
Coding as a Career Isn't Right for Me - tomreece
http://www.bipolarco.de/coding-isnt-right-for-me/
======
FreedomToCreate
Wonder what this guy would say to the countless millions who toil away in
factories, big box retail, and accounting offices. None of these people do
this for the love of the job. They do it because it needs to be done and they
get paid for it.

I wouldn't be so critical of your feelings but you whine about how society
didn't let you do what you want to do on your terms. Change your
circumstances. No one is just given everything. Its a combination of
motivation and luck. And that luck comes from generating opportunities for
yourself. So it all up to you.

I hope you get your debt paid off. Move to the cabin, but if you ever want to
come back, just remember that society has her dues.

~~~
sf_rob
I like your post and think it's valid, but I would say that coding in high
school/college doesn't prepare you for the real world at all.

In high school I was hacking on silly personal projects. In college I was
solving cool algorithms, puzzles, and games. But in the real world most
programming roles are pretty menial / not a super exciting domain / consist
largely of process, code reviews, QA, debugging.

~~~
jacalata
My friend has a HR degree where she got to study psychology and organizational
principles and how to motivate people and run a business, and now she does
paperwork all day managing employee sick time and vacation time and making
sure all their certifications are up to date. I'd be surprised if any degree
fully prepares students for just how much menial work they'll be doing, partly
because those bits don't require a university course to learn.

------
meric
You remind me of me.

I'm 26. I'd much rather work on my own stuff than my company stuff. I have
this plan after my current job to burn up some of my savings and spend a
couple of years to build something I'm excited by. I've been paying off
student debt.

I think I'm okay with working a 10.30-6.30 job. The pay-check is what will
grant me my freedom. Every week I work, I save 3 weeks of expenses. I've
already enough savings to pay off my student debt two times over. After
another year I'll have enough savings to live as I do currently for 5 years.
(Can double that if I don't take the train every day & eat out during office
hours).

 _The product is important. Does it help someone? Does it make their task
easier? Are the bugs in it tolerable? At all three of my big boy jobs, I 've
been so far removed from the user that I have no clue if the product helped
them or not. This hurts and it hurts a lot._

You're writing test automation. Think of your users as your colleagues. You're
not saving random people time. You're saving time of people you go out to
lunch with. All you have to do is ask "Are my tests saving you time?" And
that's something.

~~~
derekp7
Don't forget that once you get enough saved up, you can live off the interest
alone (i.e., retire). So at your rate, 5 years gives you 15 years of expenses.
At 7% return on investment, that money will never run out.

------
Mithaldu

        > I want to get away from coding for you and code for me.
        > I don't like coding for you. I don't think any of us do.
    

I'm sorry you haven't found anything to like and be excited by, but i assure
you it is out there. I personally have never worked in a company with much
process, so i haven't experienced that kind of hell. But do keep in mind,
there's also another kind of hell: Where everybody is a cowboy coder and walks
all over anybody's changes; where everybody codes 9-5 and then doesn't think
about code ever, never improves, coding the same as when they started, 15
years after they start.

I've found my enjoyment in taking such companies and teaching them how to
produce quality code without compromising on speed. I've found my enjoyment in
encouraging such companies to take on young coders who i can then teach, and
see flower into excellence they could otherwise only reach with years of
investment.

And occasionally there is the one or two projects that are just for fun, or
really touch many many customers.

Don't give up and blame the world. Look harder. Maybe even change your
language. I mainly do Perl, which gets a bit of a bad rap by people who don't
use it. But compared to companies doing e.g. Java or PHP i find a marked
difference in culture. Maybe you're just stuck with the wrong focus in your
skill set?

Or, if you feel brave: Maybe your problem is that you keep getting into the
kind of company that wants an employee. Maybe you can change your situation by
becoming a freelancer. Keep in mind that as a freelancer, you eventually, if
you're good enough, end up in the position where you may fire clients. You
also tend to see a lot more projects of much more variety.

~~~
tomreece
Thanks for the advice. My first job was full stack Java backend (SpringMVC)
and jQuery hell front end. Second was full stack, Python backend, AngularJS
front end. My new job is writing Protractor tests for multiple AngularJS
applications.

