4 ms·

> This is just incredibly frustrating and disheartening to read. How is one supposed to plan for a future in this career when your lifestyle can just disappear

> This is just incredibly frustrating and disheartening to read. How is one supposed to plan for a future in this career when your lifestyle can just disappear overnight? Plan like everyone else in your country who has to deal with this uncertainty on significantly lower salaries. Budget. Save. Trim expenditure. And enjoy your career because you chose it as a career, not because it allowed you a lifestyle.

brundolf 4y ago
And also don't panic, because nobody knows the future (especially in tech), despite the OP's confidence. Nobody knows the future in either direction.
- jerf 4y ago
  I want to highlight this. I do probably a lot more "prep" than the average HNer is, but it's not out of panic. It's just a cold engineering assessment of costs & benefits. A lot of prep is just moving forward purchases and storing easily stored things, so the real cost is minimal if you have the space anyhow. And not spending all your money is a good plan anyhow; it has been for a long time and will continue to be. Even if you knew 100% the economy is fine and will be fine for the rest of your life, there's still good reason to prepare because you may have problems, health problems, natural disasters, maybe just the desire to take three months off work to prevent burnout, any number of reasons you should try very hard not to live paycheck to paycheck no matter how little you make. And then, when you are prepared, you can be more calm about a lot more things. Yes, it's possible for the Zombie Apocalypse to hit and make a mockery of all my prep... but because I'm more-or-less ready for more realistic scenarios, I'm also more chill about the possibility of them happening. And they may not, in which case frankly I won't have wasted many resources anyhow, any more than it's a waste to buy an insurance policy that you never get to collect on.
- randomdata 4y ago
  What we do know is that the market thinks the career is risky, charging a substantial risk premium. The market isn't infallible, but tends to be right more often than not. But that also means that you need not be too alarmed. Even just one year of making the aforementioned $300,000 allows you several years of not working at all before you are making less, on average, than a typical low risk job. As you've already priced in the risk, you'll be fine. And if the market is wrong then you've gained a nice reward.
  - samvher 4y ago
    What makes you interpret it as a risk premium? My sense is it's mostly driven by demand growing ahead of supply, and barriers existing to the supply expanding (which is partly because of the value of experience, which takes time to build). I.e. I'd say it's a scarcity thing more than a risk thing.
    - randomdata 4y ago
      > My sense is it's mostly driven by demand growing ahead of supply That, from an employer point of view, is certainly what makes the difference between offering a high risk premium and deciding that the work isn't worth doing. > which is partly because of the value of experience, which takes time to build All jobs value from experience. The question the worker has to ask himself is: Where am I going to allocate my time to gain experience? One can't do everything. They have to make a choice. Tech is a risky place to allocate your time, but compensates for that by offering a premium to compel you in that direction. Tech is risky because it is all about exploring unknowns. You get periods of fruit, but you are also likely to get periods of dead ends, and when those dead ends start to accumulate people start to back away. That is quite unlike, say, road maintenance where there is a strong belief that roads will be around for the lifetime of one's career. That isn't a guarantee, but it is lower risk. Tech is known to disappear. Tech has crashed many, many times before after too many dead ends. It feels to me like we're in a dead end period. When was the last time you were excited about new tech? The WFH period during the pandemic brought some small excitement in tech emergence, but it seems we're trying as hard as possible to back away from that. But who knows? This time might be different. And if that's the case you've got your risk premium as a reward for taking the risk.
ianbutler 4y ago
I mean, I love software development, spend a lot of my own time on it outside of work. In fact I've been writing code since I was 11 or 12, close to 20 years now, professionally for 8 years, but I'm also very intelligent and like my lifestyle, so if that evaporated the chance that I'd continue to do professional software development, especially since many of the things we deal with day to day for pay are arguably the worst parts of software development, would be very low. This whole "its your calling" thing is how the abuse and low pay in adjacent industries, like game development, are maintained, and frankly it's BS. I'd go back to school and into something that will maintain my lifestyle.

brundolf 4y ago

And also don't panic, because nobody knows the future (especially in tech), despite the OP's confidence. Nobody knows the future in either direction.

jerf 4y ago
I want to highlight this. I do probably a lot more "prep" than the average HNer is, but it's not out of panic. It's just a cold engineering assessment of costs & benefits. A lot of prep is just moving forward purchases and storing easily stored things, so the real cost is minimal if you have the space anyhow. And not spending all your money is a good plan anyhow; it has been for a long time and will continue to be. Even if you knew 100% the economy is fine and will be fine for the rest of your life, there's still good reason to prepare because you may have problems, health problems, natural disasters, maybe just the desire to take three months off work to prevent burnout, any number of reasons you should try very hard not to live paycheck to paycheck no matter how little you make. And then, when you are prepared, you can be more calm about a lot more things. Yes, it's possible for the Zombie Apocalypse to hit and make a mockery of all my prep... but because I'm more-or-less ready for more realistic scenarios, I'm also more chill about the possibility of them happening. And they may not, in which case frankly I won't have wasted many resources anyhow, any more than it's a waste to buy an insurance policy that you never get to collect on.
randomdata 4y ago
What we do know is that the market thinks the career is risky, charging a substantial risk premium. The market isn't infallible, but tends to be right more often than not. But that also means that you need not be too alarmed. Even just one year of making the aforementioned $300,000 allows you several years of not working at all before you are making less, on average, than a typical low risk job. As you've already priced in the risk, you'll be fine. And if the market is wrong then you've gained a nice reward.
- samvher 4y ago
  What makes you interpret it as a risk premium? My sense is it's mostly driven by demand growing ahead of supply, and barriers existing to the supply expanding (which is partly because of the value of experience, which takes time to build). I.e. I'd say it's a scarcity thing more than a risk thing.
  - randomdata 4y ago
    > My sense is it's mostly driven by demand growing ahead of supply That, from an employer point of view, is certainly what makes the difference between offering a high risk premium and deciding that the work isn't worth doing. > which is partly because of the value of experience, which takes time to build All jobs value from experience. The question the worker has to ask himself is: Where am I going to allocate my time to gain experience? One can't do everything. They have to make a choice. Tech is a risky place to allocate your time, but compensates for that by offering a premium to compel you in that direction. Tech is risky because it is all about exploring unknowns. You get periods of fruit, but you are also likely to get periods of dead ends, and when those dead ends start to accumulate people start to back away. That is quite unlike, say, road maintenance where there is a strong belief that roads will be around for the lifetime of one's career. That isn't a guarantee, but it is lower risk. Tech is known to disappear. Tech has crashed many, many times before after too many dead ends. It feels to me like we're in a dead end period. When was the last time you were excited about new tech? The WFH period during the pandemic brought some small excitement in tech emergence, but it seems we're trying as hard as possible to back away from that. But who knows? This time might be different. And if that's the case you've got your risk premium as a reward for taking the risk.

ianbutler 4y ago

I mean, I love software development, spend a lot of my own time on it outside of work. In fact I've been writing code since I was 11 or 12, close to 20 years now, professionally for 8 years, but I'm also very intelligent and like my lifestyle, so if that evaporated the chance that I'd continue to do professional software development, especially since many of the things we deal with day to day for pay are arguably the worst parts of software development, would be very low. This whole "its your calling" thing is how the abuse and low pay in adjacent industries, like game development, are maintained, and frankly it's BS. I'd go back to school and into something that will maintain my lifestyle.