Fuck computer programming as a career

Was a software engineer for 20 years. It SUCKED. You had to re-learn the wheel every other month with the "new, hot" language. Too much work, not enough respect or payoff. OR JOBS!

Yep and companies outsource cheap labor. IT Field sucks

Maybe you can write a program that helps you communicate using proper sentence structure?

I taught myself programming about 26 years ago. I'm still doing it. I enjoy my personal projects, but hate working for others. Website design is the worst. I've had enough clients go to hell the moment they pipe up like "My (wife/daughter/niece) took a class in web design, and she thinks.."

A bad day for me is when someone asks me to generate a nonsensical report. Other than that, most of my job is automated, they just don't know it. :-D

i'm not a fool. I was burnt out and became sick with an auto-immune disease that caused chronic exhaustion and brain fog so that I lost the capability to mentally organize sufficiently to deliver a product anymore. I learned only recently what my health problem is and my focus is on restoring health. Without adequate health you can't make any forward progress at all. People who have never had auto-immune/chronic fatigue cannot understand this. anyway, for me, regaining health is the key to repairing my career.

Not only do you need a great idea, and a functional site, but you need exposure! You can have the best site/idea/software in the world and if nobody knows about it then you will not succeed. It's far more likely someone with money will copy your idea then profit from it.

That's a shame, I like programmers they're nice folk (well all the coders I know and I know a couple) without them things would go downhill fast.

Perhaps you should all jump off and make your own company that would whoop these satanic whore companies with all their pyramid eye 666 logos and stuff?

You're smart folk so you could figure out a winning concept.

Sounds very familiar.

I'm a semi-retired web developer, and there have been times I removed my business link from a site because I was ashamed of what the client made me do for them. They're also quick to vent their spleen on you for every little thing that goes wrong, even when you prove that it was their own fault for not using the software as they made you design it to work. I had to add a disclaimer to my contract that their local ISP issues are not my fault or responsibility.

Yeah, the automation... I back up whole site databases with one click.

yes!! @ "vent on you even when you prove it was their fault"

I had one e-mail convo go like this..

David: I want you to use this template
Me: ok, done
Mike (David's partner): that looks like shit, I hate that template
David: what the hell were you thinking that template is awful
!?!?!?

Yess!! agreed @ this too -> "It's like prostituting you brain power for irrelevant shit."

Lol... that just happened to me a few weeks ago. Had a nice custom WordPress template that they approved, it ran for a month, then suddenly it was awful. Of course they weren't adding titles to their posts or using the Featured Image like I told them, but it was like pulling teeth to get them to admit this was what they ordered.

Programmers are treated like grunts, yet they run, create, and solve all the company's problems. The higher up "execs" KNOW NOTHING about the real tech stuff. Real wake up call when you are a programmer, you see how the real corporate world works...or doesn't work.

i wrote the post earlier in this thread about leaving programming 10 yrs ago and now being on food stamps after a subsequent business failure.

Just wanted to add - for me there were a few Epiphanic incidents that led me to finally leave programming. One of the most memorable and fateful was - I went to see the band Yes at the PNC bank Arts center in NJ. as an aside, the Art Center has a roof but open walls. Anyway, it was a warm breezy evening, watching the Sunset while listening to Yes, very close to the front, as in those days I could afford $300 tickets with concierge service.
It was a fantastic show and when I walked out of that place, it hit me like a ton of bricks how much I hated my life and felt it was all going to waste in a toxic corporate hell, working with people I generally despised as robots, writing code for big Pharma, which is tough because I hate Pharma as well. I felt like a pressure that had built up over a decade was squeezing my head like a vice, literally. It was not long after that that coincidentally my contract with Pfizer was cut short in favor of the Indian contractors on H1B visa's who were being paid much less than me. So I never went back after that.
One big mistake I made was leaving NJ and going to Sunny Florida. That place is a toilet full of poverty, and I would advise anyone else thinking of going there to think twice. By 2009 I finally managed to get back to NJ - which despite its reputation, has some very beautiful rural areas. And its not poor - at least not in my area. In fact its the fourth richest county in the USA.

Fair enough -- I absolutely sympathize with that! But I'm sure you'll agree that for the majority of new businesses, they most often fall through the cracks for that reason...

You guys need to learn to FW: and CC: your emails.

