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I just don’t want to be a software developer anymore (2017)

75 points by croh 7y ago

rajman187 7y ago
A sad story indeed, but I've never felt any of my work has been "Snow Crashy" or monotonous or lacking the need for autonomy and creativity. I doubt it's representative of the entire industry, and it's not even fair to treat the industry as a monolith to begin with.
- thiago_fm 7y ago
  most of people have jobs like she mentions, but they need money badly to live, so they have no choice than to accept it.
  - jshield 7y ago
    Most of my male colleagues and myself included also hate the industry because the pay sucks, the hours are long, you are expected to do impossible things in impossible amounts of time, and we are so removed from the end users that it’s hard to get an idea of the impact we are having on their day to day grind. It may have something to do with the local scene as well, as I’m pretty confident that not all workplaces are like that, it wasn’t at all like that where I was before. That being said I find anonymously contributing code to open source projects rewarding enough to offset the daily grind.
topologistics 7y ago
> "In the meantime I’ll still be here coding, maybe actually enjoying it again, and trying to find a life where I have true balance between my work and my other needs" Women are underrepresented in tech only because it is a sexist boys club, not because of anything having to do with personal choices.
- thiago_fm 7y ago
  do you have data about this?
- JSavageReal 7y ago
  If you're going to make such outrageous claims, the least you can do is provide some evidence.
draw_down 7y ago
I'll agree that the job is not fun, but it's still a decent job overall I think. I have definitely been miserable at many points, on the other hand. The real problem is that a lot of other jobs seem worse, not that coding is so great. I definitely do not have any sort of passion for it, that left long ago. Just a job.
deaps 7y ago
That did spiral quickly into a rant about women in the tech field. But maybe all that ranting explains the lack of women in the field.
- nkrisc 7y ago
  Can you elaborate please?
  - deaps 7y ago
    Maybe her concerns are shared amongst a majority of her female peers - thus leading to women either not wanting to join the field or leaving shortly after entering it. I mean men and women are different. We tend to excel at different things, have different thought processes, process things differently, different strengths and weaknesses (generally, right? - there is obviously overlap). Maybe her complaints help explain the lack of women in the field.
    - nkrisc 7y ago
      > We tend to excel at different things, have different thought processes, process things differently, different strengths and weaknesses (generally, right? - there is obviously overlap). This could also be said of all individuals, sex aside. Either way, I don't buy it. Nurses tend to mostly be women and yet the job is far harder than any software development job. It's more grueling hours, physically demanding, and mentally challenging. I think it's absurd to suggest that women as a whole can't handle the hours and demands of software development.
      - dqv 7y ago
        But being a nurse is more social than software is. And that aligns with what we know about the differences between where women tend to excel and where men tend to excel.[1] And of course you can then argue that parts of software are more social and my argument would be that there are more women in those parts of software. [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/why-brilliant-girls-tend-favor-non-stem-careers https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rabble-rouser/201707...
rvz 7y ago
The OP needs to place (2017) in the title. > I still love coding, but I hate this industry This essentially can be summarised by only doing software development as a hobby rather than as a profession. But again, this industry isn't for everyone. While its always unfortunate that people who once enter this industry have now quit due to the 'long hours', 'deadlines' or 'burnout', perhaps they should have looked twice at the job requirements or questioned the number of hours before applying in the first place, rather than finding out the hard way. This industry is unforgiving for those who cannot handle it or have no passion in the trade and only do it for the money. If you think a job as a SWE or a SDET is 'bad', wait until you go for a software engineering interview at a FAANG or FTSE 100 company. If this sounds too 'hard' I have heard many vacancies for easier roles in the circus though who are willing to hire what they call 'clowns' and 'idiots'...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- precisioncoder 7y ago
  Do you have any idea how hard it can be to get a job in any decent circus? Most of them require decades of training and education and pay less than most manual labour jobs. Honestly working as a software developer (which I do) required far less investment of time and money then circus. (Where I am now a Partner Acrobatics trainer)
  - wslh 7y ago
    Clearly accepted Cirque du Soleil performers are scarcer than Google developers. This can also be applied to top performers in classical music as well.
    - precisioncoder 7y ago
      The thing that shocked me is it isn't just the best. Even the worst usually have massive amounts of time and effort invested and the pay is normally awful. It's the hobby effect, similar to art and music, however the top performers make vastly less. Cirque du Soleil performers who are some of the best in the world still mostly make < 100k/year.
cerberusss 7y ago
Reading this, I have the feeling she quit her career in programming because of the long hours. But why not look for a job with normal hours?
- jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
  If she lives in the U.S. it can be difficult to find an employer who's willing to cover the cost of living in exchange for labor. Sounds like she's stuck in a positive feedback loop of medical expenses, and that makes it hard to be picky about jobs.
  - bluedevil2k 7y ago
    What??? Maybe in Silicon Valley, but everywhere else in the US if you’re a programmer you’re in the top 25% incomes locally, probably higher. In Austin, a good front end dev and you’re living in pretty much any neighborhood you want.
    - jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
      But at what cost? It sounds nice to be in the top 25% but if the conditions are unsustainable, it won't matter.
      - bluedevil2k 7y ago
        That's a rather bleak outlook on life. And nonsense. If you get a nice job in Austin for $120k, you can buy a house in a nice neighborhood, let your wife stay at home with the 3 kids, own 2 cars, take vacations. And it's been that way for the last 20 years I've been here.
        OrangeMango 7y ago
        > Austin for $120k, you can buy a house in a nice neighborhood, let your wife stay at home with the 3 kids, own 2 cars I'm not that familiar with Austin, but a quick look at real estate listings show that four bedroom homes with two car garages are not commonly available for less than $400,000, unless you perhaps want to spend most of your non-working hours commuting.
netfl0 7y ago
There are good workplaces out there and you have to really seek them out!
mtw 7y ago
Inst this more of a rant against corporate, big companies only offering desk jobs? There are many other types of companies. Smaller ones with flexible and/or remote work exist out there
- lnsru 7y ago
