4 ms·

Perhaps it has to do with aptitude and education and experience. Not everyone can be a SWE just like not everyone can be an artist or an athlete. Also..maybe i

Perhaps it has to do with aptitude and education and experience. Not everyone can be a SWE just like not everyone can be an artist or an athlete. Also..maybe it’s not always about the money. I also find it rather charming that you think a SWE would not have to deal with long hours or certifications or hostile work environment.

baron816 5y ago
You think investment bankers aren’t doing it for the money? I don’t know anyone who’s had to get any certifications to be a software engineer. I don’t even know what certifications would be useful. The other stuff might be debatable (Amazon does exist), but still easy to avoid (just don’t work for Amazon).
- jelliclesfarm 5y ago
  So you are saying if one had the choice between being a surgeon saving lives vs swe making easy money, its unfathomable to you if one chooses the former over the latter? I am trying to understand.
  - baron816 5y ago
    That's not what I'm saying. I can imagine people having a passion for medicine. I can't imagine people having a passion for investment banking. But, I'm sure there are a lot of people who pursue medicine primarily because of the money. If surgeons made $120K max, there wouldn't be nearly as many people willing to go through 12 years of training to do it. What I'm saying is that if more people knew that software engineers can make surgeon/investment banking money, many of them would choose software engineering instead of surgery/investment banking. My theory is that many people just aren't aware of it, and without that information, choose professions that they're less happy with.
    - jelliclesfarm 5y ago
      wall street has a great demand for astrophysicists and mathematicians/physics PhDs. i doubt if a math or physics PhD would find SWE and project management as rewarding. i know at least one PhD(completed) and mechanical engineer who is farming with us. they are not working for agtech companies, but actually working hands-in-the-dirt farming. i guess my answer is..there are all kinds of people out there.
- exdsq 5y ago
  Investment banking is seen as a more prestigious job in some circles which can be more important than the money. Tech is still seen as a trade job to those same people. So even if you can make more money doing SWE those people would rather join the army and then go into banking because that's 'what they're meant to do'.
smoldesu 5y ago
> Perhaps it has to do with aptitude and education and experience. Not everyone can be a SWE just like not everyone can be an artist or an athlete. When I was in school I remember reading an article titled "Teach Yourself Programming in 10 Years"[0], and at the time I found it pretty funny. I was learning to write Java at a rate I'd never picked up anything else before, how could it possibly take 10 years to call yourself a programmer? Nowadays, I've just about hit that 10 year mark and I feel like I have nothing to show for it. Some nights I lie awake staring at the ceiling, wondering if I've wasted my time learning something as vapid and meaningless as computer science. Time on this earth is so unbelievably valuable, throwing away even a minute of it makes you the envy of the dead. It's been a decade and I still feel funny calling myself a programmer. What people compensate you for is wasted time. All those nights you decided to fiddle with NGINX instead of drinking with friends, the times you pushed away a loved one or a partner just to polish a commit before you pushed it, the years you wasted talking with people who will never see eye-to-eye with you but demand an argument nevertheless; as I get older and time starts slipping through my fingers like sand, I don't know if any amount of money could fill that void. The only thing I'm left with is a sort of unfulfilled sadness that makes me wish I spent more time with people, or cultivating my social garden, as it were. Instead I find myself past the point of no return on this track though, damned to walk the same path everyone before me did, and then some. Not everyone can be an SWE because most people have self-respect. [0] https://www.norvig.com/21-days.html https://www.norvig.com/21-days.html
- mdm12 5y ago
  Your post echoes my sentiments one hundred percent as a mid-30s SWE. The only consolation for myself is...I literally don't know what else I would do other than software development. At least my schizoid personality is profitable...
- throwaway1777 5y ago
  It sure beats working at McDonald’s or the local insurance office though. Not all of us were born rich enough to not need a job.
  - 5y ago
ravenstine 5y ago
I beg to differ. What most of us are doing really isn't that complicated. It's no harder than anything you have to study in the 8th grade. The primary reason coding is hard is because we make it that way to make ourselves appear clever and intelligent. If you eliminate all the OOP, metaprogramming, and CS mumbo jumbo, and impose some actual standards, it's really a lot of writing wrappers around databases. Once someone can confidently do that then the more unusual problems become more solvable anyway. Yeah, if you're doing game engines, systems programming, ML and whatnot, it's a different story. The vast majority aren't doing that, and you don't need all those skills just to be a software engineer. One might not become a great SWE that way, but must they be great? I've known far more mediocre SWEs than brilliant ones. Even the um... sorta awful ones manage to skate by pretty well.
- AYBABTME 5y ago
  I think you're out of touch with the shear amount of base knowledge you had to accumulate to get to the point where all this seems like 8th grader level. It _is_ simple in the end, most of the time, but it's a freaking mile high pile of simple concepts built on top of each other.
  - ravenstine 5y ago
    I could just as easily say that you believe that because you're in a bubble. Now I'm not arguing that per se, but rather that there's no way I can provide a counterargument. One could use your argument to suggest that any skill is hard because they are built on a massive pile of concepts, which isn't necessarily true or untrue being that it's a matter of degree. Eliminate the concepts in the field of programming that aren't required for making a Turing-complete language, and what you are left with isn't that crazy complex. It then comes down more to practice, which most people don't want to do because they don't see the inherent value, don't have their own ideas, or assume they aren't smart enough.
    - AYBABTME 5y ago
      I've seen enough people try to learn from scratch to know that it isn't as simple as it seems when we stand on our pile of background. It's not impossible knowledge to acquire, but to be an effective engineer, there's a ton of stuff you need to know. Maybe try to remember the first time you learned about trivial things like Git, UNIX pipes, closures, big-O complexity, hashing, graph theory, refactoring, MMUs and ADUs, TCP windows, IP, HTTP, MVC, design patterns, encoding formats, queuing theory... there's a ton of "simple" stuff to know, many of which takes a regular person a few concerted days to get comfortable with.

