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There' a difference between having "large swaths of time that are a bit mind numbing", and having those swaths taking most, possibly all your working time. OP said:

> I don't think I ever caught myself writing code for my employer and thinking "hey, I really enjoy this"

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> Our job is not to program, our job is to create value.

It's supposed to be the job of every worker out there. Even janitors (believe me, clean toilets are quite valuable). Or maybe you think our job is to think about what creates value, then do it (or have it done)? That part is not programming, it's business analysis. The OP was a junior programmer, and as such likely had no say on BA. Heck, in general, junior programmers don't even get to chose their programming language, nor their build system, nor the high-level architecture of the programs they write. Genuinely thinking of creating value? That's a pretty good way to get fired. Just do what you're told, and watch (edit: and learn from) the consequences as they unfold.

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> You should be getting your jollies off of making cool shit happen, solving real problems, not necessarily that you just invented some sophisticated new algorithm.

True. However, the OP said:

> Imagine coming to work to spend hours googling, wiring together unbelievably shitty, amazingly poor documented frameworks and battling Javscript and CSS.

This is not making cool shit happens. It's loosing untold amount of time battling accidental difficulties. Solving "real problems" is precisely what the OP would have liked to do:

> There were a lot of really hard problems that programmers had to solve that didn't exactly involve javascript hacks to make internet explorer users happy

Working around a problem (such as IE6) that could in principle have been avoided in the first place, is not the same as solving real problems. Computers were supposed to augment the damn human intellect, and now they're mainly used to extract money from other people. This emphasises the short term and zero-sum aspects of our economy, both of which are poor at advancing humanity forward.

Seconded. It's not our job to create value.. Well it is but in a perverse way. It's our job to follow a boss' order and do what he thinks has value to his life, his salary, and him not getting in trouble with higher management

You guys need to take responsibility for your unhappiness and go find a job where you aren't treated as a cog. I say that with complete sincerity. Find a better job.

I already am. I'm starting a side gig, and will do it full-time as soon as it starts earning profit :) But I'm stating the reality that's true for the vast majority of people here.

> Find a better job.

Sure! Can you provide for my family while I do?

I get the suspicion that a lot of people tech startup circles, never had to worry about paying there own bills. At any stage of life.

That sounds harsh. I think it's more that there are many young, single people who have the freedom to accept financial hardship in the short term, in order to secure wealth.

Once you have kids, you can't as easily say, "well, we'll just sleep in the car for a year", or "I'll just stay at work ten hours a day and take advantage of their free meals" (or something). For most parents, our risk-taking preferences change dramatically once we have something to lose, and the pressure from our spouses makes it a little bit harder to take on risks of catastrophic failure.

Yea it was definitely targeted at the right of college SF VC/incubator crowd.

It doesn't take much time at all to look for a job if you spread the tasks over a year. Sounds like an excuse to me.

Read my reply to _sh.

Why can't you? It's not like you have to quit your current job to find a better one.

My advice to anyone who doesn't like their job: please don't come to work in a shitty mood all the time, bitch and moan, and spread your poison around. You don't have to love your job, but quit making excuses and being lazy and go get yourself one you will love.

> Why can't you? It's not like you have to quit your current job to find a better one.

Finding a job I love would require me to change my career and–in the best case–would most certainly offer a starting salary that's far less than I need, given my current financial responsibilities (e.g., my family and $130K in private student loan debt).

Furthermore, I would most likely have to earn another Bachelor's degree.

See where this is going...?

Not going to really try to refute your claims, but it sounds like you're making it as difficult as possible. For one I highly doubt you'd have to earn another bachelors degree. There has to be another way..

So, are you trying to say that I can become an Archaeologist with only a BS in CS?

Also, how can I fulfill my financial obligations with an entry-level job in Archaeology?

> I don't think I ever caught myself writing code for my employer and thinking "hey, I really enjoy this"

Poor guy. I write stuff I enjoy for my employer all the time.

+1

Writing code that gets used by others no matter how cumbersome makes me feel like I've won the lottery.

> If work was always enjoyable, then they wouldn't need to pay you to do it.

Why do football players, musicians and movie actors get payed 1000x as much as the software engineers who made the technology to make possible their success? TV, Internet, radio, now all HD quality. So that some people can enjoy their work and earn millions while we who invent and produce the infrastructure should suck it up and call it work?

Does our society really encourage people to do stuff they dont really want to do, stuff they dont find enjoyable?