  Finding right place to work is tricky. My experience in Germany: public research organizations have funny salaries, but job might be very interesting and fulfilling. Small owner led companies can be great with great conditions, but can also be exactly opposite. Big companies pay best, it’s a good argument to stay there at certain age.
fuball63 7y ago
One thing that the article doesn't touch on is how a passion for software craftsmanship can be completely undermined by the recklessness of business decisions. I love the experience of writing and using rock solid programs, but in the real world, there are deadlines to meet, flaky requirements, and tech debt. For people in it for the money, it doesn't affect them. For people that appreciated good software, it turns them into people just doing it for the money, except it also affects them. I always explain it like this: imagine you were a chef, that loved the complexities of cooking; preparation, presentation, and recipe formulation. You enjoy preparing food and experiencing food. With this passion, you're forced to work in fast food, churning out meals as fast as the drive through will take them. "Well, you can always cook in your free time!"
- Isinlor 7y ago
  This is how most chefs lives look like. They prepare the same meals from a menu under time pressure years after years. Maybe it's not flipping burgers in fast food, but there is little space for artisanship in the food industry. You have to be really good to do more than prepare the same thing over and over from a menu.
  - AlexTWithBeard 7y ago
    Isn't any job is like that? I guess even super-duper-romantic jet fighter pilot will spend most of his time doing paperwork and explaining seemingly obvious things to the higher ups.
    - fuball63 7y ago
      I think this is why so many people fantasize about owning a business; it seems to allow for the most "vision oriented" work, which is what most people find enjoyable. Even that has its limits though, as there's just different kinds of drudge work involved.
  - fuball63 7y ago
    This is true for brewers too. Beer is endlessly fascinating with the amount of variables to tweak, but working in a brewery is a fairly routine process of reading the recipe and executing then same steps over and over.
mcv 7y ago
I totally agree with her priorities. I too don't want to work on just one tiny cog of a system where I don't know the big picture, so I try to avoid projects that sound boring, and look for projects that sound interesting. I want to keep that passion alive. Now I'm building interesting stuff and we're responsible for the entire thing. In fact, many companies have moved to fullstack devops roles, which is basically just new corporate speak for doing the whole thing as well as deploying it. > "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’ve tried standing desks, balance board desks, treadmill desks, special diets, exercising more before and after work. " I don't spend 8 hours per day programming either. And I only work 4 days. No single desk is ever going to solve your problems; you need regular change. Pause, get some coffee, take a walk outside. It's great for clearing your head and making a fresh start. But I can imagine corporate culture matters a lot. If you're at a company that expects you to spend 8 hours typing hard behind your desk, that's going to suck. If your employer doesn't respect your work-life balance, that sucks. Many Dutch companies do care about those things, but I can imagine that countries like the US or Japan have a very different culture.
Synaesthesia 7y ago
I’d love to be a programmer but it seems that my job would likely consist of some database programming or nuts and bolts of a internal corporate program. Not exactly exciting or fulfilling work! Correct me if I’m wrong, I’m not in the industry but that’s my impression. This blog kinda confirms my concerns.
- theworld572 7y ago
  It depends what industry you're in. If you go to work for a boring corporation that doesn't do anything interesting then you will find it boring and unfulfilling. Or you can work for a company that has some kind of ethical mission and you'll probably find that better. Its the same as any job really.
- mrkeen 7y ago
  Nuts and bolts programming isn't a bummer for me. There is room for creativity and ingenuity even in that kind of coding. I find the craftsmanship itself is the fulfilling bit. The downsides arise when management injects themselves into the process. "Skip testing", "don't use source control", "don't refactor", "don't start building until the spec is complete" are some of the gems I've heard before. It's one thing to be lazy or make mistakes - we all do it. It's another beast when you want to deliver professionally but you can't because it conflicts with a company's "way of doing things".
- dagw 7y ago
  The cool thing about being a programmer is that you can use it in basically every field of endeavor out there. If you want to work with movies, you can work with movies. Are you passionate about urban planning, ecology or archaeology, there are lots of roles for programming in all those fields. Want to be a journalist, lots of programming and data mining happening within journalism these days. There are basically two ways to approach a career as a programmer, one is to see programming in itself as your passion and solving the programming problem you're facing at any given moment as an ends in itself. The other is to see programming as a force multiplier to give yourself 'super powers' for doing the thing you actually care about.
  - 7y ago
pts_ 7y ago
What's 1000x worse than working on small code fragments, is designing programs by talking in meetings. Management types are drawn to it, not software geeks.
- dboreham 7y ago
  "geeks"?
  - stanski 7y ago
    They meant "nerds".
  - pts_ 7y ago
    Well someone passionate about thinking and implementing instead of talking and thinking loudly in a meeting room, and delegating the implementation to a low paid and low regarded individual.
- mrkeen 7y ago
  We had this at a previous job. At a meeting there would be 1 tester, 2 (!) non-tech product owners, and 3-4 devs. The designs were as bad as expected, but worse than that was the scheduling. I.e. "complete this feature", then "complete that feature", with little opportunity to work on their common parts or refactor anything. Thankfully there was enough of an agile culture for us devs to tell them to stop. We started to split meetings, so that the non-devs could dump all their information on us in the first part of the meeting, then they'd leave. Then the devs would spend the rest of the meeting scribbling designs on the whiteboard.
martin_a 7y ago
If she earns 20% less, she probably just negotiated not that good. Not everything is some structural problem.
- kakwa_ 7y ago
  Well... the pay gap between men and women is a well documented structural problem. You see it both relatively (equal competence, seniority and position) and absolutely across the whole work force (women tend to have an harder time getting top positions). The statistics may vary from country to country, but just as an example here in France, the overall gap is at ~25% while the gap even when considering equal positions and responsibilities is at ~12%.
  - martin_a 7y ago
    For Germany it's something like 22% with "uncleaned" data and somewhat like 6% (some statisticians even calculate it as low as 2%) for cleaned data. According to Wikipedia [0] the US seems to have something like 6-7%, too for cleaned data. Based on that her 30% sound like real bad negotiation and not asking for a raise regularly. But the article lacks detail information on this. Also, nobody knows that, maybe she is just not very good at her job and did not get a raise for that reason. She also only changed her job once since college, too. While her medical condition might make it harder to change jobs, I wonder how long this condition exists and whether this always was the reason not to look for a better paying job. All in all: Lots of reasons why she earns not as much as her colleagues, but probably no structural reasons. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap_in_the_United_S...
