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by beerpls 1107 days ago
No, from a young age I just appreciated computers and machines and logic.

Tbh I don’t love programming. It’s just the best way to make my wage-slave status work best for me. Remote work, chill colleagues, relatively interesting (tho boring) day work

I knew it wouldn’t be as fun as hobby programming bc you have metrics and a boss. But such is the life of the wage-slave

1 comments

> Tbh I don’t love programming. It’s just the best way to make my wage-slave status work best for me. Remote work, chill colleagues, relatively interesting (tho boring) day work

It's interesting. You aren't wrong. It's just weird to think that a lot of people are in your similar situation (me too), and we just have this "cap" about us. Why aren't we out there pushing to be entrepreneurs or demanding more out of life than whatever salary we're given/"earning"? Why are we not more risk takers, why are we complacent? Are we actually happy? Is this what we dreamed of as a child in terms of risk/reward/stability/day to day grind?

Is life really exciting/"worth living" to the fullest if every day we're just spending time on a PC/phone, checking Teams/Slack/emails. Can be pinged for a production incident or a requirements change at any time. Always kind of "plugged in", having to plan your day if you want to be effective in your off time mentally ("I'll work on XYZ task tomorrow, try to wrap XYZ up, try to follow up with XYZ"). It's like there's always multiple deadlines we are behind on with clients, always bugs, things to fix, sacrifices/compromises to make.

I wonder how many people just stick it out for the paycheck (like you said) and actually "dread" it. Like, what alternatives do we have? It's the lesser evil.

To be an entrepreneur you have to do a lot of other stuff (like finding clients) that many technical people are neither interested in nor would be good at. That's certainly my case. I'd much rather have someone else handle all that and let me worry about the techincal stuff. If it worked out I could likely make more money as a consultant but I don't think I'd be happier and would certainly be more stressed.

I probably couldn't stand a boss who tried to tell me how to do my job though but I've never had the misfortune to be in that situation.

Being an entrepreneur is easy if you have the money to burn, and are in a life phase where you have no one dependent on you so that a failed venture wouldn’t put others at risk.

*edit: Oh, and if you have good mental health.

Do you ask these same questions of all the biologists, chemists, engineers of whatever the hell when all they do is work a regular job?