I'm at year 3 and already lost it. If I have to code one more day I'll probably just say fuck it and quit. I can't stand looking at a single line of it anymore, projects aren't fun, "being a ninja rockstar programmer" (puke) isn't fun, only thing that's good is the salary.
I used to have so much motivation for other things, now I'm too burnt out to go to the gym. I hate this. Do I have to be an autist to love this career or something? I feel like the only people who genuinely love it are the asperger neckbeards or the CEOs who most of the time don't even know how to code, just cash in the money.
the median age of coders is 30, so those who don't rise to management almost always change professions.
James Foster
Idk why people don't realize being a programmer is one of the worst jobs there is. Programming is fun even you are working on your own projects, it's a different thing shitting out code 8h a day for someone else.
Kayden Walker
This. Programming is not even a career nowadays. Once you hit 30 you are in a dead end. I have made some cash though. I'll soon change career to something with less bull (hopefully).
Brody Ross
Short term, focus on your "work life balance".
Long term, start the transition into management or architecture, where you won't have to code anymore. Maybe also save as much money as you can for early retirement.
Brayden Price
>explosive growth in the past 10 years >even still, half the people are over 30 >dead end
Bentley Gonzalez
The explosive growth happened because it's well paying but boring as shit. You ruin your health and start balding early from the stress if you don't transition into management etc.
It's why all these recruiter try to lure people in with being a rockstar, ninja and what not to make it sound more appealing. They'll start off with fun side projects, and then they'll be crushed by reality.
It's always funny when you see those coding conventions where they'll constantly reference Mark Zuckerberg and how far you can go when you're a "coding pro", but in reality:
"Even though he has expressed love for programming, Zuckerberg majored in psychology, not computer science.
His peers don’t place him in the uppermost tier of skilled coders. On TopCoder, a site where coders improve and rank their skills, he's only in the third level. Adam D'Angelo — the former CTO of Facebook and founder of Quora — is in the top level, "red." (The ranking goes grey, green, blue, yellow, red)."
Luis Hall
Not OP but you've made me nervous. Almost 30, and I still make below 6 figures. What do people switch to if not programming?
Liam Wright
Idk. I'd go for those jobs that by law require a certain title/certificate/license that costs considerable money. My understanding is that these jobs have less applicants and have better conditions.
Michael Carter
We told you time and again, the field is crowded as fuck, you're going to end up in a shitslog of a deadend job and here you are.
>rise to management I don't see this anymore. Most smaller shops fail to grow to the point where they have the room to move up. Medium and larger ones would rather grab a random MBA off the streets than promote the guy who has been carrying them for the past years. Megacorps will flatout fukken blacklist you. I've had my resume pissed on by JPM for three years straight and still have to deal with retard headhunters pushing their nonsense.
>>explosive growth There has been in process automation, but that stuff looks short term at best.
a friend of mine went into software sales and now makes 250K/year, so that's what I'm planning on doing.
Blake Brooks
Just enforce an 8 hour workday, and quit if that isn't being respected. If you're not a garbage programmer then you have the leverage to go wherever you want. With 3 years experience you should have plenty of offers.
I also don't stress about stuff like deadlines, because I can only do what I can(in an 8 hour work day), and it's management's fault if their dreams are bigger than their budget.
John Foster
Better go into car sales. Software projects have extreme risk.
Kayden Perez
>Well paying Only in America. I graduated in a top latin american university, I am a AWS Certified Professional Solution Architect, have an IQ of ~135 and 2k points in StackOverflow and I make $18k/year, which is 4x more the average poorfag in this shithole but in America I would be making 10x more. Meanwhile "minorities" that graduated with me got offers from FAANG
Jacob Stewart
I feel you man. I'm based in Germany and a senior developer will only get up to 68K here.
Meanwhile digital marketing Chads are crossing six figures. FOR WHAT THOUGH?
Brayden Brown
>2k points in StackOverflow kek. thats low.
Hudson Nelson
For what it's worth, I'm a few months away from 40 and I've been coding professionally for about 20 years now. There are days in which I wonder why the fuck I even bother but truth be told I love building solutions for problems.
The reality is if you get into this field, you are going to spend a lot of time writing CRUD screens whether you want to or not. The secret to surviving and prospering in the face of that is to try and find joy in what you do.