theworld572 7y ago
I agree with most of what she says about being a software dev, expect, for the long hours - how many companies has she worked in? I have worked in 7 companies over the last few years (mostly as a contractor though a few were permanent) and in not one of them had employees working more than 40 hours a week.
yitchelle 7y ago
After reading this, I felt the she is painting all the industry that software is applicable to with the same brush. Software development as a discipline is applicable across many types of industry (automotive, mobile, communications, aerospace, Internet, etc). I wonder how much of her wanting to quit software development is due to the industry that she is in.
- andai 7y ago
  I've been wondering about this. I've heard that it can be preferable for various reasons to work at a company that does something other than software as its main thing.
durnygbur 7y ago
> 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. Please stop this. STOP. If "a man" is paid 20% less, they're expected to change job and ask 20% more at the new one. This is what is expected of "men".
- strikelaserclaw 7y ago
  How much one gets paid in relation to their peers is solely based on negotiation, in the beginning of my career i was a poor negotiator, after several years i did my research, got competing offers are used those as leverage to get the best offer. I was never taught any of these skills, i learned from experience, and by pushing myself to do things i'm uncomfortable with (would you believe me if i said in the beginning of my career, i felt guilty taking money for doing something i love, this translated into basically low balling myself). This is not a man vs woman thing, this is a good negotiator vs poor negotiator thing.
  - wolfgke 7y ago
    > How much one gets paid in relation to their peers is solely based on negotiation This is very US-specific and does not hold, for example, in Germany. I actually prefer the situation in Germany: this way, you can concentrate on getting better at programming instead of having to invest lots of time to become good at negotiation, too.
    - playing_colours 7y ago
      Some like negotiating. The thing is that rigid salary levels they have in Germany is a drawback for people who has strong people skills, understanding of business, focus on delivery, width of knowledge, etc. Those make huge difference in the value you can bring to a company. I want to talk to a company and show them the value I bring. You cannot sell yourself higher, if all employers look at are years of experience, and dry description of what work you did.
- zaphar 7y ago
kissgyorgy 7y ago
I don't see this particular story as a problem with the industry itself, but seems like a terrible employer to work for if you need to hide your pain. Good companies don't push people this far, and even help employees when needed. Some have even health-preserving programs.
JSavageReal 7y ago
> But for a long time I pretended it was fun. That I loved it. Because there is a lot of social pressure to portray yourself that way in the industry. People hiring you will run the other way as soon as they see a crack in that facade. Yes, having to put up this facade is one of my least favorite things about this industry. It's all a load of bullsh*t, I'm only in my technical area because there are jobs and money - if money weren't an issue I'd be working on my own FOSS projects that are way more interesting and meaningful to me. > Because it’s not really “passion” they are looking for, but people who are merely willing to endure long hours. They aren’t really looking for the person who spends a few hours on the weekend on an open-source project, they are looking for the person who comes home from work and spends all night on it. Yup, it's a tough pill to swallow when one realizes the exploitative nature of wage labor, and the lie we've been fed our whole lives about employers being benevolent and treating employees like family. The reality is sociopathic managers who won't hesitate to stab you in the back to cover their asses and/or get that promotion. > 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. I agree with most of the sentiment of the article so I don't want to be arguing here, but getting underpaid isn't an issue exclusive to women. Just because you're underpaid doesn't mean that it's because of your gender. Ultimately, this article is the perspective of a wage laborer waking up to the bullshit of the system, and the meaninglessness of 8 hours/day of mandated "ass in seat" time doing boring work for a boss and having to put a smile on your face and pretend like it's your passion. Everything she writes, all of us but the most brainwashed lemmings already know, but we're not allowed to say it for fear of being blacklisted from the industry. I appreciate her having the courage to speak out what everyone secretly wants to say, and wish her success in her new endeavors.
grecy 7y ago
I went through exactly the same thing. I love the coding aspect. I love using my brain, solving problems, working with intelligent people. I can't handle sitting inside for 50 hours a week, and I can't handle business politics and nonsense. So I quit my Software Engineering job and took 2 years to drive from Alaska to Argentina, having the time of my life. [1] Then I worked for a bit again to save money, and quit again and just got back from 3 years driving all the way around Africa. [2] I've decided I want to be a travel writer and photographer, because it makes me happy. I have way less money, but I'm happier than I've ever been. I have written a couple of books about my adventures, and I write for a slew of magazines now too. Do what makes you happy. [1] The Road Chose Me Volume 1 - https://amzn.to/2wkxceX https://amzn.to/2wkxceX [2] 999 Days Around Africa - https://amzn.to/2H93IUH https://amzn.to/2H93IUH
- turk73 7y ago
  That's great, but I have two kids and I don't get how people just up and leave their job to do things that earn little to no money? Thanks for keeping the dream alive, but for the most part I just don't know what else to do to make money. In 2017 I tried to 'retire' from SW Dev and basically what I found out is that pretty much all the other jobs I qualify for are $15/hr nothing burger bs that don't pay the bills. Without going back to school and spending a fortune on retraining, there's no way out of this shit for me. I'd be willing to re-train for something else, but I'm 46, I already have an MS and a PhD, and even with re-training I'd be in some $25/hr job doing workaday crap in a worse field with less vacation and worse benefits. Same shit, different day, so I guess I'll stay a little longer and suck up the horrible people and horrible politics. My kids aren't going to be developers, no fucking way. I can fully understand why seemingly rational, successful people go nuts, pop off, and end up hurting innocent people. Not that I would do that, mind you, but I certainly do understand why. This country just drives people insane.
- wolfgke 7y ago
  > I love the coding aspect. I love using my brain, solving problems, working with intelligent people. I can't handle sitting inside for 50 hours a week, and I can't handle business politics and nonsense. A wild consideration: Doesn't the fact that many companies "select" for people who love solving hard problems (e.g. by using brainteaser coding problems in the hiring process) cause this problem? This way, the company hires people who prefer a very different kind of work than what they have to do in their job. A further thought: How could a hiring process look like that selects for the kind of work that one actually has to do?
