How many people go into programming now simply for the money? More than 70%?
What percentage of programmers would still be programmers if competitive salary was not a concern in life, and people were free to simply pursue their passions?
What percentage of programmers would still be programmers if competitive salary was not a concern in life, and people were free to simply pursue their passions?
You realize you're the weirdo, and after years of everyone else being blatant about really not caring, it starts to wear on you.
“How do we ship things that make us rich” vs “how do I scratch this nerd itch/play with new shiny thing/assert my passion purity”
Similarly, a lot of the original FLOSS culture has been overshadowed by the "github-is-my-showroom" model. Optimizing for github stars and so on.
Americans care about money a lot. American SWE care about money even more.
Wanna know what the truly passionate programmer does? Ship things that make money.
If they don’t they are a hobbyist not a professional because it isn’t a profession for them.
Earning money or not does not recognise the difference between hobby and profession. Ironically a lot of hobbyists make money and very few professionals work for free.
Now there are good ways to do that and bad ways and we should take pride in our work but lets not pretend when we say “programming is an art” that we mean like a real art. Laying tile and drywall is also an “art” but people don’t care unless its part of a building.
I don't think you're replying to anything I said at this point.
Now why did I _stay_ at a FAANG company doing mostly boring low-stakes work? For the money. I say that with no shame and I encourage others to consider doing it for the money.
It's life-changing money and the job is still pretty good! I still get to write code and talk about code for a living. I also have to go to some really stupid meetings and deal with bureaucracy and use strange tools but ... so what? It's still a good deal. Who knows when this market for our talents will disappear.