6 ms·

I met a girl at a party once, and she said something really interesting when I mentioned that I wrote software for a living. "I could never do that", she said.

I met a girl at a party once, and she said something really interesting when I mentioned that I wrote software for a living. "I could never do that", she said. "I could never sit alone all day, staring at a computer and never getting the chance to talk to anybody. It'd be my worst nightmare." I hadn't ever thought about it like that. Naturally, as a developer, I think I have the greatest job there is. Where else could you get somebody to pay you like fourteen times the median family income to hang out anywhere in the world you please and solve interesting puzzles all day? But not everybody is wired the same. Lots of people (most people???) get their energy from face to face human interaction. Poor fools, eh?

mgkimsal 14y ago
14x? Where are you living? I understand software developers generally make more than the average, but I've not heard of too many people making 14x (in the US).
- jasonkester 14y ago
  ^ number pulled from butt for the purposes of comedic exaggeration. But doing a quick order of magnitude check, it's not off by much: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income In the US, that says median income is ~$31k. You'd be 10x'ing that with a $150/hr consulting rate, which is by no means outrageous.
  - mgkimsal 14y ago
    not completely outrageous, although most of the people I know that are billing >= $150/hr aren't billing 2000 hours/year. Actually, even most of the hourly consultants I know that work for themselves aren't billable that often - usually 1000-1200 billable hours between most of the independent IT/tech people I know. Still, even at $75/hour, you're still 2-3x what a lot of people are making, and it's generally only up from there for most people.
    - sbrother 14y ago
      Exactly. But that's one of the best parts of software development in my opinion - you can make 3x the median income while living wherever you like and working 20 hours a week (i.e. having time for side projects, or kids)
      - mgkimsal 14y ago
        I agree, it's just not 14x. People sometimes assume I make boatloads of money - I don't - but I do enjoy the flexibility.
  - peterarmstrong 14y ago
    Note to everyone thinking of consulting and doing this math: The challenge is that when you bill $150/hr you are not billing 40 hour weeks. By the way, this is exactly why you need to bill $150/hr (or better, a weekly or monthly rate). If you do 40 hour week math, you think you can bill < $100/hr. And then you are very hungry.
  - bosie 14y ago
    those 31k are something completely different though (normalised, purchasing power, disposable income, household) the median income in sf/nyc is closer to 45k (http://project.wnyc.org/acs2011/income.html#12.00/40.7310/-73.9809 http://project.wnyc.org/acs2011/income.html#12.00/40.7310/-7...)
- zeroonetwothree 14y ago
  Maybe the OP meant the median world income, which is around $10k/yr.
svachalek 14y ago
That image of working alone at a computer all day is a long way from the truth at a lot of companies; typically the bigger the company the more time you spend in meetings, and at many that ends up being half your day or more. That isn't particularly more anti-social than marketing or accounting, where you'll find a lot more women. Not to mention places that do all pair programming, all the time.
- pretoriusB 14y ago
  I wouldn't call "meetings" particularly social. If anything, they're the opposite, a bunch of people bored out of their minds, listing to powerpoint presentations or BS upper management speak. The more social part of a programmer's day is probably when he's having lunch with the team.
Spooky23 14y ago
The key difference is that the author is a CEO. His job is setting direction and talking to people. In any organization that I've worked in the CEO/Managing Director/Commissioner is a person who spends 6-10 hours a day in meetings. Talking to customers, internal stakeholders, random external people, the board, etc. I couldn't imagine doing that work over email.
codinghorror 14y ago
Wait what? Who in the world is using a computer today that isn't constantly interacting with people on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, uh.. Hacker News, even.. I mean, you're doing it right now. Today's web is an insanely social place. Compare with computers in 1985, yeah, you might have a point about social isolation. But today? Absolutely not, no way.
- kayoone 14y ago
  That still doesnt change "I could never sit alone all day, staring at a computer and never getting the chance to talk to anybody." Even by using social media, you are still alone in front of your computer.
  - codinghorror 14y ago
    That's meaningless. "never getting the chance to talk to anybody"? I'm talking to you, and everyone else who reads this web page, right now. Just look around you. Look at all the people who are in real world physical social situations and still spend most of their time staring at their smartphone and the stream of social updates from Twitter, from Facebook, from Email... Staring at those screens is compelling because they are so damn social now. It's not some mythical solitary activity like playing solitaire or reading a book.
    - kayoone 14y ago
      I get your point, but i still think the girl the op talked about meant something different. My girlfriend thinks the same...sitting infront of a computer has nothing todo with social activity for her, even when she occasionally checks facebook, and she would go crazy if she had to be alone in front of a computer all day, while i enjoy it alot.
    - rm445 14y ago
      It's interesting that you can't tell the difference. You are not talking to parent poster, you are typing text into a box while alone in room. You can't see his(?) facial expressions, change the subject, comment on things taking place around both of you. You just type into a box and sometime later you might see this reply. Don't get me wrong, communicating on the Internet is great. But for some types of personality (and pretty much all of us to some extent) face-to-face interaction is vital.
return0 14y ago
Maybe part of the reason why there's a big gender gap?
cafard 14y ago
A long ago girlfriend said much the same thing about copy editing when I did that. She was anything but a fool.
B-Con 14y ago
I agree. Occasionally people will say something about "having to sit at a desk" in relation to their job or mine. "Have?" I get to sit at a desk with a portal to logic, problem solving, and all the information I could want right in front of me. If I were sitting at home, family-less and jobless, I would probably be doing a very similar thing about the same portion of the day.
herval 14y ago
If the only problem is really "sitting alone", wouldn't working in a company that does pair programming solve it?
a3_nm 14y ago
I'm about to start a PhD in computer science. One might also think that CS research is something where you just live anywhere you want and solve interesting theoretical puzzles all day, but it's surprising to see how much communication is important (both written and oral). You need to tell people about your work and understand what other people do, but most importantly it's crucially important to think about hard problems together with other people. It's true that you can work on your own, but (at least from my perspective) it's incredibly more productive to think about hard problems with someone. It forces you to spell your ideas fully in order to communicate them to the other person, which often deepens your understanding of the ideas (or makes errors obvious -- think of rubber duck debugging): it's true that you can do it through pretty much any medium, but face-to-face is still the best choice by a large margin. Besides, face-to-face has the added benefit that when you have someone else in front of you, there is a sense of urgency that prevents you from turning your brain off, whereas if you're thinking by yourself it's much easier to lose focus. For this reason, even though it seems that you could do CS research your own, a vast, vast majority of papers (at least in my field) are collaborations, and 1-author papers are incredibly rare. Besides, though researchers are fond users of email and Skype and other such tools, they also go through the time and expense of moving to remote countries just to be able to collaborate face-to-face with the right people.
eli_gottlieb 14y ago
Where else could you get somebody to pay you like fourteen times the median family income to hang out anywhere in the world you please and solve interesting puzzles all day? Where can you find this $700,000/year software job (assuming median family income of $50k/year as it approximately is in the USA)?
- ndonnellan 14y ago
  14x worldwide average income makes more sense, which might be an order of magnitude less