dctoedt 7y ago
By no means should we ever stop trying to improve working conditions for all, but we should also keep in mind that throughout history, most workers haven't had the luxury of being able to feed their families by doing fun- or personally-fulfilling work. At least we don't have to wrestle a heavy plow behind a balky ox or mule for hours on end in hot, humid weather (to give just one example).
- turk73 7y ago
  Everyone up to my Grandfather was a farmer, all the way back as far recorded history goes--farmers. My Grandpa left the farm and had a string of utterly failed businesses. He should have stayed on the farm because that land is now worth millions of dollars, but no, he sold that farm for a song to buy his first restaurant which quickly failed. As far as your assertion, just because people had it worse in the past doesn't prevent me from complaining about the utter dissonance by which I live my life. I just put a smile on every day and be an Fortune 500 drone, but honestly, I pray for revolution every single day.
stanski 7y ago
It sounds like what she's discovered that 40+ hours a week sitting in a cubicle is not the most physically or mentally fulfilling task to be had in life. Seems pretty straight-forward to me!
writehappycode 7y ago
If you don’t like most of the software development lifecycle and are not willing to learn new strategies, you probably shouldn’t “write code” for a living, and that’s ok. You are more than just a requirement to code translator. Learn to grow a little task into something special. There is always a way to make it better. Spend more time designing and less typing. That’s my 2 cents
esotericn 7y ago
Ultimately I think it's difficult to find a job with the correct combination of everything you want. I don't think this is unique to software development. I've worked in places in London that I really enjoyed. Good colleagues, good environment, tip top. But then you're in a place with a hellish cost of living, and it's basically a requirement to play office politics and earn $BIGNUM, else you'll be in a pokey flat with a shit commute forever. And that can really eat in to motivation - because suddenly your work is no longer about the craft, it's about increasing your personal numbers. I imagine the same to be true in SV/SF. You can then have the other extreme, whereby perhaps you have a very low cost of living, but there's 1 software company and you either work there or not. Remote work can help to solve this, but there are a whole bunch of unsolved social issues there. A lot of the stuff I read on here about burnout I think isn't really linked to the work itself. It's the whole environment - everything feeds in.
vgoh1 7y ago
This article makes me feel a little better about my life decisions. I started programming at age 12, but as my major I chose mechanical engineering because at the time, there was a lot of talk about the US software industry crashing and it all going to India. I'm not going to try to portray mechanical engineering as all roses - the pay is a bit lower, and the chances of becoming a break-out rock start are much lower (think of the capital investment needed to build your own business). But the work weeks are a true 40 hours for at least 90% of weeks in most places, the work is much more varied (office, shop, lab, travel), and mechanical engineers with grey hair don't seem to have problems finding a job.
- vonseel 7y ago
  but as my major I chose mechanical engineering because at the time, there was a lot of talk about the US software industry crashing and it all going to India. I was in college 07-11. When I later asked my dad "WTF why did I not study CS?" he told me pretty much verbatim what you said... we thought it was going to India. I wonder if you were a student around the same time period? In retrospect, things quickly changed around 2012 coming out of the recession, and I suspect the industry had been picking up steam for a while after a few generations of iPhones and mobile gaining early traction.
jdmoreira 7y ago
I agree with a lot of things in the article and I can relate to the author but this quote really threw me off >"some guy who does the same work as me is getting paid 20% more” (the author being female) Several times in my career I've found that other male developers (me being male) that I considered not even good made 50% more than me. Sometimes I found out that I made 50% more than other younger developers that I considered way better than me. I understand that women are underpaid compared to men in general but this specific situation can be explained by so much more than sexism.
- vonseel 7y ago
  I agree but it's difficult to make any comment on this sort of thing without being misinterpreted and/or seen as minimizing women's equality and the right to equal pay. As far as the rest of her article, I agree with it and I'm a single, white, straight male. Sure, I like coding, but at the end of the day a job is a job and, in the words of the author herself, I dream of a world where we all work less..
  - jdmoreira 7y ago
    I hope people don’t misunderstand my comment to mean that I want to live in a world where women make less than men just because they are women. I certainly don’t and yet that’s the world we live in. On the other hand this particular example from the author is not a very good one since we all know men make +/- 20% from each other
    - vonseel 7y ago
      men make +/- 20% from each other It can go a lot more than 20%, and it doesn't always have to do with bias/minorities/etc. I think plenty of people just get paid less because they aren't strong negotiators or don't know how much they should be requesting. Sure, the latest salary report they saw online said people are getting $150k for similar jobs, but are they really getting $150k at XYZ company in your town, or are those numbers inflated by liars/SF|NYC|LA roles? Those are the thoughts that go through my head, at least, in addition to "Am I really worth that? They would offer me X if I was worth X, right?".
vonseel 7y ago
Is it common for people under ~35 to have so much back pain and medical issues? I thought back pain in young people is usually related to something like a bad injury. I get back pain when I'm working at the desk a lot, but that's at the end of 14+ hour days sitting around with minimal movement.
elindbe2 7y ago
IMO a lot of problems with our work culture come down to too many hours. If we cut down full-time to mean 20 hours a week, I think a lot of the suffering would disappear. Health conditions would be reduced, ennui from the meaninglessness of tasks wouldn't seem as stark, balancing work and life would be a breeze. It just seems so weird to me that employers are willing to pay me $X for 40-50 hours a week but not $X/2 for 20-25.
hsbaut76 7y ago
Work culture in the western world is broken. We face so many issues because when it comes down to it, humans spend most of their time in very cold, disconnected working environments that are designed to break your soul and turn you into a drone. I think what should be remembered is that swdev is a high demand job, and you should have high demands and standards of yourself and your needs. The author admits to hiding away her flaws as to not show weakness, this is the wrong approach. Admit your weaknesses, be honest with yourself, your colleagues and your boss. If they don't understand or reciprocate, tell them to go get fucked. Become a freelancer or consultant.