baron816 5y ago

You think investment bankers aren’t doing it for the money? I don’t know anyone who’s had to get any certifications to be a software engineer. I don’t even know what certifications would be useful. The other stuff might be debatable (Amazon does exist), but still easy to avoid (just don’t work for Amazon).

jelliclesfarm 5y ago
So you are saying if one had the choice between being a surgeon saving lives vs swe making easy money, its unfathomable to you if one chooses the former over the latter? I am trying to understand.
- baron816 5y ago
  That's not what I'm saying. I can imagine people having a passion for medicine. I can't imagine people having a passion for investment banking. But, I'm sure there are a lot of people who pursue medicine primarily because of the money. If surgeons made $120K max, there wouldn't be nearly as many people willing to go through 12 years of training to do it. What I'm saying is that if more people knew that software engineers can make surgeon/investment banking money, many of them would choose software engineering instead of surgery/investment banking. My theory is that many people just aren't aware of it, and without that information, choose professions that they're less happy with.
  - jelliclesfarm 5y ago
    wall street has a great demand for astrophysicists and mathematicians/physics PhDs. i doubt if a math or physics PhD would find SWE and project management as rewarding. i know at least one PhD(completed) and mechanical engineer who is farming with us. they are not working for agtech companies, but actually working hands-in-the-dirt farming. i guess my answer is..there are all kinds of people out there.
exdsq 5y ago
Investment banking is seen as a more prestigious job in some circles which can be more important than the money. Tech is still seen as a trade job to those same people. So even if you can make more money doing SWE those people would rather join the army and then go into banking because that's 'what they're meant to do'.

smoldesu 5y ago

> Perhaps it has to do with aptitude and education and experience. Not everyone can be a SWE just like not everyone can be an artist or an athlete. When I was in school I remember reading an article titled "Teach Yourself Programming in 10 Years"[0], and at the time I found it pretty funny. I was learning to write Java at a rate I'd never picked up anything else before, how could it possibly take 10 years to call yourself a programmer? Nowadays, I've just about hit that 10 year mark and I feel like I have nothing to show for it. Some nights I lie awake staring at the ceiling, wondering if I've wasted my time learning something as vapid and meaningless as computer science. Time on this earth is so unbelievably valuable, throwing away even a minute of it makes you the envy of the dead. It's been a decade and I still feel funny calling myself a programmer. What people compensate you for is wasted time. All those nights you decided to fiddle with NGINX instead of drinking with friends, the times you pushed away a loved one or a partner just to polish a commit before you pushed it, the years you wasted talking with people who will never see eye-to-eye with you but demand an argument nevertheless; as I get older and time starts slipping through my fingers like sand, I don't know if any amount of money could fill that void. The only thing I'm left with is a sort of unfulfilled sadness that makes me wish I spent more time with people, or cultivating my social garden, as it were. Instead I find myself past the point of no return on this track though, damned to walk the same path everyone before me did, and then some. Not everyone can be an SWE because most people have self-respect. [0] https://www.norvig.com/21-days.html https://www.norvig.com/21-days.html

mdm12 5y ago
Your post echoes my sentiments one hundred percent as a mid-30s SWE. The only consolation for myself is...I literally don't know what else I would do other than software development. At least my schizoid personality is profitable...
throwaway1777 5y ago
It sure beats working at McDonald’s or the local insurance office though. Not all of us were born rich enough to not need a job.
- 5y ago

ravenstine 5y ago

I beg to differ. What most of us are doing really isn't that complicated. It's no harder than anything you have to study in the 8th grade. The primary reason coding is hard is because we make it that way to make ourselves appear clever and intelligent. If you eliminate all the OOP, metaprogramming, and CS mumbo jumbo, and impose some actual standards, it's really a lot of writing wrappers around databases. Once someone can confidently do that then the more unusual problems become more solvable anyway. Yeah, if you're doing game engines, systems programming, ML and whatnot, it's a different story. The vast majority aren't doing that, and you don't need all those skills just to be a software engineer. One might not become a great SWE that way, but must they be great? I've known far more mediocre SWEs than brilliant ones. Even the um... sorta awful ones manage to skate by pretty well.

AYBABTME 5y ago
I think you're out of touch with the shear amount of base knowledge you had to accumulate to get to the point where all this seems like 8th grader level. It _is_ simple in the end, most of the time, but it's a freaking mile high pile of simple concepts built on top of each other.
- ravenstine 5y ago
  I could just as easily say that you believe that because you're in a bubble. Now I'm not arguing that per se, but rather that there's no way I can provide a counterargument. One could use your argument to suggest that any skill is hard because they are built on a massive pile of concepts, which isn't necessarily true or untrue being that it's a matter of degree. Eliminate the concepts in the field of programming that aren't required for making a Turing-complete language, and what you are left with isn't that crazy complex. It then comes down more to practice, which most people don't want to do because they don't see the inherent value, don't have their own ideas, or assume they aren't smart enough.
  - AYBABTME 5y ago
    I've seen enough people try to learn from scratch to know that it isn't as simple as it seems when we stand on our pile of background. It's not impossible knowledge to acquire, but to be an effective engineer, there's a ton of stuff you need to know. Maybe try to remember the first time you learned about trivial things like Git, UNIX pipes, closures, big-O complexity, hashing, graph theory, refactoring, MMUs and ADUs, TCP windows, IP, HTTP, MVC, design patterns, encoding formats, queuing theory... there's a ton of "simple" stuff to know, many of which takes a regular person a few concerted days to get comfortable with.