What I find joy in shifts every few years but lately I'm on a dual track of pushing clients towards more FOSSy solutions and developing extremely performant solutions in a reasonable amount of time.
While I can't definitively claim that I'll still be doing this in ten years time, I'll probably always indulge myself with some form of coding whether I'm paid to do it or not. Building something out of nothing, even something mundane and boring can be amazing if you give it a chance. But hey it's not for everybody and that's okay.
Isaiah Cook
if you break 6 figures in the south/midwest or 200+k on the coasts you'll be fine. just drink like the rest of us. The biggest problem is job insecurity. I can't wait until the flowers on this board go through a real recession. You'll be doing dead end work at a short term position for pennies. Pajeet and stacy will be gunning for you this time. Learn2code was such a good idea right guys?
>t. 10+ years in software as a dev
Colton Turner
try applying for remote positions if you're so great at what you do, it's a lot easier to do than getting a H1B1
but I suspect that you're not that great though, none of the things you listed are impressive
looks like you choose the wrong IT field, I'm pretty happy as a network admin.
Cameron Jackson
I am you but I have permanent home office and no certification
Owen Campbell
Is MCSE worth anything?
Adam Myers
>MCSE No dude. I'm talking about REGULATED professions. Pilot. Doctor. Train driver. Ship captain. Engineer. MSCE is just a certification, looks good on your CV but it is not required at all for any job. There is nothing preventing Mr Sheklesberg from hiring literally anyone instead of a nice MSCE-certified programmer. I do have a Java certification, it is essentially worthless, anyone that can code in Java is on foot with me. I also have a Cambridge english certificate, also worthless, anyone that spews a few words is on foot with me. Don't fucking invest on worthless papers unless they allow you to get where others can't.
Lincoln Carter
My boss is pushing me into business architecture and it fucking sucks. Makes me want to kill myself
i go tout after fking 20 years everyonee ripped me off its worthlessas a job
Jack Perez
its run by people who have no interest in it -- specifically in the UK chancers, criminals every low grade character in the fucking universe wants a slice of it, because there is so much money NOBODY is qualified
Luke Bennett
>Terry shitposting beyond the grave
Brandon Richardson
same I just don't feel like myself anymore.
Michael Wright
What's a good career that's still technology related?
Ayden Torres
machine learning maybe?
Alexander Taylor
Yes I am not that great. I have only 2 years of experience. But I am for sure at the same level of an American who makes 5-10x more.
You believed you were a rockstar lmao you will never be a rockstar they lied to you t. Retired rockstar
Dominic Walker
>Medium and larger ones would rather grab a random MBA off the streets than promote the guy who has been carrying them for the past years Random MBAs don't have technical experience. For example Google requires technical skills for SWE managers. Instead of trying to hire an MBA that has technical skills (impossible), it's easier to promote a SWE into a lead/manager position.
Cooper Sanchez
>boring as shit For code monkey positions, maybe. Software eng is hard/interesting. I'm not saying it's fun necessarily; that depends on your personality, but if it's boring then you're clearly only doing grunt work.
If you're not the type of guy to enjoy solving math problems then you fucked up getting into CS.
Caleb Davis
Go sysadmin route. You'll do a little bit of everything
John Bell
>Do I have to be an autist to love this career or something Fucking obviously
Liam Cox
Guys it all depends on where you work. If you work for a marketing agency, it's crap because nobody respects you.
Just get in company with more experienced programmers and learn how they and the company makes their money. Then when you're mid-30's start on your own projects.
It's not rocket science.
Lucas Gomez
Do you know how expensive it is for someone that can't develop to start his own business? Not only that, because they know nothing about architecture, they're gonna fuck up the entire project. It's a gods gift to being able to make your own project without investment money and without some asshole breathing on your neck. That's the dream, you know that's the dream. That's why you got into it in the first place remember?
Matthew Johnson
Get into cloud and use your coding skills to be a bash/powershell king
Austin Carter
I've never seen a sysadmin do anything. It's like they work 20 minutes, sit down for 7 hours and 40 minutes but still leave with six figures / year.
David Evans
Right now I am making fuck all money as a fullstack junior, but in all seriousness I am not that great yet. I was thinking of looking into freelancing for amerifat companies that pay like 50$ an hour which would mean I'd only work for 4 hours a day and still live like a king in EE. That is, once I know my shit. Any useful advice on that career choice? I hate commuting, hate being the bitch of my boss and hate being chained to my workplace for 8 hours a day and all the retarded bureaucracy that comes with it.
you don't. You go for Google or one of the big ones, burn 5 years of your life, living in a shithole while working on your own project, save as much money as you can by living in a van, showering at a gym and at the end, take your million dollars and retire to somewhere like Arizona.