75 points by croh 7y ago

A sad story indeed, but I've never felt any of my work has been "Snow Crashy" or monotonous or lacking the need for autonomy and creativity. I doubt it's representative of the entire industry, and it's not even fair to treat the industry as a monolith to begin with.

thiago_fm 7y ago
most of people have jobs like she mentions, but they need money badly to live, so they have no choice than to accept it.
- jshield 7y ago
  Most of my male colleagues and myself included also hate the industry because the pay sucks, the hours are long, you are expected to do impossible things in impossible amounts of time, and we are so removed from the end users that it’s hard to get an idea of the impact we are having on their day to day grind. It may have something to do with the local scene as well, as I’m pretty confident that not all workplaces are like that, it wasn’t at all like that where I was before. That being said I find anonymously contributing code to open source projects rewarding enough to offset the daily grind.

topologistics 7y ago

> "In the meantime I’ll still be here coding, maybe actually enjoying it again, and trying to find a life where I have true balance between my work and my other needs" Women are underrepresented in tech only because it is a sexist boys club, not because of anything having to do with personal choices.

thiago_fm 7y ago
do you have data about this?
JSavageReal 7y ago
If you're going to make such outrageous claims, the least you can do is provide some evidence.

draw_down 7y ago

I'll agree that the job is not fun, but it's still a decent job overall I think. I have definitely been miserable at many points, on the other hand. The real problem is that a lot of other jobs seem worse, not that coding is so great. I definitely do not have any sort of passion for it, that left long ago. Just a job.

deaps 7y ago

That did spiral quickly into a rant about women in the tech field. But maybe all that ranting explains the lack of women in the field.

nkrisc 7y ago
Can you elaborate please?
- deaps 7y ago
  Maybe her concerns are shared amongst a majority of her female peers - thus leading to women either not wanting to join the field or leaving shortly after entering it. I mean men and women are different. We tend to excel at different things, have different thought processes, process things differently, different strengths and weaknesses (generally, right? - there is obviously overlap). Maybe her complaints help explain the lack of women in the field.
  - nkrisc 7y ago
    > We tend to excel at different things, have different thought processes, process things differently, different strengths and weaknesses (generally, right? - there is obviously overlap). This could also be said of all individuals, sex aside. Either way, I don't buy it. Nurses tend to mostly be women and yet the job is far harder than any software development job. It's more grueling hours, physically demanding, and mentally challenging. I think it's absurd to suggest that women as a whole can't handle the hours and demands of software development.
    - dqv 7y ago
      But being a nurse is more social than software is. And that aligns with what we know about the differences between where women tend to excel and where men tend to excel.[1] And of course you can then argue that parts of software are more social and my argument would be that there are more women in those parts of software. [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/why-brilliant-girls-tend-favor-non-stem-careers https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rabble-rouser/201707...

rvz 7y ago

The OP needs to place (2017) in the title. > I still love coding, but I hate this industry This essentially can be summarised by only doing software development as a hobby rather than as a profession. But again, this industry isn't for everyone. While its always unfortunate that people who once enter this industry have now quit due to the 'long hours', 'deadlines' or 'burnout', perhaps they should have looked twice at the job requirements or questioned the number of hours before applying in the first place, rather than finding out the hard way. This industry is unforgiving for those who cannot handle it or have no passion in the trade and only do it for the money. If you think a job as a SWE or a SDET is 'bad', wait until you go for a software engineering interview at a FAANG or FTSE 100 company. If this sounds too 'hard' I have heard many vacancies for easier roles in the circus though who are willing to hire what they call 'clowns' and 'idiots'...

deleted 7y ago
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precisioncoder 7y ago
Do you have any idea how hard it can be to get a job in any decent circus? Most of them require decades of training and education and pay less than most manual labour jobs. Honestly working as a software developer (which I do) required far less investment of time and money then circus. (Where I am now a Partner Acrobatics trainer)
- wslh 7y ago
  Clearly accepted Cirque du Soleil performers are scarcer than Google developers. This can also be applied to top performers in classical music as well.
  - precisioncoder 7y ago
    The thing that shocked me is it isn't just the best. Even the worst usually have massive amounts of time and effort invested and the pay is normally awful. It's the hobby effect, similar to art and music, however the top performers make vastly less. Cirque du Soleil performers who are some of the best in the world still mostly make < 100k/year.

cerberusss 7y ago

Reading this, I have the feeling she quit her career in programming because of the long hours. But why not look for a job with normal hours?

jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
If she lives in the U.S. it can be difficult to find an employer who's willing to cover the cost of living in exchange for labor. Sounds like she's stuck in a positive feedback loop of medical expenses, and that makes it hard to be picky about jobs.
- bluedevil2k 7y ago
  What??? Maybe in Silicon Valley, but everywhere else in the US if you’re a programmer you’re in the top 25% incomes locally, probably higher. In Austin, a good front end dev and you’re living in pretty much any neighborhood you want.
  - jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
    But at what cost? It sounds nice to be in the top 25% but if the conditions are unsustainable, it won't matter.
    - bluedevil2k 7y ago
      That's a rather bleak outlook on life. And nonsense. If you get a nice job in Austin for $120k, you can buy a house in a nice neighborhood, let your wife stay at home with the 3 kids, own 2 cars, take vacations. And it's been that way for the last 20 years I've been here.
      - OrangeMango 7y ago
        > Austin for $120k, you can buy a house in a nice neighborhood, let your wife stay at home with the 3 kids, own 2 cars I'm not that familiar with Austin, but a quick look at real estate listings show that four bedroom homes with two car garages are not commonly available for less than $400,000, unless you perhaps want to spend most of your non-working hours commuting.

netfl0 7y ago

There are good workplaces out there and you have to really seek them out!

mtw 7y ago

Inst this more of a rant against corporate, big companies only offering desk jobs? There are many other types of companies. Smaller ones with flexible and/or remote work exist out there

lnsru 7y ago
Finding right place to work is tricky. My experience in Germany: public research organizations have funny salaries, but job might be very interesting and fulfilling. Small owner led companies can be great with great conditions, but can also be exactly opposite. Big companies pay best, it’s a good argument to stay there at certain age.

fuball63 7y ago

One thing that the article doesn't touch on is how a passion for software craftsmanship can be completely undermined by the recklessness of business decisions. I love the experience of writing and using rock solid programs, but in the real world, there are deadlines to meet, flaky requirements, and tech debt. For people in it for the money, it doesn't affect them. For people that appreciated good software, it turns them into people just doing it for the money, except it also affects them. I always explain it like this: imagine you were a chef, that loved the complexities of cooking; preparation, presentation, and recipe formulation. You enjoy preparing food and experiencing food. With this passion, you're forced to work in fast food, churning out meals as fast as the drive through will take them. "Well, you can always cook in your free time!"

