

Why a Career in Computer Programming Sucks - apsec112
http://www.halfsigma.com/2007/03/why_a_career_in.html

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apsec112
My personal thoughts on this: For smart, generally capable people (ie, the
people who actually become programmers), programming is a mildly bad but not
terrible career. You make a decent salary, you can fairly easily find a new
job in any major US city, and you don't have to wear a suit or do anything
really dangerous or physically taxing. On the other hand, the upward mobility
is quite low, the salary will never really be great, and you get little
respect or social status (if you care about that).

~~~
hga
You left out one thing, which this essay explicitly buys into: vicious age
discrimination. It's very hard to keep yourself fully employed in this career
unless you do one or more of the following things:

    
    
      Become a multi-client consultant.
    
      Specialize in embedded programming.
    
      Get a a serious government clearance.

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gaius
Completely disregards this little thing called "domain knowledge". Maybe no-
one cares if you're just building websites, but in serious software, knowing
about the problem your application solves in the real world does matter, and
does get more valuable over time.

