I been working as a front-end developer for about 5 months now after finishing college. I enjoyed it at first since I was doing a lot of design related stuff and had a lot of influence over how our application looks and feel. Now I am basically doing bug fixing and trying to implement third party libraries with shitty documentation into our app. My reaction now is that I feel like I do not want to be a programmer. I think I would be much happier being a UI/UX designer. Anyone else realized that being a programmer is not their passion after working as one?
Im autistic so the monotony of programming doesn't bother me.
Programming is an entry level occupation, not a profession. You're supposed to get promoted up out of it after 2-3 years at most. That's called paying your due. Comparing to other fields like engineering it's not that bad.
>>51667103
I enjoy being able to sit down with a nice cup of coffee and code while /comfy/.
It's relaxing, especially if you're working with an easy language like python.
>>51667979
This.
Programming in general is fun.
>>51667979
yeah I liked doing that when I was messing around with game design in Unity at home at my own pace and leisure. The work environment is nothing like that though. I am given time estimates for all my tasks and I feel the clock always ticking. I am constantly stressed and unmotivated at the same time. I have to essentially force myself to get through the work day and I am super exhausted at the end. After all that, it still seems like they are unhappy with my performance.
>>51668040
Part of the job.
Can't please everyone.
Get you $$.
Quit if you really can't handle it.
>>51667103
I like programming. Programming for my own projects is what I do during most of my free time, but I'm still in school and haven't had a real job yet. I'm sure that the reality of professional software development will wreck my enthusiasm for the subject, but at least I'd be making decent pay
At least you have a programming job. I don't have a degree so I'm not sure if I'll ever make it. Be grateful pham.
>>51668106
>I don't have a degree
>but you should be grateful even though you do
what?
>>51667103
>echo "banana";exit;
>>51667103
Yes, and that's why I would never do it as a job.
Greenfield projects? Yes, making architecture decisions and building stuff myself and refactoring as I go is very fun.
Maintaining shitty legacy codebases that an Indian outsourcing company built 10 years ago? No. Except for those occasions when you spend a 12 hour day debugging something and it finally clicks, that's damned satisfying. But not worth the shitty 11 hours that preceded it.
I've been in jobs that had me doing various ratios of each, my current one is 90% maintenance. Thankfully I'm leaving for a new position in a smaller company soon that builds stuff for events so (fingers crossed) I probably won't have to do much maintenance stuff.
>>51668167
how many years of experience do you have? what has been your favorite job so far? also are you contractor or full time?
>>51668132
Be grateful for your job because other people like me would take it if we could get it.
>>51667940
>Programming is an entry level occupation, not a profession.
>for mediorce programmers
ftfy
Median salaries for project managers is higher than median salaries for developers, but top salary for developers is higher than top salary for project managers
>>51667103
>Anyone else realized that being a programmer is not their passion after working as one?
yes because shitty client work
found a company working on its own product and not client work, and its like i rediscovered programming again
half of its you, half of its the projects/company
>>51667940
> You're supposed to get promoted up out of it after 2-3 years at most.
Don't you think that if everyone is going to become a manager, there soon will be too many managers and too little people doing actual work? And don't tell me please about increasing number of vacancies, they don't follow exponential curve.
>>51668195
>how many years of experience do you have?
About 8 years now. I started out of high school doing frontend dev when table-based layouts were on their way out.
>what has been your favorite job so far?
I was the only, then lead (of a tiny team of 3), dev for a failed insurance web app startup for less than 6 months. If it hadn't been a toxic work environment and doomed business that may have been my favourite simply for getting to work on one product, instead of jumping between client work.
But I'd say my favourite has been freelancing, which I've spent the majority of my time doing. But there are really low troughs and high peaks in terms of money and enjoyment of projects, and you have to do EVERYTHING yourself: Invoicing, and self-assessment, and chasing up invoices, and paying late-filing fines for self-assessment, and chasing up invoices. But the actual programming work was most enjoyable because I got to do it my way and try out new libraries, frameworks and even entirely new stacks when it took my fancy.
>also are you contractor or full time?
From age 16 to 25: Full time @ agency -> Freelance/contracting with a business partner -> Full time @ startup -> Freelance -> Full time @ bigger agency -> Full time @ new place starting next month. All while freelancing on the side too, to various degrees.
This'll be my 4th job, and I've only ever interviewed for 3. I stopped using a CV and dressing up after the first one. I've been really lucky, we're in a good spot career wise; buyer's market and all that. I wonder when our luck will turn?
