I dunno, the film Office Space was filmed in 1999. Some of the managers in Corporate IT are still the same as depicted in that film. I actually have 7 different managers in my current role. Only 5 are legit, 2 of the others manage other teams but if i am fixing bugs in our code base that effects them then they chase me for updates. And there was this other manager who thought he was my direct manager as well but really wasn't.
aren't some programmers 10x more productive? with remote work hold down 10x jobs and give 1/10x effort
Then i would have 70 manager chasing me for updates instead of 7 Actually reading the contractor forums many are servicing multiple clients during lockdowns. Makes more sense via company structure..
While not an ideal outcome, still a far better outcome than partying for 4 years, ending up with a worthless degree + $80k in debt, and then end up working a near min-wage job that doesn't require a college degree because that's all you can get.
Find a group where you are the only software developer in the group. Then you have full control over the code. If you can get away with it, don't write documentation...job security.
Yeah for over ten years now. I like the actual programming. The long hours, maintaining buggy code that's been in place for years, dismal architectures made by those who don't understand data structures, and general disrespect all irritate.
As it's friday permit me to be long winded and introspective. When I was a kid I wanted to be a progammer (actually I wanted to be a systems analyst, which at the time was a rather grand job which basically involved telling programmers what to do. It seems to have morphed into business analyst, which is now a rather low ranked job where you get squeezed between the business and the developers and they all hate you. But I would have started as a programmer). From the age of 7 when I learned BASIC on a TRS 80 (that ages me!) I did loads of hobby programming. I did a year of computer science at uni, then dropped it. I was like the kid who wants to be a professional footballer, who is then faced with the reality of getting up at 5am to clean the 1st team players boots before doing laps round the training ground. I enjoyed programming as a hobby, but not as an academic subject. Over the next 20 years or so I did various jobs, obviously using computers to a degree but nothing more serious than an excel macro. In my final job (systematic hedge fund PM) I ended up doing quite a lot of coding. But it wasn't my job exactly; I was writing prototype and backtesting code but not production code. I had a team of professional developers who did that. I didn't have to write tests or deal with annoying disrespecting users and their pesky business requirements (I was the annoying user). I had to put up with other peoples buggy legacy code, but it was someone elses job to fix it. I had the long hours and the annoying meetings, but that was just because I was working in a managerial position in the finance sector. And I was being paid properly for it. In a funny sort of way I was still a hobby programmer, except hobby programming was part of my job. So when I retired from finance, well naturally the first thing I did was write code. And I've probably spent more time writing code than doing anything else since then (more time than I've spent writing books, or doing the odd bit of consulting). I am not writing code for the sake of it or working on 'fun' projects, it's all about backtesitng and trading, but it's still writing code. And I enjoy it; clearly, as I don't have to do it but I still do a lot of it. In a weird sort of way I've basically achieved my dream of being a hobby programmer without the distraction of a proper job to get in the way. And I know I'm extremely lucky, and I wouldn't want to be working in a job I hated. And though I could probably work as a journeyman developer I'm not sure I'd enjoy it all that much. GAT
GAT, I agree. Thing is, a hobby programmer can get away with stuff somewhat-working or good-enough. A (good) professional programmer has to get things exactly right. The client will not agree with "it mostly works and that 1% of the time that it doesn't, you just re-run it and it works". And those tiny niggly details and tracking down bugs that happen only to 0.1% of your customers is the stuff that is soul-killing drudgery to a lot of people. Whereas to programmers-who-were-born-to-the-profession it is a challenge to be overcome that is inherently satisfying.
A few things most don't realize about being a Programmer: 1. The buck stops with you. If your code doesn't work, it's on you--your bug. There's nowhere to hide. It takes a certain amount of guts to put your code out there to process real data. You must have confidence in your code. 2. Financial applications are ultra-high-pressure. Not the post-trade or regulatory stuff, I mean front-office. I've worked on these systems, with real fund money, and let me tell you: If there's a problem with my code, heat's on! No sleep until it's fixed. (For this reason I carefully log, so that I have a head-start if there's a problem) 3. Programming requires a lot of creativity. It requires solving difficult problems in innovative ways.
One could make a case that doing anything purely for money is prostituting yourself. Maybe prostituting body is better than prostituting one’s soul.