Reconsider going into programming for the following reasons:
1. Programming/software development/software "engineering" (if you will) compared to other disciplines like medicine, law, engineering or finance/accounting is a place where knowledge capital (the knowledge you acquire through formal education and work experience) deteriorates much more quickly than the aforementioned fields. Lawyers can benefit immensely from studying 17th century documents, medicine depends on centuries old knowledge about anatomy, finance people can still refer to books from the 1970's and benefit greatly. Can the same be said about IT but more specifically software development? What use is a 50 year old book to a programmer besides teaching you outdated stuff?
2. This is true for literally any white collar job but programming can be outsourced and is being outsourced the difference is there are legal requirements that demand that certain jobs be done here for medicine, law, engineering and finance/accounting. Unlike software development which is completely un-unionized. You have programmers making 70k a year while they net the companies millions in revenue.
Yes companies aren't outsourcing all their work to India en masse but it still does happen. Microsoft and bunch of other companies have offices there. But still companies are going to Eastern Europe, and when push comes to shove they're importing workers from overseas to drive down wages (see Indians, Chinese, Russians in SF).
3. Programmers/software developers are low status individuals. Programming is low status. If your company's main product isn't some software service IT/programmers are considered the lowest priority for everything. That means office space, technology, pay. To Chads and Stacies you're just nerds who are too extroverted. Also programmers are conceived off as super autistic and passionate about what they do so they assume you'll be happy to work 12 hours a day for below market-rate. This for the most part is true.
4. As per point 1 you have to stay on top of the new language or be out of work. Sure C# is similar to Java but try explaining to the Stacy who does the hiring that you could easily fit into a senior Java role. You have got to jump on each bandwagon before your well dries up (like retraining to learn data science. At one point this was so big people with degrees in business could make 80k doing data science work), because if you don't no one will look at you because they expect 2-3 years of prior experience using their technology.
Landon Edwards
5. CS degrees are a scam for the most part. Plenty of schools offer them but few do them right. However the reality is you don't really benefit from a CS degree. The 3 or 4 years you spend in school you could spend learning a particular language, framework or stack. Instead you learn advanced math, CS theory and other BS subjects that have no bearing on what your actual job is. If you want to touch anything CS-theory related or math based you have to have a Phd in CS, math, physics or at least a MS in statistics (if you go the ML/data """science""" route). Sure it's nice to know but it's not worth the opportunity cost (2-3 years spent in school doing this stuff could be spent earning 60k+ as a dev while you study this stuff in your spare time at your own pace).
The only relevant subjects you will take in a good CS program will be your Data Structures and Algorithms course, and your advanced Java/C++ class. Everything else can be easily self-taught or is not worth learning (e.g. programming language theory, operating systems, compilers).
6. It's a very ageist field. It's one of the few profession where being a 40 year old veteran in the field is a negative. Rather they prefer young guys with knowledge of the latest tech and with no commitments who can work overtime and code outside of work to keep their skills sharp.
Meaning you have to move into project management but as per point 3 you guys aren't deemed worthy or capable of managing yourselves. You need some Chad with an MBA to boss you around. Where as in other professions this is considered preposterous (for example that a non-surgeon would have command over another surgeon, or lawyer over another lawyer).
Elijah Parker
yes keep fudding cs please
Brandon Parker
So my final assessment is unless you can go to a top CS school that is heavily recruited by FANG and other big companies, or you can secure yourself some programming related work without a CS degree it's not really worth it. There are other non-college routes you can take. Also before anyone says anything I am aware of the state of engineering.
There are number of CS students from state schools in the SF area and California who can't find work. Some with master degrees and internships.
Jose Garcia
Anyone who learns to program and gets a wagecuck job must have some serious debilitating mental defects. There are so many avenues to express yourself independently and make money. Personally, I would go with toolz and other black hat related programs. Skids will pay so much money for quality programs.
Jack Sanchez
Bravo !
Problem is not all code monkeys will rise to Manager levels as it needs usual extroversion (you can learn it / fake it but end of the day you will be dissatisfied if you are faking it all time) and more STEM hypes continue to create never-ending supply of code-monkeys. So your seniority/experience actually doesn’t matter unless you are specialised in a niche like CyberSecurity. In all “sustainable” professions you usually are more valuable with your experience. For example MDs. I refuse to learn all latest-greatest frameworks that my workplace dictates. OS intervals / multithreading / scalability — they used to be interesting but ceased to appeal my interest as Agile BS starts spreading like wild fire converting creative devs to assembly line workers. Coding used to be good when supply was limited and few people knew it. Just like everything else it got commoditised. It’s actually very good for managers / employers and VCs. More young blood to exploit and it’s all the more better as those coders doesn’t have unions / cannibalise each other / without any standardised governing body (have never seen lawyers denigrating each other outside courts; they respect each other and registered to bar council who can attest)
Software is a good career for 3-5 years. Make as much money and investments you can afford. But invest something on yourself to find a sustainable career whee you will not be so tired to afford a sue hustle. Actually Enterprise Consultant in SAP / SAS / Oracle Financials are good stable careers as they have higher switching cost.