Isinlor 7y ago
This is how most chefs lives look like. They prepare the same meals from a menu under time pressure years after years. Maybe it's not flipping burgers in fast food, but there is little space for artisanship in the food industry. You have to be really good to do more than prepare the same thing over and over from a menu.
- AlexTWithBeard 7y ago
  Isn't any job is like that? I guess even super-duper-romantic jet fighter pilot will spend most of his time doing paperwork and explaining seemingly obvious things to the higher ups.
  - fuball63 7y ago
    I think this is why so many people fantasize about owning a business; it seems to allow for the most "vision oriented" work, which is what most people find enjoyable. Even that has its limits though, as there's just different kinds of drudge work involved.
- fuball63 7y ago
  This is true for brewers too. Beer is endlessly fascinating with the amount of variables to tweak, but working in a brewery is a fairly routine process of reading the recipe and executing then same steps over and over.

mcv 7y ago

I totally agree with her priorities. I too don't want to work on just one tiny cog of a system where I don't know the big picture, so I try to avoid projects that sound boring, and look for projects that sound interesting. I want to keep that passion alive. Now I'm building interesting stuff and we're responsible for the entire thing. In fact, many companies have moved to fullstack devops roles, which is basically just new corporate speak for doing the whole thing as well as deploying it. > "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’ve tried standing desks, balance board desks, treadmill desks, special diets, exercising more before and after work. " I don't spend 8 hours per day programming either. And I only work 4 days. No single desk is ever going to solve your problems; you need regular change. Pause, get some coffee, take a walk outside. It's great for clearing your head and making a fresh start. But I can imagine corporate culture matters a lot. If you're at a company that expects you to spend 8 hours typing hard behind your desk, that's going to suck. If your employer doesn't respect your work-life balance, that sucks. Many Dutch companies do care about those things, but I can imagine that countries like the US or Japan have a very different culture.

Synaesthesia 7y ago

I’d love to be a programmer but it seems that my job would likely consist of some database programming or nuts and bolts of a internal corporate program. Not exactly exciting or fulfilling work! Correct me if I’m wrong, I’m not in the industry but that’s my impression. This blog kinda confirms my concerns.

theworld572 7y ago
It depends what industry you're in. If you go to work for a boring corporation that doesn't do anything interesting then you will find it boring and unfulfilling. Or you can work for a company that has some kind of ethical mission and you'll probably find that better. Its the same as any job really.
mrkeen 7y ago
Nuts and bolts programming isn't a bummer for me. There is room for creativity and ingenuity even in that kind of coding. I find the craftsmanship itself is the fulfilling bit. The downsides arise when management injects themselves into the process. "Skip testing", "don't use source control", "don't refactor", "don't start building until the spec is complete" are some of the gems I've heard before. It's one thing to be lazy or make mistakes - we all do it. It's another beast when you want to deliver professionally but you can't because it conflicts with a company's "way of doing things".
dagw 7y ago
The cool thing about being a programmer is that you can use it in basically every field of endeavor out there. If you want to work with movies, you can work with movies. Are you passionate about urban planning, ecology or archaeology, there are lots of roles for programming in all those fields. Want to be a journalist, lots of programming and data mining happening within journalism these days. There are basically two ways to approach a career as a programmer, one is to see programming in itself as your passion and solving the programming problem you're facing at any given moment as an ends in itself. The other is to see programming as a force multiplier to give yourself 'super powers' for doing the thing you actually care about.
- 7y ago

pts_ 7y ago

What's 1000x worse than working on small code fragments, is designing programs by talking in meetings. Management types are drawn to it, not software geeks.

dboreham 7y ago
"geeks"?
- stanski 7y ago
  They meant "nerds".
- pts_ 7y ago
  Well someone passionate about thinking and implementing instead of talking and thinking loudly in a meeting room, and delegating the implementation to a low paid and low regarded individual.
mrkeen 7y ago
We had this at a previous job. At a meeting there would be 1 tester, 2 (!) non-tech product owners, and 3-4 devs. The designs were as bad as expected, but worse than that was the scheduling. I.e. "complete this feature", then "complete that feature", with little opportunity to work on their common parts or refactor anything. Thankfully there was enough of an agile culture for us devs to tell them to stop. We started to split meetings, so that the non-devs could dump all their information on us in the first part of the meeting, then they'd leave. Then the devs would spend the rest of the meeting scribbling designs on the whiteboard.

martin_a 7y ago

If she earns 20% less, she probably just negotiated not that good. Not everything is some structural problem.

kakwa_ 7y ago
Well... the pay gap between men and women is a well documented structural problem. You see it both relatively (equal competence, seniority and position) and absolutely across the whole work force (women tend to have an harder time getting top positions). The statistics may vary from country to country, but just as an example here in France, the overall gap is at ~25% while the gap even when considering equal positions and responsibilities is at ~12%.
- martin_a 7y ago
  For Germany it's something like 22% with "uncleaned" data and somewhat like 6% (some statisticians even calculate it as low as 2%) for cleaned data. According to Wikipedia [0] the US seems to have something like 6-7%, too for cleaned data. Based on that her 30% sound like real bad negotiation and not asking for a raise regularly. But the article lacks detail information on this. Also, nobody knows that, maybe she is just not very good at her job and did not get a raise for that reason. She also only changed her job once since college, too. While her medical condition might make it harder to change jobs, I wonder how long this condition exists and whether this always was the reason not to look for a better paying job. All in all: Lots of reasons why she earns not as much as her colleagues, but probably no structural reasons. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap_in_the_United_S...

