12 ms·

Programming Is a Dead End Job

299 points by pauljonas 12y ago

kayloos 12y ago
"Whatever you do, you have to find a balance between doing what you love and making enough money to live the life you want, or what your family needs. It's not always an easy choice." If you love to program the choice is easy. It's not like programmer wages are so low you have to live under a bridge. Personally I'm psyched that people will actually pay me to program, because if they wouldn't, I would still be programming.
paulhauggis 12y ago
If you expect to get rich working for someone else, you will be disappointed. Everywhere I've worked, things start out great. You get to work on new and exciting projects. Then, new management comes in or your boss makes crazy development decisions and your project becomes a sinking ship. I just dropped a contract that was exactly this. I got tired of being forced to make bad decisions, which I know will lead to the failure of the project/company. This is why I started my own company. There are no limits to my salary.
- noir_lord 12y ago
  I also own my company, there is a limit to your salary in one direction, Zero.
  - chrisdevereux 12y ago
    I also own my company, zero is not a limit.
    - ChuckMcM 12y ago
      Exactly, you can go waaaaay past zero :-)
      - maerF0x0 12y ago
        no, zero is the bottom limit. Unless you do something stupid like personal guarantees on loans or do not incorporate. Thats the point of LLCs. Limit the liability of shareholders. Edit: I guess I should add, of course legal matters depend on location. AFAIK much of the developed world has legal structures that allow risk to be limited to the "company" and not risk the shareholders' personal assets (ie Your personal assets).
        chrisdevereux 12y ago
        Most people would consider their own investment in their company to be 'negative salary'
        palebluedot 12y ago
        no, zero is the bottom limit. Unless you do something stupid like personal guarantees on loans or do not incorporate. Thats the point of LLCs. Limit the liability of shareholders. I am an owner / co-owner of 3 (US-based) LLCs, and I can tell you from experience that banks will require a personal guarantee, joint and several, of all principal owners, for any non-collateralized loan or line of credit. The same is generally true of most lessors, as well. Some (most?) tech incubators / hubs / innovation centers are the exception, and I am sure also some smaller 'mom-and-pop' lessors. But once we moved out of those, we had lessors wanting us personally guaranteeing our 3-5 year leases, although we were able to negotiate those terms away with some of them. We were able to secure net-30 terms from suppliers, however, that did not require a personal guarantee. Even if you managed to somehow navigate these waters without anyone requiring a personal guarantee, zero is generally not the bottom limit. If you are a founder, or an owner, you most likely have brought assets and/or money into the venture.
        beachstartup 12y ago
        great post. i'll add that it's not just term debt or capital leases, but other contracts too - even your first commercial real estate lease can require a large security deposit and personal guarantee. and if you're not careful, this personal guarantee will continue carrying over even as you expand into larger and larger offices... and of course let's not forget operational credit cards (you are exposing yourself if you don't use an amex to pay for certain things) - that's the owners'/founders' credit on the line (at least at first).
    - beachstartup 12y ago
      yeah, it's more of a starting point. it can go really quickly in either direction.
  - reboog711 12y ago
    I own my own company too... In fact; at last count I've tried 14 different ventures over the past 20 years. Many of those had a net loss over the course of their life. As self-funded companies they have brought my income below zero. As a IT consultant with clients; that is unlikely to happen, though, and I have used such a business to fund a lot of my other ventures.
  - WalterBright 12y ago
    If you do own your own company, you do wind up being paid exactly what you're worth :-)
logn 12y ago
It depends on the company. I worked at a large software company and the promotion track for software engineers went all the way up to something like Fellow Engineer or Principal Engineer. Almost no one got to those roles because they were so high up the track. After the several levels of Senior Engineer, they had Expert Engineer. One person I knew made it to that level (after some 20-30 years experience) and still programmed every day. Edit: that said, I don't consider it a dead end job if you have to switch out of programming to keep advancing because often to become an engineering manager at companies they want you to have programming experience. I think a dead end job is one in which your experience serves no purpose or as no pre-requisite for better paying jobs.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
I respond really negatively to the notion of 'dead end.' Programming isn't a dead end job any more than welding is a dead end job or painting. But it is a trade. What is more, managing is a different job than programming. Not a lot of programmers really internalize that until they try out being a manager. Architecture, and technical leadership in general, is still another job. It takes the ability to internalize massive amounts of detail, organize it into some coherent frame work and then communicate that framework as needed to various levels in the language they understand. So for programmers they need to know how the parts fit together, for managers they need to know how the parts integrate with the business process, for sales they need to know how the parts make them better than the competition (or equivalent to). From an economic standpoint, being able to generate 1000 lines of syntax error free code per day, is perhaps the best possible programmer you could be, but its never worth more than 10 programmers generating 100 lines of syntax error free code a day.[1] So yes, there is an economic limit on your pay. The good news is that generally that economic limit is much higher than the cost of living, and you can run at that limit for a decade or more, so you can be reasonably expected to save enough to retire and not have to work any more. Dead end jobs are jobs that will never pay you enough money to save for retirement. Programming isn't one of those jobs. [1] Yes the 9 women, one month joke applies for short sprints but in general not for longer coding projects.
- nostrademons 12y ago
  Being able to combine programming with communication, sales, and analysis skills can be incredibly valuable, though. That 1000 line/day programmer, if he looks around and observes the functioning of the org, could probably easily find several areas where those 10 programmers are writing 100 lines/day that could easily be automated away. If he can then write a solution that does this and sell it to upper management, he's clearly been more productive than all of them combined. This is where you find the programmers who get paid several million a year.
  - ChuckMcM 12y ago
    Agreed, but if she can observe the "functioning of the org" then she probably will try management at some point. There is an old quote my Grandfather had which went something like "soldiers control battlefields, generals control objectives, and kings control countries." The gist of it was that if you could see the path to success you rose to the level where you could use that vision to make that level of change happen.
declan 12y ago
It's a well-written essay (I say this as someone who has been a journalist/editor/manager and is now doing quite a bit of programming again for Recent.io). But really you could say the same thing about many other jobs: * Do you love to report the news? In most jobs as long as you continue to be a reporter you will likely have a limited set of promotions you can get... * Do you love woodworking? In most jobs as long as you continue to be a carpenter you will likely have a limited set of promotions you can get... * Do you love photography? In most jobs as long as you continue to only take photos you will likely have a limited set of promotions you can get... Even in you look at areas like law, the top 10% of earners in the profession are not the ones who do all of their own legal research and brief writing. They're the GCs at publicly traded companies or equity partners at large law firms, where they're responsible for the work output of tens or hundreds of lawyers. Which means, yikes, they're managers too.
- frankpinto 12y ago
  Disagree that its well-written. The rambling feel of it was kind of distracting from the point he was trying to make. The anectodes are kind of generic (sister, hawaii), I felt like they were just thrown in there as some kind of "proof"
- mturmon 12y ago
  A cynical take on your observations sometimes occurs to me, and seems pertinent. The managers set the wages. Therefore, they will be well-paid, and their contributions will readily recognized. This is simplistic and does not explain everything, but I think it is a major ingredient.
  - jjoonathan 12y ago
    Leverage and measurability.
  - dsjoerg 12y ago
    Like being good with makeup can help you be more attractive, learning how to persuade managers that you are valuable is a skill of its own. You don't have to be a manager to have this skill, although it is a subset of the management skillset.
badman_ting 12y ago
Yes, it's true. My solution was to find a job programming at an excellent place to work, so that I can make sure I do valuable things and still be done with my day around 1-2pm most days. Take my dog for a walk, read, learn, whatever after that. If they're not gonna pay you in gold get 'em to pay you in some other way. All the prestige stuff ("a seat at the table", job titles, authority, etc) isn't actually worth much anyway.
frankpinto 12y ago
Seeing promotions as your only form of career advancement is a little misleading. In management the only way you can increase your income/status is directly through your employer (or switching jobs). In programming, you're a builder. You can make templates, assets, etc. to sell. Your income increases can come from applying the skills you honed at work in the world around you
luxifer 12y ago
I disagree. In France it's the case, if you want to get a promotion and you're a programmer, you hate to move and become a manager or something else. But don't get it wrong, programming and managing or marketing are very differents positions. You can't be good at programming and bo good at managing. Like any other jobs, programming is a real one. Not just one you start with and then move to management or something else, to get more money. I am realistic and I know most of company think programmers are replacable. But I think it can change if everybody does. Programming is not a dead end job, if every company like google, atlassian or github does, I mean paying well their developers and treating this as a real profession.
- morgante 12y ago
  > You can't be good at programming and bo (sic) good at managing. I don't think they are mutually exclusive. Sure, being good at programming doesn't imply you'll be good at managing. But there are plenty of great programmers who successfully > Programming is not a dead end job, if every company like google, atlassian or github does, I mean paying well their developers and treating this as a real profession. I don't buy this. Even at Google, there is a psychological cap on how much engineers can make—you'll never see a programmer pulling in, say, $10M a year. That's the point: as a programmer, there is a society-wide cap on your pay, some level at which you will eventually plateau. As a manager, there is no such cap: you can eventually be the CEO.
codeonfire 12y ago
Managers can't change jobs and are under total control of their bosses. Developers can change jobs at any time but won't make as much money as the management cartel (which, suprise, decides that management should get all the comp). Both jobs kind of suck in their own way.
ateevchopra 12y ago
