too am planning my departure from the tech industry. I've been at several major startups in the bay area and I've worked for large tech companies. I'm one of those people who are completely self-taught and passionate about technology, and I'm good at what I do. For me its a creative outlet. However, the dark side to this is that I'm frequently taken advantage of. And like the author in the article, I often work alongside people who couldn't care less or be bothered with this stuff. To them, its just a job, and they are masters at putting in the least amount of effort. They'll look at you with some kind of wonderment and incredulity and question why you even care at all. Working in big tech (and some startups) were the worst. You had very little creativity, and there are plenty of other engineers devoid of any ounce of talent that will be quick to identity you as different than them and summarily drown you in dozens of pointless code review comments to stall your work and demotivate you. You'll often be forced to work with antique tools, ancient code bases and languages you hate and that have no future. Throw in a territorial devops person and a manager who treats you like a basic I/O device for shits and giggles. If you have a vision for anything you want to build, or have an idea, better forget it. You better not collide with your product manager or the loads of management above you that don't actually contribute in any meaningful way to the actual product. They'll isolate you from customers and if you do come up with something original they will work to make sure you don't get any recognition for your accomplishments. Sometimes it won't even matter if you're an early employee at a startup that is successful. The investors will just bring in all their own management and put you in jail anyway. If you're lucky once you quit or get fired you might be able to only get away with paying $15k or $20k to exercise your worthless, unsaleable options. This entire industry is a pathetic joke. I'm passionate about it still but I only like working on my own projects and ideas. Eventually, you just give up. Its better to work in another industry, I'm trying to get into the art/design industry myself.
  • quotemstr 9y ago
    What's amazing is that perfectly good tech companies become the kind of hell you describe. Every single one --- it's just a matter of time.
  • expertentipp 9y ago
    > Working in big tech (and some startups) were the worst [..] a manager who treats you like a basic I/O device for shits and giggles. The entire paragraph - had this exact experience in a low cost center of an American IT company in post-Communist EU country. Are these companies created out of a template? Are these managers and code-monkeys cloned in a factory and trained in the same place? If by a catastrophic decision I end up in such a place, how do I defend myself?
• deleted 9y ago
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• Jazcash 9y ago
  I hated working in the "software" industry until I quit doing typical enterprise website development and started doing web apps and games which is 99% Javascript. Working with CMS' was especially awful. Complete lack of creativity and felt like it was mostly just hooking up inputs to outputs without anything in the middle. Even when there was some custom functionality required it was mostly copy paste jobs. If I ever have to make another Wordpress theme I'll slit my fucking wrists
• derwiki 9y ago
  > Passion is prized in this industry and people who come into code out of love are considered special. It is also considered the reason why certain groups of people are less represented in tech, because not as many of them are building Linux machines in their basements for fun. I apologize in advance for being time deaf / lack of empathy. But why is this surprising? The best musicians I know were obsessed with their guitar when they were 11 —- like I was with QBasic. Most professional musicians don’t start playing at 18 when they enter conservatory. I can’t even fathom a conservatory admitting a student who wasn’t already obsessed to some level. Is this a valid complaint of the music industry as well?
  • internetman55 9y ago
    There's little demand to hear someone who isn't a top talent perform music. You can just go to a concert hall and watch someone world famous play with several hundred other audience members, or buy a recording. There is a lot of demand for simple custom business applications, and many people without an obsessive interest in the field are more than skilled enough to provide the product.
    • derwiki 9y ago
      Very good point. Although many professional musicians aren’t selling out large venues, they are playing small gigs/lounges, which sounds similar to the custom business apps you describe.
• dahart 9y ago
  > That savings was originally for a downpayment for a house, but now gives me a landing pad where I can take some time to really do what I love. Saving up and taking two years to do my own thing made me appreciate the old saying "time is money" like nothing else ever has, I literally bought time to do what I want with that money. It ran out before I figured out how to turn it into a sustainable business, but I still had the best two years of my professional life so far.
  • Clubber 9y ago
    I recently took a 4 month sabbatical and money is certainly freedom. I appreciate it more.
