A female relative was considering a career change, but even though the salary and perks sounded nice, the work itself seemed meaningless to her.
Another friend did make the jump, mostly for the money and career opportunities and she's struggling and feeling a bit demotivated. The CS theory is quite hard, and it's not something she's especially interested in.
These anecdotes don't prove anything, but I've been thinking for a while if the mental toll of this profession is really worth it.
We say that the others didn't make it into the industry, but what if the others are clever enough to avoid having to spend all day in front of a computer working on very abstract things that aren't really understood by most of the people in their lives, including their managers and a significant number of their colleagues.
Having to spend their free time studying just to keep up with the latest fashion, doing overtime, going through the interview gauntlet every damn time, getting shafted by incompetent business leaders and managers.
Programmers are kind of the punching bag of the software industry.
> "Having to spend their free time studying just to keep up with the latest fashion, doing overtime, going through the interview gauntlet every damn time, getting shafted by incompetent business leaders and managers."
This is why my wife left the industry to be a full-time mom/homemaker. The problems she solves are more rewarding and the time/energy she spends on things are more worth it according to her. Why would she want to get out of bed every morning to churn out JS for some scummy corporation every day when she could be spending time with our kid, teaching them new things, hiking/backbacking/kayaking/fishing with them, etc.?
She's appreciative that I go to work everyday to pay the bills and sees her position as the more ideal one.
Exactly...my wife struggles with the judgement of her former co-workers/classmates who deride her decision to forgo a career coding for some megacorp...I don't really get why there is such hoopla over going to work and trading your precious time for some money...I get why it is necessary, but not why it is celebrated as a defining thing about a person...a company can easily find someone else who can build/maintain their simple CRUD app, your kid cannot as easily find replacement parents.
I'm one of those who made the jump from programming to medicine. I consulted during medical school, but programming is much more fun as a hobby than it ever was as a career, and I'm past the bad days where I had sleepless nights and long call. Residency still sucks but even that is getting relatively more humane.
I'd never go back to programming as a career unless medicine became completely untenable, and I doubt that's going to happen at the level I'm at now.
Another friend did make the jump, mostly for the money and career opportunities and she's struggling and feeling a bit demotivated. The CS theory is quite hard, and it's not something she's especially interested in.
These anecdotes don't prove anything, but I've been thinking for a while if the mental toll of this profession is really worth it.
We say that the others didn't make it into the industry, but what if the others are clever enough to avoid having to spend all day in front of a computer working on very abstract things that aren't really understood by most of the people in their lives, including their managers and a significant number of their colleagues.
Having to spend their free time studying just to keep up with the latest fashion, doing overtime, going through the interview gauntlet every damn time, getting shafted by incompetent business leaders and managers.
Programmers are kind of the punching bag of the software industry.