3 ms·

>> So even up to then I had been keeping a distance from computers when out in public so that I could maintain the image of "Yeah, I'm good at computers but I'm

>> So even up to then I had been keeping a distance from computers when out in public so that I could maintain the image of "Yeah, I'm good at computers but I'm not a computer guy or anything". "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life"

osigurdson 4y ago
Of course, these days it is the opposite problem: people know that there is money in software so they base their career on it despite not having any real interest.
- googlryas 4y ago
  What's wrong with that? Money provides opportunity to do as you please. I say this as a person who never had to worry a day in my life about money, because I thought programming was super interesting, and learned C when I was 12, and made more money than both my parents combined by the time I was 18. It was never about money for me, but I wouldn't blame anyone for doing it for the paycheck. Falling in line with conventional viewpoints rarely gets you kudos, since it is what most people do.
  - osigurdson 4y ago
    There is nothing wrong with trying to earn the most money you can. I don't enjoy working with people who don't enjoy what they are doing however.
    - onion2k 4y ago
      I don't enjoy working with people who don't enjoy what they are doing however. I wonder if your manager feels the same way you feel about code, but about meetings. Maybe they wish you'd chosen a career that paid less because you don't enjoy meetings. You probably drag their working day right down by not finding meetings super fun.
      - VFIT7CTO77TOC 4y ago
        If you become a novelist not because you want to tell stories but because you want to sell a few books, don't be surprised when nobody likes your novels
        CM30 4y ago
        Isn't that how Garfield came into existence? Jon Davis created the character because he'd be marketable, and has turned the series into a merchandising empire as a result.
      - wiseowise 4y ago
        Except it is code that moves their company, not meetings. Anyways, their manager can stick their opinion where the sun doesn’t shine, just OP does probably since it’s anticlimactic to express opinions like that.
      - ngc248 4y ago
        The meetings are not the product. The code implements the product, so this analogy falls flat.
        onion2k 4y ago
        Communication is pretty much the most important part of the process of building software at scale. Meetings are a simple way of having that communication quickly. Without communication (eg meetings) most software would fail to ship, largely because the developers would never stop working on it long enough to push it over the line.
      - osigurdson 4y ago
        Meetings are of course necessary. The problem is pointless meetings.
  - boppo1 4y ago
    As a 30 year old learning C and C++ (a project I want to contribute to uses both), where does one look to earn money with said languages? To land entry level jobs? I have some genuine interest and it won't be ling until I'm able to write small to medium programs. At that point working in an unrelated field is a bottleneck because I don't have time to spend programming. Hence I need a job so I can focus my time on actually doing it. Any advice? How I prove I'm good enough for entry level even though I'm "old" without a relevant degree? Avoiding employers that will push bad coding habits on me?
    - geitir 4y ago
      C and C++ are pretty specialized this day and age in my opinion, you might have better opportunities breaking into a programming career if you at least get working knowledge of more popular languages
      - boppo1 4y ago
        I've done some projects in python and JS. I just never felt confident in what was really going on. Reading K&R helped me connect a lot of dots.
  - zelphirkalt 4y ago
    The problem is usually, that without love for the craft, they do not have good chances to actually learn important lessons, because those are not taught in your mainstream OOP or algorithm classes. If their approach is to slam hyped frameworks together until it works, because dinner is at 7, then the outcome will be annoying to work with for people, who do learn their lessons and love the craft. They love the craft, but get their work environment made worse, by some "everything must be React/JS" kinda guy. Or by some guy who has only ever used Java for 10 years and has the idea of noun=class so calcified in their brain, that they think that is the definition OOP and makes the whole code base worse.
- deepGem 4y ago
