Programmers -- the abused profession?
Programming is a tough field. To become successful as a coder one has to come in with knowledge, experience, ingenuity, quick wit and very good problem solving skills.
True, there are plenty of programmers out there who couldn't code their way out of a paper bag and will continue existing in a nine-to-five world for the rest of their professional lives drinking bad coffee and never writing much more than the mundane and boring.. but those people are not what I would refer to as "true professional programmers". They're.. just programmers.
The people I'm thinking of are the ones for whom programming is pure joy and excitement. They live for that moment of clarity when an incredibly complex problem becomes simple and solve-able with a few keystrokes and well placed braces. These are the *real* programmers. The ones who get to work on new and exciting things.. stuff that hasn't been done before.. They publish articles and gain admiration of other geeks worldwide. They get all the hot chicks too. Oh, alright that last one was a stretch.. and anyway not all great programmers are guys.
These people, these heroes of the computer world are probably the most abused profession in modern age. What other employees are not only asked to but expected to work endless hours of overtime without extra pay?
Have you ever applied for a job where the description included "50+ hours a week expected" ? I have. I'm a programmer.
In what other profession do people leave the office, drive home just to sit in front of the computer and work more, on their own time, getting no extra pay or even credit? Pull all-nighters on a regular basis simply because they don't want to stop working -- gotta solve that problem!
And in what other profession do these people not only do all this without a complaint but actually enjoy it!
We truly are the suckers.
I suppose the best compensation is that we actually do love our jobs and hell,most of us get paid pretty damn well. Even if it doesn't include overtime pay.
I like my profession.
Comments
The real test: would you do this work on your own time on the weekends. If you, you're a real programmer :-)
Posted by: Steve | February 4, 2003 05:51 AM
Corporate lawyers and investment bankers are two such examples. They don't work 50+ hours, they work 90+ hours. And they don't go home to pull all-nighters, they pull all-nighters in the office.
And trust me, there's no overtime. Sure, they're both well-compensated, but there's no direct correlation to time spent working.
Posted by: Tim Marman | February 4, 2003 11:42 AM
Systems Administrators can be very much like that. I go through spruts of addiction myself. Then they lay people off, I realize it doesn't really matter that much, and play video games instead.
Posted by: Dan Isaacs | February 4, 2003 12:26 PM
Programming is one of the fields I'm considering going into just because it seems so cool to be able to manipulate the computer and make it do things...
I was talking to some sales dude when we had to go get a TV. He was at Trinity learning to become a programmer. He said that there are times, that you just bring your pillow into the computer lab and sleep there because your there so long...
Posted by: Techie2000 | February 4, 2003 03:46 PM
Techie2000, I've found (after over a decade) I can only write good code for perhaps 5 hours a day. More than that, and my quality slides - I spent two hours the next day fixing the bugs I created but didn't see the day before. On rare occasions I'll pull an all-nighter, but I think most programmers are engaging in fallacy to work lunatic hours. A good programmer is easily 10 times more productive than a weaker one, so even if you spend less time, your productivity is actually a lot higher. In the other hours of the workday, I do research, code review for other programmers, surf the web, etc. At night, I think about the "big picture" - writing notes on a paper pad about ideas. Then I visit blogs and write meaningless comments ;-)
Posted by: Stewart Vardaman | February 6, 2003 04:26 AM
at least for lawyer, they can become partner and earn more money .. can a developer become a partner of a firm as well ? or are we just a bunch of expandable dudes ?
Posted by: [rux] | February 6, 2003 08:16 PM
Not to belittle the programmers out there, but I don't know about you, but have you ever been a network and systems administrator for a company that was mainly business people and programmers... Believe me, while there are times when you sit there and play Hearts all day, there are days when you are tempted to grab the nearest LART and chase employees. Especially when those programmers are windows programmers and the servers mostly run UNIX...
Systems administrators... With out us, you'd have nothing to do. :)
*runs and hides back at dslreports*
Posted by: badmagicnumber | February 6, 2003 11:34 PM
yup. everything true. except good salary. but true reward comes out from knowledge gathered through work polished by experience. what programmer experience through coding, while fokusing on to particular piece of code and rotating rest of it in sphere manner waiting for right moment where reflection will accomplish decision, is what soverign exeprience in a less perfect world with a less perfect classes. :)
"chose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life."
confucius
somewhere 5k b.c.
(dark side of the moon)
p.s.
i like this piece:
"In what other profession do people leave the office, drive home just to sit in front of the computer and work more" :)))
Posted by: ace | February 8, 2003 04:15 PM
Nah, programming is a sick occupation.
"As soon as we started programming, we found out to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs."
Maurice Wilkes, somewhen in the late 1940s.
Posted by: dave | February 9, 2003 08:22 PM
"I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs"
i believe that you could help yourself if you develop combinatoric memory. i have found that is better to reassembling code in mind. anyway better than stare into code (memory is much wider screen) and debugging just help me to do it faster.
Posted by: ace | February 10, 2003 05:19 PM
I'd like to give the big philosophical point of view of the great reward for a job well done but after: digging the knife out from between the shoulder blades many a time; putting in many 50+ hours a week and lets not forget working on holidays of course with no extra pay; oh yeah, reward here is the reward, getting laid off after completing your best work.
A programmer has no noble cause and saves no lives. We are all lemmings swimming to nowhere. Only to tire and end at the bottom of the ocean with those who came before us. I swam with blinders on focused on things that weren’t important. All that extra time spent, for what? Maybe a little extra bonus at Christmas, or line some CEO’s pockets.
Not anymore. It’s time to be home with the wife. It’s time to be home with the kids. It’s time to take a vacation. Its time to live for one’s self.
After getting laid off (not such a bad thing). I started doing contract work, now when I work late hours I get paid for it. For now those late hours pay for the vacation that my family uses to spend more time together.
I’m a good programmer but I prefer to be great father.
Posted by: Mr. Content | February 27, 2003 12:11 PM