7 ms·

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 deve

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
    Just acknowledging a problem exists takes practically zero time.
  - tomjen3 9y ago
    I hate this attitude. Well hate is not nearly a strong enough word for my sentiment, but I refuse to feel unearned guilt over somebody else not having what I have. I will work on improving my life and then they can work on improving theirs. I might have cared, once, but I have been hit in the head so much with attitudes like yours that I just don't care anymore.
    - tboyd47 9y ago
      Exactly, and even if you did, why would that unearned guilt stop you from being concerned about yourself and the people directly around you?
jib 9y ago
Shittier jobs I've had than a desk job: 5-6 hours a day biking in -15C snow with wet feet (Mailman). 8 hours a day moving chips one by one in and out of an EPROM writer because it was cheaper to have me do that than pay the extra 2c to have them preprogrammed. The chips were 25c without programming and 27c with. (Ericson subcontractor). And I am privileged as hell, coming from Sweden with a good education and a family I can rely on. I think the point of burning out on work is relatable still. It is not fun to work long hours of anything, and it is even less fun when something you used to do for entertainment turns into a chore. But I'm pretty happy with my desk job in the software industry because the other jobs Ive seen have been a lot less nice.
- hackermailman 9y ago
  I'm a developer and still a mailman in Canada in the freezing rain and snow because that indexed pension is just too good to give up, plus they let you do awesome things like bank all your overtime so you can take more days off. I had one month off paid this year in addition to my regular 5 weeks off. Before my shift these days I program for a university medical research lab, which isn't highly paid but it's satisfying work where you are always learning something, and they keep writing me letters of recommendation so I keep picking up new research contracts when one ends. Very casual environment, coworker post-doc's are helpful to bleed for information, no performance bonus paperwork to fill out or bosses harassing me with nonsense the lead researchers thankfully take care of that. Before I was working remotely for various companies and hated it as the unpaid hours kept growing with ridiculous meetings and paperwork. Their management kept sending me these surveys to fill out and very long emails and slack distractions that always required immediate attention so the job became more trouble than it was worth and I quit. My criteria for work these days is "Will they lay me off in X years?" and "How much mandatory overtime is there?" nothing else really matters including the pay being below average.
  - justboxing 9y ago
    > I'm a developer and still a mailman in Canada.... Before my shift these days I program for a university medical research lab. So your mailman job is a full-time job and the programming job is part-time? Or is it the other way around? Or are both part-time? Asking because part-time jobs in software engineering are quite hard to come by, atleast in the US.
claudiulodro 9y ago
I was a furniture upholsterer. It was super interesting, good exercise, and really required a lot of analytic thinking. I loved upholstery. However, I wasn't able to support a wife and kid on an upholsterer's paycheck. An employee upholsterer starts at $10/hour for a junior up to a high-range of $20/hr for 10+ years experience. Now I'm a software developer making multiples higher more income. I like it OK and I can provide a cushy life for my family. Upholstery was the best. I miss upholstery. I don't see any way I could feasibly switch back to it, though.
- derwiki 9y ago
  > cushy life Nice upholstery pun :D
- justboxing 9y ago
  Interesting you mentioned your story about going from upholsterer to software engineer. It looks like the OP of the medium post is going the other way around... > The good news is I basically already did win the lottery. I built up savings working as a developer which allowed me to quit. > .... but now gives me a landing pad where I can take some time to really do what I love. Ample time with people I care about. > In January I’m starting a leatherwork vocational program. So maybe a year from now, she'll experience what you experienced, i.e. low wages / income and decide to come back to the 'cushy' life and follow up with another blog post titled "I just not want to be a leather worker any more."
  - UMadBreaux 9y ago
    I started getting a little dissatisfied with programming during university, and decided to become an Emergency Medical Technician because medicine had always interested me. I thought it would be a far more meaningful experience, but it drove me back to programming very quickly. The majority of calls were rather pointless in terms of impact. Patients were generally in a state where nothing you did would make a difference, whether that was because they we're beyond help or didn't really need your help in the first place. The calls where you did make a difference we're generally so traumatic anyways that I preferred to try and forget about them. In my area, pay was about 12 to 15 USD per hour. It wasn't worth it to me to dodge bodily fluids, risk throwing your back out lifting stretchers (those things are heavy even without a patient!), and above all, get an incredibly depressing view of humanity. I worked in