| I agree completely with this blog post, though honestly, to me it makes the field sound pretty grim. I highly recommend you follow the link to the "technology steamroller" (earlier post by same blogger). "If you don't keep learning, keep reading, keep improving your skills eventually that nasty steamroller behind you will flatten you permanently. Then your career is likely over." and "And that clanky monster breathing down your neck has an endless supply of fuel." Egads. Not blaming the messenger here, he's right. It's a tough field. So the pay is extraordinary, right? http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/rankings/the-100-b... Take a look at these jobs, and in particular, look at the pay in higher salary regions. The best job, software developer, earns 116k a year on average in San Jose. The average registered nurse earns 122k a year in San Jose. The average dental hygenist in SF earns about 106K a year. Nurse practitioners clock in at 125K a year. There are all kinds of ways to interpret this data, and in the end, I'm talking about the greenness of the grass somewhere else. Not that I wouldn't welcome comments about these comparisons, I just want to make it clear that I acknowledge these other fields come with their own stresses and challenges and barriers to entry (and I don't object to good salaries in these fields at all). And everyone has to keep learning... But is there a steamroller that threatens to make dentists obsolete, and do dentists have to bet the farm, so to speak, on whether to learn "enterprise java beans". It does seem particularly relentless (and difficult to predict) in software, and the career stakes are very, very high. I think programming can be a wonderful career for some people. I think the main reason I pay so much attention to this sort of thing is that I often think about pay and work conditions for software developers within the context of claimed "shortage", as this is frequently discussed (and until recently, often accepted without question) in the mainstream media. Judging from this informative blog post, it takes a very unique wiring to really thrive for a career as a software developer. Can we really say there's a shortage of people willing to put themselves in the path of a steamroller? (The author of the blog post in no way made this claim, this is just a question I'm turning around in my own mind). |