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Is this supposed to be some art piece? > That is what professional programming is like. You don’t care about the goal to begin with, it doesn’t have any notice

Is this supposed to be some art piece? > That is what professional programming is like. You don’t care about the goal to begin with, it doesn’t have any noticeable effect on the world once each Jira ticket moves over to the Done column, and you don’t have any ownership over the finished product. You just wait for the next Jira ticket. Sure, there are jobs like this, but it's super weird to claim that all programming jobs are like this. Just.. don't work those jobs! Find real jobs at real companies making real products for real people. Don't stay at a job where all your work ends up in a black hole of nothingness until you burn out. The burnout means you quit too late. I'm not saying it's easy to find programming jobs that cure cancer, fix climate change or cause world peace, but it's really not that hard to find programming jobs where what you make is used by real people and if you make the thing you make better, these real people will tell you that they're happy that it's now better (and, immediately after, what else needs fixing). This can be all the way from super challenging computer sciency shit to line-of-business CRUD app coding at a small shop in a mid size provincial town for regional customers. It exists everywhere. ps. Personal context: Articles like these mildly offend me because I run a company and we try very hard to make everybody's time at the company worth their while. The suggestion that business owners like me do not exist hits hard. In fact, we are many. There's plenty bosses and entrepreneurs and managers out there who realize that the more motivated and involved and happy team members are, the better their work will be. Also being the boss of stressed out burned-out programmers sounds like hell to me. I'd much rather run a team of enthusiastic self-starters! Incentives are, actually, pretty aligned (happy people = great results) and companies where they're not are just, in my humble opinion, badly run companies. Don't work there.

gushogg-blake 2y ago
To be honest I've just never really liked programming for work, and have felt kind of trapped in it as my only source of good money for a few years. So there's probably some bitterness there that I don't mean to offend anyone with. Even at what on paper seemed to be a great job - fully remote, annual retreats, great teammates, etc - I just couldn't resist the desire to work on something that was actually mine, in some fundamental way. So maybe "has no effect on the world" isn't the right way to put it - but that's how it feels. I guess it's in the sense of, if it wasn't me doing it, it would get done anyway, or something. And at all the companies I've worked at at least, my job as a programmer has been totally interchangeable with other people. I think my main skill as a programmer is writing really clear, solid code - line managers/clients have said this so it's not just my own bias - and you get a little kick of dopamine whenever you check some code in and someone goes "great!". But then they go "OK, now do that again, forever". The Jira tickets never end. You never get a big payout. That's been my experience anyway. Maybe having equity would significantly change the calculus.
- skrebbel 2y ago
  This holds for psychotherapists too. Quit being a psychotherapist and people will find another psychotherapist. If this here is really how you feel then IMO your article is misrepresenting things. Feeling like you want to work on something that is your own makes a lot more sense to me than suggesting that every programming job out there doesn't affect anybody anywhere ever. I mean, I recognize this one completely - it's why I started my own business in the first place!

gushogg-blake 2y ago

To be honest I've just never really liked programming for work, and have felt kind of trapped in it as my only source of good money for a few years. So there's probably some bitterness there that I don't mean to offend anyone with. Even at what on paper seemed to be a great job - fully remote, annual retreats, great teammates, etc - I just couldn't resist the desire to work on something that was actually mine, in some fundamental way. So maybe "has no effect on the world" isn't the right way to put it - but that's how it feels. I guess it's in the sense of, if it wasn't me doing it, it would get done anyway, or something. And at all the companies I've worked at at least, my job as a programmer has been totally interchangeable with other people. I think my main skill as a programmer is writing really clear, solid code - line managers/clients have said this so it's not just my own bias - and you get a little kick of dopamine whenever you check some code in and someone goes "great!". But then they go "OK, now do that again, forever". The Jira tickets never end. You never get a big payout. That's been my experience anyway. Maybe having equity would significantly change the calculus.

skrebbel 2y ago
This holds for psychotherapists too. Quit being a psychotherapist and people will find another psychotherapist. If this here is really how you feel then IMO your article is misrepresenting things. Feeling like you want to work on something that is your own makes a lot more sense to me than suggesting that every programming job out there doesn't affect anybody anywhere ever. I mean, I recognize this one completely - it's why I started my own business in the first place!