>>51667103
>That ridiculous glare
Is that the famed Macbook Pro?
>>51668273
>found a company working on its own product
That's exactly what I am doing right now. I'm at a startup who are developing a product and is getting ready for release. It's crunch time right now and our requirements keep changing and we have to go back and change or completely remove stuff we previously spent a lot of time making. This is really annoying and discouraging. Plus there are a million bugs to fix and and general user experience problems. It's like trying to design and build a plane as its taking off the runway. They are also expecting me to stay late and work long hours. I don't though. I am standing my ground. Until they pay me more I am not going to overwork myself.
>>51668040
kek, iktf
It hard at the beginning after a while it gets just normal, and after few months/years you will be bored as fuck.
>>51668454
>>51668462
>It's like trying to design and build a plane as its taking off the runway
> Now I am basically doing bug fixing and trying to implement third party libraries with shitty documentation into our app
Welcome to programming dipshit this is literally what you signed up for.
>>51668462
>It's crunch time right now and our requirements keep changing and we have to go back and change or completely remove stuff we previously spent a lot of time making
start finding them recruiters on linked in
its your job mate
i will tell you tho
try to find a company big enough with departments, having a dedicated QC/Dev/UIUX departments really saved some mental headaches
>>51668498
> pic
My fucking sides
>>51668507
that image is so relevant to our project. thanks for the laugh.
>>51667103
>Anyone else realized that being a programmer is not their passion after working as one?
Yes, which is why I went back to do a PhD.
>>51668659
hello to you, newfag
>>51668642
Not that guy. I'm at a mid-sized company (~30 staff) and we do have different specializations. There's a UI team, a couple of dedicated designers, one "HCI Specialist" who advises the designers, a team of programmers and some systems guys, and plenty of support/managerial/client-services staff. But I've found it's worse than a small place where people wear different hats. There's a lot of bloat and momentum, so it's hard to get new ways of doing things going, and we produce a lot of buggy shit. It's frustrating to me because I haven't been able to effect any change in my time here, I'm used to working in smaller companies and having more say on how we do things.
I don't know if that's just this company that sucks. Or perhaps it's big, but not big enough to get the benefits of what you describe? Maybe there's a size threshold they need to cross before it starts paying off.
>>51668697
We all know this feel. That was sent around our dev mailing list last week when a client's website crapped itself and a couple of us were in until midnight fixing it.
Have another.
>>51668449
Yeah seems like you had a good head-start in your career.
>I wonder when our luck will turn?
I don't know. Seems like developers are gaining more power now more than ever. Clients are begging to realize they either have to really work to come in to an agreement with us or end up paying some shitty offshore team who end up botching their project and fucking over their business.
>STEMfags
>>51668953
I'm starting to become disillusioned with the very idea of outsourcing (ie. nearly my entire career up to now). I've seen projects fail time and again because the needs of the contractor (be it an agency, freelancer or offshore team) are at odds with that of their client's business.
Agency's and such exist to keep themselves alive, they have to and you can't blame them for it. They quickly have big bills to pay as they grow, mainly salaries. That means they have to focus on tight budgets and strict deadlines, which are not the natural fit for software development, a surprisingly creative pursuit. And if they don't people lose their jobs.
I think as software becomes a bigger part of every business, it will become standard to have your own in-house software and/or systems team. Like how plenty of companies currently have an IT team, but expanded to include developers and sysadmins and product managers, with an annual budget to spend. Even in small firms eventually. Because treating a new website or ERP system or POS software as a capital expenditure once every few years just isn't working that well for most businesses. They fight against the software, constantly needing to come up with workarounds. Listen to any retail worker and they'll complain about their computer systems at work and say the fixes are so obvious. Well developers need to work with those people, job shadowing and learning the problems first hand. Not deal with a project manager who emails the CEO to figure out requirements that they derived through chinese whispers with their upper management.
>>51667103
I like to think that I will when I find something I want to do that actually needs the skillset. A career in programming doesn't interest me at all, and there aren't too many problems I need to solve with it in my own hobbies.
Have you tried woodworking?
>>51667103
Everyone has a different love. It also depends on the job. But it sounds like you'll be happier being a UI/UX designer, so do some retraining and when you have some comfortable savings and a few demo projects, go for it.
I got a developer job a little over a year ago as a full-LAMP dev, and I got assigned to do some API integrations. Now I love it and all I want to do is back-end integration and write clean sharp code. Some dude flew in from denmark to the burgerland just to interview me on what principals he take in to account when developing and API for his product.
tl:dr; To each their own, OP. Go for it.
