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Being a software engineer is still a kick-ass job compared to almost anything else out there today. No, I really don't think so. If I were to do it over again,

Being a software engineer is still a kick-ass job compared to almost anything else out there today. No, I really don't think so. If I were to do it over again, I would rather be an Alaskan fishing boat operator than a software engineer doing 99% of the stuff that paid programmers have to do. My body is mediocre. It works, there's nothing wrong with it, and I'm probably in the top 33% for physique, but I'm not Olympic material, so using my body for mediocre physical work does not offend me. It seems about right. I think I would be happier in medieval times when there was no expectation that a smart person would do high-quality work. You did harsh physical work for 45 years and then died. Seems more fulfilling than this corporate bullshit where a bunch of well-connected high priests don't merely do less work and make more money, but the fuckers think they earned it! My mind, on the other hand, is Olympic material and any time someone tries to coerce me into using it for the grunt work they don't want to do, it just makes me homicidal.

dasil003 13y ago
I have go call bullshit on this. You are probably younger than every Alaskan fishing boat operator today and you could go do that tomorrow if you really wanted. Also, why would it be better to pay 80% of your labor directly to a king who would let you starve after a bad harvest or two than it would be to deal with some douchey suits? I mean you can't really be serious with this, it's just a diatribe against the existing corporate hegemony, am I wrong?
- dangrover 13y ago
  It's funny, I actually met a guy once who worked on Alaskan fishing boats and decided to move into programming. I don't think he regretted the move.
- rayiner 13y ago
  > Also, why would it be better to pay 80% of your labor directly to a king who would let you starve after a bad harvest or two than it would be to deal with some douchey suits? Most of the time its literally the same thing: pay 80% of the value of your labor to someone who doesn't care if you starve in a drought.
  - dasil003 13y ago
    In medieval times what you produced had intrinsic value. If you work in a corporation it's impossible to isolate the value you are creating from the company itself. Maybe they take 80% of your value, or maybe you are extracting a paycheck and providing negative value. In any case though, I find it disingenuous to seriously compare this to being essentially enslaved by a feudal lord.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      Companies are built on employees creating more value than they are paid. That's obvious. The fact that its harder to measure who produces how much doesn't change the dynamic, it just means you have to do the analysis statistically instead of individually.
      - nostrademons 13y ago
        The other thing companies are built on is employees being able to create more value within the company than outside of it. Every single employee has the option of quitting and founding their own business. Several do. Many take a pay cut to exercise this right.
        rayiner 13y ago
        Right, but that was true of feudal structures too.
        dasil003 13y ago
        I'm not sure if you're trying a reductio ad absurdum or what, but your point is lost on me because the comparison is foolish on its face.
        adamgravitis 13y ago
        This is a crucially important point. The question becomes: to what extent does the accumulation of capital, expertise, equipment in a corporation render a software engineer able to produce more value than working on their own, or in a partnership, or other arrangement? I would imagine this varies dramatically by industry. I know several of the biosciences, for example, do require a lot of specialized people, equipment and tons of cash... Many of the areas we're seeing disrupted by startups are areas where you'd hit diminishing returns (from, say, more equipment / capital) rather quickly.
hpagey 13y ago
If I was not a software engineer/tech entrepreneur, I would be Alaskan Bush Pilot.
- benaiah 13y ago
  As someone who actually lives up in Alaska, I think you guys may be romanticizing it just a tad. Sure, it's adventurous and everything, but do you really want to live somewhere where you have multiple feet of snow nine months out of the year (or more - we had a snowstorm just about a week ago. Yes. In May.) Everything is more expensive, jobs are hard to come by unless you want a two-weeks-on two-weeks-off rotation to somewhere where it's even colder (-50 F plus wind chill is pretty normal for the Slope), etc. If you do want to deal with that, good-for-you, but it's not like the grass is verdantly greener here. And yes, I know you both were probably only half-serious. It just amuses me when people refer to Alaska like its some sort of mystical Last Frontier. It is pretty cool up here, I must admit.
ims 13y ago
> If I were to do it over again, I would rather be an Alaskan fishing boat operator than a software engineer doing 99% of the stuff that paid programmers have to do. I usually find your comments thought provoking but as somebody who is familiar with this industry I assure you that this is not the case. No need to even go into the conditions, which are probably more horrible than you imagine (in terms of the work itself, workers' physical safety, interpersonal interactions that usually range from unfriendly to physically abusive, and overbearing managers which we all know you despise). Those are obvious. But if you think that VC's exercise undue influence on the tech industry, and if you chafe against this kind of control (as it seems you do), you would not enjoy an industry where people doing the actual labor and putting their lives on the line (really) make very little compared to the extremely large companies that bankroll the operations and distribution. A nitpick, I know, but... software development is still not a bad industry to be in compared to most.
