5 ms·

This whole article is great advice for playing the career game, or “how to fit in and not get bullied at school”. Note that it comes at a cost, and that cost ma

by klabb3 4y ago

This whole article is great advice for playing the career game, or “how to fit in and not get bullied at school”. Note that it comes at a cost, and that cost may or may not be worth it to you. Note also that playing a game for a long time you forget that you are playing a game, and you start incorporating the rules of the game into your mind. Some people are more resistant to this effect than others, and some people share the same values in the first place. Others dislike who they become and either quit or become resentful. A big pile of money looks like the best thing in the world to a college grad. Playing a game you aren’t passionate about can be a worthwhile compromise, especially if you don’t have much financial safety. But never let anyone else tell you what game to play, that is your choice alone. If you have the privilege to choose what game to play, I recommend picking not by the rewards of the game – but based on how you like the rules of the game.

jckahn 4y ago
I’m willing to play the game as a survival mechanism. I’m not in tech (professionally) because of passion. I’m in it to survive and solve problems that having money can solve. I make open source software and give it away for free in my spare time because of passion. The fact that my job and my hobby are very similar is merely incidental.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
dasil003 4y ago
Great post overall, and great advice on picking your game. What I would add is: sometimes the thing which you want to do can't be done without some engagement in a game you don't like. It doesn't mean you have to give in and lose yourself entirely to the game, but you need at least pay enough attention to understand what's going on. The world is full of gatekeepers, often where you least expect it. Trying to avoid that reality can sometimes lead you to a worse place than just sucking it up and putting on a smile to get where you want to be.
robocat 4y ago
The article finishes with: At the end of the day, your life happiness will not be dominated by your career. Either talk to older people or trust the social scientists who have: family, faith, hobbies, etc etc generally swamp career achievements and money in terms of things which actually produce happiness. Optimize appropriately. Your career is important, and right now it might seem like the most important thing in your life, but odds are that is not what you’ll believe forever. Work to live, don’t live to work. I paraphrase the article as: (1) these are the real rules, (2) you must know and internalise these rules because playing the game is compulsory if you “choose” to work, (3) you must not fall for fairytales. > playing the career game The audience for this article is engineering graduates starting a career, not artists searching for meaning. “Programmer” is right there in the title. Whether you want to play the career game or not, it is one of the few games most of us will play, unfortunately. Totally agree that the game has its compromises.
- tomcam 4y ago
  I’m on the wrong side of 60 and have loved being a programmer for 4 decades. I don’t mind saying it’s a substantial part of my identity.
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    By wrong side I assume you mean you’re my age (30). We should all be lucky enough to acquire the wisdom of a 60+ year old.
    - tomcam 4y ago
      Made me smile. You’re very kind, neighbor (Redmond representing).
- onion2k 4y ago
  I think this used to be true when a single blue collar income was enough to provide your family with food and shelter and a bit extra. Today if you're not earning an above average wage you just can't have the family, hobbies, etc. Life got a lot more expensive. The pursuit of money isn't what makes people happy, but a lack of money definitely stops people being happy.
bitwize 4y ago
Playing the game is an important life skill. Go for that pile of money early. Compound interest over years means it can make the difference between just making ends meet for the rest of your life, and actually having something substantial to retire on. Apply to FAANG or whatever it is these days if you're smart enough. Prove you're smart enough by grinding leetcode and doing mock interviews. Don't faff about with homebrew game consoles or microcontroller things, things of that nature unless work demands it. Focus on GPGPU and open source FPGAs. Not quantum computing, though, it looks like that might be another time/money/energy sink like crypto. (Reconsider it if I'm proven wrong.) Don't get distracted by the Lisp lotus-eaters. The future will be built on doing massive array-based computation as fast as possible, as parallel as possible, using as little power as possible. Knuckle down and do the high-paying work early on, and possibilities will open up as to what game to play in your 30s, 40s, and beyond. Play the tech bohemian in your 20s, and you may find yourself struggling in later life.
- brailsafe 4y ago
  > and you may find yourself struggling in later life. Generally you don't get to pick no struggles. If you play the tech game real hard in your 20s, you might have no friends in your 30s, and your struggle might manifest in "Ask HN: How do you make friends after 30?" type posts. You can always push personal value down the line until you don't remember what it is you truly value. If that's only money and arbitrary success, then great, spend your 20s doing that.
- laurencerowe 4y ago
  Having played the open source tech bohemian in my 20s I think it was fine. While I earned a fraction of what I earned later in Silicon Valley it paid better than most of my contemporaries and through it I met a bunch of interesting people from around the world and became a much better programmer than I’d otherwise have been.
- jbay808 4y ago
  Maybe. I've never hired for FAANGs but from the other side of the interview table, I'd much sooner hire someone overflowing with energy and enthusiasm for homebrew game consoles or hacking a TI-83 calculator, than someone who has practiced the right exercises but has no passion for the work, doesn't remember when they stopped loving tech, and would have pursued a different major if the big bucks were elsewhere. It's not hard to tell.
hinkley 4y ago
"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be." - Kurt Vonnegut
- wrp 4y ago
  "I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person. Or he became me." - Cary Grant
- bigmattystyles 4y ago
  When I became a dad I started making 'dad' jokes sarcastically. Now I make them and I don't even notice. So yes, beware.
  - taneq 4y ago
    It works in reverse, too. I've been gleefully making dad jokes forever and look where that got me.
bruce511 4y ago
>> If you have the privilege to choose what game to play, I recommend picking not by the rewards of the game – but based on how you like the rules of the game. It's kinda both though isn't it? Sure we all want to play the game with the "right rules", but at the same time I also care deeply about the rewards - I want time with the family, I don't want to worry about money every night, and so on. But I agree, rules first. You can live on less money, but bad jobs destroy the soul. I would add this. Wherever you end up, understand that there are rules. They may not be intuitive. They may not be logical. But they exist. Don't assume. If you don't like the rules, or can't do the rules, change the game - you're not going to change the rules (and fighting to do so is exhausting.) For reference, I've spent my whole career building boring Crud apps in a language you've never heard of. It's not sexy, but it's given me a great life - more than I would have hoped for.
- bqmjjx0kac 4y ago
  > For reference, I've spent my whole career building boring Crud apps in a language you've never heard of. Well now I have to guess. ColdFusion?
  - kodah 4y ago
    I feel like a lot of programmers on here have probably heard of ColdFusion. Allaire (and Macromedia after they bought them) built one of the best IDEs back in the day. It was a strong competitor to Komodo.
    - bruce511 4y ago
      ColdFusion is a global household name compared to what I use :)
      - bqmjjx0kac 4y ago
        Fine, keep your secrets.
      - shaftoe 4y ago