theworld572 7y ago

I agree with most of what she says about being a software dev, expect, for the long hours - how many companies has she worked in? I have worked in 7 companies over the last few years (mostly as a contractor though a few were permanent) and in not one of them had employees working more than 40 hours a week.

yitchelle 7y ago

After reading this, I felt the she is painting all the industry that software is applicable to with the same brush. Software development as a discipline is applicable across many types of industry (automotive, mobile, communications, aerospace, Internet, etc). I wonder how much of her wanting to quit software development is due to the industry that she is in.

andai 7y ago
I've been wondering about this. I've heard that it can be preferable for various reasons to work at a company that does something other than software as its main thing.

durnygbur 7y ago

> 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. Please stop this. STOP. If "a man" is paid 20% less, they're expected to change job and ask 20% more at the new one. This is what is expected of "men".

strikelaserclaw 7y ago
How much one gets paid in relation to their peers is solely based on negotiation, in the beginning of my career i was a poor negotiator, after several years i did my research, got competing offers are used those as leverage to get the best offer. I was never taught any of these skills, i learned from experience, and by pushing myself to do things i'm uncomfortable with (would you believe me if i said in the beginning of my career, i felt guilty taking money for doing something i love, this translated into basically low balling myself). This is not a man vs woman thing, this is a good negotiator vs poor negotiator thing.
- wolfgke 7y ago
  > How much one gets paid in relation to their peers is solely based on negotiation This is very US-specific and does not hold, for example, in Germany. I actually prefer the situation in Germany: this way, you can concentrate on getting better at programming instead of having to invest lots of time to become good at negotiation, too.
  - playing_colours 7y ago
    Some like negotiating. The thing is that rigid salary levels they have in Germany is a drawback for people who has strong people skills, understanding of business, focus on delivery, width of knowledge, etc. Those make huge difference in the value you can bring to a company. I want to talk to a company and show them the value I bring. You cannot sell yourself higher, if all employers look at are years of experience, and dry description of what work you did.
zaphar 7y ago

kissgyorgy 7y ago

I don't see this particular story as a problem with the industry itself, but seems like a terrible employer to work for if you need to hide your pain. Good companies don't push people this far, and even help employees when needed. Some have even health-preserving programs.

JSavageReal 7y ago

> But for a long time I pretended it was fun. That I loved it. Because there is a lot of social pressure to portray yourself that way in the industry. People hiring you will run the other way as soon as they see a crack in that facade. Yes, having to put up this facade is one of my least favorite things about this industry. It's all a load of bullsh*t, I'm only in my technical area because there are jobs and money - if money weren't an issue I'd be working on my own FOSS projects that are way more interesting and meaningful to me. > Because it’s not really “passion” they are looking for, but people who are merely willing to endure long hours. They aren’t really looking for the person who spends a few hours on the weekend on an open-source project, they are looking for the person who comes home from work and spends all night on it. Yup, it's a tough pill to swallow when one realizes the exploitative nature of wage labor, and the lie we've been fed our whole lives about employers being benevolent and treating employees like family. The reality is sociopathic managers who won't hesitate to stab you in the back to cover their asses and/or get that promotion. > 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. I agree with most of the sentiment of the article so I don't want to be arguing here, but getting underpaid isn't an issue exclusive to women. Just because you're underpaid doesn't mean that it's because of your gender. Ultimately, this article is the perspective of a wage laborer waking up to the bullshit of the system, and the meaninglessness of 8 hours/day of mandated "ass in seat" time doing boring work for a boss and having to put a smile on your face and pretend like it's your passion. Everything she writes, all of us but the most brainwashed lemmings already know, but we're not allowed to say it for fear of being blacklisted from the industry. I appreciate her having the courage to speak out what everyone secretly wants to say, and wish her success in her new endeavors.

grecy 7y ago

I went through exactly the same thing. I love the coding aspect. I love using my brain, solving problems, working with intelligent people. I can't handle sitting inside for 50 hours a week, and I can't handle business politics and nonsense. So I quit my Software Engineering job and took 2 years to drive from Alaska to Argentina, having the time of my life. [1] Then I worked for a bit again to save money, and quit again and just got back from 3 years driving all the way around Africa. [2] I've decided I want to be a travel writer and photographer, because it makes me happy. I have way less money, but I'm happier than I've ever been. I have written a couple of books about my adventures, and I write for a slew of magazines now too. Do what makes you happy. [1] The Road Chose Me Volume 1 - https://amzn.to/2wkxceX https://amzn.to/2wkxceX [2] 999 Days Around Africa - https://amzn.to/2H93IUH https://amzn.to/2H93IUH

turk73 7y ago
That's great, but I have two kids and I don't get how people just up and leave their job to do things that earn little to no money? Thanks for keeping the dream alive, but for the most part I just don't know what else to do to make money. In 2017 I tried to 'retire' from SW Dev and basically what I found out is that pretty much all the other jobs I qualify for are $15/hr nothing burger bs that don't pay the bills. Without going back to school and spending a fortune on retraining, there's no way out of this shit for me. I'd be willing to re-train for something else, but I'm 46, I already have an MS and a PhD, and even with re-training I'd be in some $25/hr job doing workaday crap in a worse field with less vacation and worse benefits. Same shit, different day, so I guess I'll stay a little longer and suck up the horrible people and horrible politics. My kids aren't going to be developers, no fucking way. I can fully understand why seemingly rational, successful people go nuts, pop off, and end up hurting innocent people. Not that I would do that, mind you, but I certainly do understand why. This country just drives people insane.
wolfgke 7y ago
> I love the coding aspect. I love using my brain, solving problems, working with intelligent people. I can't handle sitting inside for 50 hours a week, and I can't handle business politics and nonsense. A wild consideration: Doesn't the fact that many companies "select" for people who love solving hard problems (e.g. by using brainteaser coding problems in the hiring process) cause this problem? This way, the company hires people who prefer a very different kind of work than what they have to do in their job. A further thought: How could a hiring process look like that selects for the kind of work that one actually has to do?

