velzevur

Since the lack of talent is a huge problem, there are tons of _academies_ that claim to be producing developers in just a few months. This generates a lot of people with no experience, close to zero knowledge but yet eager to join the industry. A viable strategy for companies is to hire as many of those as possible, hoping that there are just a few diamonds there. That's the main reason Jrs are terribly underpaid. If one prooves to have potential - it is not uncommon to have a salary doubled in a few monthsm, otherwise other organization might snatch the person.

I had interviewed a little more than a hundred people for regular and senior roles only to eventually give up and train a couple of juniours.

The salary really depends on the job title. Junior developers usually start 500-750E. The juniour position is a tricky one because with no background it is usually hard to spot the talent. From then on it really depends on the carrier path you take but compensations in the range of 3000-5000E are probably a soft cap for a developer position.

For QAs and DevOps is around 30% less.

Job security is something quite strange here. Once your trial period passes, it is terribly difficult for you to get fired. If you arrive on time - there is no legal mechanism for you to get fired. The only means would be for the company to trunc the position you're taking. This means they are not allowed to hire someone for the same position for 6 months or so. If they do - it must be you. This is enforced by court. So if they fire you for some reason, you can sue them and the court will return you back to your seat.

Even with this in mind, contractors are terribly rare. I know just two people working this way.

Bulgarian here. It is probably a long story but the IT industry is one of the very few not-heavy-regulated here and it flourishes. There is a growing start-up culture, companies are fighting over talants and people with various backgrounds are just pouring in the industry. I know a few dosens of architects, layers and medical doctors that made that step. Also a flat 10% tax certainly helps :)

Correlation does not imply causation...

I accidentally the whole bank

also not being garbage collected...

I've been using Herman Miller for the past 5-6 years or so and they're just great. I also have the first one and now having seen the second - I want it, too.

The chair is some sort of easy to try: you just go and try it. Choosing a bed and pillow is not that easy - I've thrown away a couple of pillows that seemed fine in at the beggining but were actually unbearable to sleep on. As for the cheap chairs - you get exactly what you've paid for

I measure my quality of life in experiences, so there are 2 issues here: good health and knowing what makes you happy. I'm going to focus on the first one because it is more generic.

It depends on what you're doing. I spend most of my day sitting in front of a computer: around 9 hours with some small breaks. Another good portion of my time goes to sleeping, so a great bed, pillow, chair and desk are a must. If you make compromises with any of them - you'll have neck/back pain.

Food is another thing to spend some money on: especially fresh fruits and vegetables. If you're a caffeine junkie like me - a good coffee will make a huge difference.

Another thing to consider is a suitable sport. It doesn't have to be a gym (I find gym borring), it can be any sport you find satisfying. I put it in the list because some sports can get really expensive but might or might not be worth it, it depends on you.

I'll just sketch some non-health related life improvers: trips, bike riding, hiking, music lessons, volunteering - anything that takes you out of your routine and makes you happy.

This! I can not stress this enough: algorithms, languages and paradigms are just tools and some are suitable for a certain job and some are not. How do you choose a language to complete a task? It depends on the task at hand. In handling money you must be consistent but in some other cases - eventual consistency is just good enough. When building a server should I kick all users out just because we've lost a couple of nodes in the cluster? It always depends, it always is a trade off.