I enjoy writing Python. Javascript isn't that thrilling to me. Not super
excited by the countless FooJS libraries and Promises and async everything. In
Protractor if I want to get the text of an element in the DOM, that's a
promise. I mean come on? .getText() should not return a promise. I'm not a
Javascript expert, so this will sound whiney-ish, but I think Promise hell is
a thing just like Callback hell is.

~~~
stonith
I escaped the boredom by becoming very proficient in a popular open source
project that I found interesting and that multiple companies are looking to
hire for. While the business requirements for the features I have to add may
come from my employer sometimes, for the most part I'm really just working on
upstream and making it better. I've also job hopped a fair bit to try to find
a job where there was motivation on both sides before getting to this point,
so your tale is somewhat familiar.

Perhaps you could aim for something similar. There's employers out there (eg.
RedHat) that will happily pay you to hack on open source if you can show that
it's in both of your best interests. That way you get to choose what you're
working on going in. Even just specialising a bit more might make things more
interesting as you'll be hired to work on <thing you actually quite like>
instead of some random stack put together by someone who may not have a clue.

Good luck in your search :)

------
danso
Hey, kudos for thinking this:

> And then I want to get away from coding for you and code for me. I don't
> like coding for you. I don't think any of us do.

Too many people think of coding as only a career...thus, we shouldn't teach
coding to non-comsci-majors because not everyone should be a programmer as a
job.

Programming is an intellectual and productive pursuit in it of itself, and
there is a huge difference between programming for someone else, and
programming for your self and for what you care about. It's no different from
writing prose. You could love to write for yourself, or for your own novels
and projects...while having a writing job (technical writing, journalism) that
you dislike. But it's not the writing itself that's the problem.

~~~
mabbo
That said, I've met a few developers where it's just their job. They aren't
passionate about code they way I am- their passions lie elsewhere, and that's
fine.

Being passionate about software development can help you be a better
developer- but it's not a prerequisite by any means.

~~~
tomreece
I often feel like I'm surrounded by programmers who just come to work every
day, write as much good enough code that they can, and then go home. They seem
really happy. I want to be like them. But my care gets in the way. My desire
to question why we do things the way we do only to be told "that's just how it
is" is difficult to hear and only frustrates me further. The happy people
around me don't seem to ask questions, they just do.

~~~
palimpsests
It sounds like you're conflating caring about the quality of ones work with
having a poor work-life balance.

Also, I think that pursuing happiness in and of itself is quite boring and
demonstrates a lack of agency that we have as human beings... We need more
than just the feeling of constant pleasure in order to have a fulfilling life.
One very basic example: if you were happy all the time, how would you actually
know? Being aware of the contrast between various emotional and psychological
states provides a lot more fulfillment versus always residing in a single mode
of existence.

------
dudul
Damn this is one bitter guy indeed. First of all, _everything_ you do as a kid
is more fun than doing it as a professional. I sure loved to play soccer as a
kid, but guess what? Being a professional player is full of annoying things
like training, lifting weight, being careful with your diet, traveling all the
time, etc. And that could probably be said about any career. Being a
professional at anything is tough compared to toying around as a child, that's
how it is.

"At all three of my big boy jobs, I've been so far removed from the user that
I have no clue if the product helped them or not." Even during the second job
at a "small startup with 15 employees, 5 developers, no testers." ? Hard to
believe.

"I don't like coding for you. I don't think any of us do. We only do it
because you pay us way too much money and we have loans to pay off." Feel free
to write whatever you want about your point of view, but leave the rest of us
out of your vast generalization.

~~~
vladimir-y
It looks like that kid becomes an adult, and eventually realizes that adult
life is full of compromises.

------
staunch
If programmers made twice as much money, it would be such a great job. And yet
salaries have been relatively flat for over a decade (adjusted for inflation).

Something is wrong that salaries never seem to rise with demand in Silicon
Valley. We know there was a secret deal to help suppress wages at one point,
but it's not obvious why it's been so successful. Is it new graduates,
immigration abuse, internationalization, illegal price fixing?

A programmers union could probably force tech companies to double salaries.
They all could afford to pay it.