Kevin Lee
Being a good programmer doesn't matter. You have to luck out and create something that becomes a meme like Minecraft, Twitter, Instagram and so on. So basically luck. And yes autistic fuckers are the ones that enjoy coding all day.
Adam Cox
I wanted to study this but on the first year we saw C and C+ and XML and mysql on the terminal and I became bored as fuck and dropped.
Now im making money off adsense and if that fails bitcoin will be worth 1 million in 5 years anyway.
Isaiah Gonzalez
So just become visionaire, start a company and hire a few autistic neckbeard codemonkeys who won't shut up about how "coding is a super power" ? Got it.
Camden Foster
right and who's going to pay you for whatever your company produces?
Chase Bell
Dunno. Throw the word blockchain around a few times when talking to an investor?
Hudson Scott
I built scripts to do all my codemonkeying
Austin Kelly
does that still work?
Jaxson Long
It did for a colleague who quit and made high six figures with his agency in the last 8 months, so probably? If not shilling Flutter will do the job
Zachary King
you better get on it quick before boomer investors figure out blockchain is a meme
Gee I am already on my way to 29 and I dont know what else to do. I am still sticking around at my entry level job that I got after college, maybe its time to fuck off and do something else then.
>Most smaller shops fail to grow to the point where they have the room to move up That's what they get for not using a lisp
Aaron Gutierrez
I burned out after 11 years. I don't know what I will do next. :(
Sebastian Hughes
I worked 6 month in the industry. >We already have a shitty C app for that, but make us a Java version Was OK. Had to learn Java from zero, but the pain of doing nothing was bearable. >Here's a shitty Java app developed by an intern with no documentation. Please make it lighter so it doesn't lag on and debug it. Job done, holy fuck, I literally re-wrote everything. Deployment day arrives, put it on a CD with latest JVM and check it works on another machine. Be 10pm. Be called by guy that can't make it work on site.
That's when I gave up. I looked into the future, and saw nothing but pain.
Any kind of work is like that - boring shit, but programming like you say at least pays back decently.
Michael Phillips
I'm a consultant and I travel a lot. Its pretty comfy desu I enjoy it.
Easton Bell
you got lucky
John Ross
I know user. I work for a small company (200ish employees) and they treat us really well too. Traveling can burn some people out but I like being on the road. Lots of miles and perks too.
Daniel Harris
>I can't wait until the flowers on this board go through a real recession.
I can’t wait. Tech bros have ruined my city and my stable union job isn’t going anywhere no matter how bad it gets.
Landon Sullivan
Thats why its an awesome career and why I got into it.
I've been a professional developer for about 10 years now. This is the best description I've seen in a while.
Unfortunately people don't understand that. So you have thousands and thousands of people flocking to programming-related degrees because they heard it makes good money - then they find out they're no good at it, they hate it, or both.
I teach a couple classes a local university every now and then and the number of graduating students that are going into non-related jobs baffles me. All these people slaving away for 4 years to get a degree in Computer Science and they accept jobs as salesmen, recruiters, or generic "office" people making 40-50k.
Josiah Taylor
I got a job in Mech Engineering and I work at a software company doing Consulting.
Nathan King
>Why is software development always listed so high on these kinds of surveys if it sucks so much? There is a legitimate conspiracy to flood the market with software engineers. Companies are tired of paying developers 60, 80, or 100k a year - especially as software becomes more and more important to companies - because it's their most expensive cost of doing business.
Every high school counselor tells kids to go to college for Computer Science. NGOs like "Hour of Code" funded by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, etc., are incorporating "coding" into school curriculum for kids as young as 5 - and are shilled by congressmen and even the President. YouTube is flooded by those "a day in the life of a software engineer" videos trying to glamorize the profession. I'm almost positive that in a couple of years, they're going to launch children's shows on television with a super hero whose power is software development.
Now schools are seeing massive waves of Computer Science students and they can't hire professors fast enough. Industry leaders are telling them to incorporate more "practical" CS classes (i.e. code monkey classes), so they start skimping on CS theory and occasionally even math requirements to graduate more people.
