Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Is programming a worthwhile occupation?

This blog has a new home:
http://selectioneffect.info/blog/programming/is-programming-a-worthwhile-occupation/

There's an old hacker adage that goes: "After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless". 


This pretty much sums up why people become programmers in the first place, and why most of them stay programmers.  There's a significant anti-management mentality among programmers, and really among IT engineers/technicians in general. 

It's felt that doing is more important, because it actually achieves something, and you can make a visible difference in the world around you. Management is just an obstacle to getting things done, because they never understand the technological concepts involved, and always choose a shortsighted economically driven path, instead of doing things "the right way".

Some people become managers, and others stay programmers. Is the one better than the other?

From a financial point of view, the manager will always have a higher salary. The programmer, while perceiving himself as being smarter and more educated than the manager, will always get paid less.

The only way for a programmer to overcome this is to become a businessperson as well, like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, or on a smaller scale like any of the successful iPhone game developers.

Doing this will mean that you don't have to work for anyone, and everything you do will be directly beneficial to your own well-being.

So programming can lead to financial and personal freedom, if coupled with some business sense.

The act of programming, meaning the actual process and the problem solving aspect creates a sense of satisfaction for the programmer. This is no different from the satisfaction a World of Warcraft player gets when killing a difficult enemy, however. The reward you gain from programming as an occupation is the same immaterial reward that you will get from playing a good computer game or even reading a nice book or watching a good movie.

Realising this, many programmers say that it's good to also get paid for doing what you love. 

Sure, this is true, but what's the point? Programming becomes a major drag if that's what you do for a living, because now other people and their viewpoints of life, money and their level of understanding of a problem can dictate how you have to program, how you have to solve a problem, and even if you should actually even work on a problem in the first place.

Programming as an occupation is just like anything else: if that's what you want to do to pay the bills, then do so. If you can find a way to make that enjoyable for yourself, and dull the pain of having to go to work every day - and freelance contracting is not significantly different - then, by all means, do it.

One day you will have a lot of experience in programming and with people, and you can then decide to expand your horizons into business ventures, and become free from the daily grind. Free from the machine, if you will.

In this respect at least, programming is ahead of the curve.

1 comment:

  1. Might as well brush up on interview techniques, if you're going to want to keep on learning and gaining experience:

    http://www.bukisa.com/articles/483590_interview-mistakes-to-avoid

    ReplyDelete