• deleted 9y ago
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• dahart 9y ago
  > As a developer I’ve often had trouble figuring out if a job would be Snow Crashy or not, and been seduced by promises of engaging work only to find myself ferreting out bugs on some enterprise CMS. Some jobs are more engaging and some are less. In my experience, all dev jobs involve some time spent doing things that I don't consider fun, but the company needs done. Employers do usually sell the work as interesting and engaging for the person with the right skills. Companies do tend to value the people that willingly take on the ugly stuff and get it done. Sometimes (but not always) those people are paid more. I think there are ways to make it more engaging, by studying the value of the less fun work and working to fix it. This might mean developing interests in and spending time doing some non-coding skills. And certainly there are also some jobs that don't have much to redeem them. Does anyone have advice for identifying what portion of the work will be engaging during hiring interviews?
  • starik36 9y ago
    > ferreting out bugs on some enterprise CMS. Yikes, that hits close to home. The job was sold to me as helping improve performance of a website with 1 million + daily visitors. Which I took care of in the first month. Now I ferret out bugs on an enterprise CMS.
• danieka 9y ago
  The author may not have intended it as such, but what I read is a excellent argument for a shorter work week. She writes that if she won the lottery she would still program, but fewer hours. And I wonder how her work related injuries would look if she had worked say six or five hours per day. I'm guessing a shorter work week would have been cheaper for both her and her employer and that she would have been more efficient at her job. There is certainly a price to be paid for working long hours, and for each additional hour you have a lower output. There are many companies that don't get this and (hopefully unconsciously) treat their employees like disposables. Work 'em to the bone and replace 'em when they break. Companies can easily form a toxic culture around working long hours. I guess my point is that most people would probably be happier if they traded a little income for a little free time. And they may just find that it makes sense financially as well, both for individual and company.
  • vlehto 9y ago
    To me the optimum would be two part time jobs. Two days a week doing job A, other two days doing B and three days off. Eggs in different baskets. For companies it's often said that you should never rely on single customer. But it makes sense for companies to force employees to rely on single customer simply by buying all of their excess time.
• phkahler 9y ago
  Assuming she passed our interview process - which I think she would - I would gladly hire the author into a software development position that is entirely different from her previous experience. It's not all roses - work is work - but I feel like everything she complained about is different where I work.
• ataturk 9y ago
  I read it. I thought about it before posting. I complain a lot about the same issues in other HN postings. I think corporate America has lost its collective mind and that daily working life is mostly trying to stay sane in the face of absurdity. But here's the thing: I don't feel sorry for the author. Not even a little bit. Not even after having gone through some of the same issues myself. I don't because working for a living isn't supposed to be enjoyable or fun, it's supposed to put food on the table and a roof over your head. Whether you're in tech or someplace else, that is the point. The world owes you NOTHING. You have to find a way to create value. That's pretty tough when millions of others possess the exact same skills as you do. Software development is a "lucky" field for those who have the brain power to complete the work. There is no "lowering the bar" in this field, not really. We try and try and the results speak for themselves. Some few have the aptitude and can learn and expand, most will never be able to. There's no amount of social engineering that can fix that. It is astounding how technology breaks with all human wishes and desires and becomes its own thing, not to be dominated, only harnessed. I have always been against affirmative action for minorities or for women for the very reason mentioned in the article--how demoralizing is it to know you got in via a quota versus being able to actually hack it? I'm all for giving anyone a try out, but they have to measure up in some way and have an improvement arc and I have run into this as a mentor time and again--who to expend more energy on because they have huge potential and who to counsel into project management or some other area (which by the way, those other areas have value, they aren't all worthless, so don't read into that). My own company is going through yet another "diversity" initiative this year. It's Cultural Marxism, identity politics, find root because the social engineers enjoy tinkering. The end result will be negative for the company, wait and see. If they survive, it will be because intelligent people innovated, not because bars were lowered or outcomes were tinkered with. This is getting long, so my best advice is this: If you don't want to be a developer, don't. You will find some other kind of work to do that suits you. The pay differential is real, but I think that is more a comment on how bad other career paths are doing overall versus how "privileged" software developers are--demand better pay and better working conditions and stop going along to get along. If the world's biggest social engineers got their way, we would all be serfs on plantations, paid in company script and completely redundant. That some of us aren't that means there is hope for humanity.