I think "Coding" as a job can be best analogous to an old job called "Samurai". A good samurai's aim is to be the best at skills. His all work is dedicated towards a "kingdom". Every samurai doesn't wants to become a king. They just want to server their king. And the King's duty is to take care of its army and people. I think king's jobs is highly overrated. In real life its difficult to be a king. In the end its just a job with lots of responsibilities.
- kumbasha 12y ago
  Then the samurai should behead the king and redistribute all of the fine luxuries that the samurai earned for the king to his samurai buddies. Then simply find a clerk to do the king's old job.
joshvm 12y ago
No mention of finance? Working for the devil sure, but if you know your stuff they will pay and pay and pay for top class programmers. Also depends on your idea of a dead end salary. If you enjoy what you do and can make £50k out of it then you should be pretty happy with your life.
untog 12y ago
Programming is hardly unique in this regard. In fact, I'd wager that the vast majority of professions are like this. There's a simple reality at work: when you are programming code there's only so much effect it will have. That effect is greater when the organisation is small (i.e. a startup) but there's a limit. Once you become a manager in charge of five developers you're suddenly able to affect 5x (well, not quite, but..) the change within a company. And yes, yes, I know - you're not actually doing the change, but you are responsible for planning, organising and maintaining it, which in many ways can be more valuable to the company.
- kumbasha 12y ago
  On the other hand, without all of the actual programmers you would have no product and no profits at all. Neither group can function without the other, and pay should reflect that rather than the ridiculously unequal spread we just automatically accept as normal.
  - untog 12y ago
    Yes and no. It might be an unpopular opinion (and I'm a programmer myself) but 80% of programmers are relatively easily replaceable, particularly in large organisations. There are indispensable unique unicorns out there, but they tend to be well compensated. When a project is managed by one manager and coded by five developers, you could easily lose replace two of those developers with little impact. If you lost the manager (who is calculating deadlines, coordinating with other departments, pitching for funding, as well as managing the individual developers) the project could run into problems quickly. On the face of it, it seems unfair - the developers are the ones actually writing the code after all. But the HN trope that managers are useless and feckless isn't correct.
    - nawitus 12y ago
      >If you lost the manager (who is calculating deadlines, coordinating with other departments, pitching for funding, as well as managing the individual developers) the project could run into problems quickly. Really? In my experience managers can be replaced rather easily, or at least more easily than it is to a replace a single engineer. It always takes some time for the new software engineer to learn the specifics of the project, and even more time to really grasp the business domain. The new manager has stuff to learn too, of course, but in my opinion it's less than what a new engineer needs to learn. In addition, if you replace two software engineers, you pretty much lose two man-months of work, but replacing a manager shouldn't cause much problems in the first month.
boolean 12y ago
Anyone who has transitioned from programming job to a managerial role, how did you do it? Do you recommend going back to school for an MBA? Would love to hear suggestions.
- mmcconnell1618 12y ago
  I ran my own company for 12 years which probably helped. Took a contracting role at a Fortune 500. Took extra time to come up with suggestions to managers on how to improve the overall development team. Left when the contract was over. 3 months later a management position opened up and the development manager asked me to interview for it. One of the best ways to get a new position is to start performing the work of that position before you have it. If you're already doing to the work you can remove the risk in figuring out if you'll be capable in the new position.
- puppetmaster3 12y ago
  I think MBA is best way.
motters 12y ago
If you enjoy programming then going into management or becoming an architect is really a demotion to something less interesting and which likely requires much less skill. Becoming an n-th level uber-engineer really only makes sense if you believe that top down hierarchical systems of organisation are effective or worthwhile.
ensmotko 12y ago
There is also a third option: freelancing. This way you can keep programming, with only a moderate amount of "management" (finding new projects to work on/dealing with clients).
anirudh24seven 12y ago
I would put it this way. Some positions affect the money-making capabilities of a company more than the others. Senior management has more control over the business-aspect of a company and hence this situation. In an ideal world for programmers, the only thing a company would be bothered about is the cleverness and the programming complexity of the product and would reward its programmers more. Such a company is bound to fail in the real world.
pjmlp 12y ago
I like very much my dead end, and hope to stay in this dead end, until the end of my career (pun intended). No need to go to boring management positions.
- liahsheep 12y ago
  while(1)code();
pbreit 12y ago
Doesn't this describe almost every profession?
tomasien 12y ago
I'm about to stop programming at my company because I have too much to manage as a founder. It makes me really sad and also pretty scared. Anyone else experience this?
- atarian 12y ago
  New Relic's CEO has some tips on how to keep coding: http://blog.newrelic.com/2014/03/11/sxsw-coding-ceo-recap/ http://blog.newrelic.com/2014/03/11/sxsw-coding-ceo-recap/ 1. Surround yourself with amazing people. 2. Carve out specific times for development work. 3. Focus on high-value projects. 4. Make it clear why a coding CEO is good for the company.
  - tomasien 12y ago
    Good advice! I still code at night, picking up some visible UX stuff that wouldn't make it on the road map otherwise. That way, we never have a week where it doesn't APPEAR that the product has gotten better just because whatever was on the road map wasn't visible or is taking more than a week. Seems to help relations with customers/investors/non-technical parts of the team and I enjoy it.
- WalterBright 12y ago
  About everyone who founds a company and it starts to become successful.
scotty79 12y ago
You don't get to be 4bln $ companys CEO doing management job 9 to 5 any more that you are going to be Marcus Persson or John Carmack doing programming job 9-5. Sky is the limit only for people who have right combination of skill and luck.
- quickpost 12y ago
  > Sky is the limit only for people who have right combination of skill and luck. Don't forget hard work and persistence! :)
  - scotty79 12y ago
    I sort of treat ability and propensity to work hard and persistence to be skills. Ones I almost completely lack.
pduszak 12y ago
Click bait. You're saying if I'm a programmer I might not be a millionaire someday? Oh no! That's the only reason I wanted to be a programmer in the first place. Better reevaluate my life decisions. /s
jw2013 12y ago
No offense to the author, but what a terribly written article full of logic holes. For example: 'Our parent company's former CEO started off as a programmer 25 years ago, switched to manager; in 15 years he went all the way to being CEO of a $4B company. After 10 years he retired recently with mansions and cars and no worries. Meanwhile I work with people who started around the same time and who are still senior software engineers.' So the author just picks one person that happens to be the CEO evetually? What about the rest majority of managerial forks? They probably are stuck in corporate ladder and even may be fired already. The chance of a person working on a corporate managerial job evetually becomes a CEO is likely no higher than a tech person eventually becomes a CTO. So why just pick one CEO person to illustrate managerial role is more promosing than tech role? Comparing the max value of a group to the average of another group is unfair. Also, I program because I love programming. Even if you gave me one billion dollar making me manage people for the rest of my life instead of writing code, I would still turn it down. If doing the thing I love is dead end, then I beg a different definition of dead end. Okay, just use author's definition of dead end as slight chance of moving up, but I just don't care as long as I love the job I am doing. __ An interesting side note is programming as a hobby. But I would still rather programming both at work and a spare time, as long as the day job I do making me happy.
- WalterBright 12y ago
  > The chance of a person working on a corporate managerial job evetually becomes a CEO Simple mathematics shows it is very unlikely for any random person to become a CEO. After all, if everyone is a CEO, who is being managed?
otikik 12y ago
> Do you love to program? Don't expect to ever become CEO Why the hell would I want THAT? Are you crazy?
netcan 12y ago
This is silly. First, very few people become millionaire CEOs. If thats your standard for success, then every path likely leads to failure because no path reliably leads to that kind of success. Some paths are more likely than others, but none are very likely for the average person. Part of the reason for flat-ish career trajectory is that programmers earn more at the start than most. Some professions have more of a premium on seniority and experience than others. Senior doctors and lawyers for a combination of the above 2 reasons probably have steeper salary growth than programmers. That said, good 10+ yrs programmers do earn pretty damn well. 10 years as a doctor or lawyer and you're still considered a youngin. Anyway, if you're the CEO, you aren't a programmer. If he's claiming that being a programmer is not a good starting point for becoming a CEO, I think he's wrong. Look at all the over 40s who were coders at some point, many transitioned into management or something else. Programming actually offers a lot more of that kind of opportunity than anything else.
- jamesaguilar 12y ago
  Totally agreed. In the Bay Area, there are many companies where the most junior engineering tier earns more than $100k a year, only including cash compensation. To expect to grow by 20% per year on average for a decade given this starting condition is just not realistic. Honestly, to be in the top 95% of incomes at the entry level and then to complain that you're in a dead-end job . . . it just smacks of a lack of awareness about what a real dead end is like.
  - k-mcgrady 12y ago
    >> "In the Bay Area, there are many companies where the most junior engineering tier earns more than $100k a year" It's important not to forget cost of living in that area is abnormally high.
    - serge2k 12y ago
      How could we forget, every time someone mentions a salary in the bay area people leap to mention how expensive it is there.
macspoofing 12y ago
What's the problem making a good living doing what you like? Here's a spoiler - most people will not be rich.
WalterBright 12y ago
> Maybe it's dumb but you have a choice between doing what you love and making a big payout by doing something else. This is not strictly true. Programmers are relatively well paid. You can decide to live significantly below your means, and invest the rest. For example, my neighbor once referred to his Oldsmobile as his "quarter million dollar Olds". I asked him what he meant, and he said that was the current value of the stock he'd sold to buy it.
- pcurve 12y ago
  I agree. Sr. Software engineers at our company can make $120k + bonus. It's not that different than their IT managers. And IT manager is a really crappy job if you love to code. Also, it is very difficult to go from becoming IT manager to IT director or higher, especially in bigger companies. VP of IT in large companies is filthy rich territory as per OP, but for everyone VP of IT, there are several hundred developer. Opportunity to become VP, or even director is not all that common.
  - skkbits 12y ago
    >Also, it is very difficult to go from becoming IT manager to IT director or higher, especially in bigger companies. This is so much true. >Opportunity to become VP, or even director is not all that common. Completely agree. You hit nail on the head.
