I read the article; I'm not sure this is so much a criticism of the industry as it is an examination of this developer's personal anecdotal experience.
As developers, we lead a very charmed life that others sometimes aren't even born with the chance to intellectually compete for; the author neglects to address how lucky we are to be able to do this at all, let alone to then find employment in it. If it's not an industry that benefits you holistically, find something you love that doesn't strain your neck or involve gender-politics- dentistry for example, or maybe upholstery or culinary arts.
Personally, it's the hundreds of days spent in a dish pit, and burning my hands on a hot grill for 12 hours every night that gives me the ability and patience to appreciate this opportunity we have, and all of the different elements of it. I've had very few experiences in life that afford me this type of luxury or time to examine my surroundings and then have time to compose them in words for others to read. This doesn't make the author wrong, this makes our perspectives different, and perhaps a tour of duty in other professions would benefit the author.
This one hits hard. As a front end developer, when people ask what I do, I say "I make buttons". Red buttons, blue buttons, big buttons, small buttons. Any kind of button you can imagine. I spend my life making buttons light up on a colorful screen. And then people click on those buttons and I get paid an obscene amount of money for it.
I'm not sure if this is how people are supposed to live. It's driving me mad.
But then I get home, order a burrito on Postmates, and am horrified at the thought of ending up as this guy delivering me a burrito at 3AM to make his rent. So I wake up the next morning to do it all over again. As a mediocre self taught developer without even a high school degree, I know I'll be right back there once the market turns down, so I don't really have the luxury of considering anything else.
This hit a nerve. I think I hate my life as a developer, but then I see this janitor, in our office, cleaning the floor and windows, cleaning and unblocking the toilets, etc., and is always greeting me with a smile.
Makes me wonder why I deserve to be living such s luxurious life, while this guy has to spend his days waking up probably around 5am, commuting for a hour just to clean somebody else’s shit just to earn 1/3 of what I do.
I think a janitor has some advantages going for him which are pretty rare in our thing, as well as fewer issues overall.
For example, the janitor probably has concrete and relatively unchanging definitions of success in his work. His job has tangible effects every day on those he provides his service to. There aren't many janitorial meetings. He probably doesn't have to massage the ego of his boss. To my knowledge, there are no Sanitation Reviews where some coworker will criticize him for not following the One True Sanitation Style or the latest fad in Toilet Driven Development. His profession is not constantly put in the critical spotlight by the media as a front line in the culture wars. There's no such phrase as "janitor bro" which people use to stereotype and demean them.
Focusing just on "I make $X, they make $X/4, how can I complain" downplays a lot of conditions which can make some people in this line of work very bitter about it.
I agree. I've simultaneously worked as both a janitor and a developer to make ends meet. The main benefit for me working a labor job was that it was easier to switch off my brain at the end of the day. Personally I'd rather be physically exhausted then mentally drained, stressed and have it impact my sleep and mental health once the day is over. Physical work gives you a sense of satisfaction that you don't get from staring at a screen for 8 hours a day .
5-6 hours a day biking in -15C snow with wet feet (Mailman).
8 hours a day moving chips one by one in and out of an EPROM writer because it was cheaper to have me do that than pay the extra 2c to have them preprogrammed. The chips were 25c without programming and 27c with. (Ericson subcontractor).
And I am privileged as hell, coming from Sweden with a good education and a family I can rely on.
I think the point of burning out on work is relatable still. It is not fun to work long hours of anything, and it is even less fun when something you used to do for entertainment turns into a chore. But I'm pretty happy with my desk job in the software industry because the other jobs Ive seen have been a lot less nice.
I'm a developer and still a mailman in Canada in the freezing rain and snow because that indexed pension is just too good to give up, plus they let you do awesome things like bank all your overtime so you can take more days off. I had one month off paid this year in addition to my regular 5 weeks off. Before my shift these days I program for a university medical research lab, which isn't highly paid but it's satisfying work where you are always learning something, and they keep writing me letters of recommendation so I keep picking up new research contracts when one ends. Very casual environment, coworker post-doc's are helpful to bleed for information, no performance bonus paperwork to fill out or bosses harassing me with nonsense the lead researchers thankfully take care of that.
