8 ms·

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

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.
    - dkersten 9y ago
      By the time you've been diagnosed, its possibly already too late. I bought a Kinesis Advantage2 (and foot pedal) earlier this year and after a few months of using it, I wish I'd got one years ago. I feel much less typing strain.
    - BeetleB 9y ago
      >You can only expect to be taken seriously for requests like that if you have been diagnosed with a medical condition If their default setup is bad (crappy chairs, etc), and they have the attitude you mentioned, do not work there. For me, it would be a condition of employment to get me a proper chair and desk.
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.

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.
  - dkersten 9y ago
    By the time you've been diagnosed, its possibly already too late. I bought a Kinesis Advantage2 (and foot pedal) earlier this year and after a few months of using it, I wish I'd got one years ago. I feel much less typing strain.
  - BeetleB 9y ago
    >You can only expect to be taken seriously for requests like that if you have been diagnosed with a medical condition If their default setup is bad (crappy chairs, etc), and they have the attitude you mentioned, do not work there. For me, it would be a condition of employment to get me a proper chair and desk.

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.