>>51669369
Sounds like a fun job. Do you work in a particular sector, or work for different industries depending on the client?
Don't know how much building you do, but this is a good book if you make your own APIs too https://leanpub.com/build-apis-you-wont-hate
>>51669264
>square sammich.jpg
You mean Rubik's Sandwich.
>>51669264
Has anyone solved this sandwich?
Yes. In high school it was all I would look forward to once I found it. It kind of fucked with my grades though.
>>51669457
Yes, it becomes brown on all sides.
>>51669402
Educational sector (higher ed). But I take freelance contracts for the money; but they mostly tend to be art/education based too. Way easier to work with and just want a cool website; Ecommerce contracts blow because they inherently wanna nickel and dime every little thing because they're in it for the money and it's not their passion.
>>51669532
Oh man I get what you mean. A lot of my potential freelance clients are at the level where they want ecommerce, but it's a new or side venture for them, so they're trying to do it on the cheap.
It doesn't fucking work. I've started referring those tyrekickers to an agency I used to work for that only does ecommerce. I know for a fact that they don't even look at anything under £10,000 (and even that is a tiny project to them). So the client gets an idea of how non viable their project is on their budget, and I don't waste too much of my own time coming to the same realisation.
Any project where it's a side thing to the client sucks. They don't care, until they do. So you start off with little direction and then get tons of late game change requests.
>>51668462
>They are also expecting me to stay late and work long hours. I don't though. I am standing my ground
Good man. Wish more programmers would do this, then maybe it wouldn't be the norm to treat us like shit.
But unfortunately a field full of nerds means a field full pushovers (who stay because they don't want to say no) and over competitive dickheads (who stay because they want to prove they're the "best" developer). There's more to life than that.
>>51669602
Yeah, I always find that a good way to get out of those types of offers is to price myself way outta range. They get the point. Another thing about art based clients is they usually have grants and still pay decent, and the timeframe tends to be much more lax.
>>51669830
thank you
Is it feasible to get a job online with little to no experience? I can count the amount of job postings for my city with one hand and they will all be taken by people with more experience than me.
To all the people complaining about being a code monkey. I'm a code monkey.
Since high school I was taking different jobs, mostly during vocation.
I worked 8 months as electrician in a small (5 workers + boss) company. Funny work mates, long coffee breaks, but well, sometimes i had to dig a fucking hole in rain for entire day.
For some time (2 months) I was working at iron foundry, 50% of time I could sit on my ass, but I experienced hair being burned from just the heat, not open fire.
I worked on magazine, cleaning transport boxes from snow. On auto parts production doing 2000 shitty-spring-something for 7.5 hours straight, and as night parking guards (2 weeks, just as replacement for a bro).
Now I'm a code monkey, finally, 90% of the time, I'm dealing with a legacy code, fighting with 3rd party soft, and previous monkeys inventions. But there is that 10% that brings me joy and i embrace these moments whenever possible. Accept it, find good sides of your work or fucking change it.
TL;DR;
Every kind of work (in our grey mass reality) has its ups and downs.
>>51670514
Provide a site, and provide some projects. You'll be miles ahead of other people.
>>51667103
I think the thing I enjoy most about programming so far is being able to work out the various ways I can accomplish a certain goal. I started learning C# in September and right now we've started on indexes.
I can only use VS Express 2015 at home so I can only work with the Console Application whereas at college, we use a WIndows Phone Emulator with text boxes/blocks, buttons etc.
Transferring that to a different output environment by myself was pretty rewarding in its own small way.
>>51670514
You tried uploading your CV publicly?
I was shocked by how few job postings I saw in my city, but as soon as I uploaded my CV to Monster and Indeed I had tons of recruiters calling me every day (had a few contacting me through LinkedIn too). I had to disable calls there was so many.
I graduated from a meh course at an average uni with a shit grade.
Only 4 weeks work experience and uni projects to show.
I only know HTML/CSS and intermediate level JS, with good-ish design skills but not great.
Had my first interview 3 days later and got a job as a front-end dev.
>>51668167
This guy gets it.
Also very similar experience to OP here, started creating a lot, and now my work is basically fixing shit all day.
>>51671368
That's great man, I will try that.
>>51667103
OP is cute
>>51667979
yep, this.
>>51668040
Daily reminder that it doesn't have to be this way and that our current relationship to work is a result of politics and the economy.
A 30-hour workweek with competitive wages is possible!