morgante 12y ago
This is absolutely a problem, and a dilemma I try to cope with. I'd like to think that I'm a pretty good programmer, but I know that if I continue down this path I will reach a plateau at some point. The hardest part for me to cope with is that the y-intercept of programming is significantly higher than that of business, but the slope is much less. So while I might be making twice as much as my business peers when I first graduate, they will eventually overtake me. Makes me wonder if maybe I should be switching my major to economics... does anyone have resources for people who have successfully transitioned from programming to management/business?
dpweb 12y ago
After almost two decades, still like coding but want to do more management. The technical stuff is still great, but you don't get a say in the direction of the organization. Non-technical business types don't appreciate the art and beauty, and history - of the craft.
personZ 12y ago
but it's still pretty limited compared to what being an executive or manager can make If you're just going to arbitrarily pick some hypothetical comparison, sure, it's limited. But that isn't a useful contrast. Most managers are in dead-end jobs themselves (the mere facet of the pyramid dictates this). Very few rise higher, and are more likely to have young upstarts jump above them. Most make fairly poor pay -- I worked as a dev lead at a bank and was at a pay scale that put me above every single non senior VP or above in the entire organization. 50,000+ employees. My pay as a developer was in a band normally reserved for a small handful of executives. The very, very few who went the management route and won the lottery, so to speak. I absolutely love this profession, and have resisted all paths that would pull me out of it. I make great money for doing something I love.
ryandrake 12y ago
I wouldn't call it "dead end" but outside of a few rare companies, programming has a fairly impenetrable salary/advancement ceiling. I loved software development, still do, but it's the kind of career where you max out your salary after about 4-5 years. So, I reluctantly moved in to various flavors of management. Still code little projects at home on the weekends, but unfortunately not as a job anymore. I'd love to go back to work as a programmer (still keeping my skills sharp and up-to-date just in case), but the best gigs available promise the same title/salary 5 years on.
- hatu 12y ago
  This is what most programmers-turned-managers keep telling me. The pay is a bit better but they miss programming.
at-fates-hands 12y ago
The author has a point, and one of the keys here is that the hierarchy for developer is pretty flat. All the jobs I've had except one very small startup the structure was like this: Entry Level Developer (coding 100% of the time) Senior Developer (coding 50%, managing 50%) Manager, Lead Developer, etc. (managing 100%) from the time you take a senior position, you're essentially being groomed to manage the team you're on. Whether you're another level between developers and your director/manager or simply the manager, you essentially stop coding. I think this is the point. It's not so much that programming is a dead end, the inherit structure of most companies is flat relative to the position. It's an interesting idea, how do you give a guy seniority and a nice pay raise, without taking away what he probably loves to do? Obviously for most companies, it means increased responsibility and pay = managerial tasks. For the last several years, I've been in this purgatory. I love programming, but every senior position means a reduction in my development role and an increase in managerial responsibility. The problem now is my skillset is at a place where I'm pretty much at the ceiling. It's hard to say, "I have a senior level skill set, but don't want to be a manager." I know my two options are to either bite the bullet and get into management (which to me is like adult daycare) or start my own company. As of now, I'm already laying the groundwork for a startup, so I can transition out and do my own thing in the next two years.
cool-RR 12y ago
So... Not-likely-to-make-you-into-a-multi-millionare == Dead end? Also: "in 15 years he went all the way to being CEO of a $4B company. After 10 years he retired recently with mansions and cars and no worries" If not having any worries is your goal, I'm not sure that CEO is the right career path for you.
- ronwl 12y ago
  > After 10 years he retired recently with mansions and cars and no worries Having no worries(at least financially) 'after' busting my ass for 10years is definitely a good career plan.
seivan 12y ago
Not only a dead end job but also 60-70 hour work weeks and having to deal with a management that's unable to comprehend what you do. Toxic culture as well.
epx 12y ago
I don't care. I like to do it.
- maugzoide 12y ago
  I like your answer. It is simple and objective. Why are people trying to be rich if they don't want to be rich at all? If everyone is going to be CEO, who is going to be managed?
nnain 12y ago
I don't find this a good point of view. The article goes, "if you love to program and make a decent wage and enjoy your work..." -- How many people really get that sort of satisfaction! Enjoy it if you've got it all. You can't expect the world to gift you millions if you aren't doing anything different. Moreover, if someone really is an amazing coder, then there's a good chance that he/she started the career at a good salary level, while people in other profession were still grinding at work. Why complain now if you didn't stop to brood over the situation then. That's Karma :) If you want to stay in your comfort zone that's perfectly acceptable. But don't whine! Comparing a programmer and a CEO, asking why one should earn higher for seemingly equal amount of work is not right. Being the CEO means taking risk, putting together business plans, qualifying ideas, cutting deals, leading teams, handling legal and financial work, hiring people for all functions. The blogpost itself is peppered with examples of people who took the risk and made it big. How many software engineers really want to handle all these complexities? There simply aren't enough top spots for everyone. Some love to lead, some love to code... some love to do both. You make your choices. Of course some people do get lucky and some people even win by clandestine ways. But the focused, hard-working one has his place. Everyone doesn't want a mansion and Ferrari. I don't. Why make that a parameter for success!
siscia 12y ago
Can we please come back with our foot on Earth ? Waitress is a Dead End Job, WallMart employs are a in a Dead end job, hairdresser is a dead end job. Whoever makes > 60k $/yr is not a dead end job. Please let's try to realize how lucky we (as programmers) are to live(/and work) today.
learnf007 12y ago
Narrow and very misleading way of looking at engineering and careers for sure because it assumes a false binary choice. A choice between doing what you love and making a big payout by doing something else. This assumption is wrong. On one level, there is truth to what is stated--- but it correlates more to big company paths, people who have a conservative view on their ability to leave an impact on the world, and people who are narrowly focused on programming for programming's sake. It's not about "switching" to management (this thinking is big company), it's about taking your technical skills and making things happen. If that means you have to be a startup founder or a leader (CTO, CEO, VP engineering, whatever) who ends up not coding much anymore to make that happen, so be it. The point is if you love programming, do it, get amazing at it, solve real problems... and you'll have limitless potential in the future. Being a programmer/engineer gives you the ability to find and build real solutions to problems in the world. If you're good, being able to build things = creating a startup or partnering with others to take on big things. Regardless of statistics on the rate of success of startup endeavors, this potential and this opportunity make being a programmer completely worthwhile and rich with potential. You do not need to be a manager to have financial success. What you need is equity, equity that appreciates massively in a successful company. Financial outcome is a nice side effect of starting or joining a startup but not the only metric of success. IMO, the more "correct" way of looking at a career as an engineer is what other smart people have blogged about. After graduating, join the best mid-level (in terms of size) startup you can (or hell, start your own). The relationships and the higher opportunity for rapid growth will serve you well down the road--- whether that means you're an executive or still an engineer who codes. And it's this perspective that creates a healthier mindset where you aren't thinking "Oh when should I jump ship into management" but rather "if I build X, it could solve Y in Z industry... I can partner with A and together we can make it happen or I'll start a side project and build a solution and see if I get traction": http://hunterwalk.com/2014/03/08/new-grads-midstage-startups-are-your-best-first-job-in-tech/ http://hunterwalk.com/2014/03/08/new-grads-midstage-startups...
sklivvz1971 12y ago
I read the blog post and my reaction is: they are saying that being a programmer is not a good way to become a manager, or to be successful in terms of what makes a manager successful. As a developer who has also been a director and a team lead: - Good programmers get pretty good wages in the current market. I wouldn't call earning 6 figures a "dead end job". - The number of people you manage is important to a manager, not a programmer - Becoming a CEO is important to someone that wants to manage a company, not to someone that wants to write code There are many rewards in writing code, if that's the job you like. You can write code that makes a difference in a company which does something you agree on. You can create a new company or product from scratch. You can spend your career learning new stuff. All of this is exciting to me! If your definition of success is a truckload of money, retiring at 30 and being the boss of 100 people... you shouldn't be a coder, but that's a very narrow (and let me add, totally shallow) definition.
atmosx 12y ago
What about consulting? Inventing a new framework (e.g. Rails), what about writing books on languages, design and the rest? If you are really good in programming these days you can achieve more than ever before. But if you really like programming that much, then making money isn't your highest priority. The fact that are way better payed jobs, it's a reality (lawyers, investment bankers). If you are in it for the money then you might want to consider another career (e.g. investment banking).
twistedpair 12y ago
Seems more like a realization of the human life cycle. Personally I was so happy to get a programming job out of college and a good pay. After a number of years of good performance and promotions I'm eventually a senior engineer about to jump to principal engineer. But that's when it hits you. You're still in your 20's... is that all you're ever going to be? Hey, the six figs is great, and you're on track to retire earlier than most, but was that it? Is that why you kicked butt in school for ~20 years, to write [insert field] code to make someone else rich? It's a tough realization to make, but for most anyone, in most any industry, they'll get to the same place. Then you get to decide if you want to (1) make achieving as high a level as success as possible you're life's mission or (2) live a good life and let work simply be the source of your sustainable from M-F. In the end, we're all going to be worm food, so do something that matters to you in the time you've got left.
enjoy-your-stay 12y ago
