

What happens when programmers don't want to program - samg
https://medium.com/@gerstenzang/what-happens-when-programmers-don-t-want-to-program-f7281820e4f2

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marktangotango
>> A shocking number of some of the best professional programmers I know
aren’t interested in programming for the rest of their careers: 40+ hours a
week for 40 more years. Sure, the high comp and benefits will keep a lot of
them around for a while. But that doesn’t seem like a permanent solution,
especially as we lose our most experienced engineers.

I feel myself growing weary of this field, but it's not because of the
activity of writing code, but observing the same folly, again and again, at
one company after another. And it's only getting worse.

To illustrate, when I worked a large corp, they had business analysts who knew
the business, and actively engaged development. When I then went to
medium/small companies, they typically had no business analysts, indeed no one
who was capable of working with development to define projects and work out
the edge cases.

Then seeing this formalized as 'agile' development were the developers become
the business analyst, and devops where the developers become the sys admins, I
wonder, what is it everyone else at these companies, what are they doing
exactly?

~~~
angersock
_what is it everyone else at these companies, what are they doing exactly?_

Enhancing shareholder/VC value.

Oh, and making more money than us, and claiming credit for our hard work and
understanding.

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tluyben2
I have been programming fulltime for 30 years which is 3/4th of my life and I
still find it magic. Although I now do a lot more management tasks, program
standing, go on long walks or to the gym while crunching harder problems or
when in need of creativity, I never stop feeling great when something I made
works. It's why I recommend everyone to at least do some coding; it's often a
great creative outlet.

When I am coding I forget everything and often I make too long hours. Not
because I have to but because there is so much more to code; work coding, side
project coding, hobby coding... I cannot see how I would ever start to dislike
it.

By the way; if there is a shortage of coders (as the article says), how come
the demand is not a bit more flexible as in allowing people to work from
different locations? I know for instance there is a large demand in Silicon
Valley while here (in Europe) many of friends, who would work quite a bit
cheaper than the prices I see flying around there, sit idle. They just cannot
or don't want to move.

~~~
vellum
>there is a shortage of coders

There's a shortage of companies that are flexible about paying higher
salaries, offering remote work, and doing away with whiteboard interviews.

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animefan
I consider myself to have a lot of mental stamina. I can focus for hours if I
have to, and sometimes to job really requires it, e.g. you need to get
something fixed for a customer. I don't consider this an unreasonable part of
the job, but it takes a mental and physical toll that needs to be managed. As
I get older (early 30's now) I expect to have less inclination and ability to
do this kind of intense mental workout, and therefore move more towards
management. My understand is that manual workers like builders tend to do a
similar career transition.

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spacemanmatt
I'm reading HN. So there's one data point.

------
angersock
I'm not gong to finish being a professional software engineer any time soon,
but I can certainly see the end from here. Like, it's no longer inconceivable.

The basic problem is that developers want to grow and solve new and
interesting problems--and at the very least, this billing of them as
'programmers' pretty much implies a mentality of factory assembly that doesn't
fit.

It's the core structure companies and businesses that burn out/burn through
developers, and until that changes, you'll keep losing talent.

It's not enough to pay us decently, though many don't do that. It's not enough
to give us a direct stake in the revenues of a project, though almost nobody
does. It's not enough to give us interesting problems to solve, though few
even have those problems.

You've got to do _all_ of those things.

We're collectively sick of solving problems that have been solved before, and
also of self-inflicted problems that anybody with half a brain should've seen
coming but biz wouldn't listen to tech.

We're sick of working with people that aren't clever and don't want to learn.

We're sick of making me-too apps because that's what gets funded.

We're sick of having to play catch-up on constantly evolving tech, made so by
firms who are playing the VC moneyball game and who derive their profits from
marketing and pushing tech that honestly is no great improvement on what's
gone before and which may simply implode when the money dries up.

We're sick of dealing with and babying customers who literally do not
understand the value we create for them, and for having a profession with
social cachet only slightly above child molestor.

We're sick of being managed by people who _by definition_ don't understand
their business well enough to teach an idiot savant how to run it
automatically (which is exactly our job description).

 _That 's_ why we don't want to program anymore.

EDIT: Interesting on the downvotes...fat fingering things on mobile, or what?

~~~
amalag
There are also lots of problems that we are just not interested in solving. A
lot of convoluted business logic that any sane person would just not want to
muddy themselves with. It may be difficult, but it doesn't feel worth it.

~~~
Terr_
This seems an apropos place to recycle a rant from Reddit:

[...] This happens when the managers/executives try to push the problem onto
IT/engineering, blithely assuring everyone that "The New System" will somehow
paper over and solve their org/process inconsistencies.

This means that the engineering teams gets requirements for one tool to handle
the multiple teams' workflows and business-logic, stuff which nobody seems
truly interested in harmonizing long-term. Thus your tool needs a fuckton of
special-case logic and workarounds, leading it to become a monolith of
spaghetti. Even if it started as a bunch of separate systems, they become
slowly woven and pulled together by all special-case webservice calls and
database state-sharing.

Then, after release, some people in suits spend a while patting each-other on
the back, claiming to have materially improved "how we do things"... up until
somebody wants to make a seemingly-simple change that conflicts with all of
the other pick-up sticks.

P.S.: In a weird way, the implication that the programmers can fix those big
issues is flattering, but it fades quickly as you realize:

1\. You probably aren't actually being given the freedom/power to solve the
real problem.

2\. If you were to solve the real problem, the company would be underpaying
you.

3\. Even if the first two things cancel-out, the end-result is a PITA.