• throwaway_121 9y ago
  I'm a 40 year old male and have worked as a Front End Developer & Designer for the past 8 years who is scared about having to give up my IT career. I lost my last Govt IT job due to being bullied and harassed by a peer who I reported to management. Managements response wasn't until they went hostile, put me on a PIP and made my bully the judge of my performance. I wonder has anyone ever faced something similar and or what would you do besides moving on/getting another job because I've been on 15 interviews and oddly haven't received any offers(anomaly for me).
• deleted 9y ago
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• smnplk 9y ago
  How about if I say this: Just because other people have it worse, doesn't mean that software developers are privileged or lucky. Many don't enjoy it, but they've put in hard work to learn it. I don't like how the word privileged get's tossed around these days.
• Spark9001 9y ago
  I too spent 10+ years as a professional software developer before I decided I just didn't want to do it any longer. I still love "hobby coding", as the author calls it, but production/professional software development is entirely different. Luckily, I stumbled into a job in the "solutions" genre: i.e. solutions architect, solutions consultant, pre-sales engineer, technical account manager, etc. There are subtle differences between these jobs, but they all require a fairly high level of technical knowledge, but also require soft skills and business acumen. I found this was the sweet spot for me. I'm able to stay close to technology without the immense pressure of professional software development. Plus, I get to learn more about the big picture, business operations, my clients needs, grow my network, etc. I still hobby code in the evenings, out of pure enjoyment, and the knowledge I gain helps me do my day job better. It's the perfect situation. If you're over professional software development, try a "solutions" gig.
  • azatris 9y ago
    Thank you! This is exactly where I'd prefer moving too!
• alistproducer2 9y ago
  I'm leaving IT after 5 years to start a real estate company and work with my hands. I feel exactly the same way as the OP. Sitting on my butt for 6 years is wrecking my health and I hate the work. I've saved lots of money and as long as I don't screw up my investments, I'll never have to work for anyone else again. I love open source software and will continue to build and contribute to projects. I hate enterprise software and development culture and will never do it again. To each his own.
  • kowdermeister 9y ago
    Good for you. That's really exceptional that only after 5 years you can do that. I'm not even close after 10 :/
    • alistproducer2 9y ago
      To be fair, I'm in a 2 income household and my spouse bought into the "save everything now, retire early" plan.
  • k3a 9y ago
    Same here, I was lucky to work on a successful project and now have enough money to be independent. I am also going to support free and open software (I actually released some of my code and helped with small pull requests and I am donating a bit already). I mostly use free software now. Corporations often restrict us and try to gain control and advantage over us. Just look at closed bios/intel ME. Why the hell is such an elementary piece of computer closed? I purhased an expensive coffee machine. It works fine, except I would like to do a few minor software tweaks (add a note for each coffee config button to differentiate between them). If it were open, it would be very easy. Now I will have to reverse-engineer it and hope it uses some kind of filesystem and that extending it won't be too much work...
• xstartup 9y ago
  I work 20 hours a day and I don't even feel like I am working. This involves coding 10-15 hours a day with 5-6 hours of sales pitch and customer service. I know plenty of folks who really enjoy working all time.
  • tonyedgecombe 9y ago
    How long do you think you can sustain that? Do you think you are doing good work?
  • k3a 9y ago
    It may look cool at the beginning but I guess you will change mind after 5-10 years..
• auggierose 9y ago
  There are a lot of answers here that say "there are so many worse jobs, and I've done some of them, so be grateful for the comparatively cushion job you have". I can understand this, and it is great to have people working for you who are willing to push through whatever shit you give them. On the other hand, great people really are about bending the context space to make seemingly large distances become small distances. Then you don't have to push through as much shit as you thought in the beginning. You don't want to lose the second kind of people by creating work environments in which only the first kind of people can thrive.
• dlwdlw 9y ago
  I think one perspective shift that needs to occur in tech is not of lowering some bar but recognition that many bars are unnecessarily high. Many interviews can end up selecting for group compatibility "Can she passionately discuss Haskell at our group outings." Rather than ability to do the job. It's actually "important" though as without group cohesion new people can find it difficult to get help and up to speed. Though this sounds like an "immature" type of environment it's probably fairly common at different levels of extremeness. Male vocations tend to have less work/life balance with more meaning derived from work than other things like family/relationships/hobbies. The bar can't be lowered without draining a portion of meaning which exists primarily in arbitrary difficulty/moats/hazing-rituals. Everyone just wants to feel good about themselves. But when that feeling can't be derived internally (like being able to choose and follow a hobby) the only option is externally derived feelings of usefulness which necessitate one-upping something. If it's not "I'm Ok" then it's "I'm better than you." If it's not about living then it has to be about winning. And winning is the culture of young males striving for meaning in the world.