Programming itself may be a bit of a dead end, where you can quickly hit the glass ceiling; but if you get involved in other important parts of software production like design, specification, requirements gathering, support, sales and marketing then then the domain knowledge that you can gain can lead you onto many other things. Technologists who also have a lot of domain knowledge are gold dust to many companies because they can straddle the world of business and IT and help bring the two sides together to develop better solutions. Much of the business of computing still baffles a lot of very intelligent people, so if you can act as the translator between these to sides then you can definitely broaden your horizons. The thing is as well, that you may not have to give up programming entirely. I've managed to lead IT projects, and then once they were delivered go back to working on programming again.
nikhizzle 12y ago
This is plain wrong. Facebook, Microsoft, and Google have parallel tracks for programmers and managers. You can progress all the way up to Senior VP equivalent as an engineer with no management duties. These roles include compensation equivalent to traditional CEO level roles. Eg. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2014/02/28/meet-jeff-rothschild-the-hidden-facebook-billionaire-old-enough-to-be-zuckerbergs-dad/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2014/02/28/meet-jeff-rot...
- michaelochurch 12y ago
  This is plain wrong. Facebook, Microsoft, and Google have parallel tracks for programmers and managers. You can progress all the way up to Senior VP equivalent as an engineer with no management duties. These roles include compensation equivalent to traditional CEO level roles. It is a lot harder to make "Director-equivalent programmer" in those companies than to make Director. In terms of skill, hard work, and intelligence, the competition is a thousand times tougher.
  - nikhizzle 12y ago
    I don't have enough information to judge that, since I never made it to director level at my time at FB. One salient note is that at FB you can switch between parallel tracks whenever you like. Eg. Any director level engineer can switch to being a director level manager and vice versa.
puppetmaster3 12y ago
Another way to say it is as a game theory: 2 programers, if one becomes a manager it is an advantage. I agree that pay starts well (but its earned), but in a real world scenario, programming is relatively tough work with limited upside, relatively. I agree w/ OP.
quickpost 12y ago
This article reminds me a of a quote from Learn Python the Hard Way: "Programming as a profession is only moderately interesting. It can be a good job, but you could make about the same money and be happier running a fast food joint. You're much better off using code as your secret weapon in another profession." "People who can code in the world of technology companies are a dime a dozen and get no respect. People who can code in biology, medicine, government, sociology, physics, history, and mathematics are respected and can do amazing things to advance those disciplines." "Of course, all of this advice is pointless. If you liked learning to write software with this book, you should try to use it to improve your life any way you can. Go out and explore this weird, wonderful, new intellectual pursuit that barely anyone in the last 50 years has been able to explore. Might as well enjoy it while you can." http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/advice.html http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/advice.html
momoprobs311 12y ago
This is not an apples to apples comparison. The writer is casting programmers as "commodity code producers", meaning the end goal of the code and the path to creation (e.g. what technologies to use, modules to create, etc) are already defined. That's trivially true. You could make this same argument for an artist if there were a market for people that could paint and draw things that others told them to paint using specific techniques. You could make the exact same argument for managers. If you created a perfect recipe for "motivating a team" and "evaluating a direct report's performance" and all these other nebulous ideas, and just paid for executing that recipe, you'd make management a "dead end job". If you create a recipe for someone, 99% of the work is done. The true value comes from the joining of the "what" and the "how" with the execution. Divorcing the two makes any job a commodity job because it assumes the goal and the path have already been determined. So comparing a "commodity code producer" with a full managerial position is not an equal comparison.
the_watcher 12y ago
If your goal is to become CEO of a company that would be large enough to require an engineer to quit coding, it's a fairly universal truth that you will no longer be doing what you did at the beginning of your career. It's not simply that you no longer code - if you come from banking, you stop doing that. If you come from accounting/finance, you are no longer spending all day in Excel. If you come from sales, you may do a bit of it, I guess, but you are no longer regularly jumping on the phone with customers. If you come from marketing, again, you may do a bit, but you are definitely not spending time in AdWords or developing marketing campaigns. Is there any job that this truth wouldn't apply to? Being a CEO is a full time job that has it's own requirements. It's not simply a title that you slap on a normal job.
the_watcher 12y ago
Maybe I am reading this wrong, but it reads to me like the author wants to continually be paid more without taking on additional responsibilities (which, correctly or not, are considered more valuable by potential employers). I don't think he is correct that fantastically talented programmers don't get pay raises. However, at a certain point, if no one is willing to offer more for just programming, to increase ones earning, you must take on new responsibilities, the same way that a fantastically talented anything has a ceiling on how much they can earn without adding value a new way.
elchief 12y ago
I was a junior manager, manager, senior manager, chief operating officer, and hated it. I even have a Master's of Management, which I enjoyed. But I love being a senior analyst. I want to be a senior analyst forever. It's enthralling to me. I decline management job offers. It's not worth a few extra bucks for me. I'm putting my savings toward a tech angel fund for when I'm too old to program. I'm working on side projects that might blow up big time one day. There are other options besides management.
matthewcford 12y ago
Flipping burgers is a dead end job, programming is well paid compared to most jobs.
skkbits 12y ago
The company I work is around for 40+ years now. There are some folks as "Programmer Analyst", "Software Engineer", "Sr. Engineer" for 20+ years now. I have asked many of them why you didn't move up the ladder and report to someone junior ( or H1B in his early 30's). Most of the time answer I got it, they love what they do. They love having opportunity to program , provide logical + thoughtful solutions. Of course, when new management comes in and there are times to make decision to layoff, these people become victim due to range of salary they have reached, age, skillset. This is very unfortunate but true. I would not completely write off what author is saying but I believe it depends on individual prospective. Of course, money is important factor but if you are getting a job 8 am to 5pm + raising your family/kids comfortably + spending time with family and yet have good balance when you retire then being programmer is quite good deal actually.
BatFastard 12y ago
I am blessed with a dead end job where I can love what I do almost everyday, see progress everyday, and work with smart people. I have flirted with 10 of millions of dollars in wealth, but I don't seem to have the timing to make it stick. But at the end of my life, if my kids can say he loved what he did, he loved us, and he loved life. I will be a lucky man indeed.
debt 12y ago
Ha, this is a load of shit. The magic in being a carpenter or a painter or a builder of any kind(including programming) is that you can create something from nothing. The jobs may suck but I still have the power to, whenever I want, execute and actualize my ideas. I pity those with vision but no means to at least prototype that vision themselves. That's dead end to me. Builders are magicians and they're certainly not inoxorably linked to their boring day jobs.
Elizer0x0309 12y ago
Well he's right for his life. You are what you believe. A programmer, can easily invent something that makes you a trillionaire. Ah the power of imagination and belief :)
bowlofpetunias 12y ago
By the same logic, anything from being a plumber to a brain surgeon is a dead end job.
rjf1990 12y ago
This is exactly why even though I graduated with an engineering degree, I went straight into business. I didn't want to have to make that jump to management. Rather, I started with an analytical role and moved up (well I actually left soon after). While there aren't many exec-level programming jobs out there, there are plenty that still require analytical skills. While none of the execs where I worked crunched numbers themselves, they reviewed other work and poked holes in business analyses. I think analytics career paths are perfect for the people who like engineering but want the upward mobility into management.
10098 12y ago
tldr; if your program you won't become a CEO with mansions and cars. I became a programmer not because I wanted nice cars but because it's helping me earn enough money while doing something that doesn't annoy me too much. It helps keep my sanity.
xkarga00 12y ago
Programming jobs are amongst the most well paid in the world. Calling them as a dead end in a comparison with CEO wages is like saying that holidays in Italy are trash, long live Hawaii.
overgard 12y ago
I think it's a bit pathological that we equate career success with being in management. You only need so many leaders. If you get too many people trying to be leaders, you end up with pathological organizations that engage in a lot of bikeshed painting. I think the problem with programming is that programmers are assumed to be interchangeable; or at least, management would like to think so. To me, this seems absurd, I'd rather have one good programmer than 10 mediocre ones. (And good programmers are rare, but not impossibly so). The problem is that programmers that are 10x more productive don't get paid 10x more. (And seriously, some programmers really are 10x more productive than average).
stefanobaghino 12y ago
This post holds that coding and managing a company are different jobs and that you can't do both at the same time. I don't find this any kind of shocking.
Im_Talking 12y ago
I think it's because most programmers end-up working on shit corporate software or under some PHB which just destroys any joy, and finally your creative soul. If your joy and/or soul is gone, any job is a dead-end job. I sold my software business to a public-listed company and hated every day I was there; corporate politics, PHBs, most software developed by company being absolute shit (I pathologically hated their core software platform). I had enough. Now I'm back on my own writing software I enjoy and couldn't be professionally happier.
blazespin 12y ago
Low quality thread on HN.
ryanpardieck 12y ago
Calling programming a dead end job is kind of outrageous. I normally associate the phrase "dead end job" with stuff like pizza delivery, or some of those severely monotonous office jobs like data entry or working in a call center. Most people would perceive programming to be an excellent job. A good wage, enjoyable/challenging work, and loving what you do: there are many who would love to be stuck in that kind of dead end. edit - Somehow, I goofed and lost the rest of my post. Anyhow, I noticed that in a separate blog post, the author said something like "Programming isn't just a job for me, but a way of life." I questioned whether that is something you can say of a job that is truly dead-end.
markpettersson 12y ago
The problem with programming vs management is that at the end of the day, a programmer is at the mercy of management which may or may not be competent. You may love programming but if you are not allowed to address technical debt, have unrealistic deadlines and silly priorities you won't have fun at your job.
chrisbennet 12y ago
It should be noted that life is a dead end as well. It seems the author equates the accumulation of "things" with success. If your goal is own more stuff, I guess that would constitute success. Happiness has always been my goal. By that metric, I'm wildly successful.