. 14 years experience in tech. Master of Statistics. Fluent in C++/Python/Go. 7 years in startups. Worked in SV. Pivoted to Nutrition career as couldn’t tolerate Agile BS. Happier now. Code as a hobby / write blogs / Amazon dropshipping etc.
Thomas Morales
CS degrees and Commodity Tech Startups are fucking meme. Smart guys earn more money by leeching code-monkeys in form of VC / Co-location Facilities / Incubators. Smart guys have already move to nanobiotech (molecular sensors) / synthetic biology etc. And AI is another fucking meme. Keep drinking koolaids and make your life miserable.
Brandon Anderson
Finally someone is making sense. Can I tip you for this post ? really !
Jace Hall
>shit career Explains why poo in loos overwhelmingly go into it.
>mfw my dad told me to stay out of it when I was young because he knew it was easily outsourced. Love you dad, you're the smartest man I know. Glad I got your smarts.
James Bailey
poo in loos are trapped, with programing you can produce product you can somewhat keep (not get stolen) that is useful to the world, so you can make a living maybe
unironically all programing will be outsourced because of the above, literally all of it
Angel Gonzalez
let me make a bitcoin address hahaha
Luke Hughes
the thing is that programming is very specialized and the human interaction component is done by business grads/extroverts. That get the specification from the customer and just send the requirements over to people who are outsourcing the work. The client doesn't have to interact with any of the third worlders you choose to pay.
I made the unfortunate mistake of going to a no-name school for CS.
Logan Evans
>1. Programming/software development/software "engineering" (if you will) compared to other disciplines like medicine, law, engineering or finance/accounting is a place where knowledge capital (the knowledge you acquire through formal education and work experience) deteriorates much more quickly than the aforementioned fields. Lawyers can benefit immensely from studying 17th century documents, medicine depends on centuries old knowledge about anatomy, finance people can still refer to books from the 1970's and benefit greatly. Can the same be said about IT but more specifically software development? What use is a 50 year old book to a programmer besides teaching you outdated stuff?
Literally the only reason that would matter is if you wanna read dusty literature and larp as a le classy individual from last century. People read to acquire information to fulfil a purpose
Kayden Butler
1. Nope, the syntax may change, but one you understand the patterns & general principles you can keep up. And you can always just stick with C & Lisp or something that'll never go out of date. 2. Outsourcing is a meme. Billion dollar companies entrusted their mission critical systems to bottom dollar pajeets and got owned. They're so consistently bad that I don't personally know a single unemployed White coder right now. And I get calls every few days from headhunters. 3. Low status eh? What kind of kike are you to even give a shit about that, even if it were true? And yeah, so the executives grit their teeth at having to have a bunch of bearded freaks sit in on board meetings - that makes them our bitch. We have all the power, we're the fucking wizards of the current age. I make as much money as any of them, and I could replicate their whole business if I gave enough of a fuck to run it. And my 12 years younger wife consoles me if the Stacies are mean lel. And the Chads? You mean the ones that spot me in the corporate gym? 4. See point 1. You don't have to chase every new thing you retard, do your own research on new tools and adapt as needed when theirs a real need. 5. The piece of paper helps land you your first job. If you're one of those self taught fuckers, you better be something special or I'm not hiring you. The piece of paper tells me you can at least stick to something for 3 years or so. 6. Ageist? Really? Redditfag fucking detected - I'm over 40 & like I say I get headhunter calls weekly. And really, starting your own business as a coder is so easy if you're not in demand (through being a no talent hack with no connections) you can always make apps, set up Internet businesses easily, write trading bots etc. Again, this is our fucking time, we own the world right now. So really it all comes down to this: git gud you fucking scrub.
Evan Foster
Oh and "outdated stuff" - if you haven't completed SICP or the Art of Programming (both "ancient") you aren't a programmer. I suspect you're a fucking pajeet that's struggling now the outsourcing meme is ending and this is all cope. Go shit in a street Rajeesh.
