I’m an adult on long-term sick leave so I have zero energy and money, but all the time. It’s generally not great, but at least I’m able to play all the games I want, watch all the movies and series of interest, discover music and learn about a ton of things.
If you think programmers make less than other jobs then you’re totally out of touch.
Not all programmers live in the US. In the UK, especially outside of London, the pay is surprisingly bad.
Yeah but all the other jobs don’t leave you with crypto debt up to your eyeballs. I have $83k in credit card debt that I used to buy LUNA.
Pretty sure you can lose all your money in a casino regardless of how you earn it
Hmm, yes. This reasoning is perfectly sound.
right but my github commits number is off the chart
I have no time, no money, and no energy
Software engineers get paid more than any other engineering discipline so that part is wrong AF but yea the rest is valid
The post literally above this one is about a manufacturing job with shit hours and pay and I work a 8-4 (sometimes longer) but im paid abnormally high (we start new devs at 70k and average dev is six figures).
But the other stuff like free time can absolutely suffer as even at the senior level, I’m taking so many courses and outside education to stay relevant.
Software also gets a plethora of remote work. I have zero sympathy as a mechanical and manufacturing engineer.
I work almost 100% on a computer for a municipality using software that’s already 100% web-based.
But I have to drive 90+ minutes each way every day because a citizen might want to have an in-person meeting once every few weeks instead of an email or Teams meeting.
You’re an outlier for sure
Oh, I’m not a programmer. I’m just bitching about how many of us have to go to an office for no reason.
Programmer pay is so bizarre, it makes me cynical about our entire economy.
If I’m a blue-collar worker maintaining the wires between banks, I get paid little. If I’m a programmer maintaining the banking software that controls everyone’s money and is essential to the entire nation, I’m paid a little more, but not as much as some programmers.
If I’m a young man who creates a webpage that barely works venture capitalists are tripping over themselves trying to shove millions of dollars into my hands.
A lot of the time it’s about being lucky enough be able to have or form connections with rich stupid people. Those kinds are a lot more willing to throw insane amounts of money at someone/some company they vaguely know to do things they know nothing of but hear a lot about.
Or just working at a company that’s well-known in the area and deals with clients very intimately while the product is being created.
Sometimes charging more for the same service makes them want it more, to them it means it’s premium programming (as opposed to the off-brand wish dot com programming). But sometimes they demand disgracefully cheap yet world-class service and throw a tantrum when they can’t pay you $5 an hour for a full rebranded recreation of the Amazon web service.
I think it makes perfect sense. Those people are building something from scratch. That’s a lot more responsibility and skill needed than to maintain a tiny part of a huge well established system. The people capable of doing an A+ job at building something totally new are very few and far between and the competition to hire them is fierce. The best way to move up in this industry is to build up your skill and jump ship to a new job as soon as your skill has outpaced your salary.
I think it really just comes down to scale. Relative to other professions there aren’t that many software engineers, but the work produced by each one has the potential to reach an extremely wide user base. Someone working at Google could write code that gets deployed on a billion devices. This is pretty clear when comparing between different software engineering roles as well. Companies that serve a global market pay significantly better than local companies.
On top of that, there’s no supplies or logistics required for software engineering. It just takes one person and a computer, so expenses are minimal compared to other engineering disciplines.
You missed the banks tripping over themselves to find a COBOL programmer. My father makes stupid amounts of money (read, $400-$1600 per hour) maintaining bank COBOL systems. My father is in his 70s.
COBOL is almost as much of a PITA as Lisp, but no one, not even the US Military that developed Lisp will pay the really big bucks to maintain it.
not sure what you’re talking about with lisp lol, the military may have some dialect they wrote but lisp started as an academic language and there’s plenty of still supported and used dialects outside of that
There may be, but as far as I can tell, they won’t pay what the people that still need COBOL are willing to pay
It’s pretty simple isn’t it? If you want to be paid a lot of money, learn how to do what other people can’t or won’t. In the software industry those opportunities are all over the place. You just need to find it and take it.
Dude, should I learn COBOL?
Most programmers I know have a SO and make bank. What is this?
The making bank brings the SO
you haven’t met me yet
I think it’s Europeans. I’ve heard that many European countries don’t have high pay for devs.
I’ve worked with programmers from Europe, they have above average pay.
It is lower than the US, but it’s still higher than average EU salary, plus you get tons more benefits and job security. Also, with remote work, you can get a US job in Europe. You’ll get paid less than if you were in the US, but more than other Europeans, while still enjoying the social benefits, and since you can accept less that makes you attractive to US companies. Main downside is having to adjust to US meeting hours.
I’m supposed to have energy as an adult?! I have way more time than energy. Most of that time is spent doing useless shit like watching YouTube because I’m too exhausted to do anything useful
I used to think that. Unfortunately, you’ll be proven wrong with time. I really did have a lot of energy, when I was younger. I’m now having to be ever smarter with what I have, just to tread water.
old
money 100
doubt
I invite op to Turkey
You guys have money??
I’ve been working my arse off my entire adult life and have nothing to show for it but debt and long term illness.
Ive always thought thsoe graphs were bullshit, im a college student and I have no time, energy, or money. I feel like this will not change drastically as i age lmao
Depends on Major, I have more time as a Worker than I did in College. More energy, too.
Im a physics major so it is likely my own doing
Keep at it! Physics is cool as hell!
I work 30 hours remote and cost of living is pretty ok.