Before I was working remotely for various companies and hated it as the unpaid hours kept growing with ridiculous meetings and paperwork. Their management kept sending me these surveys to fill out and very long emails and slack distractions that always required immediate attention so the job became more trouble than it was worth and I quit. My criteria for work these days is "Will they lay me off in X years?" and "How much mandatory overtime is there?" nothing else really matters including the pay being below average.
Check universities, because P/T developer work is in abundance here usually weekends or remote once you get to know the researchers you work with, showing up on odd weekends. These contracts pay less than industry but the education you receive working with post-doc's imho makes it worth it and it's still more than a livable wage. CompSci dept students don't often apply for whatever reasons, I suspect it's because they are chasing internships at big money corps.
Yep, this is true. In fact the only software dev work I've been paid to do in 2 years has been part-time a uni in Manitoba working with a post-doc there. It's way more rewarding overall than anything I've been fired for doing in an office somewhere accounting for my story points.
> 5-6 hours a day biking in -15C snow with wet feet (Mailman).
As a Swede, aren't you familiar with the saying "There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes"? :-)
I did spend one summer planting trees in Sweden. It was miserable, but in a good way: I'd sleep well every night. I'm not sure how well I'd put up with something like that over an extended period of time though.
Hehe, yeah. It is a pain in the ass to try to cycle in anything other than sneakers though imo. Especially when you need to get off the bike and run up stairs fairly often. Better to be cold and wet than be on the bike in boots.
It was actually a good job most days. Certainly made me more fit than before. I think most work is like that right? Some crappy things and some cool things. But like you say, doing that for 20 years or more I am not sure about.
I did it for a year and a half full time and then part time for two years while working on a CS degree.
"It is not fun to work long hours of anything, and it is even less fun when something you used to do for entertainment turns into a chore."
This is exactly why I quit photography: it was a passion in which I indulged in my own time that became a job when I didn't say no to friends (and then their friends, acquaintances, and sometimes strangers) who wanted me to photograph their wedding or similar "on your feet 12 hours" types of events. Fortunately I have this programming thing on which to fall back. :-)
Also the fact that the market is over-saturated and nobody needs a photographer because literally anyone can point an iPhone at whatever they like and get a perfect photo.
Photography was hard in the 80s when you had to do your own lighting and process and develop film. Not anymore.
I held a similar opinion until I saw an amazing wedding photographer work her magic. That was a highly skilled job with a lot of work and effort and knowledge at play.
Easy to do, but hard to do well. And as a layperson in the photography world it's hard to know what you're missing until you compare an amateur and a professional side-by-side.
I don't see how the 2c saving per chip, multiplied by any reasonable number of chips a person can swap in and out could pay for the work (in the so-called developed world, at that)? There are other good reasons to be doing that, like nearly instant turnaround time if a change in the firmware occurs in early production runs.
Yeah there was a sizing thing to it too. It was for a specific build of headsets that didnt go out in huge numbers each batch, so buying in bulk was risky and the lead time from Taiwan was significant.
You can do a lot of chips in a day though, I did around 10k per day if I remember right, so there was still some profit.
Being privileged also includes not having powerful people working against your, your family's, or your country's success, for example serf-owning European aristocrats, unethical monopolists, Jim Crow laws, or the US government overthrowing your democracy.
I was a furniture upholsterer. It was super interesting, good exercise, and really required a lot of analytic thinking. I loved upholstery. However, I wasn't able to support a wife and kid on an upholsterer's paycheck. An employee upholsterer starts at $10/hour for a junior up to a high-range of $20/hr for 10+ years experience. Now I'm a software developer making multiples higher more income. I like it OK and I can provide a cushy life for my family.
Upholstery was the best. I miss upholstery. I don't see any way I could feasibly switch back to it, though.
Interesting you mentioned your story about going from upholsterer to software engineer. It looks like the OP of the medium post is going the other way around...