299 points by pauljonas 12y ago

"Whatever you do, you have to find a balance between doing what you love and making enough money to live the life you want, or what your family needs. It's not always an easy choice." If you love to program the choice is easy. It's not like programmer wages are so low you have to live under a bridge. Personally I'm psyched that people will actually pay me to program, because if they wouldn't, I would still be programming.

paulhauggis 12y ago

If you expect to get rich working for someone else, you will be disappointed. Everywhere I've worked, things start out great. You get to work on new and exciting projects. Then, new management comes in or your boss makes crazy development decisions and your project becomes a sinking ship. I just dropped a contract that was exactly this. I got tired of being forced to make bad decisions, which I know will lead to the failure of the project/company. This is why I started my own company. There are no limits to my salary.

noir_lord 12y ago
I also own my company, there is a limit to your salary in one direction, Zero.
- chrisdevereux 12y ago
  I also own my company, zero is not a limit.
  - ChuckMcM 12y ago
    Exactly, you can go waaaaay past zero :-)
    - maerF0x0 12y ago
      no, zero is the bottom limit. Unless you do something stupid like personal guarantees on loans or do not incorporate. Thats the point of LLCs. Limit the liability of shareholders. Edit: I guess I should add, of course legal matters depend on location. AFAIK much of the developed world has legal structures that allow risk to be limited to the "company" and not risk the shareholders' personal assets (ie Your personal assets).
      - chrisdevereux 12y ago
        Most people would consider their own investment in their company to be 'negative salary'
      - palebluedot 12y ago
        no, zero is the bottom limit. Unless you do something stupid like personal guarantees on loans or do not incorporate. Thats the point of LLCs. Limit the liability of shareholders. I am an owner / co-owner of 3 (US-based) LLCs, and I can tell you from experience that banks will require a personal guarantee, joint and several, of all principal owners, for any non-collateralized loan or line of credit. The same is generally true of most lessors, as well. Some (most?) tech incubators / hubs / innovation centers are the exception, and I am sure also some smaller 'mom-and-pop' lessors. But once we moved out of those, we had lessors wanting us personally guaranteeing our 3-5 year leases, although we were able to negotiate those terms away with some of them. We were able to secure net-30 terms from suppliers, however, that did not require a personal guarantee. Even if you managed to somehow navigate these waters without anyone requiring a personal guarantee, zero is generally not the bottom limit. If you are a founder, or an owner, you most likely have brought assets and/or money into the venture.
        beachstartup 12y ago
        great post. i'll add that it's not just term debt or capital leases, but other contracts too - even your first commercial real estate lease can require a large security deposit and personal guarantee. and if you're not careful, this personal guarantee will continue carrying over even as you expand into larger and larger offices... and of course let's not forget operational credit cards (you are exposing yourself if you don't use an amex to pay for certain things) - that's the owners'/founders' credit on the line (at least at first).
  - beachstartup 12y ago
    yeah, it's more of a starting point. it can go really quickly in either direction.
- reboog711 12y ago
  I own my own company too... In fact; at last count I've tried 14 different ventures over the past 20 years. Many of those had a net loss over the course of their life. As self-funded companies they have brought my income below zero. As a IT consultant with clients; that is unlikely to happen, though, and I have used such a business to fund a lot of my other ventures.
- WalterBright 12y ago
  If you do own your own company, you do wind up being paid exactly what you're worth :-)

logn 12y ago

It depends on the company. I worked at a large software company and the promotion track for software engineers went all the way up to something like Fellow Engineer or Principal Engineer. Almost no one got to those roles because they were so high up the track. After the several levels of Senior Engineer, they had Expert Engineer. One person I knew made it to that level (after some 20-30 years experience) and still programmed every day. Edit: that said, I don't consider it a dead end job if you have to switch out of programming to keep advancing because often to become an engineering manager at companies they want you to have programming experience. I think a dead end job is one in which your experience serves no purpose or as no pre-requisite for better paying jobs.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

I respond really negatively to the notion of 'dead end.' Programming isn't a dead end job any more than welding is a dead end job or painting. But it is a trade. What is more, managing is a different job than programming. Not a lot of programmers really internalize that until they try out being a manager. Architecture, and technical leadership in general, is still another job. It takes the ability to internalize massive amounts of detail, organize it into some coherent frame work and then communicate that framework as needed to various levels in the language they understand. So for programmers they need to know how the parts fit together, for managers they need to know how the parts integrate with the business process, for sales they need to know how the parts make them better than the competition (or equivalent to). From an economic standpoint, being able to generate 1000 lines of syntax error free code per day, is perhaps the best possible programmer you could be, but its never worth more than 10 programmers generating 100 lines of syntax error free code a day.[1] So yes, there is an economic limit on your pay. The good news is that generally that economic limit is much higher than the cost of living, and you can run at that limit for a decade or more, so you can be reasonably expected to save enough to retire and not have to work any more. Dead end jobs are jobs that will never pay you enough money to save for retirement. Programming isn't one of those jobs. [1] Yes the 9 women, one month joke applies for short sprints but in general not for longer coding projects.

nostrademons 12y ago
Being able to combine programming with communication, sales, and analysis skills can be incredibly valuable, though. That 1000 line/day programmer, if he looks around and observes the functioning of the org, could probably easily find several areas where those 10 programmers are writing 100 lines/day that could easily be automated away. If he can then write a solution that does this and sell it to upper management, he's clearly been more productive than all of them combined. This is where you find the programmers who get paid several million a year.
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  Agreed, but if she can observe the "functioning of the org" then she probably will try management at some point. There is an old quote my Grandfather had which went something like "soldiers control battlefields, generals control objectives, and kings control countries." The gist of it was that if you could see the path to success you rose to the level where you could use that vision to make that level of change happen.

declan 12y ago

It's a well-written essay (I say this as someone who has been a journalist/editor/manager and is now doing quite a bit of programming again for Recent.io). But really you could say the same thing about many other jobs: * Do you love to report the news? In most jobs as long as you continue to be a reporter you will likely have a limited set of promotions you can get... * Do you love woodworking? In most jobs as long as you continue to be a carpenter you will likely have a limited set of promotions you can get... * Do you love photography? In most jobs as long as you continue to only take photos you will likely have a limited set of promotions you can get... Even in you look at areas like law, the top 10% of earners in the profession are not the ones who do all of their own legal research and brief writing. They're the GCs at publicly traded companies or equity partners at large law firms, where they're responsible for the work output of tens or hundreds of lawyers. Which means, yikes, they're managers too.

frankpinto 12y ago
Disagree that its well-written. The rambling feel of it was kind of distracting from the point he was trying to make. The anectodes are kind of generic (sister, hawaii), I felt like they were just thrown in there as some kind of "proof"
mturmon 12y ago
A cynical take on your observations sometimes occurs to me, and seems pertinent. The managers set the wages. Therefore, they will be well-paid, and their contributions will readily recognized. This is simplistic and does not explain everything, but I think it is a major ingredient.
- jjoonathan 12y ago
  Leverage and measurability.
- dsjoerg 12y ago
  Like being good with makeup can help you be more attractive, learning how to persuade managers that you are valuable is a skill of its own. You don't have to be a manager to have this skill, although it is a subset of the management skillset.

badman_ting 12y ago

Yes, it's true. My solution was to find a job programming at an excellent place to work, so that I can make sure I do valuable things and still be done with my day around 1-2pm most days. Take my dog for a walk, read, learn, whatever after that. If they're not gonna pay you in gold get 'em to pay you in some other way. All the prestige stuff ("a seat at the table", job titles, authority, etc) isn't actually worth much anyway.

frankpinto 12y ago

Seeing promotions as your only form of career advancement is a little misleading. In management the only way you can increase your income/status is directly through your employer (or switching jobs). In programming, you're a builder. You can make templates, assets, etc. to sell. Your income increases can come from applying the skills you honed at work in the world around you

luxifer 12y ago

I disagree. In France it's the case, if you want to get a promotion and you're a programmer, you hate to move and become a manager or something else. But don't get it wrong, programming and managing or marketing are very differents positions. You can't be good at programming and bo good at managing. Like any other jobs, programming is a real one. Not just one you start with and then move to management or something else, to get more money. I am realistic and I know most of company think programmers are replacable. But I think it can change if everybody does. Programming is not a dead end job, if every company like google, atlassian or github does, I mean paying well their developers and treating this as a real profession.

morgante 12y ago
> You can't be good at programming and bo (sic) good at managing. I don't think they are mutually exclusive. Sure, being good at programming doesn't imply you'll be good at managing. But there are plenty of great programmers who successfully > Programming is not a dead end job, if every company like google, atlassian or github does, I mean paying well their developers and treating this as a real profession. I don't buy this. Even at Google, there is a psychological cap on how much engineers can make—you'll never see a programmer pulling in, say, $10M a year. That's the point: as a programmer, there is a society-wide cap on your pay, some level at which you will eventually plateau. As a manager, there is no such cap: you can eventually be the CEO.

codeonfire 12y ago

Managers can't change jobs and are under total control of their bosses. Developers can change jobs at any time but won't make as much money as the management cartel (which, suprise, decides that management should get all the comp). Both jobs kind of suck in their own way.

ateevchopra 12y ago

I think "Coding" as a job can be best analogous to an old job called "Samurai". A good samurai's aim is to be the best at skills. His all work is dedicated towards a "kingdom". Every samurai doesn't wants to become a king. They just want to server their king. And the King's duty is to take care of its army and people. I think king's jobs is highly overrated. In real life its difficult to be a king. In the end its just a job with lots of responsibilities.