• azinman2 9y ago
  Almost anyone’s hobby is less fun when done as work, especially as a team grows and systems are necessary. E.g cooking, painting, furniture making, etc.
• mk89 9y ago
  Good luck to the author. And kudos to her that, despite all issues endured in the software industry, had a relatively good career. Our industry is not easy, and I don't feel like saying that it's the worst. This is what bad management does, unfortunately. If companies want to win they have to train management to be better and educate them regularly, implement a feedback system and act on it (no, collecting is not enough). We have lost a resource, a person who got trained for years not only at school but also on the job. Why? Because we got her frustrated and demotivated. I blame it all on bad management.
• pascalxus 9y ago
  the author has clearly been taken advantage of by her work as many people have been both in the software industry and outside of it. The biggest problem, is our need for money. If we only needed 1/3 as much money to live, then you wouldn't need to work nearly as much. You could work for 5 years and then take several years off. And, if everyone else did the same, the labor supply would shrink to amount that forces employers to treat labor with more respect. At that point, I don't think they'll mind you have a 3 year gap, as long as your skills are up to date. But, reducing your need for money to 1/3 is hard, partly due to our financial decisions: but this part can be changed. It's pretty easy to cut spending on the frivolous parts. The hardest part is taxes. In the US, on average, 1/3 of every dollar you earn gets taken by the Gov and it's much much more than that if you're in an expensive area like the bay area. If you find this surprising, take a good look at gov spend of GDP. Housing cost is probably the next biggest area that's hard to reduce, mainly due to laws that prevent land supply and zoning from increasing and lots of other political factors. Anyways, I think it's not reasonable to expect everyone's work to be fun 100% of the time. We just have to expect that some of the work will be interesting and some of it won't and reduce the total amount of work done in a lifetime accordingly.
• brooklyntribe 9y ago
  A heads up? Don't take a cabinet making workshop with an instructor passionate about what you can do with a plank of Birds Eye Maple, a router and a piece of sandpaper. You may never look at another Javascript framework again. So DON'T take that class. You may do something crazy like quit your day job and make wooden bowls all day. And have way too much fun. You don't want to have way too much fun. And don't get me started on glassblowing! You can do pretty well on Etsy, and code on the side. And keep that grad degree in CompSci as Plan B. :-)
• psyc 9y ago
  I feel the same as the author about software jobs. I love CS, coding, architecture, and UX design more than just about anything. I spend at least 60 hours coding most weeks, and mostly for the love of it. But I dearly hope that I never have to go to work at a company, any company, ever again. I've happily accepted a very minimal standard of living to help ensure that. There are a lot of top comments here already that sound like "keep quiet and stop being ungrateful." Well, being grateful for what you have is good for your mental health in general, but it isn't the answer to everything. Otherwise, why have any preferences? Obviously, I feel this way because of my experiences in the workplace, and you feel differently because of yours. Sorry, but ditch-digging is not universally a worse deal than a software job. I put in 4 years at Walmart, during which I cleaned a lot of shit and vomit off floors and walls, pushed carts through snow in the northeast winters, and physically exerted myself to exhaustion regularly. Yet I was never very unhappy. I never got anywhere close to the raw misery and near mental breakdowns I experienced in several of my developer jobs. I would have expected more of us to understand all too well why dev jobs can be truly terrible, stressful, unrewarding, and dis-empowering. If you feel lucky to be in this line of work, maybe you are lucky, but not every software engineer is lucky to have their job.
  • abledon 9y ago
    """Sorry, but ditch-digging is not universally a worse deal than a software job. I put in 4 years at Walmart, during which I cleaned a lot of shit and vomit off floors and walls, pushed carts through snow in the northeast winters, and physically exerted myself to exhaustion regularly. Yet I was never very unhappy. I never got anywhere close to the raw misery and near mental breakdowns I experienced in several of my developer jobs.""" So True, money is good in our industry, but sometimes the stress that comes with it is nowhere worth it. We spend our health earning money and once we are rich, spend our money trying to regain our health lol.