mgkimsal 14y ago

14x? Where are you living? I understand software developers generally make more than the average, but I've not heard of too many people making 14x (in the US).

jasonkester 14y ago
^ number pulled from butt for the purposes of comedic exaggeration. But doing a quick order of magnitude check, it's not off by much: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income In the US, that says median income is ~$31k. You'd be 10x'ing that with a $150/hr consulting rate, which is by no means outrageous.
- mgkimsal 14y ago
  not completely outrageous, although most of the people I know that are billing >= $150/hr aren't billing 2000 hours/year. Actually, even most of the hourly consultants I know that work for themselves aren't billable that often - usually 1000-1200 billable hours between most of the independent IT/tech people I know. Still, even at $75/hour, you're still 2-3x what a lot of people are making, and it's generally only up from there for most people.
  - sbrother 14y ago
    Exactly. But that's one of the best parts of software development in my opinion - you can make 3x the median income while living wherever you like and working 20 hours a week (i.e. having time for side projects, or kids)
    - mgkimsal 14y ago
      I agree, it's just not 14x. People sometimes assume I make boatloads of money - I don't - but I do enjoy the flexibility.
- peterarmstrong 14y ago
  Note to everyone thinking of consulting and doing this math: The challenge is that when you bill $150/hr you are not billing 40 hour weeks. By the way, this is exactly why you need to bill $150/hr (or better, a weekly or monthly rate). If you do 40 hour week math, you think you can bill < $100/hr. And then you are very hungry.
- bosie 14y ago
  those 31k are something completely different though (normalised, purchasing power, disposable income, household) the median income in sf/nyc is closer to 45k (http://project.wnyc.org/acs2011/income.html#12.00/40.7310/-73.9809 http://project.wnyc.org/acs2011/income.html#12.00/40.7310/-7...)
zeroonetwothree 14y ago
Maybe the OP meant the median world income, which is around $10k/yr.

svachalek 14y ago

That image of working alone at a computer all day is a long way from the truth at a lot of companies; typically the bigger the company the more time you spend in meetings, and at many that ends up being half your day or more. That isn't particularly more anti-social than marketing or accounting, where you'll find a lot more women. Not to mention places that do all pair programming, all the time.

pretoriusB 14y ago
I wouldn't call "meetings" particularly social. If anything, they're the opposite, a bunch of people bored out of their minds, listing to powerpoint presentations or BS upper management speak. The more social part of a programmer's day is probably when he's having lunch with the team.

