Why a career in computer programming sucks. ⇒
12 March 2007, mid-morning
My program at Waterloo was filled with lots of dudes just like this; I always wondered why they were studying Computer Science. Anyway, this dude apparently hates his job, and decides that this must be because the whole profession sucks. Yeah. Update: Follow-up here. (Or better yet, here)
This is a post from my link log: If you click the title of this post you will be taken the web page I am discussing.
I think a lot of people signed up for CS degrees because they thought they’d be swimming in money. A lot of those people failed out pretty quick though.
I have no idea what ATOP is.
by ramanan on March 12 2007, 5:03 pm #
Oh, yes we had that funding as well. I just didn’t know what it was called. I’m pretty sure I was accepted into Computer Engineering at Waterloo because of that program.
by ramanan on March 12 2007, 6:55 pm #
Haha, wouldn’t those people who wanted to be swimming in money done something a little more closely related to money, say banking? =) Or accounting or business?
When you think programmer you think Bill Gates, and people from the office. So unless you think you’re going to be Bill Gates…
by Victor on March 12 2007, 10:43 pm #
There are a lot of fallacies in the article, but there are couple reasonable points:
Cubicle farm; only 1 of the 3 places I’ve work put software developers in their own office.
Lack of tools/equipment needed to do the job; I know of one place that shelled out big money to replace all the (single) CRTs that the developers had and replaced them with a pair of flat-screen LCDs (very nice); but it is too frugal to give them graphics cards that support two monitors. (What was the point of spending all the money?)
by Ryan on March 12 2007, 11:22 pm #
So, I admit I wrote my comment before reading the article. =p
I don’t really know much about programming, so I’m interested certainly to hear more comments like Ryan’s so that I can understand it a little better.
One interesting point in his article was the outsourcing and bringing in foreign labor. If he’s right about the profession being low prestige and encouraging people not to enter it, then doesn’t moving it offshore make sense? Since if it’s not a good profession for “white American’s” then move all the jobs away and stop training “white American” programmers?
His suggestion to students to look into public accounting isn’t that far off the mark, and there are certainly a lot of new accounting students these days (more then twice as many at Waterloo’s program then when I was present). So he’s probably not too far off on that call. However, interestingly, public accounting jobs (despite all the hype to the contrary) appear to be filling up now a days, and I think we will be going into a hiring slow down sooner then pundits predicted.
by Victor on March 13 2007, 1:31 am #
I thought that suggestion was funny since a lot of accounting jobs are being outsourced to India. (Never mind the fact accounting is pretty far down most corporate food chains as well.) He does bring up some good points, but many don’t apply solely to the tech field. For example, I don’t know anyone that has their own office right now.
by ramanan on March 13 2007, 8:12 am #
Weiguo’s first point is a good one: you want to work at a place where your department is a revenue generator, not a cost the company has to put up with.
by ramanan on March 13 2007, 2:10 pm #
Thanks for the info. That makes sense with most companies, if it’s your core, then you’ll treat those working in it better.
Based on your comment Ram, I might wish to shed some light on accountants.
There is a possible threat of outsourcing accounting jobs to India, but these are bookkeeping jobs. Bookkeeping involves various activities such as recording invoices, writing invoices, putting in journal entires, etc.
Public accounting is highly unlikely to be outsourced successfully. Public accountants go over accounting rules, audit and analyze financial data and provide accounting advice. Those who move from public accounting to industry jobs are reasonably high on the food chain, normally Controller, CFO or COO after 5-7 years in public accounting. This is given the very complex nature of accounting rules, and the significant penalties for not adhering to them.
The people you are thinking of perhaps are the A/P clerks? These people do not need to go to university, and don’t even always need an accounting degree. You could probably pick up a job as an a/p clerk without too much difficulty.
by Victor on March 13 2007, 2:28 pm #
> The people who worry about losing
> their jobs to India are either a)
> students who don’t know what the
> actual job market is like (IE the
> Slashdot crowd to which Ram
> referred in another comment), or b)
> crappy programmers.
>
> Joel Spolsky writes more about this if you want to read up, Vic
Joel Spolsky’s marketing effort for his software company’s products involves a lot of telling programmers what they would like to hear.
For example: that if only they study Spolskyism enough, which I think encourages buying or recommending Spolsky’s company’s products, they will have cool prestigious jobs and won’t be vulnerable to outsourcing to India.
Telling people that if they watch trends and try to look ahead, they are crappy programmers, is argument by insult. It is not logical and it demeans your reader and yourself.
by Crappy Programmer? on March 26 2008, 4:52 pm #
I agree that Spolsky talks a lot of smack, but his advice in that particular article is pretty good. He doesn’t go on about Excel or Windows — awesome.
And to be clear, I wasn’t “telling people that if they watch trends and try to look ahead, they are crappy programmers,” I was saying that if you don’t like programming don’t become a programmer. Shocking, I know.
by Ramanan on March 26 2008, 5:16 pm #