Ask HN: Experiences Programming Outside of Tech?

[outotrai]

In Zed Shaw's new Python book, he writes:

"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."

How true is this, as far as you know? Have you had more success programming in non-programming-related fields? What relevant experiences do you have?

[tom_b]

I've worked in enterprise software dev and testing, a big financial corp, on a small bioinformatic data export contract project, and now in a bioinformatics group in a pure research setting where the focus is on the science and not on programming except as a support to the science.

I strongly believe that deep tech skills with extensive domain specific knowledge is the most valuable combo in all those environments. If you can quickly soak up domain specific knowledge as even an average developer, you're going to be well respected and thought of. I'm not great at this part, but do well simply by having reasonable communication skills - it's flat out amazing how many tech folks fail based on bad people skills.

Honestly though, I think expectations are so low, so often that people are completely willing to put up with really low quality results if they can simply pay bottom dollar for coders. This ties in with organization culture in any of those environments - it will far and away be the dominant factor in your ability to be successful programming. If the culture is restrictive or narrow-minded, you'll struggle.

Maybe Zed is trying to drive home that there is lot of headcount floating around in tech companies with a job title that would lead you to think they were doing a bunch of development, but they amount to magic TPF report generators. The other option, and one that I love stumbling into, is that there are some tremendously smart people in those fields he mentions who have taught themselves to code to do cool hacking in the field. I find that as an "officially credentialed" CS type, many of these people have picked up a significant amount of what I spent more than a few years in formal education pursuing.

[starkfist]

I used to work in bioinformatics and got paid less and worked with worse engineers on more tedious problems than when I worked at a pure tech company. I don't know if I was respected. It was one of the few jobs where the level of Asperger's syndrome increased as one went up the management chain. I don't think my boss, a PhD/MD, really ever remembered my name or what I was supposed to be working on, or that it registered that I was a human being. I'm not sure if he considered himself a human being. Mostly it sucked.

When I was very young I made the website for an alternative newspaper (like the Village Voice) and they thought I was a cool whiz kid. The kinda hot and MILFy single mom secretary always came onto me at the company drinking outings. Maybe that's what Zed means?

[hernan7]

He forgot about finance for some reason :-\

[patrickk]

Yeah Wall Street's been using sneaky 'algos' for a few years now. They are quite lucrative apparently.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_16/b3929113_...

To answer to person posting the topic, I've seen web design (not programming) in a large, well-established (non-investment) bank. It was laughable. To use the term in this context is an insult to the profession. Those with IT skills certainly weren't given any special status.

Another guy on my team was able to demonstrate that by the bank's IT unit embedding Google JavaScript into the bank's homepage, he could exploit this into showing a competitors homepage over the original one. Absolute joke. He got torn a new asshole for not going through "the proper channels."

[megamark16]

A friend of mine just got fired from his bank job for not going through the right channels. He created an iPhone app, but didn't release it, just asked permission to release it. It' a bit more involved, because you might assume that there were security concerns or technology concerns and that had something to do with his firing, but there were none, the security team signed off on it, but because he didn't go through the right channels he hurt someone's pride and got canned.

[johngalt]

Cross out respected.

[outotrai]

Why do you say so?

[andyjdavis]

Generally as a programmer working in a non-software/tech area you're treated as, at best, semi-skilled labour. Sure you can program but that's nothing compared to the complexity of mechanical engineering/microbiology/whatever.

You tend to be treated as necessary but undesirable. Someone that I, your engineer/doctor/professor boss who is far smarter than you, will have to waste time telling what to do. All so you can go do the fancy typing necessary to make the software do what I say.

In terms of respect level its not uncommon for non-programmers to lump programmers in with book keepers, compliance officers and other necessary but undesirable people.

It would probably be different if you were both a biologist/trader/chemical engineer AND a programmer. That would be entirely different than just being a programmer working within the domain.