- dasil003 13y ago
  I have to assume he is trolling here as he is quite a bright lad after all, and he had nothing to say when I called him out in my reply. As a troll it was one of the most effective I've seen in a while just by reply volume.
nostrademons 13y ago
FWIW, if you'd really prefer to be an Alaskan fishing boat operator than a software engineer, that option is open to you. I have a friend that spent 6 months on an Alaskan salmon-fishing boat before taking a job at an economics consultancy. He said the work is back-breaking, the job conditions are dangerous, the hours are insanely long...but it was overall a pretty good experience, because he learned that maybe office work wasn't so horrible. (He forgot it a couple years later when he quit and decided to party it up in Thailand off savings later, but that's another story...) Also FWIW, I used to think my mind was Olympic-class material as well, and certainly had the test scores and comments from accomplished adults to back it up. Maybe it still is, but I care a whole lot less now, because I've learned that beyond 120 or so IQ, EQ matters a lot more. And if my mind is actually that awesome, I could use it to increase my EQ rather than complain about how nobody recognizes how brilliant my IQ is.
deleted 13y ago
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throwaway9848 13y ago
This comment is the worst piece of crap I've read here. It reads like the worst kind of egotistical, entitled, and insular stereotype of people in this field. You ought to be ashamed. You mind, "_is_ Olympic material". Bollocks. Did your Olympic class mind research the fatality rates and lifestyle for Alaskan fisherman? Happier in medieval times? Are you out of your damn mind? God help you that you have to deal with a boss that makes more money then you and doesn't recognize what a snowflake you are. I can't believe you have to deal with mundane tasks like the rest of us peons. EDIT: I read the civility note, but how does the parent comment have positive points to engage with constructively? Honestly. It is pure tripe. I bet that 6.8 billion on the face of the planet would do anything to trade place with this guy, and he's wishing that he lived in a time when 1/3 of children died before age 5 and 1/5 of women died because of childbirth? Just because he is suffering from malaise? Can't he watch Office Space or Fight Club to get it out of his system? Didn't more than 1000 Bangladeshis die in a sweatshop less than 1 month ago? What a stunning lack of perspective and empathy.
- polarix 13y ago
  Lack of empathy, sure. But this is orange sunshine perspective.
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  You hold strong opinions for how little you understand. I am aware that there's a higher fatality rate for Alaskan fishermen than software engineers. However, I don't really worry about dying. I do worry about subordination, which I find to be worse. If I'm to die, I'll die. But the slow death that takes 50 years (subordination) is one I can't tolerate even thinking about. Also, let's talk about the emotions that come along with robbery and crime. Let's say that someone robs you at gunpoint and take the contents of your wallet. Lucky for you, you only have $3 in your wallet at the time. So the financial loss is trivial. You're still traumatized, and no one likes being robbed. No one. Even with only $3 lost, you'd probably rather this never happened, and avoid the place where the robbery occurred for a long time. Yes, there are horrible things in the world that I can't control and those are far more awful than the state of the software industry. That's true. If I could change them, I would; and I'd feel awful if I didn't. However, people are fundamentally local in how they engage with the world. They tend to focus on things they can change, the robberies in their neighborhood rather than half a world away. And, fundamentally, what we need as software engineers is a neighborhood watch for our industry. The problem with Work (the social-climbing game, not the activity) is that when you get robbed, it's taken to be entirely your fault. If someone steals from you and fucks up your career, you're the loser, not him. He probably got a promotion for that shit.
precisioncoder 13y ago
I love being a software engineer, but I would quit in a second to become a crew member under Han Solo on the Millenium Falcon. Until that opportunity shows up software developer is one of the best jobs on the planet. Go work physical labour for awhile, then make a decision. If you like it better than switch, if you don't like that then switch again. There are no limits besides those we create for ourselves. Oh, you do have to let go of the thinking that money matters, you might have to get a cheaper house or have some hard discussions with your wife or friends. If they love you though they'd rather live in an apartment with a happy person than a huge house with an unhappy one though.
arethuza 13y ago
"I would rather be an Alaskan fishing boat operator" Having spent a week on a trawler in the North Sea (and coming from a family where most of my males ancestors for ~300 years were fishermen) I can emphatically state that I like having a job on dry land. It is incredibly hard work, uncomfortable, risky and unpleasant in just about every way possible.