>Once you hit 30 dude, you're fucked in the head. i'm 52 and still kicking ass in this industry. when i got started (age 14), i wondered what it would be like when i got bored with programming, but it hasn't happened yet. maybe my enthusiasm works for me and my clients.
Isaiah Thomas
>FOR WHAT THOUGH? for bringing in the dough. programmers are a dime a fucking dozen, but a good marketer who can drive sales is not easy to come by.
Jaxson Morris
>I've never seen a sysadmin do anything. that's because they set everything up to run correctly. a good sysadmin is one you never see because shit doesn't break.
Joshua Johnson
I am 30 and I lost all motivation, I dont even know why. Only good part of the day is when I am finally done with work and have a big glass of whisky.
Dominic Perez
Germany is shit for programming. Try to get a Job in the US. Or even UK can be better because of tax. You might also find jobs in NL if you have a masters you might have a reduced tax rate.
Colton Ortiz
>Be 10pm. Be called by guy that can't make it work on site. >That's when I gave up. >I looked into the future, and saw nothing but pain. Yeah, if, inherently, you don't like solving problems/puzzles, then programming is not for you.
John Miller
I'd like to go into marketing because the SEM guys at our company make 90.000 - 120.000 Euros per year which is unfair since us developers are stuck at 36.000 - 68.000€. But I don't have the charisma those guys have.
Samuel Anderson
I just wrote this in another thread. But I had the same problem. Worked on heavy coding for a few years. Got sick of it. Wanted to do something artistic instead. Managed to switch to UX design and now I get to draw shit all day. The salary is lower but the job is more fun and I get free time without stress. Best choice I ever made.
Justin Reyes
I lost it 6 months after college and started an EE PhD. Now I'm getting paid as a McDonald's employee, but at least I don't want to kill myself every day.
Nathaniel Sanders
You see them come in for 2 hours a day, check their PPC accounts, report that the meeting with a client was successful and they convinced them into investing more into our company and then they're free to fuck off.
so this user is probably right I guess.
Camden Morris
>but at least I don't want to kill myself every day I feel that
Nolan Wright
Very much in agreement here. Don't let the idiots in business push you to fuck up a work/life balance? Deadline unreasonable? Tell them. On call too much? Push for hiring. Not enough time to do work outside of meetings? start cancelling meetings or blocking off entire days. If you're a reasonably good programmer who has made a sizable contribution to the company it would cost years of your salary to 1. Fire you 2. Find someone to replace you 3. Waste another person's time training your replacement for 6+ months 4. Waiting for that person to determine what the fuck you were doing.
Another major recommendation, especially if you enjoy coding in your off time: don't do any company projects, or even study for things you do at work. Let your company influence your off-time and you'll get to a point where you don't even want to look at computers anymore.
These fucking Zoomers these days don't know how much easier they have it.
>Gen X oldfag also kicking ass
Lincoln Howard
Oh yeah and request remote days as well. I currently work remote 2 days of the week and generally get more done those 2 days than I do in weeks of coming in.
Good engineers with any amount of time greater than 6 months at a company are nearly priceless to those companies. The very last thing they want to do is replace you (this goes for any country besides China. If you're a programmer in China, you'tr just out of luck)
Dylan Anderson
It's not that, I hustle. I don't have a CS degree. Worked my way up from pulling cables. Most millenials/zoomers don't have any hustle.
Not that user, but I agree with one exception. Web development. We've had developers who worked her for 5 years replaced by random Indians and Chinese people and then put on permanent junior salary, bascially. I think web dev is so easy and has such a low barrier to entry that the "valued engineer" thing doesn't work.
However, our mobile dev team has yet to be replaced. Even the boomer who's been here for 12 years and refuses to use anything but Xamarin for apps.
Ethan Edwards
No problem, I have autism, this is basically my daily life without working
John Gray
can you lend me a bit of your autism? I need one more year of saving up from my dev job before I can start my own business
Levi Thomas
So, you don't like your job? Welcome to adult life kiddo, it only gets worse from here.
Bentley Parker
The ABSOLUTE state of non-autists
Colton Campbell
This. Not only do I code at work I also code on weekends/holydays/vacations.
Caleb Ortiz
I think I really just hate people. I was fine when I was freelancing, but companies suck. I dont think a different job would be better though.