~~~
Apocryphon
Silicon Valley presumes to disrupt everything, why not labor laws? And by
disrupt, I mean in favor of the worker, and not management.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
Comment of the day- thanks :)

------
faitswulff
I reached the same conclusion recently. I'm about the same age, but instead of
going through college to get there, I was one of the early "bootcamp" grads
(though I took issue with my so-called bootcamp).

Yes, we should be glad to have these high paying jobs doing knowledge work.
But there is something thoroughly dissatisfying about writing another
meaningless CRUD app that spins the cogs just a little faster. More
efficiently? Who knows. Besides, it probably does one of three things:
ecommerce, ads, or glorified coupons. What's the point?

Coding isn't the right career for me, either. I do think it's a useful tool,
but I think I've got to do something else with my life. I wish you luck
figuring what that something else is, as well.

------
nstart
I almost cried while reading this. <virtual hug to tomreece). I'm 27 too and
hitting my 5th year in software. Last year I worked in a company that had 20
employees; 10 people were related to dev. Everyday in there was a slog.
Shipping code was a convoluted affair that happened once every 45 days or so.
Testing was all over the place, and in a bid to do "excellent design" there
were classes connected to 5 levels of interfaces and abstractions and multiple
circular references.

During that job, I made and shared two side projects for the first time in my
life.

But the 9 to 5 hell was impossible to deal with.

Fast forward to now, I'm remotely working with a company that pays me a great
salary. I live in South East Asia and that means my savings are fantastic.
Bonus is that the company is amazing. Dreamt of joining it since 2012. But I
digress.

Here's where I get to the point. Try and find this kind of remote work, and
come live around here for a short while (Sri Lanka). Heck. I'd be happy to
talk to you about it. Put it in perspective, with a salary of say 80k USD,
you'll pay off your student loan in one year guaranteed if you live a little
frugally. Hope this helps

~~~
tomreece
Awesome story friend. I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors!

~~~
nstart
Let me know if you want to take it up :)

------
sdenton4
'One says to me, "I wonder that you do not lay up money; you love to travel;
you might take the cars and go to Fitchburg today and see the country." But I
am wiser than that. I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes
afoot. I say to my friend, Suppose we try who will get there first. The
distance is thirty miles; the fare ninety cents. That is almost a day's wages.
I remember when wages were sixty cents a day for laborers on this very road.
Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night; I have travelled at
that rate by the week together. You will in the meanwhile have earned your
fare, and arrive there some time tomorrow, or possibly this evening, if you
are lucky enough to get a job in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you
will be working here the greater part of the day. And so, if the railroad
reached round the world, I think that I should keep ahead of you; and as for
seeing the country and getting experience of that kind, I should have to cut
your acquaintance altogether.

'Such is the universal law, which no man can ever outwit, and with regard to
the railroad even we may say it is as broad as it is long. To make a railroad
round the world available to all mankind is equivalent to grading the whole
surface of the planet. Men have an indistinct notion that if they keep up this
activity of joint stocks and spades long enough all will at length ride
somewhere, in next to no time, and for nothing; but though a crowd rushes to
the depot, and the conductor shouts "All aboard!" when the smoke is blown away
and the vapor condensed, it will be perceived that a few are riding, but the
rest are run over- and it will be called, and will be, "A melancholy
accident." No doubt they can ride at last who shall have earned their fare,
that is, if they survive so long, but they will probably have lost their
elasticity and desire to travel by that time. This spending of the best part
of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during
the least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India
to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the
life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once. "What!" exclaim a
million Irishmen starting up from all the shanties in the land, "is not this
railroad which we have built a good thing?" Yes, I answer, comparatively good,
that is, you might have done worse; but I wish, as you are brothers of mine,
that you could have spent your time better than digging in this dirt.'

Probably my favorite passage from Walden...

~~~
tomreece
Excellent.

------
pyrrhotech
Work is called work because it isn't supposed to be fun. If your's is remotely
tolerable, only requires your time from 9 to 5 and pays you enough to cover
all your necessities and even some luxuries you are better off than 95% of the
world. Life's a bitch, then you die. At least you make enough money to not
have to do it past your 40s if you don't want to.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
Eh, no. Work is called work because it's supposed to produce something. If all
it does is drive you nuts, waste your life and fill the world with garbage,
then what's the point of it? You might as well give it all up and go tour the
world with nothing but the clothes you wear.

And what's that I hear, about getting a pension in your 40s'? Wasn't that what
the Greeks did wrong, that they wanted to get a pension in their 40s, and
that's why their economy died?

