[trchek]

I gotta say I worked as a farmhand, waiter, fast food manager, line cook, grounds crew (by far my favorite job, it was at a university and I got to do everything), plumber, electrician, day laborer, delivery driver for many things and I did a couple stints in factories all before I ever owned a computer (didn’t come from a background where you had one, I got my first one and it clicked, within a year, I was working at an ISP configuring Qmail and Bind, everyone just assuming I had been living with a computer since I was born).

I’ve had a wildly successful career in tech where I’ve gotten to do, what to me are crazy impressive things (I don’t want to brag about here but you may have benefited from some of it, certainly all of you have done more impressive things than me, and thank you for that) and I don’t regret it a day, but as someone that’s worked in those " normal jobs", other than factory work I found the jobs themselves WILDLY more satisfying than anything I’m doing today.

Tech work did used to be a lot better and I still love learning new things but if I could make a few hundred grand a year and never do another OKR and garden I would take that so quickly you can’t even imagine (actually I’d take it for a 100 grand year).

Now I’m old and I have people that depend on me, so I do the OKR shuffle and play all the politics, and even lead on new tech that I think is being misapplied in the org but hell if I can get anyone to believe me and just use SQLite. But if I was single and had no kids, I’d gladly give up the 6 figure lifestyle to get my hands in the dirt again or even get through a hard rush in the kitchen with the team, there was so much more worthwhile about the jobs I had before, it was just the benefits sucked and couldn’t support a family in the USA without a lot of luck and sacrifice.

I think maybe it is possible that most of you that think these other jobs are so hard just didn’t come from a family where they were normal, but for me they were, and I don’t see anything wrong with them other than the pay and the benefits. They’re honest work.

That said I’d be ok if technology companies just let us do our jobs without all the bizarre AMA, self help talk and bizarre behavior from management.

[sureglymop]

I think the answer is that it depends. Software engineering is incredibly hard if you are a perfectionist who wants to make efficient, secure and maintainable software. But most probably it is not even possible to be that perfectionist and stay within any given budget. And the requirements are most often not your own.

The thing is, it's a job that needs creativity, spontaneous decision making as well as personal responsibility for those decisions. It's a real easy job if you don't need to take this responsibility (e.g. those who come after me when I am long gone have to deal with the consequences). It becomes a hard job the instant that you have some passion or ethical concerns that drive you to create software that holds up to your own high standards and requirements.

I think that's what makes it so hard for many. We are incredibly passionate (why would we be on this forum in our free time otherwise) but we constantly have to betray our own principles to make it work or stay employed.

[arunabha]

> It becomes a hard job the instant that you have some passion or ethical concerns that drive you to create software that holds up to your own high standards and requirements.

This is the hardest lesson to learn for a lot of software engineers. By nature, computers are unforgiving, so a lot(most?) of us are wired to do things 'right'. The apparent fundamental incompatibility of that mindset with modern corporate environments is a pretty painful lesson to learn.

This is not to say that any one of the approaches is the one true approach. To a company software is a means to its ultimate goal of more profits.

To an engineer though it's often both, a means of livelihood and a source of joy. Reconciling the second with the first is easy in theory and hard in practice.

[opem]

couldn't agree more! these people who are not that passionate and build software for a living tend to care less, and when we care less we do more. also rarely they come up with crappy solutions, that might not be good but work. making things even harder for the passionate perfectionists.

[studio1057hack]

I started it as a dance instructor (after competing since I was 13 years old) then I saw that the dance studio director still shared a room (!!) with somebody else in a really crappy part of New York City, so I got a job on the airport from a classified ad my husband clipped from NY Times and I got really interested and passionate about aviation. Took a few lessons and went through a course for my dispatcher license.

I loved it and got hired internally the second try. If I tell you we were called 'flight dispatch officers' you might be able to figure out which airline that was.

In about 12 years the airlines headquarter and ops center moved to the Midwest so I opted to stay in NY and go to school for retraining. I choose WAN admin because there were no coding schools. Here I got my A+, MCSE, MCSD,CCNA,CCNP,CCIE. But in the meantime I got heavily involved in scripting and coding. So my first job was perl, PHP and SQL developer and I've been doing it for quite some time now. I must say this is the most liberal and appreciative career I've seen. As long as your work is done, you can be anywhere. Besides the great salaries, benefits, (,ok no travel) these jobs are fun. Good choice.

[numa7numa7]

CCIE is legit!

Just wanted to say that's impressive.

[MoonGhost]

In my long carrier I've seen many devs. Those who came for money really suffer the whole life. I started programming as a kid and can't stop even now ;)

[trchek]

I’ll be honest I would have left by now if I could have, but I don’t regret my career in the slightest. I still code for fun, but our jobs are rarely about just coding, and the money has brought in a lot of toxicity.

[opem]

exactly, also these days coding is not about creativity or fun anymore.

[MoonGhost]

Yes, in big projects you don't see the result. it becomes a boring routine. But when your hobby robot makes first steps it's a completely different feeling.

[BenGosub]

Very inspiring comment. I suppose that software development was a much more impactful job back in the days.

I do get pleasure when building software, but like many others I also dream about starting a farm to diversify my income and get some physical work regularly.

[izacus]

I wonder if that conviction would actually survive you being dependent on the income of that garden (and the ability for crops to survive, grow and be sold at a good price to sustain you) or if you're just dreaming of vacation where you poke at the land a bit.