>>51671558
b a s e d
a a
s s
e e
d d
>>51667531
/g/ ladies and gentlemen
No. I do it for a living. I fucking hate it. The people are shits. Spend my time fixing simple shit. It's way too stressful. I will find a new job in testing soon I hope.
>>51668449
What do you mean by "toxic work environment"?
>>51667103
>I been working as a front-end developer
There's your problem mate
>>51667103
>PHP
>Programming
topkek
What do I have to do to get a job
>>51672766
i dont get this
>>51673251
Some people just decide to hop on the PHP hate train. Mostly people who are poor developers and don't know any better.
10 year php web dev here. I enjoy not having to do fuck all 90% of the time, and earning way more than I need. It's easy as fuck, though I wish I were a python web dev sometimes, maybe someday. I would lose my god damn mind if I was a hardcore C programmer or some shit, I prefer just fucking around and getting paid pretty well for it.
>>51673686
Forgot to mention that I 100% do not touch CSS, production, Photoshop or anything. Nor WordPress. Slopping together some HTML and JS is as far as I will go. UX is fun but tedious as fuck unless you are the one that gets to make all the decisions. If you have a client or PM bitching at you to make it just right how THEY want it, and are shortsighted morons who are asking for too much without realizing, it is really fucking frustrating and will burn you out quick.
Don't be a programmer if you don't love to be one. You will just develope bad code, that stops this gs from getting aweso.e
>>51667103
Keep in mind OP that programming comes in over a million different forms.
The first taste of programming I got was in a high school class dealing with a lot of data structure puzzles and I loved the shit out of it. But in college (technical university specifically) basically every program we made was nothing more than a pretty mysql frontend and it was fucking boring as shit.
>>51673863
I'm in college right now and I really liked my advanced data structures class. How can I do more of the in my work?
>>51673898
If you mean to ask what kind of jobs require you to do that kind of work, I can't say for certain, but I would suggest avoiding jobs for high-level programming languages since in my (rather limited) experience w/ Java and C# there was no working with traditional data structures (linked lists, trees, heaps, hash tables, etc) because those have already been implemented by Sun/Oracle. I mean you still use those structures, but custom work in those languages never gets as down and dirty as when you're making an implementation of those structures
>>51667103
>not vim
>>51667103
Well kid the problem might be that you are working in front end web development, arguably the worst, most stressful of all programming jobs.
No. I've been coming to terms with the fact that I really hate doing programming. It just feels mind-numbingly boring to me and I want to avoid it wherever possible. Maybe its just my ADHD. I get in the mood to try to learn it, open an IDE and make a new project and then just close out. Or order a programming book and read the first chapter and never look at it again. Just not my thing, I guess
Hopefully becoming a sysadmin doesn't involve it. I'll even do tech support. Just no fucking programming.
I realized - or confirmed - after a couple of years that frontend legacy code is a horrifying devil, and many modern frameworks are almost as bad.
Backend is fun as hell, cool shit to experiment with in hardware and software.
Spinning up a ludicrously expensive/powerful instance in a cloud provider to run some ridiculous software for a day then spinning it down, for pennies. Fun shit to play with.
>>51667103
>Using tabs on my webstorm
fggt
NETWORKING/PEN-TESTING/SECURITY CREW REPORTING IN.
You dun goofed.
Hack the Gibson.
>>51669486
kek
How to enjoy your job as a programmer:
1. Don't be a webdev.
2. Enjoy solving problem with data structures and algorithms. If this is not you, abort.
3. Avoid large corporations and non-tech companies.
4. Find a startup in tech, or a tech company that has been around a while but operates their dev like a startup would. Even better if it's not a MS shop and you actually have freedom to integrate third party open source solutions, or even open source your own generalized solutions to github.
5. Get a job working on their backend infrastructure where you can do (2) (ie. Don't just be a glorified SQL response handler)
6. Enjoy tfw
You might have to move for (4) depending on where you live, but it's worth it.
I worked at a large company that was not tech first, and was very top heavy with management, and it was cancer. Moving from there to work on backend services for a large community site was like night and day.
I do. I enjoy problem solving and getting into the minds of who designed the api/library I'm using. I think people who only enjoy programming when everything works don't enjoy programming, a big part of it is using stress productively.
Personally, I question whether people who strictly use really easy languages enjoy programming, simply because nothing can go wrong.
>>51674822
I mostly agree to this.
Any advice for a guy with a lot of obvious skill but none of that "experience"? I only get callbacks from teams small enough that they have junior devs hiring, I've done some LinkedIn searching of the (mostly female) HR rejecting me, they all have sociology degrees from random no name schools which makes me wonder if my Github has helped in the slightest.