  I am one such person, or at least I was when I began my career writing software way back in 2000. Oh well, write software is a loaded term, let's say I began writing programs. Simply for the reason you state above, more money than anywhere else with one caveat. There was this hunch that software is the future and there were more exciting stuff happening in software than in the world of let's say mechanical engineering, even in my backyard in Bangalore. But, over time I got to love writing software and the entire industry as such. About 3 years in, I couldn't think of doing anything else. So yeah, there's no harm in pursuing something for the sake of money, because the odds are you will eventually fall in love with that path, assuming some of your qualities are suitable for that career. But, not everyone finds happiness or satisfaction in a path that they chose for money and I think majority of them will be wishing they never had to be in that career.
  - antaviana 4y ago
    “Love what you do” is a safer and more realistic professional strategy than “Do what you love”.
- FrontierPsych 4y ago
  True, but people do that about a lot of things. People might become a dentist but then start to hate it, but the $$$ is too good and how is he or she going to start as a newspaper cartoonist for $13,000 per year because that is their interest? If you don't know what you want, and don't have any real absorbing interest in too much, if nothing really turns your crank, why NOT go into the highest paying job that you can get? Nothing wrong with that? I think these days way too much emphasis is put on the whole "Do what you love" thing. Who loves being a convenience store clerk, or a gas station attendant or movie ticket taker? But people do it, for the sole reason that they need money. And do it year after year, for a lifetime. It's the real high-end problem when you decide between being an investment banker, a programmer for google, a lawyer at a top 10 law firm, or a brain surgeon that graduated from Harvard med school. Personally, I have no interest in anything. I've "explored" all kinds of areas, more than most. I'm one of those people you read about that's done 489 different jobs (hyperbole, but not much, I don't think). Nothing turns my crank. What am I supposed to do? So, I just keep going from industry to industry, lacksadaisically, wandering aimlessly through life. Am I supposed to have a goal? Am I supposed to only work one job, one career for 60 years? Those are not real questions, because I don't really care too much. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do and be a robot, go to work, go through the motions, and collect your paycheck. No dancing girls in your office every day, no $5 million gold sink in your private office, no live concert by Miley Cyrus in your personal office, how rude, how can I live without being catered to my every whim and being so, so, so happy? I MUST be happy, I MUST have a real interest....snnnnooooore. Get real, people. The only ones whose world is their oyster are people who graduate from a top 10 school, they truly can do anything. The rest of us hacks that graduated from anything below that, or god forbid a middling or low end university with a C average, we take what scraps that fall on the floor. Let alone high school graduates, or worse, those who never finished high school. Count your blessings.
  - osigurdson 4y ago
    >> Count your blessings. After reading this post, I certainly do!
  - helloworld11 4y ago
    Thank you. You said it wonderfully. It becomes absurd to see privileged people with all sorts of opportunities and economic support hectoring others because they (for some reason that obviously has nothing at all whatsoever to do with not being so cushioned) just pick up a job that's less than perfect, but do it for decades because they need to find a way to make a living, pay the bills, support family and in the lapses between tedious work, still find some way to generate a bit of personal happiness in some detail or another of their less than perfect lives. For those of you living in your bubbles of trouble-free personal fulfillment, welcome to the real world for a vast majority of the world's population. The people that handle your menial needs don't always do so out of pure love of the job, but yes, they still find some imperfect avenues for happiness in life. There's nothing innately wrong with that either.
- ar_lan 4y ago
  As someone who just honestly enjoys it, this has been painful to see. I feel so few people I can talk to who enjoy the craft.
  - urthor 4y ago
    It's more like folk who enjoy the craft run off and join the big tech companies in my experience. You can work in a skyscraper, and not find a single one. Off you go to the other skyscraper. There's a whole bunch.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
  When referring to "software" does this mean the software that is licensed at no cost to mobile carriers and consumers. Does it include open source software used by corporations for which there are no license fee payments. There is money in surveillance, data collection and advertising. Are those practices synonymous with software.