  • brightball 9y ago
    I think there is really something to be said for the simple satisfaction of doing almost the same thing everyday and never having expectations change. You leave your job when you clock out. Constant deadlines can and will wear on you over time. Pressure to meet those deadlines while solving problems in which the completion time has been guessed and the people setting the deadlines don’t seem to get that creates a lot of stress. It’s honestly made me want to get into dev management just because I feel like I could to more to help dev teams run smoothly than I can as a single developer.
• katzgrau 9y ago
  I understand that a job gets boring and you have to do things you wouldn't choose to do yourself for decades on end, but that's what a job is. And as a developers, we're pretty lucky that we're generally respected within our companies, well paid, have plenty of work/life flexibility, and have the ability to go solo and do our own thing on our own terms - all within what is mostly a meritocracy in that talent often trumps pedigree. I make a living running a company that I bootstrapped 5 years ago. It was fun when I started, but I do find plenty of days where I'm feeling burnt out or uninterested. I'm reasonably certain that no matter what you're doing - if you do it long enough, you'll find things you don't like about it. My only tip for anyone feeling this way is to look for microchallenges. If you're basically just fixing bugs in an established enterprise product, for example, find clever ways to improve the code, refactor code, make debugging easier, improve system stability and monitoring, etc. Perhaps find something that you could parlay into an open source project. There are plenty of fun little challenges that can align your personal and work life if you look for them.
• funkythingss 9y ago
  So this lady doesn't like to work in tech, because a single men told her that fewer women are interested in tech than men? Maybe she was wrong there from the beginning, if she can't listen to other people's opinions. Also, how often has the wage gap been debunked?
• nickbauman 9y ago
  If your job as a programmer is being measured by the hours you're putting in every day, you are experiencing a conflict of mission. I have a co-worker who never seems to be working yet he's one of the most productive people in the office. He works for 1 hour in the morning untangling a hairball in the code that creates 22 hours of productivity for the rest of the team. He's been programming since the 1980s. Stop this madness of applying 19th century industrial England's work "ethic" to the job of a programmer, please.
• xupybd 9y ago
  >That what James Damore said that really cut to the core was that a lot of us women in tech were only there because a bar was lowered to get us in to meet some quota. I don't think that is what he was saying, he was saying lowering the bar is of limited utility if not that many women are choosing tech careers. Maybe addressing the reason that tech is not attractive to women is a better solution?
• stmw 9y ago
  A relevant Harvard study - "Ten-month-old infants determine the value of a goal from how hard someone works to achieve it" https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-11-ten-month-old-infants-goal-hard.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-11-ten-month-old-infants...
• ots 9y ago
  I am not a software developer. As a sysadmin, I'm paid less than a software developer with similar experience. I started doing support after college, even though I have a CS degree. At the beginning I wasn't sure if I want to this and was a bit envy to software developers. It took me several years to realize that I actually prefer to what I'm doing than full-time coding. I've been at jobs that I can travel to different parts of the work to support our infrastructure or build a company's server infrastructure from scratch and having significant impact on the organization. There is always a different path one can take, especially at such young age as the OP.
• qntl 9y ago
  I’d love to teach high school math or physics (or hell, even programming) classes. I’ve looked into it a little, and the bottom line is that no school district is ever going to pay me even half what my <Big Tech Firm> employer will pay me to shine their latest shiny app. I think it might make a good retirement career for me some day though.
• smsm42 9y ago
  That's why I have avoided working for huge companies so far. The pros of working for big company (including the Government which for this purpose is the same) are the benefits are usually pretty good, and if you're going to do decent job you probably will have decent job security - unless somebody 5 levels up decides to close your whole subdivision, in which case you're out no matter what. The cons are you are not even close to where the decisions are made, have very little chance to influence anything substantial and can spend years perfecting formatting on TPS reports without even knowing whether somebody ever looks at them. I would suggest people feeling the upsides of nice paycheck do not cover the downsides of being a corporate drone try to explore smaller company scene. Maybe not fresh-baked startups (too risky unless you have good cash cushion or so young that expanding your resume is worth it anyway) but ones that are already established but still did not develop to Facebook/Google sizes.
