

Computer Software Engineer in list of least stressful careers... WTF? - goldham
http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/109521/5-high-paying-low-stress-jobs?mod=career-worklife_balance

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russell
I think so. I like programming, and I work for smaller companies which tend to
have reasonable hours. Since the move from waterfall development to agile with
releases ever week or two, death marches are a thing of the past. Or have I
just had it lucky?

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stretchwithme
I can think of a lot of careers that are far more stressful, careers where
real people are dependent on you doing your job fast and well. All we have to
do is write code that does its job fast and well. That seems like a lot less
stress to me.

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benologist
Not to mention ergonomic chairs, air conditioning, coffee and messing around
on the net all day.

Reddit downtime is the most stressful part of my work really.

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jsz0
Programmers and engineers always think they have the most stressful jobs.
Nothing new there. Most don't have experience outside of the industry to
realize these are fundamental _plight of the working man_ sort of complaints
that apply equally to their jobs as they might to a teenager working at a fast
food restaurant.

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ajaimk
Think you might have read it wrong. This is an article about High-Paying, Low-
Stress Jobs which is what is says a CSE is.

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devinj
It mentions game development. Game development has extremely low pay for the
amount of stress it causes.

I mean, everybody wants to be a game developer. Any prospective developer is
screwed by supply and demand and a broken development model that allows for
insane crunch time.

Or have things changed?

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benologist
In some senses it has ... it's a lot more viable to be an indie game developer
and work from home now - flash, facebook, iphone, android etc ... all have
readily achievable barriers for entry.

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teaspoon
Does that not exacerbate the supply-demand problem?

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benologist
There's pretty much infinite demand - those markets are enormous and diverse,
iphones the smallest I mentioned with a mere 50m potential customers.

However it's very easy to make a game that doesn't stand out and doesn't make
money.

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jarek
That article was predictably bad, but what really clinched it was the claim
that civil engineering jobs are less stressful because projects have long
deadlines without giving any consideration to how much time the job actually
requires.

Somehow I don't think a five-year project with a deadline three years from now
is the most stress-free job around.

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potatolicious
Not to mention, the civil engineer's work can't be patched post-release, and
tends to have more severe consequences if it's buggy.

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jarek
Funny you should say, a couple of days after I read
<http://www.duke.edu/~hpgavin/ce131/citicorp1.htm> via hn:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1325393>

I agree, though -- being responsible for people's lives has a certain je ne
sais quoi when it comes to stress levels.

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j_baker
I don't necessarily disagree with the article, but it does a very poor job of
explaining why programming is low stress, aside from saying that some
programmers work from home.