a low-income area and above all it was just sad. Granted, I was 22 years old and probably a little too immature for the work. I worked with some of the most burnt-out, cynical people I can imagine, but also some of the kindest, most-dedicated individuals I have ever met in my life. I moved back in with my parents to catch up on programming and got into software dev without any issues. I worked in consulting for three years and it was incredibly stressful. I learned a lot working on a wide variety of projects, but there were also weeks of working 70+ hours. I began resorting to substance abuse to deal with burnout. Now I work as the sole developer for a small organization. I don't learn as much in my day-to-day activities as I did as a consultant, but the work is not stressful and I have incredibly supportive coworkers. I am less stressed but not satisfied with my job. Cars have become a passion of mine, I debate becoming a mechanic now at least once a week. I would get paid far less, but there is something incredibly satisfying about working on cars. It feels a lot more meaningful to me.
eternalban 9y ago
I think it significant that you are not making a comparison to other intellectually demanding professions. A short order cook's worklife is worse than software workers, therefore let us be grateful. (The other day I made the same remark to a co-worker as we passed the guard in the lobby. "We're lucky!") It is true. Software development is indeed the best /blue collar/ career out there. Software engineers need to look into work conditions of other intellectually demanding professions that meet the "charmed life" criteria you mention.
- dkersten 9y ago
  Just because other people have it worse, doesn't necessarily mean you have to settle for something that causes you unhappiness/stress/burnout. Yes, we are absolutely lucky and privileged, but the industry isn't all rosy either and there are lots of frustrated, unhappy and burntout developers out there.
  - eternalban 9y ago
    Yes, yes, and yes. (I think you missed the point.)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jvvw 9y ago
Realistically though, most of us working as developers wouldn't be working in a restaurant though instead. With a degree in maths, I would have probably ended up in something like statistics, science, finance or teaching. Not saying that those are better areas to be in (and one of the reasons that I work half-time is that I don't want to be more sedentary than I am) but it feels like a weird comparison for me.
- empath75 9y ago
  I actually was working as a grocery clerk, then in a mail room. There are a lot of developers without degrees in the world. I was a nobody from nowhere and my vocational opportunities were pretty limited if I didn’t have the good luck of having a Commodore 64 when I was a kid.
  - LouisSayers 9y ago
    We had a Commodore 64 when I was a kid. It was fun! I used to play games on it. That was the only thing I did on it - I guess I just didn’t know that you could do more than play games on it. Maybe I was a bit too young at the time, or the fact that it was gifted to my family who knew next to nothing about computers. So I still ended up working at supermarkets and doing manual labour jobs until I was at university and started doing some tutoring. I think it’s good to have had the experiences of doing some manual labour type jobs - it gives people context and perspective.
aphextron 9y ago
This one hits hard. As a front end developer, when people ask what I do, I say "I make buttons". Red buttons, blue buttons, big buttons, small buttons. Any kind of button you can imagine. I spend my life making buttons light up on a colorful screen. And then people click on those buttons and I get paid an obscene amount of money for it. I'm not sure if this is how people are supposed to live. It's driving me mad. But then I get home, order a burrito on Postmates, and am horrified at the thought of ending up as this guy delivering me a burrito at 3AM to make his rent. So I wake up the next morning to do it all over again. As a mediocre self taught developer without even a high school degree, I know I'll be right back there once the market turns down, so I don't really have the luxury of considering anything else.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
  "I spend my life making buttons light up on a colorful screen." Anything can be cynically reduced to some absurd description. You do your (very sensible) argument a disservice by doing that.
  - dictum 9y ago
    "Stamping out widgets" is the classic industrial equivalent, and the idea certainly dates back to the first craftspeople. For instance, when their whole work is considered, nurses are essential, but their work can be similarly reduced to shuffling things around.
    - Chris2048 9y ago
      Don't craftspeople literally reproduce the same thing? Reproducing the exact same button is as easy as ctrl-c,ctrl-v
  - m_fayer 9y ago
    I make crud apps, but shiny.
- noncoml 9y ago
  This hit a nerve. I think I hate my life as a developer, but then I see this janitor, in our office, cleaning the floor and windows, cleaning and unblocking the toilets, etc., and is always greeting me with a smile. Makes me wonder why I deserve to be living such s luxurious life, while this guy has to spend his days waking up probably around 5am, commuting for a hour just to clean somebody else’s shit just to earn 1/3 of what I do.
Boothroid 9y ago