Just my twist on this.

> Why do football players, musicians and movie actors get payed 1000x as much as the software engineers who made the technology to make possible their success?

Do you think their jobs are cake walks? You think football players really enjoy the training, really enjoy destroying their bodies on a weekly basis? You think musicians haven't toiled for years and years making no money at all before reaching the level where they can make a living?

Even if you believe that they enjoy every minute of it, you are pointing at an extreme minority. Software engineers are in the top 5 best paid jobs and frankly, our jobs are ridiculously easy and enjoyable.

It's incredible to me how hard these guys work and the level of ambition they have.

I always say Tom Cruise, Christian Bale, etc. (pick any major actor) would have been successful in their life no matter what since they have the incredible drive and discipline to achieve their goals.

I also get just a bit frustrated when we boil everything down to "software/tech runs the world" so we should be glorified in some way. Well, sewage systems also run the world. I certainly don't recall or care who built that.

Seconded.

It reminds me of a quote from Muhammad Ali:

“I hated every minute of training, but I said, 'Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion'.”

Now I'm not going to say that every athlete or musician is like that, which is part of the point; reality generally defies generalizations, but I will say that discounting the work professional athletes put in is a bit narrow minded, regardless of any perceived pay-hardwork or pay-joy ratio.

Another quote I've heard and liked: "Training is like wrestling with a gorilla. You don't stop when you're tired. You stop when the gorilla is tired."

And the gorilla is never tired.

Apples and oranges. Only the top 1% of athletes, musicians, actors make a living off it. Compare them to the top 1% of programmers.

Alternatively if you compare all aspiring athletes, musicians, and actors to all programmers, you may find that programming does pretty well.

A good point. When you look at the top richest people of the world, some of them are (were) programmers. None of them are sports or movie stars.

eh, I don't think that's the same. Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, they weren't top 1% programmers. They are simply people who knew programming (to some degree) and got rich from their business ideas. Whereas the athletes, like Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods, are incredibly talented.

The closest you can find in the programming world is probably John Carmack, who found a way to earn a large sum of money based directly on his programming talent.

Zuckerburg got lucky as well. I has signed up to a few similar apps before facebook, but the timing was right to get a critical mass.

You can't say that Gates and Zuckerberg were not talented though. They definitely were in the right place in the right time but if you look at their early history you would find people who did their due diligence when it came to programming and got the business running and then stepped into managerial roles. They have multiple talents if you will which is only evident by juggling all responsibilities and seeing things through. Of course athletes like Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods are incredibly talented but only in a single field. They have managers who handle the rest of their business affairs.

why do you make 100k while the cleaning lady who provides you with health thru a clean infrastructure should just suck it up and call it work?

While I was reading OP's article, I remembered a blog post by an actor. The blog was gone, but basically what he said was that even those who were lucky to act for full-time in Hollywood, 95% of their work is mundane stuff. Basic training. Networking. Auditions. Imagine that you take job interviews twice a week and once hired for 3 months you take employee evaluation every day. That's their life.

They endure that life because they know the door that opens to the field where they can do what they want is only reachable through this muddy road.

I program both for work and for fun, and I can understand that. (I also act, only occasionally, and yeah, regular programming job is a lot more stable and low-risk, so it's understandable that the upside is a lot lower.)

Wow. Who is to say every single professional athlete and musician and actor enjoys every single second of their career?

Athletes' bodies are taxed to the maxed. Most of the above are in the public light 24/7, they might feel unsafe and have to hire bodyguards. That's not something everyone is going to enjoy. These people work hard, sometimes long hours. They are on the road, sometimes away from their families for long periods of time. This might be an exciting life at first, but wears you down after a few years.

Your average working musician has a "day job" playing for weddings, churches, and corporate events anyway. Not the life of luxury you seem to imagine. They are spending their off time marketing, networking, and planning their next event.

Most actors don't "make it big" and spend most of their time auditioning for roles, networking, and spending time looking for more work. I know a actor. She actually quit and got a "day job" because of the unstable nature of the work. If you get a role, you're still working under a deadline, and you're still working under the authority of someone else. I've heard in an interview somewhere that TV actors can work up to 12 hours a day.

After all, while preparing for the Australian Open Serena Williams said "I don't love tennis today, but ... I've actually never liked sports."

What about the people who support the infrastructure that make your job possible? The people who get paid less than you. The people (probably immigrants) who work in farms and factories and slaughterhouses to bring you food? The cooks and servers in the restaurant. The workers in China who build your computer/computer parts.