osigurdson 4y ago

Of course, these days it is the opposite problem: people know that there is money in software so they base their career on it despite not having any real interest.

googlryas 4y ago
What's wrong with that? Money provides opportunity to do as you please. I say this as a person who never had to worry a day in my life about money, because I thought programming was super interesting, and learned C when I was 12, and made more money than both my parents combined by the time I was 18. It was never about money for me, but I wouldn't blame anyone for doing it for the paycheck. Falling in line with conventional viewpoints rarely gets you kudos, since it is what most people do.
- osigurdson 4y ago
  There is nothing wrong with trying to earn the most money you can. I don't enjoy working with people who don't enjoy what they are doing however.
  - onion2k 4y ago
    I don't enjoy working with people who don't enjoy what they are doing however. I wonder if your manager feels the same way you feel about code, but about meetings. Maybe they wish you'd chosen a career that paid less because you don't enjoy meetings. You probably drag their working day right down by not finding meetings super fun.
    - VFIT7CTO77TOC 4y ago
      If you become a novelist not because you want to tell stories but because you want to sell a few books, don't be surprised when nobody likes your novels
      - CM30 4y ago
        Isn't that how Garfield came into existence? Jon Davis created the character because he'd be marketable, and has turned the series into a merchandising empire as a result.
    - wiseowise 4y ago
      Except it is code that moves their company, not meetings. Anyways, their manager can stick their opinion where the sun doesn’t shine, just OP does probably since it’s anticlimactic to express opinions like that.
    - ngc248 4y ago
      The meetings are not the product. The code implements the product, so this analogy falls flat.
      - onion2k 4y ago
        Communication is pretty much the most important part of the process of building software at scale. Meetings are a simple way of having that communication quickly. Without communication (eg meetings) most software would fail to ship, largely because the developers would never stop working on it long enough to push it over the line.
    - osigurdson 4y ago
      Meetings are of course necessary. The problem is pointless meetings.
- boppo1 4y ago
  As a 30 year old learning C and C++ (a project I want to contribute to uses both), where does one look to earn money with said languages? To land entry level jobs? I have some genuine interest and it won't be ling until I'm able to write small to medium programs. At that point working in an unrelated field is a bottleneck because I don't have time to spend programming. Hence I need a job so I can focus my time on actually doing it. Any advice? How I prove I'm good enough for entry level even though I'm "old" without a relevant degree? Avoiding employers that will push bad coding habits on me?
  - geitir 4y ago
    C and C++ are pretty specialized this day and age in my opinion, you might have better opportunities breaking into a programming career if you at least get working knowledge of more popular languages
    - boppo1 4y ago
      I've done some projects in python and JS. I just never felt confident in what was really going on. Reading K&R helped me connect a lot of dots.
- zelphirkalt 4y ago
  The problem is usually, that without love for the craft, they do not have good chances to actually learn important lessons, because those are not taught in your mainstream OOP or algorithm classes. If their approach is to slam hyped frameworks together until it works, because dinner is at 7, then the outcome will be annoying to work with for people, who do learn their lessons and love the craft. They love the craft, but get their work environment made worse, by some "everything must be React/JS" kinda guy. Or by some guy who has only ever used Java for 10 years and has the idea of noun=class so calcified in their brain, that they think that is the definition OOP and makes the whole code base worse.
deepGem 4y ago
I am one such person, or at least I was when I began my career writing software way back in 2000. Oh well, write software is a loaded term, let's say I began writing programs. Simply for the reason you state above, more money than anywhere else with one caveat. There was this hunch that software is the future and there were more exciting stuff happening in software than in the world of let's say mechanical engineering, even in my backyard in Bangalore. But, over time I got to love writing software and the entire industry as such. About 3 years in, I couldn't think of doing anything else. So yeah, there's no harm in pursuing something for the sake of money, because the odds are you will eventually fall in love with that path, assuming some of your qualities are suitable for that career. But, not everyone finds happiness or satisfaction in a path that they chose for money and I think majority of them will be wishing they never had to be in that career.
- antaviana 4y ago
  “Love what you do” is a safer and more realistic professional strategy than “Do what you love”.
FrontierPsych 4y ago
True, but people do that about a lot of things. People might become a dentist but then start to hate it, but the $$$ is too good and how is he or she going to start as a newspaper cartoonist for $13,000 per year because that is their interest? If you don't know what you want, and don't have any real absorbing interest in too much, if nothing really turns your crank, why NOT go into the highest paying job that you can get? Nothing wrong with that? I think these days way too much emphasis is put on the whole "Do what you love" thing. Who loves being a convenience store clerk, or a gas station attendant or movie ticket taker? But people do it, for the sole reason that they need money. And do it year after year, for a lifetime. It's the real high-end problem when you decide between being an investment banker, a programmer for google, a lawyer at a top 10 law firm, or a brain surgeon that graduated from Harvard med school. Personally, I have no interest in anything. I've "explored" all kinds of areas, more than most. I'm one of those people you read about that's done 489 different jobs (hyperbole, but not much, I don't think). Nothing turns my crank. What am I supposed to do? So, I just keep going from industry to industry, lacksadaisically, wandering aimlessly through life. Am I supposed to have a goal? Am I supposed to only work one job, one career for 60 years? Those are not real questions, because I don't really care too much. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do and be a robot, go to work, go through the motions, and collect your paycheck. No dancing girls in your office every day, no $5 million gold sink in your private office, no live concert by Miley Cyrus in your personal office, how rude, how can I live without being catered to my every whim and being so, so, so happy? I MUST be happy, I MUST have a real interest....snnnnooooore. Get real, people. The only ones whose world is their oyster are people who graduate from a top 10 school, they truly can do anything. The rest of us hacks that graduated from anything below that, or god forbid a middling or low end university with a C average, we take what scraps that fall on the floor. Let alone high school graduates, or worse, those who never finished high school. Count your blessings.
- osigurdson 4y ago
  >> Count your blessings. After reading this post, I certainly do!
- helloworld11 4y ago
  Thank you. You said it wonderfully. It becomes absurd to see privileged people with all sorts of opportunities and economic support hectoring others because they (for some reason that obviously has nothing at all whatsoever to do with not being so cushioned) just pick up a job that's less than perfect, but do it for decades because they need to find a way to make a living, pay the bills, support family and in the lapses between tedious work, still find some way to generate a bit of personal happiness in some detail or another of their less than perfect lives. For those of you living in your bubbles of trouble-free personal fulfillment, welcome to the real world for a vast majority of the world's population. The people that handle your menial needs don't always do so out of pure love of the job, but yes, they still find some imperfect avenues for happiness in life. There's nothing innately wrong with that either.
ar_lan 4y ago
As someone who just honestly enjoys it, this has been painful to see. I feel so few people I can talk to who enjoy the craft.
- urthor 4y ago
  It's more like folk who enjoy the craft run off and join the big tech companies in my experience. You can work in a skyscraper, and not find a single one. Off you go to the other skyscraper. There's a whole bunch.
1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
When referring to "software" does this mean the software that is licensed at no cost to mobile carriers and consumers. Does it include open source software used by corporations for which there are no license fee payments. There is money in surveillance, data collection and advertising. Are those practices synonymous with software.