Dentistry is far from easy on the body and mind - high suicide rates, high toll on the body. Many if not most older dentists have some kind of physical ailment related to their job.
samirillian 9y ago
This is a perfect example of the tone that people (men) effect when they want to mask their own emotional reaction to feeling attacked with a veneer of logicism or scientificity. Simply state that her claims are anecdotal, and without even addressing the core of the argument you've managed to make them sound _unreasonable_. At least to those amenable to that kind of passive aggressive ad hominem.
- donquichotte 9y ago
  I did't read that comment as passive aggressive or sexist. Maybe my SJW-meter is miscalibrated.
  - dang 9y ago
    Please don't respond to a provocative comment with still more flamebait. That's exactly the wrong direction to take a thread.
    - samirillian 9y ago
      Yes, he does kind of prove my point doesn't he...
- ImSkeptical 9y ago
  The article author's claims are anecdotal by definition. She is recounting the story of why she doesn't want to be a software developer anymore. As readers, we can ask ourselves whether her story represents something that we feel is true in our own lives. In a way, the comment you are replying to is at odds with article, and in a way the comment is in agreement with the article. The comment you are replying to states that the physically demanding work that commenter is acquainted with is an alternative that makes software development seem like a good job choice. In that way, the commenter is disagreeing with the article author. However, the commenter also states that he is blessed by the ability to do software development style work. This is a sentiment that the article author shares, writing that she is blessed by the ability to build up enough money to safely try out other careers. In this way, both writers are in congruence. I think you're reading sentiments that are not evident into the comment you are replying to. In my reading of that comment, there is nothing there that is attacking - just someone observing that they don't share the author's perspective, and explaining why. Bringing gender into the discussion also strikes me as an overreach. There is nothing about the subject that is related to gender - the article author is disenchanted with software development and wants a different career. The commenter, having had a less pleasant career first, prefers software development with it's flaws. As a final note, I believe the word you are looking for is "affect" and not "effect" - if you mean that men are adopting a tone in order to make an impression on others.
Terr_ 9y ago
This reminds me of an amusing post that is... Well, not exactly a rebuttal as much as a re-framing: > Every friend I have with a job that involves picking up something heavier than a laptop more than twice a week eventually finds a way to slip something like this into conversation: "Bro, you don't work hard. I just worked a 4700-hour week digging a tunnel under Mordor with a screwdriver." https://gizmodo.com/programming-sucks-why-a-job-in-coding-is-absolute-hell-1570227192 https://gizmodo.com/programming-sucks-why-a-job-in-coding-is...
askafriend 9y ago
I think this piece needs to be taken with the context of the author’s work history which heavily colors her professional experience. It’s easy to look up on LinkedIn. Once I saw it, her post made a ton more sense. I offer no value judgements as I know better than to do that (whether positive or negative, not interested in engaging). But you can look for yourself.
bearbearbear 9y ago
> 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. As a normal, stupid person who interacts with coders frequently I find this to be not in the least unusual. They simply don't understand what it is to be without a $4,000 apartment within walking distance of everything they could possibly want and so much money that figuring out what to do with it all is a real and ever present problem for them. They love to humble brag about how the only people who shop at walmart are people who believe in despotic employment practices, never conceding to the fact that a lot of people shop there because they can't afford to pay $5 for a single apple (no seriously, at the Stanford Shopping Center there's a produce shop that sells a single apple for $5).
nikdaheratik 9y ago
I don't think the comparison is to the service industry, but rather to other in demand jobs that require the same level of education and don't get pushed into some kind of massive grind based on artificial deadlines. If you get into software because you love the work, but then find out at this particular company, their goal is to make the work more boring and predictable than accounting. Only they also decide that you have to do this boring stuff for 50+ hours a week in order to meet whatever deadline they told their executives, you'd probably think about a different field as well. It really depends on the company, on the freedom you get to do your job, and the kinds of problems you are allowed to work on. And the choices many people are given is to either work at an established company where all of the interesting work is locked up by the Senior people who will never leave, or work at a "scrappy" startup that doesn't have the budget to hire a reasonable number of people, doesn't know how to make a realistic timeline, and may not be there in a few years. It's possible to find a job or company with the right mix, but if you don't luck into one of those, the industry really can feel like a mug's game.