>Who is to say every single professional athlete and musician and actor enjoys every single second of their career?

Why does this "every single second" strawman keep cropping up? The complaint was not that every single second of programming isn't glorious, it is that every single second is shit. The idea is not "other jobs are perfect because they are fun all the time", it is "other jobs are better because they aren't 100% pure shit all the time". If you don't agree that programming is 100% pure shit all the time, then argue against that. But don't stoop to lame strawman arguments.

I wasn't intending to attack a stawman. I thought the parent implied that. I am sorry if I mistook the meaning of their comment.

Personally, I don't find single second of my job to be shit. I really enjoy my job for the most part. There is some time spend on mind numbing tasks, but I tend to take those in stride. I wouldn't want to do anything else really. There's pros and cons to every occupation.

So basically the takeaway from all of this is that instead of walking on the backs of the downtrodden, all those immigrants, infrastructure people, poultry producers and programmers should be paid a hell of a lot larger portion of the profits.

Are you really lumping bottom 5-10% wage earners with the top 5-10% of wage earners in a nation, and calling them both downtrodden?

> Why do football players, musicians and movie actors get payed 1000x as much as the software engineers who made the technology to make possible their success?

They don’t. The notion that they do is laughable.

Let’s look at baseball. Baseball players are known for having huge multi-million dollar contracts, right? But that’s only major league players. The vast majority of professional baseball players play in the minor leagues, where they earn just a few thousand dollars a month (and they don’t get paid in the offseason). And that’s not all; minor leaguers are still really really good at baseball. They’re all easily in the top 2-3% of baseball players. There are simply no jobs for the other 97%.

The average minor league baseball player making $15k a year playing baseball is a vastly better at playing baseball than the typical senior developer making $120k a year at $BIGCORP is at programming.

As for the couple hundred guys making multiple millions a year who you hear about all the time? Well, there’s even more engineers who have struck it rich with a startup, and no baseball player will ever come close to Zuckerberg-level wealth.

> As for the couple hundred guys making multiple millions a year who you hear about all the time? Well, there’s even more engineers who have struck it rich with a startup, and no baseball player will ever come close to Zuckerberg-level wealth.

You are comparing employees to a CEO and business owner (which doesn't have anything to do with technology, other than for the initial lines of code). Of course he has more wealth.

CEO of a company with a single product, which is a web app that he wrote the first several versions of by himself, in his dorm room. Yeah, he did it in PHP, but that doesn't mean he wasn't an "engineer" working on "technology."

Still not an employee. If I inherited a big fortune would you put me too as an example of how lucrative this career is?

So there are billionaire baseball coaches?

In fairness, there are billionaire team owners, but they didn’t become billionaires by founding baseball teams.

> If work was always enjoyable, then they wouldn't need to pay you to do it.

I can't pay my bills with enjoyable.

what bills do you have if you are permanently joyful?

Drug ?

Food and Shelter.

"Our job is not to program, our job is to create value."

This bears repeating. Rare is the job that allows the job-holder to write code for the sake of writing code. Most of us have to build software that adds value to some other business process.

That takes a lot of thought and research, a little bit of code, and a lot of testing, documentation, and maintenance.

If we're lucky, we get to pass off what we consider the most mundane of those tasks to other employees. BUT! If we're good, we can (and do) perform all of those tasks when needed.

> Rare is the job that allows the job-holder to write code for the sake of writing code.

Just as rare is the job that allows the job-holder to clean up toilets for the sake of cleaning up toilets. Janitors clean toilets for a reason: allowing people to poo in a clean, healthy environment, therefore diminishing their stress and health problems, therefore making them more productive at whatever they do, which means more money for their company. On the other hand, getting paid for cleaning toilets up without reflecting on those good consequences is quite common.

Programming is the same. Many, possibly most programmers, are paid to implement specifications handed out from above, few questions asked. They are definitely not paid to think about the actual business value of the solutions they are told to implement. The bigger the company, the more junior the programmer, the truer this is.

This is true in any academic field: Poetry, history, math, physics, engineering...

The nice thing about computer science is you can make a decent living out of your hobby. The not so nice thing - you have to do what people pay you to do, whether they are customers are bosses. It's still a much better living than a poetry expert makes.

+1. And the flip side is true to: companies that find a way for their employees to create value while enjoying their jobs are able to hire great employees and produce excellent work.