dasil003 13y ago

I have go call bullshit on this. You are probably younger than every Alaskan fishing boat operator today and you could go do that tomorrow if you really wanted. Also, why would it be better to pay 80% of your labor directly to a king who would let you starve after a bad harvest or two than it would be to deal with some douchey suits? I mean you can't really be serious with this, it's just a diatribe against the existing corporate hegemony, am I wrong?

dangrover 13y ago
It's funny, I actually met a guy once who worked on Alaskan fishing boats and decided to move into programming. I don't think he regretted the move.
rayiner 13y ago
> Also, why would it be better to pay 80% of your labor directly to a king who would let you starve after a bad harvest or two than it would be to deal with some douchey suits? Most of the time its literally the same thing: pay 80% of the value of your labor to someone who doesn't care if you starve in a drought.
- dasil003 13y ago
  In medieval times what you produced had intrinsic value. If you work in a corporation it's impossible to isolate the value you are creating from the company itself. Maybe they take 80% of your value, or maybe you are extracting a paycheck and providing negative value. In any case though, I find it disingenuous to seriously compare this to being essentially enslaved by a feudal lord.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    Companies are built on employees creating more value than they are paid. That's obvious. The fact that its harder to measure who produces how much doesn't change the dynamic, it just means you have to do the analysis statistically instead of individually.
    - nostrademons 13y ago
      The other thing companies are built on is employees being able to create more value within the company than outside of it. Every single employee has the option of quitting and founding their own business. Several do. Many take a pay cut to exercise this right.
      - rayiner 13y ago
        Right, but that was true of feudal structures too.
        dasil003 13y ago
        I'm not sure if you're trying a reductio ad absurdum or what, but your point is lost on me because the comparison is foolish on its face.
      - adamgravitis 13y ago
        This is a crucially important point. The question becomes: to what extent does the accumulation of capital, expertise, equipment in a corporation render a software engineer able to produce more value than working on their own, or in a partnership, or other arrangement? I would imagine this varies dramatically by industry. I know several of the biosciences, for example, do require a lot of specialized people, equipment and tons of cash... Many of the areas we're seeing disrupted by startups are areas where you'd hit diminishing returns (from, say, more equipment / capital) rather quickly.

hpagey 13y ago

If I was not a software engineer/tech entrepreneur, I would be Alaskan Bush Pilot.

benaiah 13y ago
As someone who actually lives up in Alaska, I think you guys may be romanticizing it just a tad. Sure, it's adventurous and everything, but do you really want to live somewhere where you have multiple feet of snow nine months out of the year (or more - we had a snowstorm just about a week ago. Yes. In May.) Everything is more expensive, jobs are hard to come by unless you want a two-weeks-on two-weeks-off rotation to somewhere where it's even colder (-50 F plus wind chill is pretty normal for the Slope), etc. If you do want to deal with that, good-for-you, but it's not like the grass is verdantly greener here. And yes, I know you both were probably only half-serious. It just amuses me when people refer to Alaska like its some sort of mystical Last Frontier. It is pretty cool up here, I must admit.

ims 13y ago

> If I were to do it over again, I would rather be an Alaskan fishing boat operator than a software engineer doing 99% of the stuff that paid programmers have to do. I usually find your comments thought provoking but as somebody who is familiar with this industry I assure you that this is not the case. No need to even go into the conditions, which are probably more horrible than you imagine (in terms of the work itself, workers' physical safety, interpersonal interactions that usually range from unfriendly to physically abusive, and overbearing managers which we all know you despise). Those are obvious. But if you think that VC's exercise undue influence on the tech industry, and if you chafe against this kind of control (as it seems you do), you would not enjoy an industry where people doing the actual labor and putting their lives on the line (really) make very little compared to the extremely large companies that bankroll the operations and distribution. A nitpick, I know, but... software development is still not a bad industry to be in compared to most.