~~~
jacalata
Nobody mentioned pensions, the comment was saying you should save up your own
money.

------
davekiss
Thanks for writing this, Tom. Coding as an employee isn't right for me,
either.

By and large, programmers generally make great employees. Many brilliant
people are able to knock out their assigned and existential objectives by
solving complex problems and are handsomely rewarded with hefty checks. But,
if you ask them questions outside their comfort zone about, for example,
running a business, designing for the user, or marketing, most would be quick
to point out that those aren't responsibilities that fall on their plate.

To me, it sounds like you have a fervor for being more than just an employee.
You want to take ownership of your work. You want to use your brain for your
own benefit, not for some other corporation to rent out. You want the
grittiness of taking on multiple roles and welcome being side by side with
your users.

There are many of us out here, coding as self-starters, founders, freelancers,
remote workers, and small business owners. It isn't for everyone, and if you
are happy or content with your full time job, then it's probably not for you.
That's ok.

But for those of us who have found ways to make it work outside of what can
feel like the soul-crushing environment of a typical full-time workplace, the
devs building on their own, grinding out client work, doing remote year,
making products - ask any of them, and you'll find that coding as a employee
wasn't right for them, either.

I'd encourage you to read my post on the way I fell into this line of thought,
but for me, I was coming from a job that I actually really liked:
[http://davekiss.com/getting-started-with-passive-
income/](http://davekiss.com/getting-started-with-passive-income/)

You don't need to code as an employee to code as a career. Be honest with
yourself; are you an employee, or a founder?

------
tomreece
How Software Companies Die \- Orson Scott Card

[https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/jokepg/joke_19970213_01.txt](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/jokepg/joke_19970213_01.txt)

------
outericky
Change your lifestyle temporarily, go heads down and pay off your debt in 12
months. Probably could.

Alternatively, there are plenty of places to work that won't make you feel
like a small cog in a giant machine.

Self improvement comes from, improving your situation. No one will do it for
you.

~~~
tomreece
This is my third try at improving my situation, each time the money has
increased and is helping me pay that debt off. So I'm getting closer on that
front, but I don't want the money. I want to be excited to wake up every
morning and go build something amazing.

~~~
nostrademons
Money buys freedom. Save up a couple years of living expenses and you can go
do what you want for a couple years. If you're prudent, this could also
develop the skills that'll make sure your next job is both more fun and more
lucrative than your past ones.

Actually, you don't even have to quit. Just knowing that you _can_ quit, if
you're not happy, changes how you interact with your employer. Don't like what
you're doing? Do something else, either there or at a different company.

~~~
tomreece
> Just knowing that you can quit, if you're not happy, changes how you
> interact with your employer.

I think if I KNEW this, I'd have a significantly different perspective on
things.

------
YuriNiyazov
You call yourself "Old, Tired, and Bitter" but it actually sounds like this is
your first, maybe second job out of college.

~~~
tomreece
Third. I've only been at it for 6 years now. I'm 27. I'll correct the title
for you to be "Older, Tired, and Bitter"

~~~
YuriNiyazov
Did you pick these companies to work for, or did they approach you?

~~~
tomreece
I picked all three. The first was a medium sized startup (90 employees, mostly
sales, only 5 devs). The second was a small startup (15 employees, 5 devs). My
current job is a huge hosting company with like 3000+ employees in my
location.

~~~
YuriNiyazov
There's something wrong with how you evaluate your potential employers, then.
I understand how one can make the mistake that working at any startup would
mean that it is going to be an exciting job. If you want to be excited about
what you are working on, the fact that a company is a startup or a huge
company isn't important; the question is always, what are they making, and are
you excited about that?