I think some a you burn outs need to form a partnership and develop logistical software for the corporate military. Maybe do something like that promis software where the doj stole it from the one programer husband and wife team than tried to drive em into bankruptcy.

They sued and got some cash out of it.

Same here... Been programming since I was 13. 42 now! I always used to love it but lately I can't even bring myself to do it. I always tell people that my job is like "factory work of the brain"....

I keep records; that's how I proved whose fault it was. But there's still a lot of resistance to the evidence, and they'll claim the wording was vague or misleading. I just won't work with clients like that in the future. They either are reasonable people who are willing to bend, or they'll have to get someone else.

Last Edited by Keep2theCode on 02/15/2013 08:39 PM

Exactly how I feel right now.

Everything in life is a treadmill. It just depends how you take advantage of the things that are available to you that matters. I used to program a lot, than I switched to web development and graphic design. I work from home and through a corporation, which I can also work from home if need be. I get month long projects, pound them out in a week or two, than relax for two weeks and do whatever the fuck I want.

I love this field, I make tons of money, and it's actually fun.

Last Edited by DoomTardSmash on 02/15/2013 08:42 PM

For me it's being out of a job in finance and not wanting back in since I loathe the fuckers and in return loathe myself for doing the work.

I'll be sure to steer clear of Florida, friend.

I actually had a similar style gig where I was able to work from home a good bit of the time and would also pound out a month project in a week or two. Problem is, the firm finally went bankrupt. That was a day of reckoning. I became so used to having all that time to myself it was a real shock when I lost it. That's honestly when I should have started something but at the time I was in no financial position to do so.

Question:

When working in corporate as a coder, do they compartmentalize the project so no one actually knows what they are coding for, or is it all right up front with this is what we want and how its to work, now get on it, we have to have a fully functional widgit to show the client by weeks end.

Everyone who cannot make it and wants to kick back, goes to Florida. Along with a lot of criminals who buy houses with their ill-gotten gains, then declare BK and under FL law they cannot lose their house. The worst behavior in the USA happens in FL, and they could not afford more than the minimum in social programs because of their bottom-feeding population.

But if you're making an income it's not bad because of zero income tax. If you're not making an income, NJ would probably be a lot better as long as you can stay warm, and access to NYC is a great thing.

Often it's like the first. Modern sofware design methodologies are designed to allow management to treat the coders like robots and to measure their performance in detail. Naturally every programmer is treated like an Indian contract programmer now. They don't care who writes their code.

It's good to get a job where you can't be outsourced. But you have to be sneaky to get them.

I decided a couple years ago to give programming another go - but this time I would not build my house on sand. I would only write applications for the love of it, try to sell them, and If I make any money, great, if not, well maybe the lottery will still come through, ;). At least I will have produced something I feel good about and enjoyed the experience of making.
In my case, I have always been a die hard synthesizer lover. So I learned WPF and am working on a midi interface to program a specific model legacy hardware synthesizer.
After PC I will probably port it to tablet. So if no one buys it, no problem, I want it for myself anyway. And if it does generate interest, then can always continue on that line with more apps for other models.

You think they want to pretend they are busy bees by constantly updating code used on internet based applications? Do you have any notion about the semantic web or the internet of things?

best thread ever.

Don't code apps for google play. There's really no money in it, and if you manage to make a bit, its the law of diminishing returns. Its already saturated and you can't profit without 15-20 paid apps.

Subcontract yourself out. I've seen sql database nerds make $150 an hour because the server is down and theiyre losing money

I really think this is the best niche right now. If you can rescue somebody's site or app or project, they'll pay through the nose for the emergency help.

I've worked the hardware side all my life in electronics. Yep, the shit is old and we don't built much of shit here anymore, just maintaining the old shit. Everthing now is routers, switches and servers. everyhting is a fucking network now. I agree with the OP and I am equally tired of the hurry up and fix it now, with limited documentation at times and barely a decent schematic if any. They want it fast but they couldn't fix it themselves if they had to. All they know most of the time is their keyboards.

Someone the other night posted a thread about learning web design because there weren't any jobs to be found. I said yeah, that's right, shoot for the moon but when the EMPs come your fucking software ain,t gonna run without a working transistor. Learn some fixin skills that you can barter with when TSHTF.

Fuck software. Hardware was running by itself long before software came around and together they are a great pair but one can live without the other.

The 1% that only know their keyboards and not how it works will be the first to scurry to the bunkers. When it's all over, their fucked.