> The good news is I basically already did win the lottery. I built up savings working as a developer which allowed me to quit.
> .... but now gives me a landing pad where I can take some time to really do what I love. Ample time with people I care about.
> In January I’m starting a leatherwork vocational program.
So maybe a year from now, she'll experience what you experienced, i.e. low wages / income and decide to come back to the 'cushy' life
and follow up with another blog post titled "I just not want to be a leather worker any more."
I started getting a little dissatisfied with programming during university, and decided to become an Emergency Medical Technician because medicine had always interested me. I thought it would be a far more meaningful experience, but it drove me back to programming very quickly.
The majority of calls were rather pointless in terms of impact. Patients were generally in a state where nothing you did would make a difference, whether that was because they we're beyond help or didn't really need your help in the first place. The calls where you did make a difference we're generally so traumatic anyways that I preferred to try and forget about them.
In my area, pay was about 12 to 15 USD per hour. It wasn't worth it to me to dodge bodily fluids, risk throwing your back out lifting stretchers (those things are heavy even without a patient!), and above all, get an incredibly depressing view of humanity. I worked in a low-income area and above all it was just sad.
Granted, I was 22 years old and probably a little too immature for the work. I worked with some of the most burnt-out, cynical people I can imagine, but also some of the kindest, most-dedicated individuals I have ever met in my life. I moved back in with my parents to catch up on programming and got into software dev without any issues.
I worked in consulting for three years and it was incredibly stressful. I learned a lot working on a wide variety of projects, but there were also weeks of working 70+ hours. I began resorting to substance abuse to deal with burnout.
Now I work as the sole developer for a small organization. I don't learn as much in my day-to-day activities as I did as a consultant, but the work is not stressful and I have incredibly supportive coworkers.
I am less stressed but not satisfied with my job. Cars have become a passion of mine, I debate becoming a mechanic now at least once a week. I would get paid far less, but there is something incredibly satisfying about working on cars. It feels a lot more meaningful to me.
Look at any unemployment chart since 80's and women have better job security than men. And the difference typically increases a lot in economic depression.
However we do live in a world where we have to prioritize because we each have finite time. The social issues of tech work will never be as dire as issues of poverty, child welfare or health care. Our privilege blinds us to this.
I hate this attitude. Well hate is not nearly a strong enough word for my sentiment, but I refuse to feel unearned guilt over somebody else not having what I have. I will work on improving my life and then they can work on improving theirs. I might have cared, once, but I have been hit in the head so much with attitudes like yours that I just don't care anymore.
I think it significant that you are not making a comparison to other intellectually demanding professions. A short order cook's worklife is worse than software workers, therefore let us be grateful. (The other day I made the same remark to a co-worker as we passed the guard in the lobby. "We're lucky!") It is true. Software development is indeed the best /blue collar/ career out there.
Software engineers need to look into work conditions of other intellectually demanding professions that meet the "charmed life" criteria you mention.
Just because other people have it worse, doesn't necessarily mean you have to settle for something that causes you unhappiness/stress/burnout. Yes, we are absolutely lucky and privileged, but the industry isn't all rosy either and there are lots of frustrated, unhappy and burntout developers out there.
I don't think the comparison is to the service industry, but rather to other in demand jobs that require the same level of education and don't get pushed into some kind of massive grind based on artificial deadlines.
If you get into software because you love the work, but then find out at this particular company, their goal is to make the work more boring and predictable than accounting. Only they also decide that you have to do this boring stuff for 50+ hours a week in order to meet whatever deadline they told their executives, you'd probably think about a different field as well.
It really depends on the company, on the freedom you get to do your job, and the kinds of problems you are allowed to work on. And the choices many people are given is to either work at an established company where all of the interesting work is locked up by the Senior people who will never leave, or work at a "scrappy" startup that doesn't have the budget to hire a reasonable number of people, doesn't know how to make a realistic timeline, and may not be there in a few years. It's possible to find a job or company with the right mix, but if you don't luck into one of those, the industry really can feel like a mug's game.