kumbasha 12y ago
Then the samurai should behead the king and redistribute all of the fine luxuries that the samurai earned for the king to his samurai buddies. Then simply find a clerk to do the king's old job.

joshvm 12y ago

No mention of finance? Working for the devil sure, but if you know your stuff they will pay and pay and pay for top class programmers. Also depends on your idea of a dead end salary. If you enjoy what you do and can make £50k out of it then you should be pretty happy with your life.

untog 12y ago

Programming is hardly unique in this regard. In fact, I'd wager that the vast majority of professions are like this. There's a simple reality at work: when you are programming code there's only so much effect it will have. That effect is greater when the organisation is small (i.e. a startup) but there's a limit. Once you become a manager in charge of five developers you're suddenly able to affect 5x (well, not quite, but..) the change within a company. And yes, yes, I know - you're not actually doing the change, but you are responsible for planning, organising and maintaining it, which in many ways can be more valuable to the company.

kumbasha 12y ago
On the other hand, without all of the actual programmers you would have no product and no profits at all. Neither group can function without the other, and pay should reflect that rather than the ridiculously unequal spread we just automatically accept as normal.
- untog 12y ago
  Yes and no. It might be an unpopular opinion (and I'm a programmer myself) but 80% of programmers are relatively easily replaceable, particularly in large organisations. There are indispensable unique unicorns out there, but they tend to be well compensated. When a project is managed by one manager and coded by five developers, you could easily lose replace two of those developers with little impact. If you lost the manager (who is calculating deadlines, coordinating with other departments, pitching for funding, as well as managing the individual developers) the project could run into problems quickly. On the face of it, it seems unfair - the developers are the ones actually writing the code after all. But the HN trope that managers are useless and feckless isn't correct.
  - nawitus 12y ago
    >If you lost the manager (who is calculating deadlines, coordinating with other departments, pitching for funding, as well as managing the individual developers) the project could run into problems quickly. Really? In my experience managers can be replaced rather easily, or at least more easily than it is to a replace a single engineer. It always takes some time for the new software engineer to learn the specifics of the project, and even more time to really grasp the business domain. The new manager has stuff to learn too, of course, but in my opinion it's less than what a new engineer needs to learn. In addition, if you replace two software engineers, you pretty much lose two man-months of work, but replacing a manager shouldn't cause much problems in the first month.

boolean 12y ago

Anyone who has transitioned from programming job to a managerial role, how did you do it? Do you recommend going back to school for an MBA? Would love to hear suggestions.

mmcconnell1618 12y ago
I ran my own company for 12 years which probably helped. Took a contracting role at a Fortune 500. Took extra time to come up with suggestions to managers on how to improve the overall development team. Left when the contract was over. 3 months later a management position opened up and the development manager asked me to interview for it. One of the best ways to get a new position is to start performing the work of that position before you have it. If you're already doing to the work you can remove the risk in figuring out if you'll be capable in the new position.
puppetmaster3 12y ago
I think MBA is best way.

motters 12y ago

If you enjoy programming then going into management or becoming an architect is really a demotion to something less interesting and which likely requires much less skill. Becoming an n-th level uber-engineer really only makes sense if you believe that top down hierarchical systems of organisation are effective or worthwhile.

ensmotko 12y ago

There is also a third option: freelancing. This way you can keep programming, with only a moderate amount of "management" (finding new projects to work on/dealing with clients).

anirudh24seven 12y ago

I would put it this way. Some positions affect the money-making capabilities of a company more than the others. Senior management has more control over the business-aspect of a company and hence this situation. In an ideal world for programmers, the only thing a company would be bothered about is the cleverness and the programming complexity of the product and would reward its programmers more. Such a company is bound to fail in the real world.

pjmlp 12y ago

I like very much my dead end, and hope to stay in this dead end, until the end of my career (pun intended). No need to go to boring management positions.

liahsheep 12y ago
while(1)code();

pbreit 12y ago

Doesn't this describe almost every profession?

tomasien 12y ago

I'm about to stop programming at my company because I have too much to manage as a founder. It makes me really sad and also pretty scared. Anyone else experience this?

atarian 12y ago
New Relic's CEO has some tips on how to keep coding: http://blog.newrelic.com/2014/03/11/sxsw-coding-ceo-recap/ http://blog.newrelic.com/2014/03/11/sxsw-coding-ceo-recap/ 1. Surround yourself with amazing people. 2. Carve out specific times for development work. 3. Focus on high-value projects. 4. Make it clear why a coding CEO is good for the company.
- tomasien 12y ago
  Good advice! I still code at night, picking up some visible UX stuff that wouldn't make it on the road map otherwise. That way, we never have a week where it doesn't APPEAR that the product has gotten better just because whatever was on the road map wasn't visible or is taking more than a week. Seems to help relations with customers/investors/non-technical parts of the team and I enjoy it.
WalterBright 12y ago
About everyone who founds a company and it starts to become successful.

scotty79 12y ago

You don't get to be 4bln $ companys CEO doing management job 9 to 5 any more that you are going to be Marcus Persson or John Carmack doing programming job 9-5. Sky is the limit only for people who have right combination of skill and luck.

quickpost 12y ago
> Sky is the limit only for people who have right combination of skill and luck. Don't forget hard work and persistence! :)
- scotty79 12y ago
  I sort of treat ability and propensity to work hard and persistence to be skills. Ones I almost completely lack.

pduszak 12y ago

Click bait. You're saying if I'm a programmer I might not be a millionaire someday? Oh no! That's the only reason I wanted to be a programmer in the first place. Better reevaluate my life decisions. /s

jw2013 12y ago

No offense to the author, but what a terribly written article full of logic holes. For example: 'Our parent company's former CEO started off as a programmer 25 years ago, switched to manager; in 15 years he went all the way to being CEO of a $4B company. After 10 years he retired recently with mansions and cars and no worries. Meanwhile I work with people who started around the same time and who are still senior software engineers.' So the author just picks one person that happens to be the CEO evetually? What about the rest majority of managerial forks? They probably are stuck in corporate ladder and even may be fired already. The chance of a person working on a corporate managerial job evetually becomes a CEO is likely no higher than a tech person eventually becomes a CTO. So why just pick one CEO person to illustrate managerial role is more promosing than tech role? Comparing the max value of a group to the average of another group is unfair. Also, I program because I love programming. Even if you gave me one billion dollar making me manage people for the rest of my life instead of writing code, I would still turn it down. If doing the thing I love is dead end, then I beg a different definition of dead end. Okay, just use author's definition of dead end as slight chance of moving up, but I just don't care as long as I love the job I am doing. __ An interesting side note is programming as a hobby. But I would still rather programming both at work and a spare time, as long as the day job I do making me happy.

WalterBright 12y ago
> The chance of a person working on a corporate managerial job evetually becomes a CEO Simple mathematics shows it is very unlikely for any random person to become a CEO. After all, if everyone is a CEO, who is being managed?

otikik 12y ago

> Do you love to program? Don't expect to ever become CEO Why the hell would I want THAT? Are you crazy?

netcan 12y ago

This is silly. First, very few people become millionaire CEOs. If thats your standard for success, then every path likely leads to failure because no path reliably leads to that kind of success. Some paths are more likely than others, but none are very likely for the average person. Part of the reason for flat-ish career trajectory is that programmers earn more at the start than most. Some professions have more of a premium on seniority and experience than others. Senior doctors and lawyers for a combination of the above 2 reasons probably have steeper salary growth than programmers. That said, good 10+ yrs programmers do earn pretty damn well. 10 years as a doctor or lawyer and you're still considered a youngin. Anyway, if you're the CEO, you aren't a programmer. If he's claiming that being a programmer is not a good starting point for becoming a CEO, I think he's wrong. Look at all the over 40s who were coders at some point, many transitioned into management or something else. Programming actually offers a lot more of that kind of opportunity than anything else.

jamesaguilar 12y ago
Totally agreed. In the Bay Area, there are many companies where the most junior engineering tier earns more than $100k a year, only including cash compensation. To expect to grow by 20% per year on average for a decade given this starting condition is just not realistic. Honestly, to be in the top 95% of incomes at the entry level and then to complain that you're in a dead-end job . . . it just smacks of a lack of awareness about what a real dead end is like.
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  >> "In the Bay Area, there are many companies where the most junior engineering tier earns more than $100k a year" It's important not to forget cost of living in that area is abnormally high.
  - serge2k 12y ago
    How could we forget, every time someone mentions a salary in the bay area people leap to mention how expensive it is there.

macspoofing 12y ago

What's the problem making a good living doing what you like? Here's a spoiler - most people will not be rich.