~~~
tomreece
They're all making glorified crud apps, stuff that I could make solo. I'm not
excited by it.

~~~
cgh
Well, you seem to work with web applications. So no wonder. In my opinion, in
terms of fun, interest and challenge web programming ranks slightly above
Cobol, for exactly the reasons you state.

You mentioned you wrote a game. Game programming might be something you like
and not every place is a sweatshop, although you have to be discerning.

Embedded/low-level programming is cool too. I used to write router firmware,
and I also worked on a sql engine for a time. Neither job had anything to do
with "like" buttons or CRUD.

So maybe the issue boils down to equating "programming" with "web app".

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
>> Well, you seem to work with web applications. So no wonder. In my opinion,
in terms of fun, interest and challenge web programming ranks slightly above
Cobol, for exactly the reasons you state.

Hey. Lay off the COBOL, especially if you haven't actually done it (I don't
know if you have).

I've done web dev for the last four years, since graduating. I now learn
mainframe development, with COBOL and JCL (and also REXX recently). It's fun.
There's a lot more actual, honest-to-god, programming to do in a mainframe job
than there is in web development. At least you don't spend your every waking
life trying to shake the angle brackets out of your eyes (XML, right?).

Most of my web dev work was in back-endy stuff btw, primarily C# and a little
bit of RoR and Java. Which means 60% configuration, 40% actual coding and even
then, the actual coding is implementing some framework interface. That sucks
the life right out of "programming" (because it really isn't).

~~~
cgh
You are right, I shouldn't badmouth Cobol. I've never worked with it
professionally but I did have to learn it in school. And let's face it, it's a
good career move to learn it as there's going to be a "Cobol crunch" soon and
the opportunity for relatively low-stress, high-paying jobs is good in that
area.

------
xupybd
Work is work. But you can learn to self motivate, and even learn to enjoy the
boring bits. However if you think that it's out of your control, what you
enjoy and what bores you, it can be hard to improve your enjoyment.

------
russelluresti
My suggestion would be to move away from the idea that there's only "code for
you" and "code for me" \- try to "code for us."

If you're passionate about something, there's bound to be a couple of
companies that are working in that field. Find one that shares your values and
code for them. It can still be frustrating, but you move forward every day
because you care about what you're doing.

------
aaronchall
I had a graduate degree and could barely make rent for more than a year before
I finally got a job as a programmer.

At my lowest point, I used to pick up a large $5 dollar cheese pizza to go, a
tomato and onion from a street vendor (for toppings on my pizza), and stretch
4 meals out of it.

You should be grateful you have the opportunities you have, and that you're
able to work a job that would allow you to pay off your student loans so
quickly.

As a programmer, you have one of the best jobs that exists. You have a low
stress job and you make a lot of money. (The median programmer makes more than
twice the median wage - 37 versus 17/hr -
[http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm](http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm)
) - your financial freedom will come much more quickly to you than it will for
most others.

You ought to do your best to learn to find meaning in your work and be
grateful you have so much self-direction in your work when so many others
don't.

------
scrabble
I actually quite enjoy my job. I still have side projects that I also enjoy,
but my job is wonderful along with the company I work for.

Also, this stuff: "I didn't care how my code read, or if it was maintainable,
or if it was DRY, or if it was tested, or how long it'd take me to write, or
if features were separated into logical chunks"

Right at the beginning is where you lost me, because even when I was in grade
school, I still made my code maintainable and separated into logical chunks
because I had to read and maintain it whenever I got a chance to get back to
it. My side projects are all built with these things in mind.

It is good that you have decided that coding isn't the right career for you,
but I wonder what is? I would also be careful of making harsh public
criticisms of your employer. It's easy to figure out where you work, and these
are the types of concerns that your employer should be able to work with you
to address.

Best of luck.

------
derekp7
My biggest problem with coding for an employer, is that they then own
exclusive rights to the code. Essentially, you are solving a problem. If that
problem is unique to the employer, then that is fine for them to own the code.
But if the project involves writing a bunch of potentially reusable routines,
such as what you might find in a third party library, it just seems awful that
you can never solve those same problems again in the future (as more likely
than not, you will end up typing in about the same code).