dasil003 13y ago
I have to assume he is trolling here as he is quite a bright lad after all, and he had nothing to say when I called him out in my reply. As a troll it was one of the most effective I've seen in a while just by reply volume.

nostrademons 13y ago

FWIW, if you'd really prefer to be an Alaskan fishing boat operator than a software engineer, that option is open to you. I have a friend that spent 6 months on an Alaskan salmon-fishing boat before taking a job at an economics consultancy. He said the work is back-breaking, the job conditions are dangerous, the hours are insanely long...but it was overall a pretty good experience, because he learned that maybe office work wasn't so horrible. (He forgot it a couple years later when he quit and decided to party it up in Thailand off savings later, but that's another story...) Also FWIW, I used to think my mind was Olympic-class material as well, and certainly had the test scores and comments from accomplished adults to back it up. Maybe it still is, but I care a whole lot less now, because I've learned that beyond 120 or so IQ, EQ matters a lot more. And if my mind is actually that awesome, I could use it to increase my EQ rather than complain about how nobody recognizes how brilliant my IQ is.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

throwaway9848 13y ago

This comment is the worst piece of crap I've read here. It reads like the worst kind of egotistical, entitled, and insular stereotype of people in this field. You ought to be ashamed. You mind, "_is_ Olympic material". Bollocks. Did your Olympic class mind research the fatality rates and lifestyle for Alaskan fisherman? Happier in medieval times? Are you out of your damn mind? God help you that you have to deal with a boss that makes more money then you and doesn't recognize what a snowflake you are. I can't believe you have to deal with mundane tasks like the rest of us peons. EDIT: I read the civility note, but how does the parent comment have positive points to engage with constructively? Honestly. It is pure tripe. I bet that 6.8 billion on the face of the planet would do anything to trade place with this guy, and he's wishing that he lived in a time when 1/3 of children died before age 5 and 1/5 of women died because of childbirth? Just because he is suffering from malaise? Can't he watch Office Space or Fight Club to get it out of his system? Didn't more than 1000 Bangladeshis die in a sweatshop less than 1 month ago? What a stunning lack of perspective and empathy.

polarix 13y ago
Lack of empathy, sure. But this is orange sunshine perspective.
michaelochurch 13y ago
You hold strong opinions for how little you understand. I am aware that there's a higher fatality rate for Alaskan fishermen than software engineers. However, I don't really worry about dying. I do worry about subordination, which I find to be worse. If I'm to die, I'll die. But the slow death that takes 50 years (subordination) is one I can't tolerate even thinking about. Also, let's talk about the emotions that come along with robbery and crime. Let's say that someone robs you at gunpoint and take the contents of your wallet. Lucky for you, you only have $3 in your wallet at the time. So the financial loss is trivial. You're still traumatized, and no one likes being robbed. No one. Even with only $3 lost, you'd probably rather this never happened, and avoid the place where the robbery occurred for a long time. Yes, there are horrible things in the world that I can't control and those are far more awful than the state of the software industry. That's true. If I could change them, I would; and I'd feel awful if I didn't. However, people are fundamentally local in how they engage with the world. They tend to focus on things they can change, the robberies in their neighborhood rather than half a world away. And, fundamentally, what we need as software engineers is a neighborhood watch for our industry. The problem with Work (the social-climbing game, not the activity) is that when you get robbed, it's taken to be entirely your fault. If someone steals from you and fucks up your career, you're the loser, not him. He probably got a promotion for that shit.

precisioncoder 13y ago

I love being a software engineer, but I would quit in a second to become a crew member under Han Solo on the Millenium Falcon. Until that opportunity shows up software developer is one of the best jobs on the planet. Go work physical labour for awhile, then make a decision. If you like it better than switch, if you don't like that then switch again. There are no limits besides those we create for ourselves. Oh, you do have to let go of the thinking that money matters, you might have to get a cheaper house or have some hard discussions with your wife or friends. If they love you though they'd rather live in an apartment with a happy person than a huge house with an unhappy one though.

arethuza 13y ago

"I would rather be an Alaskan fishing boat operator" Having spent a week on a trawler in the North Sea (and coming from a family where most of my males ancestors for ~300 years were fishermen) I can emphatically state that I like having a job on dry land. It is incredibly hard work, uncomfortable, risky and unpleasant in just about every way possible.