[pure-awesome]

I think the way that abledon used it here is fine. He wasn't saying "everyone else is a code monkey", he was saying "we are all code monkeys" himself included.

In this context, it might actually help OP to relax a bit - the message is "Don't worry, you don't have to be a programming contest winner in order to work as a programmer. Many programming jobs are much lower stress and lower cognitive load than that", and abledon's description certainly matches my own programming job more than, e.g. what was described in the other "What was it like to be a software engineer at NeXT?" post on HN.

[EADGBE]

Exactly. You must ask yourself what you want from this. If it's a secure-ish job, good pay, and relatively low-stress it's pretty easy to find.

If it's The Social Network style code-bro'ing, coding the cure to cancer, etc; well that's pretty easy to find too.