I worked on a farm and I find this romanticising outright ridiculous because I don't think a lot of you understand just how hard is it to actually make a living from the land.

[therealcamino]

PP above says working on a grounds crew was their favorite job ever. I think that's what they're talking about.

[trchek]

Yes was talking about the grounds crew, no one was harvesting trees for money, it was my favorite job and would happily do it again if I didn’t have family obligations (I had mentioned this in the post).

That said the farm I worked I knew the farmer and his dad pretty well and I worked there year round for a couple of years with breaks in the summer. Harvest time was insane and not all the years were good, but the family were comfortable and most of the time the workload was reasonable. It maybe different now but I lived in farm states then and I personally knew several well to do farmers that were living very well with more assets than I currently have. So I’m not sure I’m fully on board with your view of farming. It depends a lot on time and place I’m sure though, I’ll fully admit that I’m no expert.

[trchek]

I’m sorry this caused such a negative reaction but I think you stopped reading too soon, we agree more than disagree. Listen, I’ve paid my taxes on those jobs that I miss, so I know what it is I’m saying.

[fsociety]

Upvotes for you. I have also worked a ton of odd jobs out of necessity. Many doing things that would frankly disgust most people, or people would say is a worker’s right violation, or is a safety violation. I enjoyed these jobs more despite the conditions.

Financially it is great, no doubt about that. Take away the money and it’s a terrible job - despite loving programming, design, and engineering. And I mean, I love design, programming, ambiguity, and the constant learning required.

My largest source of sanity in this career is to spend extra time at work doing the things that I love in my position. Ironically, I get high performance ratings because of this - but have to fight to spend my time on it.

Modern tech companies and culture suck, even the best ones that I praise. I can’t even blame anyone at this point because it is hard and I have not started a company that tries to be better. I'm not even sure I would do better, to be honest.

[trchek]

Thanks I appreciate it, re safety violations, yeah some of it was those laws were just badly applied across the board, and it was hard to find a place without some degree of violating the letter of the law, so I think they just got flippant.

Re “source of sanity” I’ve caught myself doing the same with extra work, but sometimes it backfires when the little fun tool you wrote solves the purpose so well that it becomes the company standard and then the politics comes in, I don’t mean the “oh we need this feature super badly that breaks a bunch of other things can you do it for us” that’s just having a successful project. I mean when it starts figuring into political finger pointing and you’re forced to be involved in it all since you are the creator of a tool tangentially involved in some inter office politics. I’ve not figured out how to avoid that yet.

[weiliddat]

It seems insane sometimes that politics makes everything take so long that a decent engineer could’ve written all 3 solutions and validated them in 3 days, but no we want to discuss in this ticket over 3 weeks whose responsibility it is depending on which approach it is or what hypothetical scenarios this will bring (no one really knows anyways so we should’ve just tested it).

Unfortunately that has also pushed lots of good engineers to either disengage or work extra hard to push things through despite organizational problems (I seem to alternate between both but I feel too responsible to really disengage).

Often I wonder why can’t it be easier?

[jffhn]

>My largest source of sanity in this career is to spend extra time at work doing the things that I love in my position. Ironically, I get high performance ratings because of this - but have to fight to spend my time on it.

Why do you have to fight if it's extra time? And couldn't you avoid the fighting by just doing it on regular time?

[sshine]

How inspiring.

As someone who only delivered newspapers and worked in a video store as a kid, before landing my first developer job, I’ve always had this impression.

And I could never convince myself to go work on a farm, or in a nursery, or at a gas station, because working on my computer, often from home, always paid better.

I feel like most computer problems are made up, and so many real-world problems draw in your emotions and senses.

[justonceokay]

> I feel like most computer problems are made up, and so many real-world problems draw in your emotions and senses.

It’s funny, I feel the same but come to the opposite conclusion. I don’t want to look back on my life thinking that I spent all my time chasing fake problems. The calculus is different for everyone though.

[sshine]

> I don’t want to look back on my life thinking that I spent all my time chasing fake problems.

If I understand you correctly, it is an argument to not pursue software development?

I agree, I am mostly in it for the money and my own curiosity.

And I do see that it sometimes solves real problems, like removing landmines. But it's rare.

[no_wizard]

>I don’t want to look back on my life thinking that I spent all my time chasing fake problems

Neo-liberal capitalist economies are full of fake problems.

Take flash trading for example. I know why it exists, and I know why it works. I don't fault people for getting involved in it, because they (and we) exist in the system we have.

Yet, think of all the money that has gotten both pumped into that industry and the industry has made in profits, and all for...being able to algorithmically trade penny differences in value at a profit due to volume.

Is that a problem that is worth solving? Well, in our current economic system, it is, but should it be?

I don't know whats better per se (I'm not arguing for communism or some other clearly failed economic political system) but I sure feel like I can identify problems that could quite easily fall into the made up category.

[pfannkuchen]

Doesn’t flash trading basically contribute compute to force prices to settle at equilibrium faster thereby improving pricing efficiency?

I’m not sure it’s worth the required effort input at a system level vs other places the effort could be applied, but there is at least some abstract benefit to it, I think.

[sshine]

A study by the SEC in 2014 stated that very high trading frequency is "unnecessary" (below 0.2s), but failed to identify clear downsides or damages to the markets.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2363114

[test6554]

For me work is work. Getting up on Monday Morning is always going to be a bummer. So I might as well get PAID and air conditioning.