WalterBright 12y ago

> Maybe it's dumb but you have a choice between doing what you love and making a big payout by doing something else. This is not strictly true. Programmers are relatively well paid. You can decide to live significantly below your means, and invest the rest. For example, my neighbor once referred to his Oldsmobile as his "quarter million dollar Olds". I asked him what he meant, and he said that was the current value of the stock he'd sold to buy it.

pcurve 12y ago
I agree. Sr. Software engineers at our company can make $120k + bonus. It's not that different than their IT managers. And IT manager is a really crappy job if you love to code. Also, it is very difficult to go from becoming IT manager to IT director or higher, especially in bigger companies. VP of IT in large companies is filthy rich territory as per OP, but for everyone VP of IT, there are several hundred developer. Opportunity to become VP, or even director is not all that common.
- skkbits 12y ago
  >Also, it is very difficult to go from becoming IT manager to IT director or higher, especially in bigger companies. This is so much true. >Opportunity to become VP, or even director is not all that common. Completely agree. You hit nail on the head.

morgante 12y ago

This is absolutely a problem, and a dilemma I try to cope with. I'd like to think that I'm a pretty good programmer, but I know that if I continue down this path I will reach a plateau at some point. The hardest part for me to cope with is that the y-intercept of programming is significantly higher than that of business, but the slope is much less. So while I might be making twice as much as my business peers when I first graduate, they will eventually overtake me. Makes me wonder if maybe I should be switching my major to economics... does anyone have resources for people who have successfully transitioned from programming to management/business?

dpweb 12y ago

After almost two decades, still like coding but want to do more management. The technical stuff is still great, but you don't get a say in the direction of the organization. Non-technical business types don't appreciate the art and beauty, and history - of the craft.

personZ 12y ago

but it's still pretty limited compared to what being an executive or manager can make If you're just going to arbitrarily pick some hypothetical comparison, sure, it's limited. But that isn't a useful contrast. Most managers are in dead-end jobs themselves (the mere facet of the pyramid dictates this). Very few rise higher, and are more likely to have young upstarts jump above them. Most make fairly poor pay -- I worked as a dev lead at a bank and was at a pay scale that put me above every single non senior VP or above in the entire organization. 50,000+ employees. My pay as a developer was in a band normally reserved for a small handful of executives. The very, very few who went the management route and won the lottery, so to speak. I absolutely love this profession, and have resisted all paths that would pull me out of it. I make great money for doing something I love.

ryandrake 12y ago

I wouldn't call it "dead end" but outside of a few rare companies, programming has a fairly impenetrable salary/advancement ceiling. I loved software development, still do, but it's the kind of career where you max out your salary after about 4-5 years. So, I reluctantly moved in to various flavors of management. Still code little projects at home on the weekends, but unfortunately not as a job anymore. I'd love to go back to work as a programmer (still keeping my skills sharp and up-to-date just in case), but the best gigs available promise the same title/salary 5 years on.

hatu 12y ago
This is what most programmers-turned-managers keep telling me. The pay is a bit better but they miss programming.

at-fates-hands 12y ago

The author has a point, and one of the keys here is that the hierarchy for developer is pretty flat. All the jobs I've had except one very small startup the structure was like this: Entry Level Developer (coding 100% of the time) Senior Developer (coding 50%, managing 50%) Manager, Lead Developer, etc. (managing 100%) from the time you take a senior position, you're essentially being groomed to manage the team you're on. Whether you're another level between developers and your director/manager or simply the manager, you essentially stop coding. I think this is the point. It's not so much that programming is a dead end, the inherit structure of most companies is flat relative to the position. It's an interesting idea, how do you give a guy seniority and a nice pay raise, without taking away what he probably loves to do? Obviously for most companies, it means increased responsibility and pay = managerial tasks. For the last several years, I've been in this purgatory. I love programming, but every senior position means a reduction in my development role and an increase in managerial responsibility. The problem now is my skillset is at a place where I'm pretty much at the ceiling. It's hard to say, "I have a senior level skill set, but don't want to be a manager." I know my two options are to either bite the bullet and get into management (which to me is like adult daycare) or start my own company. As of now, I'm already laying the groundwork for a startup, so I can transition out and do my own thing in the next two years.

cool-RR 12y ago

So... Not-likely-to-make-you-into-a-multi-millionare == Dead end? Also: "in 15 years he went all the way to being CEO of a $4B company. After 10 years he retired recently with mansions and cars and no worries" If not having any worries is your goal, I'm not sure that CEO is the right career path for you.

ronwl 12y ago
> After 10 years he retired recently with mansions and cars and no worries Having no worries(at least financially) 'after' busting my ass for 10years is definitely a good career plan.

seivan 12y ago

Not only a dead end job but also 60-70 hour work weeks and having to deal with a management that's unable to comprehend what you do. Toxic culture as well.

epx 12y ago

I don't care. I like to do it.

maugzoide 12y ago
I like your answer. It is simple and objective. Why are people trying to be rich if they don't want to be rich at all? If everyone is going to be CEO, who is going to be managed?

nnain 12y ago

I don't find this a good point of view. The article goes, "if you love to program and make a decent wage and enjoy your work..." -- How many people really get that sort of satisfaction! Enjoy it if you've got it all. You can't expect the world to gift you millions if you aren't doing anything different. Moreover, if someone really is an amazing coder, then there's a good chance that he/she started the career at a good salary level, while people in other profession were still grinding at work. Why complain now if you didn't stop to brood over the situation then. That's Karma :) If you want to stay in your comfort zone that's perfectly acceptable. But don't whine! Comparing a programmer and a CEO, asking why one should earn higher for seemingly equal amount of work is not right. Being the CEO means taking risk, putting together business plans, qualifying ideas, cutting deals, leading teams, handling legal and financial work, hiring people for all functions. The blogpost itself is peppered with examples of people who took the risk and made it big. How many software engineers really want to handle all these complexities? There simply aren't enough top spots for everyone. Some love to lead, some love to code... some love to do both. You make your choices. Of course some people do get lucky and some people even win by clandestine ways. But the focused, hard-working one has his place. Everyone doesn't want a mansion and Ferrari. I don't. Why make that a parameter for success!

siscia 12y ago

Can we please come back with our foot on Earth ? Waitress is a Dead End Job, WallMart employs are a in a Dead end job, hairdresser is a dead end job. Whoever makes > 60k $/yr is not a dead end job. Please let's try to realize how lucky we (as programmers) are to live(/and work) today.

learnf007 12y ago

Narrow and very misleading way of looking at engineering and careers for sure because it assumes a false binary choice. A choice between doing what you love and making a big payout by doing something else. This assumption is wrong. On one level, there is truth to what is stated--- but it correlates more to big company paths, people who have a conservative view on their ability to leave an impact on the world, and people who are narrowly focused on programming for programming's sake. It's not about "switching" to management (this thinking is big company), it's about taking your technical skills and making things happen. If that means you have to be a startup founder or a leader (CTO, CEO, VP engineering, whatever) who ends up not coding much anymore to make that happen, so be it. The point is if you love programming, do it, get amazing at it, solve real problems... and you'll have limitless potential in the future. Being a programmer/engineer gives you the ability to find and build real solutions to problems in the world. If you're good, being able to build things = creating a startup or partnering with others to take on big things. Regardless of statistics on the rate of success of startup endeavors, this potential and this opportunity make being a programmer completely worthwhile and rich with potential. You do not need to be a manager to have financial success. What you need is equity, equity that appreciates massively in a successful company. Financial outcome is a nice side effect of starting or joining a startup but not the only metric of success. IMO, the more "correct" way of looking at a career as an engineer is what other smart people have blogged about. After graduating, join the best mid-level (in terms of size) startup you can (or hell, start your own). The relationships and the higher opportunity for rapid growth will serve you well down the road--- whether that means you're an executive or still an engineer who codes. And it's this perspective that creates a healthier mindset where you aren't thinking "Oh when should I jump ship into management" but rather "if I build X, it could solve Y in Z industry... I can partner with A and together we can make it happen or I'll start a side project and build a solution and see if I get traction": http://hunterwalk.com/2014/03/08/new-grads-midstage-startups-are-your-best-first-job-in-tech/ http://hunterwalk.com/2014/03/08/new-grads-midstage-startups...

sklivvz1971 12y ago

I read the blog post and my reaction is: they are saying that being a programmer is not a good way to become a manager, or to be successful in terms of what makes a manager successful. As a developer who has also been a director and a team lead: - Good programmers get pretty good wages in the current market. I wouldn't call earning 6 figures a "dead end job". - The number of people you manage is important to a manager, not a programmer - Becoming a CEO is important to someone that wants to manage a company, not to someone that wants to write code There are many rewards in writing code, if that's the job you like. You can write code that makes a difference in a company which does something you agree on. You can create a new company or product from scratch. You can spend your career learning new stuff. All of this is exciting to me! If your definition of success is a truckload of money, retiring at 30 and being the boss of 100 people... you shouldn't be a coder, but that's a very narrow (and let me add, totally shallow) definition.

atmosx 12y ago

What about consulting? Inventing a new framework (e.g. Rails), what about writing books on languages, design and the rest? If you are really good in programming these days you can achieve more than ever before. But if you really like programming that much, then making money isn't your highest priority. The fact that are way better payed jobs, it's a reality (lawyers, investment bankers). If you are in it for the money then you might want to consider another career (e.g. investment banking).

twistedpair 12y ago

Seems more like a realization of the human life cycle. Personally I was so happy to get a programming job out of college and a good pay. After a number of years of good performance and promotions I'm eventually a senior engineer about to jump to principal engineer. But that's when it hits you. You're still in your 20's... is that all you're ever going to be? Hey, the six figs is great, and you're on track to retire earlier than most, but was that it? Is that why you kicked butt in school for ~20 years, to write [insert field] code to make someone else rich? It's a tough realization to make, but for most anyone, in most any industry, they'll get to the same place. Then you get to decide if you want to (1) make achieving as high a level as success as possible you're life's mission or (2) live a good life and let work simply be the source of your sustainable from M-F. In the end, we're all going to be worm food, so do something that matters to you in the time you've got left.