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
  Just acknowledging a problem exists takes practically zero time.
- tomjen3 9y ago
  I hate this attitude. Well hate is not nearly a strong enough word for my sentiment, but I refuse to feel unearned guilt over somebody else not having what I have. I will work on improving my life and then they can work on improving theirs. I might have cared, once, but I have been hit in the head so much with attitudes like yours that I just don't care anymore.
  - tboyd47 9y ago
    Exactly, and even if you did, why would that unearned guilt stop you from being concerned about yourself and the people directly around you?

jib 9y ago

Shittier jobs I've had than a desk job: 5-6 hours a day biking in -15C snow with wet feet (Mailman). 8 hours a day moving chips one by one in and out of an EPROM writer because it was cheaper to have me do that than pay the extra 2c to have them preprogrammed. The chips were 25c without programming and 27c with. (Ericson subcontractor). And I am privileged as hell, coming from Sweden with a good education and a family I can rely on. I think the point of burning out on work is relatable still. It is not fun to work long hours of anything, and it is even less fun when something you used to do for entertainment turns into a chore. But I'm pretty happy with my desk job in the software industry because the other jobs Ive seen have been a lot less nice.

hackermailman 9y ago
I'm a developer and still a mailman in Canada in the freezing rain and snow because that indexed pension is just too good to give up, plus they let you do awesome things like bank all your overtime so you can take more days off. I had one month off paid this year in addition to my regular 5 weeks off. Before my shift these days I program for a university medical research lab, which isn't highly paid but it's satisfying work where you are always learning something, and they keep writing me letters of recommendation so I keep picking up new research contracts when one ends. Very casual environment, coworker post-doc's are helpful to bleed for information, no performance bonus paperwork to fill out or bosses harassing me with nonsense the lead researchers thankfully take care of that. Before I was working remotely for various companies and hated it as the unpaid hours kept growing with ridiculous meetings and paperwork. Their management kept sending me these surveys to fill out and very long emails and slack distractions that always required immediate attention so the job became more trouble than it was worth and I quit. My criteria for work these days is "Will they lay me off in X years?" and "How much mandatory overtime is there?" nothing else really matters including the pay being below average.
- justboxing 9y ago
  > I'm a developer and still a mailman in Canada.... Before my shift these days I program for a university medical research lab. So your mailman job is a full-time job and the programming job is part-time? Or is it the other way around? Or are both part-time? Asking because part-time jobs in software engineering are quite hard to come by, atleast in the US.

claudiulodro 9y ago

I was a furniture upholsterer. It was super interesting, good exercise, and really required a lot of analytic thinking. I loved upholstery. However, I wasn't able to support a wife and kid on an upholsterer's paycheck. An employee upholsterer starts at $10/hour for a junior up to a high-range of $20/hr for 10+ years experience. Now I'm a software developer making multiples higher more income. I like it OK and I can provide a cushy life for my family. Upholstery was the best. I miss upholstery. I don't see any way I could feasibly switch back to it, though.

derwiki 9y ago
> cushy life Nice upholstery pun :D
justboxing 9y ago
Interesting you mentioned your story about going from upholsterer to software engineer. It looks like the OP of the medium post is going the other way around... > The good news is I basically already did win the lottery. I built up savings working as a developer which allowed me to quit. > .... but now gives me a landing pad where I can take some time to really do what I love. Ample time with people I care about. > In January I’m starting a leatherwork vocational program. So maybe a year from now, she'll experience what you experienced, i.e. low wages / income and decide to come back to the 'cushy' life and follow up with another blog post titled "I just not want to be a leather worker any more."
- UMadBreaux 9y ago
  I started getting a little dissatisfied with programming during university, and decided to become an Emergency Medical Technician because medicine had always interested me. I thought it would be a far more meaningful experience, but it drove me back to programming very quickly. The majority of calls were rather pointless in terms of impact. Patients were generally in a state where nothing you did would make a difference, whether that was because they we're beyond help or didn't really need your help in the first place. The calls where you did make a difference we're generally so traumatic anyways that I preferred to try and forget about them. In my area, pay was about 12 to 15 USD per hour. It wasn't worth it to me to dodge bodily fluids, risk throwing your back out lifting stretchers (those things are heavy even without a patient!), and above all, get an incredibly depressing view of humanity. I worked in a low-income area and above all it was just sad. Granted, I was 22 years old and probably a little too immature for the work. I worked with some of the most burnt-out, cynical people I can imagine, but also some of the kindest, most-dedicated individuals I have ever met in my life. I moved back in with my parents to catch up on programming and got into software dev without any issues. I worked in consulting for three years and it was incredibly stressful. I learned a lot working on a wide variety of projects, but there were also weeks of working 70+ hours. I began resorting to substance abuse to deal with burnout. Now I work as the sole developer for a small organization. I don't learn as much in my day-to-day activities as I did as a consultant, but the work is not stressful and I have incredibly supportive coworkers. I am less stressed but not satisfied with my job. Cars have become a passion of mine, I debate becoming a mechanic now at least once a week. I would get paid far less, but there is something incredibly satisfying about working on cars. It feels a lot more meaningful to me.