• keithnz 9y ago
  This is why I have always enjoyed working for smaller companies. I've got to do lots of things, I'm a multi stack developer (tm), I code for embedded systems, Web, and Desktop. You build from scratch the things you need, you make "executive" decisions about technology stacks and generally do kind of hobby like stuff but in a proffesional way. You work with a few other individuals in the same boat and constantly have to innovate. There are downsides, you rarely get to focus on one thing for any extended amount of time, so some of the bigger pieces of work get trickier to do. Often you come up with really good ideas that would be great to do but just go on the back burner.
• throwawayy60 9y ago
  This really hit home for me, and I personally know plenty of other dissatisfied software developers who would feel the same. It’s incredibly sad. And this doesn’t even take into account the problems female developers run into. The biggest thing for me was the hours. I can’t stand “startup hours”. In my first three years of software development, I guess I lucked out because this wasn’t a problem. But after my first two jobs, I started taking in 9:30-6:30 and 10-7. When I interviewed elsewhere, I came across a new term. I was told “we work startup hours.” Some companies described it using different words, but the meaning was always the same. You’ll be here late, just like everybody else. If you don’t like it, don’t work here. I got that from three out of the four companies I interviewed for. Not a huge sample size, but hugely demoralizing. I became a consultant thinking billable hours might save me. It’s not perfect but it’s a hell of a lot better. Working long hours is no longer the norm, as it’s cinsidered “eating hours” and doing free work for clients.
• wolco 9y ago
  For someone in her position I would be looking at a manager role or project manager.
• spectrum1234 9y ago
  Please leave. You suck as a dev. Bye!
  • SliderUp 9y ago
    Just fuck right off. I hope she coffees as much as she wants to, on what she wants to. You're an asshole, on the other hand.
• fulafel 9y ago
  Not to reduce this to one thing, but > Coding for a couple of hours a day in your spare time isn’t the same as coding for 8+ hours a day. Over the past decade it has worn me down. I have regular painful migraines triggered by working long hours. I have the beginnings of arthritis in my neck. I don't recommend anyone does 8+ programming days because of deadlines. It's different if you're "in the zone" of course. Normal good programming jobs are fine with 8 hours days consisting of much less than 8 hours of actual programming. That's why you are in a salaried job: you do your best but you you're not responsible for getting things done "at any cost".
• grad_ml 9y ago
  This is a new trend of tech blogging. Complain on each and every thing. I have this, I'm this. I'm that. I have that. I'm goood. pretty much crux of the whole article. Software jobs are complex, demanding, which is mostly `reflected` in salaries. She has devoted half of article sniding/criticizing here male peers >It’s really hard to celebrate “women’s day” with free feminist speakers when I just found out some guy who does the same work as me is getting paid 20% more. Well, many men who do the exact same work, don't get same money. Women/men in tech, imo are getting paid, whatever they could negotiate. I think, it's not about gender at all. I have never witnessed hiring manager not willing to pay because candidate is women/asian/white/black or purple. Is there backlash against women in tech? I think, not at all. As a matter of fact, companies now have quotas for women in dev/engineering and management positions. Equality.. that's some real double talk. Workplace is not a political place, which guarantees freedom of speech. It's a controlled environment, which tries to achieve business objective. On top of that, I feel like women criticizing men in workplace is acceptable, like calling them "jerk" in article. I feel like, dev community is fine with that. Is dev community fine with, men calling names to women in workplace, without any consequences? On the top, we all know what is modern feminism movement about it. I don't how as a male engineer, I'll be comfortable, a bunch cribbing about men all the time around me, neither would women feel comfortable when a bunch dude pushing the idea of men rights. Dude from google got fired for expressing his opinion. I'm not quite sure, what kind of workplace we are trying to envision.
• vnrst1 9y ago
  At Spot.coach, we work with a lot of engineering teams to help them design their dream work life. http://www.spot.coach/managers http://www.spot.coach/managers
• cmroanirgo 9y ago
  The article reminds of my story. I left 5 years ago. I'd written everything from 3d games to accounting & stock market analysis. Couldn't wait to get out. I now write for me, and for friends. For free. Some of it could even turn very lucrative, if I felt inclined -- which I don't. I'm living off savings mainly, but occasionally do a bit of manual labour -- and am happier for it.