enjoy-your-stay 12y ago

Programming itself may be a bit of a dead end, where you can quickly hit the glass ceiling; but if you get involved in other important parts of software production like design, specification, requirements gathering, support, sales and marketing then then the domain knowledge that you can gain can lead you onto many other things. Technologists who also have a lot of domain knowledge are gold dust to many companies because they can straddle the world of business and IT and help bring the two sides together to develop better solutions. Much of the business of computing still baffles a lot of very intelligent people, so if you can act as the translator between these to sides then you can definitely broaden your horizons. The thing is as well, that you may not have to give up programming entirely. I've managed to lead IT projects, and then once they were delivered go back to working on programming again.

nikhizzle 12y ago

This is plain wrong. Facebook, Microsoft, and Google have parallel tracks for programmers and managers. You can progress all the way up to Senior VP equivalent as an engineer with no management duties. These roles include compensation equivalent to traditional CEO level roles. Eg. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2014/02/28/meet-jeff-rothschild-the-hidden-facebook-billionaire-old-enough-to-be-zuckerbergs-dad/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2014/02/28/meet-jeff-rot...

michaelochurch 12y ago
This is plain wrong. Facebook, Microsoft, and Google have parallel tracks for programmers and managers. You can progress all the way up to Senior VP equivalent as an engineer with no management duties. These roles include compensation equivalent to traditional CEO level roles. It is a lot harder to make "Director-equivalent programmer" in those companies than to make Director. In terms of skill, hard work, and intelligence, the competition is a thousand times tougher.
- nikhizzle 12y ago
  I don't have enough information to judge that, since I never made it to director level at my time at FB. One salient note is that at FB you can switch between parallel tracks whenever you like. Eg. Any director level engineer can switch to being a director level manager and vice versa.

puppetmaster3 12y ago

Another way to say it is as a game theory: 2 programers, if one becomes a manager it is an advantage. I agree that pay starts well (but its earned), but in a real world scenario, programming is relatively tough work with limited upside, relatively. I agree w/ OP.

quickpost 12y ago

This article reminds me a of a quote from Learn Python the Hard Way: "Programming as a profession is only moderately interesting. It can be a good job, but you could make about the same money and be happier running a fast food joint. You're much better off using code as your secret weapon in another profession." "People who can code in the world of technology companies are a dime a dozen and get no respect. People who can code in biology, medicine, government, sociology, physics, history, and mathematics are respected and can do amazing things to advance those disciplines." "Of course, all of this advice is pointless. If you liked learning to write software with this book, you should try to use it to improve your life any way you can. Go out and explore this weird, wonderful, new intellectual pursuit that barely anyone in the last 50 years has been able to explore. Might as well enjoy it while you can." http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/advice.html http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/advice.html

momoprobs311 12y ago

This is not an apples to apples comparison. The writer is casting programmers as "commodity code producers", meaning the end goal of the code and the path to creation (e.g. what technologies to use, modules to create, etc) are already defined. That's trivially true. You could make this same argument for an artist if there were a market for people that could paint and draw things that others told them to paint using specific techniques. You could make the exact same argument for managers. If you created a perfect recipe for "motivating a team" and "evaluating a direct report's performance" and all these other nebulous ideas, and just paid for executing that recipe, you'd make management a "dead end job". If you create a recipe for someone, 99% of the work is done. The true value comes from the joining of the "what" and the "how" with the execution. Divorcing the two makes any job a commodity job because it assumes the goal and the path have already been determined. So comparing a "commodity code producer" with a full managerial position is not an equal comparison.

the_watcher 12y ago

If your goal is to become CEO of a company that would be large enough to require an engineer to quit coding, it's a fairly universal truth that you will no longer be doing what you did at the beginning of your career. It's not simply that you no longer code - if you come from banking, you stop doing that. If you come from accounting/finance, you are no longer spending all day in Excel. If you come from sales, you may do a bit of it, I guess, but you are no longer regularly jumping on the phone with customers. If you come from marketing, again, you may do a bit, but you are definitely not spending time in AdWords or developing marketing campaigns. Is there any job that this truth wouldn't apply to? Being a CEO is a full time job that has it's own requirements. It's not simply a title that you slap on a normal job.

the_watcher 12y ago

Maybe I am reading this wrong, but it reads to me like the author wants to continually be paid more without taking on additional responsibilities (which, correctly or not, are considered more valuable by potential employers). I don't think he is correct that fantastically talented programmers don't get pay raises. However, at a certain point, if no one is willing to offer more for just programming, to increase ones earning, you must take on new responsibilities, the same way that a fantastically talented anything has a ceiling on how much they can earn without adding value a new way.

elchief 12y ago

I was a junior manager, manager, senior manager, chief operating officer, and hated it. I even have a Master's of Management, which I enjoyed. But I love being a senior analyst. I want to be a senior analyst forever. It's enthralling to me. I decline management job offers. It's not worth a few extra bucks for me. I'm putting my savings toward a tech angel fund for when I'm too old to program. I'm working on side projects that might blow up big time one day. There are other options besides management.

matthewcford 12y ago

Flipping burgers is a dead end job, programming is well paid compared to most jobs.

skkbits 12y ago

The company I work is around for 40+ years now. There are some folks as "Programmer Analyst", "Software Engineer", "Sr. Engineer" for 20+ years now. I have asked many of them why you didn't move up the ladder and report to someone junior ( or H1B in his early 30's). Most of the time answer I got it, they love what they do. They love having opportunity to program , provide logical + thoughtful solutions. Of course, when new management comes in and there are times to make decision to layoff, these people become victim due to range of salary they have reached, age, skillset. This is very unfortunate but true. I would not completely write off what author is saying but I believe it depends on individual prospective. Of course, money is important factor but if you are getting a job 8 am to 5pm + raising your family/kids comfortably + spending time with family and yet have good balance when you retire then being programmer is quite good deal actually.

BatFastard 12y ago

I am blessed with a dead end job where I can love what I do almost everyday, see progress everyday, and work with smart people. I have flirted with 10 of millions of dollars in wealth, but I don't seem to have the timing to make it stick. But at the end of my life, if my kids can say he loved what he did, he loved us, and he loved life. I will be a lucky man indeed.

debt 12y ago

Ha, this is a load of shit. The magic in being a carpenter or a painter or a builder of any kind(including programming) is that you can create something from nothing. The jobs may suck but I still have the power to, whenever I want, execute and actualize my ideas. I pity those with vision but no means to at least prototype that vision themselves. That's dead end to me. Builders are magicians and they're certainly not inoxorably linked to their boring day jobs.

Elizer0x0309 12y ago

Well he's right for his life. You are what you believe. A programmer, can easily invent something that makes you a trillionaire. Ah the power of imagination and belief :)

bowlofpetunias 12y ago

By the same logic, anything from being a plumber to a brain surgeon is a dead end job.

rjf1990 12y ago

This is exactly why even though I graduated with an engineering degree, I went straight into business. I didn't want to have to make that jump to management. Rather, I started with an analytical role and moved up (well I actually left soon after). While there aren't many exec-level programming jobs out there, there are plenty that still require analytical skills. While none of the execs where I worked crunched numbers themselves, they reviewed other work and poked holes in business analyses. I think analytics career paths are perfect for the people who like engineering but want the upward mobility into management.

10098 12y ago

tldr; if your program you won't become a CEO with mansions and cars. I became a programmer not because I wanted nice cars but because it's helping me earn enough money while doing something that doesn't annoy me too much. It helps keep my sanity.

xkarga00 12y ago

Programming jobs are amongst the most well paid in the world. Calling them as a dead end in a comparison with CEO wages is like saying that holidays in Italy are trash, long live Hawaii.

overgard 12y ago

I think it's a bit pathological that we equate career success with being in management. You only need so many leaders. If you get too many people trying to be leaders, you end up with pathological organizations that engage in a lot of bikeshed painting. I think the problem with programming is that programmers are assumed to be interchangeable; or at least, management would like to think so. To me, this seems absurd, I'd rather have one good programmer than 10 mediocre ones. (And good programmers are rare, but not impossibly so). The problem is that programmers that are 10x more productive don't get paid 10x more. (And seriously, some programmers really are 10x more productive than average).

stefanobaghino 12y ago

This post holds that coding and managing a company are different jobs and that you can't do both at the same time. I don't find this any kind of shocking.

Im_Talking 12y ago

I think it's because most programmers end-up working on shit corporate software or under some PHB which just destroys any joy, and finally your creative soul. If your joy and/or soul is gone, any job is a dead-end job. I sold my software business to a public-listed company and hated every day I was there; corporate politics, PHBs, most software developed by company being absolute shit (I pathologically hated their core software platform). I had enough. Now I'm back on my own writing software I enjoy and couldn't be professionally happier.

blazespin 12y ago

Low quality thread on HN.

ryanpardieck 12y ago

Calling programming a dead end job is kind of outrageous. I normally associate the phrase "dead end job" with stuff like pizza delivery, or some of those severely monotonous office jobs like data entry or working in a call center. Most people would perceive programming to be an excellent job. A good wage, enjoyable/challenging work, and loving what you do: there are many who would love to be stuck in that kind of dead end. edit - Somehow, I goofed and lost the rest of my post. Anyhow, I noticed that in a separate blog post, the author said something like "Programming isn't just a job for me, but a way of life." I questioned whether that is something you can say of a job that is truly dead-end.

markpettersson 12y ago

The problem with programming vs management is that at the end of the day, a programmer is at the mercy of management which may or may not be competent. You may love programming but if you are not allowed to address technical debt, have unrealistic deadlines and silly priorities you won't have fun at your job.

chrisbennet 12y ago

It should be noted that life is a dead end as well. It seems the author equates the accumulation of "things" with success. If your goal is own more stuff, I guess that would constitute success. Happiness has always been my goal. By that metric, I'm wildly successful.