[mythhouse]

Programming isn't young mans game but a career doing programming is young man's game.

It is a young man's game in the sense that your priorities in life change. Just lose your motivation to

* learn the next hottest framework on the weekends,

* doing leetcode puzzles to change jobs

* 25 yr old nitpicking your PR that you didn't organize your imports in alphabetical order.

* plateauing at L6 level while your peers become directors. Why would you want to make 250k while your friends make 450k.

Sure you if are really good at programming you might get the respect and become a wise sage staff engineer. But most ppl and organizations are average where its hard to distinguish your self writing crud apps or data pipelines.Effort required to increase pay becomes exponential in coding after a certain point to the point that its just not worth it.

[Barrin92]

>plateauing at L6 level while your peers become directors. Why would you want to make 250k while your friends make 450k.

I'm always surprised how often this comes up. The salaries in our industry are so absurd that I find it hard to believe that this, at the margin, is supposed to be so relevant. Same with the comparisons to your peers.

What our peers do and where they stand on some invented hierarchy sounds like straight out of high school. At some point in life you got to have the maturity to make decisions based on what you're genuinely passionate about. Always makes me sad when someone's like "I liked programming but I plateaued, therefor I'm now growing doing something I don't like".

[mythhouse]

> he maturity to make decisions based on what you're genuinely passionate about.

I make decisions based on whats best for my family. I want to make maximum amount of money for my labor. There is nothing wrong with comparing yourself with your peers. I actually find "follow your passion" advice incredibly toxic and anxiety inducing. No one is really passionate about writing enterprise code. I am talking about just regular people, you know like 99% of ppl doing coding jobs for money.

[Barrin92]

it's toxic advice if you give it to a broke twenty something. When you're on stable footing and have your needs covered money is supposed to afford you the freedom to actually make your own choices about things you care.

In my family the idea has always been, money is necessary but being happy what you work on is more important both for you and your relationships. If you're making 6-12x the national mean you're literally not in the 99%, you're in the top 1%. If you're still haggling with your peers or anxious about only money you're living on autopilot.

[mythhouse]

Agreed but You still haven't explained why I should be choosing a lesser paying option between the two ( coding vs management). Whats the logic here?

Are sure seriously suggesting average big corp programmer is it for passion?

Again, there is nothing wrong with comparing yourself to your peers. Its immature to have an adverse reaction to it. Comparison is like A/B testing for your life that helps you course correct.

[Barrin92]

>why I should be choosing a lesser paying option between the two

because you enjoy coding more than managing, if you don't then you obviously shouldn't. But quite a few people do enjoy programming and give it up due to the kind of pressures or comparisons we're talking about here in the thread for mostly lame reasons.

And I don't think having an adverse reaction to peer comparison is immature. These days at big companies in tech in particular group think is incredibly strong. Being headstrong and not making decisions based on what's popular in your in group is a good thing. You can course correct but do it because of your own needs, not others. A/B testing is appropriate for products, not the lives of individuals.

[jfrbfbreudh]

I shoot for high compensation because what I really enjoy more than coding or managing is not working at all.

[afpx]

I think it's more about not being recognized for the amount of work that one puts, not necessarily the absolute (or relative) pay.

How many times I've worked all-nighters to build core parts of a system, only to see the guy who talks the loudest in meetings get promoted.