Nathan Nguyen
pretty much this. CS can be as shit or as good as you are
Isaac Cooper
How did you switch to nutrition and what do you do? I'd love to do something similar, I find nutrition interesting
Adrian Carter
>2. Outsourcing is a meme. Billion dollar companies entrusted their mission critical systems to bottom dollar pajeets and got owned. That's because they grew up in homes without any pc. That's no longer the case. Even poorest people can have pcs with internet now (eg. favelaanon). Wait 10 years and you today's 15 year old pajeets learning to code will take your job. The decrease in income is going to happen exponentially and dev incomes are going to go below western average wage.
Car industry in Detroit is good, but not perfect, comparison. >If you're one of those self taught fuckers, you better be something special or I'm not hiring you. You undermine your own argument. This is credentialism and it only starts to happen when there's an oversupply. In addition benefits from higher skill level ("self taught fuckers") are gone. Work used to be artisanal (skill level directly translating into value of output) but now it's industrial (no difference above minimum).
Jack Barnes
>tfw learnt python, ruby, JS, Node in my free time in like a month >tfw mech engi and can do data scientist jobs and mech engi at the same time >mfw CS had to take 4 years of education so they could feel intelligent even though what they do is simple to learn in a few weeks
Ayden Baker
> Low status eh? What kind of kike are you to even give a shit about that, even if it were true?
Status is the #1 thing women are attracted to. It's ahead of money, humor and height. It shares first place with good looks.
Asher Anderson
In addition to providing the best measure of how nice to live your life is.
Jaxson Butler
Data Science is like what SE used to be 8 years back. Every fucker has a python notebook, loaded pandas and mambling about “TensirFlow is so kool”. Just like when NY taxi drivers buying XRP would have been a “sell” signal, it’s a “sell” now. For God’s sake don’t be a “generic” data scientist, get a domain knowledge and then learn appropriate data tools. Like Credit Risk / FRM. Without that Alteryx or someone is coming. Training product managers will be enough and software will do the rest. No need to hire expensive engineers. Good luck.
Benjamin Clark
Just read some old cached versions of posts by Micheal O Church. The worst part is even if you love other stuff away from screen (let’s say you are faking extroversion), this god damn profession won’t let it happen. Semi-introverts will be more introverts / docile and controllable by MBA faggots. After all those study and toil, why should I allow these MBA faggots to roam around with their ducking elite degrees often without any operational experience. Moreover, Self-cannibalisation (imagine two engineers are angrily debating about Type Safety of Scala and Python with any regard to business value) and self-denigration is pretty common here. MBA faggots on one hand and tunnel-visioned engineers mesmerised by their kubernetes - 100 ways to run automated tests - slack porn - beautiful code - without any interest to learn Lean Canvas / Design Thinking / Customer Reserach / Problem Domians — makes you mad.
What about industrial automation manufacturing and networking
William Young
Do it as side hustle for business / fun / algorithm-trading. Just don’t do it for MBA faggots under Agile rituals BS. Ask a doctor and record his/her reaction - “How many patients you have seen yesterday and how many are you planning today. We have a delivery velocity of 20 cases / day irrespective of the complexity of each one. Wait have you installed Slack yet to collaborate with other doctors while you are seeing patients”.
Parker Miller
I keep hearing about how general programming is shit, save for enterprise related programming, such as SAP consulting. Is this true? I know a guy who is a SAP consultant, earns a good salary, but has a background in logistics, not programming.
Noah Evans
I quit my DevOps / programming job. it sucks.
Ryder Taylor
those professions are different, coding in a team is usually the norm, while I haven't heard of doctors working in a team too often, I guess the surgery room would be a different scenario but these things are time critical so they can all just handle it face to face. Those agile rituals are an unfortunate necessity because shit coders are shit.
Gabriel Cooper
In SAP (in SAS up to some degree), programming takes a back seat. What gets (and should be) more important is domain knowledge you acquire over years as a Techno-Functional consultant. Bonus: you get exposed to business challenges more not in “how do I parallelise this loop”. Also job is more stable and SAP has tremendous “switching cost” adding to the stability and allowing you to do a side-hustle.
Cameron Murphy
Thanks for the advice. I'm considering going into that field - I'm studying an econ/business degree and only have basic knowledge of programming (Java, VBA and SQL).
Hunter Howard
Unironically, I always felt the same as OP. Thanks for breaking it down.
>Do it as side hustle for business / fun / algorithm-trading Also ironically this
Benjamin Cook
ABAP/4 is SAP’s language. You may not need to code as most of the stuff are already there as modules. Your job mostly will be to understand a business challenge and implement / architect it using the system. Basic programming is enough. Good choice and good luck.
Re: keep an eye on Finance modules.
Jeremiah Ward
That's great news! Thanks again for the advice! If you don't mind, are there any other skills/training you can recommend? Would a short course in project management be beneficial?