eternalban 9y ago

I think it significant that you are not making a comparison to other intellectually demanding professions. A short order cook's worklife is worse than software workers, therefore let us be grateful. (The other day I made the same remark to a co-worker as we passed the guard in the lobby. "We're lucky!") It is true. Software development is indeed the best /blue collar/ career out there. Software engineers need to look into work conditions of other intellectually demanding professions that meet the "charmed life" criteria you mention.

dkersten 9y ago
Just because other people have it worse, doesn't necessarily mean you have to settle for something that causes you unhappiness/stress/burnout. Yes, we are absolutely lucky and privileged, but the industry isn't all rosy either and there are lots of frustrated, unhappy and burntout developers out there.
- eternalban 9y ago
  Yes, yes, and yes. (I think you missed the point.)

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jvvw 9y ago

Realistically though, most of us working as developers wouldn't be working in a restaurant though instead. With a degree in maths, I would have probably ended up in something like statistics, science, finance or teaching. Not saying that those are better areas to be in (and one of the reasons that I work half-time is that I don't want to be more sedentary than I am) but it feels like a weird comparison for me.

empath75 9y ago
I actually was working as a grocery clerk, then in a mail room. There are a lot of developers without degrees in the world. I was a nobody from nowhere and my vocational opportunities were pretty limited if I didn’t have the good luck of having a Commodore 64 when I was a kid.
- LouisSayers 9y ago
  We had a Commodore 64 when I was a kid. It was fun! I used to play games on it. That was the only thing I did on it - I guess I just didn’t know that you could do more than play games on it. Maybe I was a bit too young at the time, or the fact that it was gifted to my family who knew next to nothing about computers. So I still ended up working at supermarkets and doing manual labour jobs until I was at university and started doing some tutoring. I think it’s good to have had the experiences of doing some manual labour type jobs - it gives people context and perspective.

aphextron 9y ago

This one hits hard. As a front end developer, when people ask what I do, I say "I make buttons". Red buttons, blue buttons, big buttons, small buttons. Any kind of button you can imagine. I spend my life making buttons light up on a colorful screen. And then people click on those buttons and I get paid an obscene amount of money for it. I'm not sure if this is how people are supposed to live. It's driving me mad. But then I get home, order a burrito on Postmates, and am horrified at the thought of ending up as this guy delivering me a burrito at 3AM to make his rent. So I wake up the next morning to do it all over again. As a mediocre self taught developer without even a high school degree, I know I'll be right back there once the market turns down, so I don't really have the luxury of considering anything else.

kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
"I spend my life making buttons light up on a colorful screen." Anything can be cynically reduced to some absurd description. You do your (very sensible) argument a disservice by doing that.
- dictum 9y ago
  "Stamping out widgets" is the classic industrial equivalent, and the idea certainly dates back to the first craftspeople. For instance, when their whole work is considered, nurses are essential, but their work can be similarly reduced to shuffling things around.
  - Chris2048 9y ago
    Don't craftspeople literally reproduce the same thing? Reproducing the exact same button is as easy as ctrl-c,ctrl-v
- m_fayer 9y ago
  I make crud apps, but shiny.
noncoml 9y ago
This hit a nerve. I think I hate my life as a developer, but then I see this janitor, in our office, cleaning the floor and windows, cleaning and unblocking the toilets, etc., and is always greeting me with a smile. Makes me wonder why I deserve to be living such s luxurious life, while this guy has to spend his days waking up probably around 5am, commuting for a hour just to clean somebody else’s shit just to earn 1/3 of what I do.