This reminds me of an amusing post that is... Well, not exactly a rebuttal as much as a re-framing:
>
Every friend I have with a job that involves picking up something heavier than a laptop more than twice a week eventually finds a way to slip something like this into conversation: "Bro, you don't work hard. I just worked a 4700-hour week digging a tunnel under Mordor with a screwdriver."
Realistically though, most of us working as developers wouldn't be working in a restaurant though instead. With a degree in maths, I would have probably ended up in something like statistics, science, finance or teaching. Not saying that those are better areas to be in (and one of the reasons that I work half-time is that I don't want to be more sedentary than I am) but it feels like a weird comparison for me.
I actually was working as a grocery clerk, then in a mail room. There are a lot of developers without degrees in the world. I was a nobody from nowhere and my vocational opportunities were pretty limited if I didn’t have the good luck of having a Commodore 64 when I was a kid.
We had a Commodore 64 when I was a kid. It was fun! I used to play games on it. That was the only thing I did on it - I guess I just didn’t know that you could do more than play games on it. Maybe I was a bit too young at the time, or the fact that it was gifted to my family who knew next to nothing about computers.
So I still ended up working at supermarkets and doing manual labour jobs until I was at university and started doing some tutoring.
I think it’s good to have had the experiences of doing some manual labour type jobs - it gives people context and perspective.
I think this piece needs to be taken with the context of the author’s work history which heavily colors her professional experience.
It’s easy to look up on LinkedIn. Once I saw it, her post made a ton more sense. I offer no value judgements as I know better than to do that (whether positive or negative, not interested in engaging).
> As developers, we lead a very charmed life that others sometimes aren't even born with the chance to intellectually compete for; the author neglects to address how lucky we are to be able to do this at all, let alone to then find employment in it.
As a normal, stupid person who interacts with coders frequently I find this to be not in the least unusual.
They simply don't understand what it is to be without a $4,000 apartment within walking distance of everything they could possibly want and so much money that figuring out what to do with it all is a real and ever present problem for them.
They love to humble brag about how the only people who shop at walmart are people who believe in despotic employment practices, never conceding to the fact that a lot of people shop there because they can't afford to pay $5 for a single apple (no seriously, at the Stanford Shopping Center there's a produce shop that sells a single apple for $5).
Dentistry is far from easy on the body and mind - high suicide rates, high toll on the body. Many if not most older dentists have some kind of physical ailment related to their job.
This is a perfect example of the tone that people (men) effect when they want to mask their own emotional reaction to feeling attacked with a veneer of logicism or scientificity. Simply state that her claims are anecdotal, and without even addressing the core of the argument you've managed to make them sound _unreasonable_. At least to those amenable to that kind of passive aggressive ad hominem.
The article author's claims are anecdotal by definition. She is recounting the story of why she doesn't want to be a software developer anymore. As readers, we can ask ourselves whether her story represents something that we feel is true in our own lives.
In a way, the comment you are replying to is at odds with article, and in a way the comment is in agreement with the article.
The comment you are replying to states that the physically demanding work that commenter is acquainted with is an alternative that makes software development seem like a good job choice. In that way, the commenter is disagreeing with the article author. However, the commenter also states that he is blessed by the ability to do software development style work. This is a sentiment that the article author shares, writing that she is blessed by the ability to build up enough money to safely try out other careers. In this way, both writers are in congruence.
I think you're reading sentiments that are not evident into the comment you are replying to. In my reading of that comment, there is nothing there that is attacking - just someone observing that they don't share the author's perspective, and explaining why. Bringing gender into the discussion also strikes me as an overreach. There is nothing about the subject that is related to gender - the article author is disenchanted with software development and wants a different career. The commenter, having had a less pleasant career first, prefers software development with it's flaws.
As a final note, I believe the word you are looking for is "affect" and not "effect" - if you mean that men are adopting a tone in order to make an impression on others.
But, once again, nice side ad hominem. Keep 'em coming.
