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Comment by nphase | Hacker News Reader

When they do, the security of their old, relatively low-paying gigs might start to look pretty good.

The condescending tone of this line really bugs me.

It's just the rote journalistic trope of the twisty ending. How would the article end otherwise? "Only time will tell if their get-rich dreams work out?" Too flat. It's considered better to give the reader a little frisson at the end. Bonus points for confirming the reader's pre-existing beliefs, as this one does.

Count your blessings. At least the article didn't start with "Joe Schmoe, a programmer, is setting out to blah blah blah" and then end with "Back at blah blah, Joe Schmoe is still programming away, sure that millions are just around the corner."

Exactly! My immediate thought was, "You smug bastard."

This is why I would never take a job as a programmer in the trading industry working for the big firms. I have dignity, and it would never cross my mind to put up with smug bastards taking this attitude with me all day, no matter how high the salary. It's not that the software is making people tons of money, it's that nobody respects that the software is making people tons of money (the side effect of respect, of course, would be fair compensation).

If you want to work as a programmer in the finance industry, work for a finance software firm, as opposed to a bank. At least you'll be a first class citizen.

Or work on a trading desk as a quant developer, at a big bank, hedge fund or wherever. Only a foolish trader will fail to understand the value of the quants working for him.

Excuse me. I work as a programmer for a large investment bank, have dignity, and am respected by my users (commodities trading, sales and operations). I am also respected. However, I also took the time to learn my users' business and product-lines. One major problem that software developers have is that they don't take the time to learn their users' product. If you don't take the time to learn about what they do, why should they take the time to learn about what you do?

It goes both ways, I suppose. But, the description of the situations in this article sounded pretty much inexcusable and intolerable. And, specifically, the tone of the author was downright infuriating.

Honestly, I do know several people working in finance (Perl is apparently heavily used in that industry, and we're a Perl shop, so we meet folks in that industry quite often at conferences), and they generally seem happy with their work and their jobs. It's certainly an interesting field, and one in which you'd get to work on a massive scale, which is usually fun. I worked in the oil and gas industry for a while, and they've got big data (terabytes of it for a single well, for example). It's definitely interesting.

But, the big money guys do have a reputation for supreme arrogance, and recent events in our economy have not made them seem any less so.

Work at a prop shop that values programmers. You will feel valued.

Yeah, that last part made the article sound like it was attempting to dissuade other programmers from choosing to strike out on their own, as if it had been written by management.

But listening to management about job security is absurd, at least these days it is.

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