Boothroid 9y ago

Dentistry is far from easy on the body and mind - high suicide rates, high toll on the body. Many if not most older dentists have some kind of physical ailment related to their job.

samirillian 9y ago

This is a perfect example of the tone that people (men) effect when they want to mask their own emotional reaction to feeling attacked with a veneer of logicism or scientificity. Simply state that her claims are anecdotal, and without even addressing the core of the argument you've managed to make them sound _unreasonable_. At least to those amenable to that kind of passive aggressive ad hominem.

donquichotte 9y ago
I did't read that comment as passive aggressive or sexist. Maybe my SJW-meter is miscalibrated.
- dang 9y ago
  Please don't respond to a provocative comment with still more flamebait. That's exactly the wrong direction to take a thread.
  - samirillian 9y ago
    Yes, he does kind of prove my point doesn't he...
ImSkeptical 9y ago
The article author's claims are anecdotal by definition. She is recounting the story of why she doesn't want to be a software developer anymore. As readers, we can ask ourselves whether her story represents something that we feel is true in our own lives. In a way, the comment you are replying to is at odds with article, and in a way the comment is in agreement with the article. The comment you are replying to states that the physically demanding work that commenter is acquainted with is an alternative that makes software development seem like a good job choice. In that way, the commenter is disagreeing with the article author. However, the commenter also states that he is blessed by the ability to do software development style work. This is a sentiment that the article author shares, writing that she is blessed by the ability to build up enough money to safely try out other careers. In this way, both writers are in congruence. I think you're reading sentiments that are not evident into the comment you are replying to. In my reading of that comment, there is nothing there that is attacking - just someone observing that they don't share the author's perspective, and explaining why. Bringing gender into the discussion also strikes me as an overreach. There is nothing about the subject that is related to gender - the article author is disenchanted with software development and wants a different career. The commenter, having had a less pleasant career first, prefers software development with it's flaws. As a final note, I believe the word you are looking for is "affect" and not "effect" - if you mean that men are adopting a tone in order to make an impression on others.

Terr_ 9y ago

This reminds me of an amusing post that is... Well, not exactly a rebuttal as much as a re-framing: > Every friend I have with a job that involves picking up something heavier than a laptop more than twice a week eventually finds a way to slip something like this into conversation: "Bro, you don't work hard. I just worked a 4700-hour week digging a tunnel under Mordor with a screwdriver." https://gizmodo.com/programming-sucks-why-a-job-in-coding-is-absolute-hell-1570227192 https://gizmodo.com/programming-sucks-why-a-job-in-coding-is...

askafriend 9y ago

I think this piece needs to be taken with the context of the author’s work history which heavily colors her professional experience. It’s easy to look up on LinkedIn. Once I saw it, her post made a ton more sense. I offer no value judgements as I know better than to do that (whether positive or negative, not interested in engaging). But you can look for yourself.

bearbearbear 9y ago

> 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. As a normal, stupid person who interacts with coders frequently I find this to be not in the least unusual. They simply don't understand what it is to be without a $4,000 apartment within walking distance of everything they could possibly want and so much money that figuring out what to do with it all is a real and ever present problem for them. They love to humble brag about how the only people who shop at walmart are people who believe in despotic employment practices, never conceding to the fact that a lot of people shop there because they can't afford to pay $5 for a single apple (no seriously, at the Stanford Shopping Center there's a produce shop that sells a single apple for $5).

nikdaheratik 9y ago

I don't think the comparison is to the service industry, but rather to other in demand jobs that require the same level of education and don't get pushed into some kind of massive grind based on artificial deadlines. If you get into software because you love the work, but then find out at this particular company, their goal is to make the work more boring and predictable than accounting. Only they also decide that you have to do this boring stuff for 50+ hours a week in order to meet whatever deadline they told their executives, you'd probably think about a different field as well. It really depends on the company, on the freedom you get to do your job, and the kinds of problems you are allowed to work on. And the choices many people are given is to either work at an established company where all of the interesting work is locked up by the Senior people who will never leave, or work at a "scrappy" startup that doesn't have the budget to hire a reasonable number of people, doesn't know how to make a realistic timeline, and may not be there in a few years. It's possible to find a job or company with the right mix, but if you don't luck into one of those, the industry really can feel like a mug's game.