by klabb3 4y ago

jckahn 4y ago

I’m willing to play the game as a survival mechanism. I’m not in tech (professionally) because of passion. I’m in it to survive and solve problems that having money can solve. I make open source software and give it away for free in my spare time because of passion. The fact that my job and my hobby are very similar is merely incidental.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

dasil003 4y ago

Great post overall, and great advice on picking your game. What I would add is: sometimes the thing which you want to do can't be done without some engagement in a game you don't like. It doesn't mean you have to give in and lose yourself entirely to the game, but you need at least pay enough attention to understand what's going on. The world is full of gatekeepers, often where you least expect it. Trying to avoid that reality can sometimes lead you to a worse place than just sucking it up and putting on a smile to get where you want to be.

robocat 4y ago

The article finishes with: At the end of the day, your life happiness will not be dominated by your career. Either talk to older people or trust the social scientists who have: family, faith, hobbies, etc etc generally swamp career achievements and money in terms of things which actually produce happiness. Optimize appropriately. Your career is important, and right now it might seem like the most important thing in your life, but odds are that is not what you’ll believe forever. Work to live, don’t live to work. I paraphrase the article as: (1) these are the real rules, (2) you must know and internalise these rules because playing the game is compulsory if you “choose” to work, (3) you must not fall for fairytales. > playing the career game The audience for this article is engineering graduates starting a career, not artists searching for meaning. “Programmer” is right there in the title. Whether you want to play the career game or not, it is one of the few games most of us will play, unfortunately. Totally agree that the game has its compromises.