dctoedt 7y ago

By no means should we ever stop trying to improve working conditions for all, but we should also keep in mind that throughout history, most workers haven't had the luxury of being able to feed their families by doing fun- or personally-fulfilling work. At least we don't have to wrestle a heavy plow behind a balky ox or mule for hours on end in hot, humid weather (to give just one example).

turk73 7y ago
Everyone up to my Grandfather was a farmer, all the way back as far recorded history goes--farmers. My Grandpa left the farm and had a string of utterly failed businesses. He should have stayed on the farm because that land is now worth millions of dollars, but no, he sold that farm for a song to buy his first restaurant which quickly failed. As far as your assertion, just because people had it worse in the past doesn't prevent me from complaining about the utter dissonance by which I live my life. I just put a smile on every day and be an Fortune 500 drone, but honestly, I pray for revolution every single day.

stanski 7y ago

It sounds like what she's discovered that 40+ hours a week sitting in a cubicle is not the most physically or mentally fulfilling task to be had in life. Seems pretty straight-forward to me!

writehappycode 7y ago

If you don’t like most of the software development lifecycle and are not willing to learn new strategies, you probably shouldn’t “write code” for a living, and that’s ok. You are more than just a requirement to code translator. Learn to grow a little task into something special. There is always a way to make it better. Spend more time designing and less typing. That’s my 2 cents

esotericn 7y ago

Ultimately I think it's difficult to find a job with the correct combination of everything you want. I don't think this is unique to software development. I've worked in places in London that I really enjoyed. Good colleagues, good environment, tip top. But then you're in a place with a hellish cost of living, and it's basically a requirement to play office politics and earn $BIGNUM, else you'll be in a pokey flat with a shit commute forever. And that can really eat in to motivation - because suddenly your work is no longer about the craft, it's about increasing your personal numbers. I imagine the same to be true in SV/SF. You can then have the other extreme, whereby perhaps you have a very low cost of living, but there's 1 software company and you either work there or not. Remote work can help to solve this, but there are a whole bunch of unsolved social issues there. A lot of the stuff I read on here about burnout I think isn't really linked to the work itself. It's the whole environment - everything feeds in.

vgoh1 7y ago

This article makes me feel a little better about my life decisions. I started programming at age 12, but as my major I chose mechanical engineering because at the time, there was a lot of talk about the US software industry crashing and it all going to India. I'm not going to try to portray mechanical engineering as all roses - the pay is a bit lower, and the chances of becoming a break-out rock start are much lower (think of the capital investment needed to build your own business). But the work weeks are a true 40 hours for at least 90% of weeks in most places, the work is much more varied (office, shop, lab, travel), and mechanical engineers with grey hair don't seem to have problems finding a job.

vonseel 7y ago
but as my major I chose mechanical engineering because at the time, there was a lot of talk about the US software industry crashing and it all going to India. I was in college 07-11. When I later asked my dad "WTF why did I not study CS?" he told me pretty much verbatim what you said... we thought it was going to India. I wonder if you were a student around the same time period? In retrospect, things quickly changed around 2012 coming out of the recession, and I suspect the industry had been picking up steam for a while after a few generations of iPhones and mobile gaining early traction.

jdmoreira 7y ago

I agree with a lot of things in the article and I can relate to the author but this quote really threw me off >"some guy who does the same work as me is getting paid 20% more” (the author being female) Several times in my career I've found that other male developers (me being male) that I considered not even good made 50% more than me. Sometimes I found out that I made 50% more than other younger developers that I considered way better than me. I understand that women are underpaid compared to men in general but this specific situation can be explained by so much more than sexism.

vonseel 7y ago
I agree but it's difficult to make any comment on this sort of thing without being misinterpreted and/or seen as minimizing women's equality and the right to equal pay. As far as the rest of her article, I agree with it and I'm a single, white, straight male. Sure, I like coding, but at the end of the day a job is a job and, in the words of the author herself, I dream of a world where we all work less..
- jdmoreira 7y ago
  I hope people don’t misunderstand my comment to mean that I want to live in a world where women make less than men just because they are women. I certainly don’t and yet that’s the world we live in. On the other hand this particular example from the author is not a very good one since we all know men make +/- 20% from each other
  - vonseel 7y ago
    men make +/- 20% from each other It can go a lot more than 20%, and it doesn't always have to do with bias/minorities/etc. I think plenty of people just get paid less because they aren't strong negotiators or don't know how much they should be requesting. Sure, the latest salary report they saw online said people are getting $150k for similar jobs, but are they really getting $150k at XYZ company in your town, or are those numbers inflated by liars/SF|NYC|LA roles? Those are the thoughts that go through my head, at least, in addition to "Am I really worth that? They would offer me X if I was worth X, right?".

vonseel 7y ago

Is it common for people under ~35 to have so much back pain and medical issues? I thought back pain in young people is usually related to something like a bad injury. I get back pain when I'm working at the desk a lot, but that's at the end of 14+ hour days sitting around with minimal movement.

elindbe2 7y ago

IMO a lot of problems with our work culture come down to too many hours. If we cut down full-time to mean 20 hours a week, I think a lot of the suffering would disappear. Health conditions would be reduced, ennui from the meaninglessness of tasks wouldn't seem as stark, balancing work and life would be a breeze. It just seems so weird to me that employers are willing to pay me $X for 40-50 hours a week but not $X/2 for 20-25.

hsbaut76 7y ago

Work culture in the western world is broken. We face so many issues because when it comes down to it, humans spend most of their time in very cold, disconnected working environments that are designed to break your soul and turn you into a drone. I think what should be remembered is that swdev is a high demand job, and you should have high demands and standards of yourself and your needs. The author admits to hiding away her flaws as to not show weakness, this is the wrong approach. Admit your weaknesses, be honest with yourself, your colleagues and your boss. If they don't understand or reciprocate, tell them to go get fucked. Become a freelancer or consultant.