Spooky23 14y ago

The key difference is that the author is a CEO. His job is setting direction and talking to people. In any organization that I've worked in the CEO/Managing Director/Commissioner is a person who spends 6-10 hours a day in meetings. Talking to customers, internal stakeholders, random external people, the board, etc. I couldn't imagine doing that work over email.

codinghorror 14y ago

Wait what? Who in the world is using a computer today that isn't constantly interacting with people on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, uh.. Hacker News, even.. I mean, you're doing it right now. Today's web is an insanely social place. Compare with computers in 1985, yeah, you might have a point about social isolation. But today? Absolutely not, no way.

kayoone 14y ago
That still doesnt change "I could never sit alone all day, staring at a computer and never getting the chance to talk to anybody." Even by using social media, you are still alone in front of your computer.
- codinghorror 14y ago
  That's meaningless. "never getting the chance to talk to anybody"? I'm talking to you, and everyone else who reads this web page, right now. Just look around you. Look at all the people who are in real world physical social situations and still spend most of their time staring at their smartphone and the stream of social updates from Twitter, from Facebook, from Email... Staring at those screens is compelling because they are so damn social now. It's not some mythical solitary activity like playing solitaire or reading a book.
  - kayoone 14y ago
    I get your point, but i still think the girl the op talked about meant something different. My girlfriend thinks the same...sitting infront of a computer has nothing todo with social activity for her, even when she occasionally checks facebook, and she would go crazy if she had to be alone in front of a computer all day, while i enjoy it alot.
  - rm445 14y ago
    It's interesting that you can't tell the difference. You are not talking to parent poster, you are typing text into a box while alone in room. You can't see his(?) facial expressions, change the subject, comment on things taking place around both of you. You just type into a box and sometime later you might see this reply. Don't get me wrong, communicating on the Internet is great. But for some types of personality (and pretty much all of us to some extent) face-to-face interaction is vital.

return0 14y ago

Maybe part of the reason why there's a big gender gap?

cafard 14y ago

A long ago girlfriend said much the same thing about copy editing when I did that. She was anything but a fool.

B-Con 14y ago

I agree. Occasionally people will say something about "having to sit at a desk" in relation to their job or mine. "Have?" I get to sit at a desk with a portal to logic, problem solving, and all the information I could want right in front of me. If I were sitting at home, family-less and jobless, I would probably be doing a very similar thing about the same portion of the day.

herval 14y ago

If the only problem is really "sitting alone", wouldn't working in a company that does pair programming solve it?

a3_nm 14y ago

I'm about to start a PhD in computer science. One might also think that CS research is something where you just live anywhere you want and solve interesting theoretical puzzles all day, but it's surprising to see how much communication is important (both written and oral). You need to tell people about your work and understand what other people do, but most importantly it's crucially important to think about hard problems together with other people. It's true that you can work on your own, but (at least from my perspective) it's incredibly more productive to think about hard problems with someone. It forces you to spell your ideas fully in order to communicate them to the other person, which often deepens your understanding of the ideas (or makes errors obvious -- think of rubber duck debugging): it's true that you can do it through pretty much any medium, but face-to-face is still the best choice by a large margin. Besides, face-to-face has the added benefit that when you have someone else in front of you, there is a sense of urgency that prevents you from turning your brain off, whereas if you're thinking by yourself it's much easier to lose focus. For this reason, even though it seems that you could do CS research your own, a vast, vast majority of papers (at least in my field) are collaborations, and 1-author papers are incredibly rare. Besides, though researchers are fond users of email and Skype and other such tools, they also go through the time and expense of moving to remote countries just to be able to collaborate face-to-face with the right people.

eli_gottlieb 14y ago

Where else could you get somebody to pay you like fourteen times the median family income to hang out anywhere in the world you please and solve interesting puzzles all day? Where can you find this $700,000/year software job (assuming median family income of $50k/year as it approximately is in the USA)?

ndonnellan 14y ago
14x worldwide average income makes more sense, which might be an order of magnitude less