So it really seems like you are giving up a piece of your mind whenever you
program for someone else. For an example of what I'm talking about, see XKCD
664.

~~~
dudul
Well, it's not like they pay you to write code for them right?

It is only fair that your are, in theory, not allowed to reuse the code who
wrote for them at your next gig. And to be clear, we all do it. If you've
implemented it once you can redo it in no time.

~~~
derekp7
I agree that it is fair, it just kind of hurts a bit is all. Especially if you
did something you are real proud of.

I wish there were more programming jobs that were similar to photography --
you get hired to do a shoot, the customer gets a copy, but you keep the
copyrights.

------
softwaredev__
I agree that programming at work isn't as fun as it is when you're just
hacking away on side projects. But there's also that satisfaction of learning
your craft well.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
_I have NOT internalized the disciplinarian culture._

I think you have:

 _I 'm_ fortunate _to have had jobs since I graduated college._

Edit: I mean that it shouldn't be down to luck whether you have a job or not
and how productive you can be in the limited time when you can be productive,
in your life. It's rotten that not everyone can. We're doing human
civilisation wrong, if it's down to luck whether you live a satisfying life
doing fullfilling work, or spend your life in slavery.

------
grillvogel
the entitlement is strong with this one

~~~
tomreece
Indeed it is. Haven't I accrued debt, worked hard, and earned the right to be
in a job I should be happy at? I deserve that. So do you and so does every
body else.

~~~
jkereako
Happiness is not a right. This kind of thinking will perpetuate your misery.

~~~
Apocryphon
It's enshrined in the American Constitution.

~~~
krapp
The Declaration of Independence declares a natural right to "life, liberty and
the _pursuit_ of happiness[0]." Happiness itself is not enshrined as a right,
certainly not by the Constitution[1].

[0]
[http://www.founding.com/the_declaration_of_i/pageID.2423/def...](http://www.founding.com/the_declaration_of_i/pageID.2423/default.asp)

[1]
[https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CDOC-110hdoc50/pdf/CDOC-110hdo...](https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CDOC-110hdoc50/pdf/CDOC-110hdoc50.pdf)

------
williamle8300
He's essentially admitting two things:

1) I hate my job... but! 2) I do it because I need it

Ok. That's fine. Just shut-up if you need the job. No one needs to hear about
your woes and whinings if you're conscionable about the contract you're
entering in to.

It's downright childish if you don't reject/quit a job if you don't want it.

~~~
pcurve
3) make up your own interesting side projects that will benefit your manager,
company,and customers, short term and long term. If you don't, you risk
remaining as a permanent cog. You want to transform from a cog into planetary
gear set.

------
kwalazulu
Googled your name and found your Linkedin page. Rspace is getting pummeled by
AWS and Azure offerings, never work for a company that is going down and has
little or no innovation.

------
puppetmaster3
He is not a programmer. He is a tester.

I'd love to see his CV.

------
sly_foxx
$65k in student loans to learn programming? The author is clearly an idiot.
Programming can be learned from home for next to nothing, because you have all
the tools you need there. It's not like you're a surgeon and you're working
with expensive/complex equipment.

~~~
hanniabu
I graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering and decided to quit my job
to learn programming at home. Took me a year to get to the point where I'm
comfortable and know my way around.

However, just because I taught myself doesn't mean that it was free. I had a
year of lost wages which is about 65K, so all in all it costed about the same
amount for me.

~~~
sly_foxx
He had 4 years of lost wages + $65k in debt. When you're in college, you don't
work. So, again, he's in much worse situation than someone who learns
programming at home in 1 year.

~~~
hanniabu
I went to college for 4 years as well, so again, you can say we were in the
same boat: 4 years of lost wages + $65k in debt for him, 4 years of lost wages
+ $65k in lost wages for me

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
The difference is that you lost that money, but you don't owe it to anyone.
Nobody can come over and take your stuff because you owe them that money.

And then there's the matter of a debt being an amount agreed upon by all
stakeholders, whereas your "lost wages" are just a number you calculate in an
arbitrary manner, which may or may not reflect reality. Maybe you did lose
$65k by not working. Maybe if you hadn't gone to college you'd have been hit
by a car and you'd have lost far more than that. Maybe you'd be unemployed.
Who's to say?

Money is not money unless it's in your pocket (or bank account) or in an IOU.