tomcam 4y ago
I’m on the wrong side of 60 and have loved being a programmer for 4 decades. I don’t mind saying it’s a substantial part of my identity.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  By wrong side I assume you mean you’re my age (30). We should all be lucky enough to acquire the wisdom of a 60+ year old.
  - tomcam 4y ago
    Made me smile. You’re very kind, neighbor (Redmond representing).
onion2k 4y ago
I think this used to be true when a single blue collar income was enough to provide your family with food and shelter and a bit extra. Today if you're not earning an above average wage you just can't have the family, hobbies, etc. Life got a lot more expensive. The pursuit of money isn't what makes people happy, but a lack of money definitely stops people being happy.

bitwize 4y ago

Playing the game is an important life skill. Go for that pile of money early. Compound interest over years means it can make the difference between just making ends meet for the rest of your life, and actually having something substantial to retire on. Apply to FAANG or whatever it is these days if you're smart enough. Prove you're smart enough by grinding leetcode and doing mock interviews. Don't faff about with homebrew game consoles or microcontroller things, things of that nature unless work demands it. Focus on GPGPU and open source FPGAs. Not quantum computing, though, it looks like that might be another time/money/energy sink like crypto. (Reconsider it if I'm proven wrong.) Don't get distracted by the Lisp lotus-eaters. The future will be built on doing massive array-based computation as fast as possible, as parallel as possible, using as little power as possible. Knuckle down and do the high-paying work early on, and possibilities will open up as to what game to play in your 30s, 40s, and beyond. Play the tech bohemian in your 20s, and you may find yourself struggling in later life.

brailsafe 4y ago
> and you may find yourself struggling in later life. Generally you don't get to pick no struggles. If you play the tech game real hard in your 20s, you might have no friends in your 30s, and your struggle might manifest in "Ask HN: How do you make friends after 30?" type posts. You can always push personal value down the line until you don't remember what it is you truly value. If that's only money and arbitrary success, then great, spend your 20s doing that.
laurencerowe 4y ago
Having played the open source tech bohemian in my 20s I think it was fine. While I earned a fraction of what I earned later in Silicon Valley it paid better than most of my contemporaries and through it I met a bunch of interesting people from around the world and became a much better programmer than I’d otherwise have been.
jbay808 4y ago
Maybe. I've never hired for FAANGs but from the other side of the interview table, I'd much sooner hire someone overflowing with energy and enthusiasm for homebrew game consoles or hacking a TI-83 calculator, than someone who has practiced the right exercises but has no passion for the work, doesn't remember when they stopped loving tech, and would have pursued a different major if the big bucks were elsewhere. It's not hard to tell.

hinkley 4y ago

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be." - Kurt Vonnegut

wrp 4y ago
"I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person. Or he became me." - Cary Grant
bigmattystyles 4y ago
When I became a dad I started making 'dad' jokes sarcastically. Now I make them and I don't even notice. So yes, beware.
- taneq 4y ago
  It works in reverse, too. I've been gleefully making dad jokes forever and look where that got me.

bruce511 4y ago

>> If you have the privilege to choose what game to play, I recommend picking not by the rewards of the game – but based on how you like the rules of the game. It's kinda both though isn't it? Sure we all want to play the game with the "right rules", but at the same time I also care deeply about the rewards - I want time with the family, I don't want to worry about money every night, and so on. But I agree, rules first. You can live on less money, but bad jobs destroy the soul. I would add this. Wherever you end up, understand that there are rules. They may not be intuitive. They may not be logical. But they exist. Don't assume. If you don't like the rules, or can't do the rules, change the game - you're not going to change the rules (and fighting to do so is exhausting.) For reference, I've spent my whole career building boring Crud apps in a language you've never heard of. It's not sexy, but it's given me a great life - more than I would have hoped for.

bqmjjx0kac 4y ago
> For reference, I've spent my whole career building boring Crud apps in a language you've never heard of. Well now I have to guess. ColdFusion?
- kodah 4y ago
  I feel like a lot of programmers on here have probably heard of ColdFusion. Allaire (and Macromedia after they bought them) built one of the best IDEs back in the day. It was a strong competitor to Komodo.
  - bruce511 4y ago
    ColdFusion is a global household name compared to what I use :)
    - bqmjjx0kac 4y ago
      Fine, keep your secrets.
    - shaftoe 4y ago