I have a website/programming blog and a relatively impressive Github project (impressive because benchmarks), but I'm reasonably certain that's not going to help against the HR.
>>51674967
I found my new company at a HackerX event. Got a couple of interviews out of it, and it was nice to chat face to face with the company prior to even accepting an interview from them.
Google it - they run events all over NA and might do one near you soon. If you live elsewhere, I'm sure there is some equivalent wherever you are, or something like LunchCruit.
For the record I have no affiliation with the aforementioned. I wish you luck, anon.
>>51673251
>>51673634
http://programmingisterrible.com/post/70268351606/back-when-php-had-less-than-100-functions-the
>>51667103
I enjoy manipulating information
I enjoy programming only really before maintenance, at which point it just becomes a terrible chore
currently a student tho, career goal is software architect
figure out the data flow, and only touch the code at an extremely high level
heaven
>>51677465
wouldn't you just roll your own hash at that point
>>51668389
mmm.... Yeah I'm gonna need source on that
>>51673251
It's a meme.
I just finished a 28 hours programming marathon. I had to finish today with one of my assignments. It's 4 am and after living trough that hell I can say with huge conviction that I love programming, maybe the exccess of cafeine has something to do with it but I feel ecstatic.
>>51678239
>hell
>love
do you not see the contradiction? maybe you're misplacing your feels about it being over
>>51677975
You shouldn't need a source to know that there are 5+ rank-and-file devs to 1 manager (of some sort). This model is massively wide spread in every field even drug dealing (see work by Sudhir Venkatesh). This naturally means that the farther up you move in the chain, the less people are needed.
this >>51671558
40 hours a week is a scam
>>51678265
The hell was because of the disproportionate amount of time not because of the task. Even if you eat too much of your favourite food you'll have a bad time.
>>51678325
you can't eat too much programming though. you can't have too much of it. there's no input limit before it starts producing negative values.
Sitting all day typing crap you don't care about is still better than most jobs out there OP, but I get what you mean, I deal with that by having pet projects to get muh autism on and do the things I like and get stimulated by on those projects.
I'm in a similar boat. I currently have an internship where I'm just patching up legacy code. I'm wondering if getting a phd could help eventually get a more interesting job. Anybody have experience with getting a phd in CS/Math?
>>51671764
More bosses/stake holders than staff.
One of the bosses using me to work on his own other side projects (he was a "business man"), while hiding it from the others. I told them of course.
Didn't tell me the money had run out, not even told I was being let go the next day. Got informed by the nice boss who suggested I should just walk away. Screwed out of my last months pay.
The only day I was sick I got shouted at by the biggest dick of the bosses over the phone.
I stopped freelancing to take this job, but he repeatedly offended my business acumen, thinking I cared about that stuff "No wonder your company went under" and such. I just want to make things, not run a business, but only a cock would throw insults like that around.
>>51679086
>I just want to make things, not run a business
you can't make stuff in a vacuum though.
I actually enjoy programming. But I enjoy voding what I want to, not what I'm supposed to. Meaning, I enjoy my projects, but not the one handed out at work.
>>51667103
Nope. I did enjoy it back when I was writing bots for online games. Have not done that for a long time now, and did some general private Python/Flask/Bootstrap stuff.
But somehow does not excite or relax me any more. No feeling of flow, only of dull mechanical labour.
Also when it comes to programming I'm decent as long as I have my trusted documentation that tells me what functions do, but I can't into maths and never will write something truely elegant (Basically able to abstract while programming, but literally unable to do any math that goes beyond basic arithmetics and basic linear algebra).
So no, I don't enjoy programming anon.
>>51667103
No. But then again I don't think I would enjoy any job. I just don't like working and only do it to get some money.
Used to enjoy the concept of programming and really wanted to learn it so I went to school for software engineering. Switched to infosec after taking a programming place where we had to make a weather program and realized this is what I would be doing with the rest of my life.
>>51667103
not everything is about the 'big idea'. 99% of a project is executing the small details right. bug fixing, testing, breaking, testing, bug fixing, repeat. it's the same regardless what trade you enter. there will be the 'glamorous' big picture moments, and then there will be the monotony which makes up 99% of the routine. welcome to the grown up world, boy.
I've been working as as back-end developer for almost 4 years now, and I'm in the same boat as you OP.
I think what we need is to find something we personally find interesting to work on, just like how John Carmack thought VR was the next big thing.
I've got a few ideas in my head, I might make my own start-up someday.. we'll see.. I have to find that motivation again or else my career is screwed