-edit:
Here's the thing, I'm a dude, and I have worked construction and agricultural jobs. I'm not pissed because I personally feel attacked. I'm pissed because I consider HN one of the most intellectually-honest fora online, but whenever gender politics comes up, the pretense of intellectual honesty gets used as a weapon. I get pissed at what I truly perceive to be intellectual dishonesty, I really dislike it, because I love the truth.
One truth is that telling somebody to find a new job if they don't want to have to deal with neck strain or gender politics is clearly a dig at the woman's femininity.
Another truth is that intimidation is not meant to be felt by those exercising it (Pierre Bourdieu, in paraphrase). So of course men aren't going to naturally "feel" intimidated by a subtle implication that a woman is not up to the physicality of many jobs, or that she's being too sensitive. The dig wasn't aimed at them.
So, yeah, I'm bugged. But I'm bugged because I'm convinced that the HN community (as a whole) is just plain wrong on this point, and they continue to be, despite any new information that comes their way.
The "verb" section has two definitions for effect.
>1. To make or bring about; to implement.
>2. Misspelling of affect.
I believe the second one is the relevant definition here. Compare that to google's verb definition of affect:
>1. pretend to have or feel (something).
>2. use, wear, or assume (something) pretentiously or so as to make an impression on others.
Which seems a much more natural fit for your usage.
I don't intend this as an ad hominem. I'm not saying your argument is wrong because you misspelled a word. Spelling and grammar mistakes happen. In fact, another commenter has pointed out one of mine in this thread. I just know that the distinction between affect and effect is tricky, and wanted to point it out as I want my own mistakes pointed out so I can stop making them and become better.
>One truth is that telling somebody to find a new job if they don't want to have to deal with neck strain or gender politics is clearly a dig at the woman's femininity.
My reading of this line is that it is a repetition of the theme of the comment - software development has flaws, but these flaws, in the commenter's experience, are better than in other fields. For example, one might imagine a dentist strains his/her neck while staring down into the mouths of patients for long periods, or a pursuer of the culinary arts will be exposed to variations of gender discrimination less refined than the writings of James Damore.
>of course men aren't going to naturally "feel" intimidated by a subtle implication that a woman is not up to the physicality of many jobs, or that she's being too sensitive
The commenter is not suggesting that the article is not physically "up to" the demands of software development. The article author is saying so when she writes that:
>Over the past decade it has worn me down. I have regular painful migraines triggered by working long hours. I have the beginnings of arthritis in my neck. I’ve tried standing desks, balance board desks, treadmill desks, special diets, exercising more before and after work. Doctors, physical therapists, massage therapists of every stripe. I’ve spent thousands and thousands of dollars. I’ve hidden it because I was afraid it would make me unemployable. I’ve worked those long hours in intense pain
There is no shame or element of sexism in one individual being physically incapable or physically hurt by certain types of activities.
Thanks for the correction. I typed the previous comment on my mobile, and the autocomplete there is quite confident with apostrophe insertion, which I don't always notice and correct.
You are incorrect though regarding Skitt's Law - this sequence of posts is not an example of it. My comment is mainly about the subject under discussion, with a post script correction on a tricky spelling error. Your comment, which is purely a correction of a common spelling mistake, contains no errors so far as I can tell. Thus, you are the spelling pedant in this situation (even implying I should be embarrassed for making a spelling mistake) and yet, you have no spelling errors - exactly disproving Skitt's Law.
As developers, we lead a very charmed life that others sometimes aren't even born with the chance to intellectually compete for; the author neglects to address how lucky we are to be able to do this at all, let alone to then find employment in it. If it's not an industry that benefits you holistically, find something you love that doesn't strain your neck or involve gender-politics- dentistry for example, or maybe upholstery or culinary arts.
Personally, it's the hundreds of days spent in a dish pit, and burning my hands on a hot grill for 12 hours every night that gives me the ability and patience to appreciate this opportunity we have, and all of the different elements of it. I've had very few experiences in life that afford me this type of luxury or time to examine my surroundings and then have time to compose them in words for others to read. This doesn't make the author wrong, this makes our perspectives different, and perhaps a tour of duty in other professions would benefit the author.