Developers are an extremely varied bunch. I'd suspect that HN leans towards the wide interests side because startups tend to disrupt (in the traditional sense of the word) your ability to program rather than enhance it.<p>But not everyone is like that. Some developers want nothing more than a real, meaty technical challenge. Scaling up a site that's crashing every hour. Crunching huge datasets and extracting important data. If you find one, you might actually be lucky- they probably have more focus than I do.
<i>"Programmer: I'll be forced to learn things outside of programming. Things like how to design, how to market and how to do customer service.<p>MBA: But you, are a programmer.<p>Programmer: I'm also a person. Programming is just one thing I do."</i><p>I graduated in business administration, and when I tell people I can actually code and have been learning how to do it for the past few years, I mostly get blank stares, which is sometimes followed by the question: <i>"why do you learn it if you ain't a programmer? You should hire a programmer instead."</i><p>They don't get it when I explain that the programmer I would need to do the work I want done wouldn't need me as much as I would need him. They also question me why didn't I graduate in something related to programming instead of BA, as if studying something outside of your area of expertise is waste.
> <i>Yes. But when I affect someone's life, I'll get a email, maybe a call about it, and I'll have a real conversation with someone. I'll know who they are and how I affected them.</i><p>And a few hundred 1-star reviews on the app store(s), saying that while they use your app daily, it <i>really</i> isn't worth the $1.99 they paid for, and people should use X instead, which is FREE. Or 3-star reviews that say the app is PERFECT, they love it, but it needs feature X (assuring you that they'll bump up their reviews to 5 star when you add the said feature).<p>At times like that, I'm sure you'd rather you worked for some giant corporation and didn't have to deal with customers directly.
I wish this was an accurate mindset of the kinds of programmers I have to work with. Sometimes I picture myself tying my scarf around my head, leaping onto my desk and screaming "Come on! Lets go! F--k this place, we can do it better than they do it. You don't have to sit here day-in, day-out doing the same monotonous things. We can do better this, we owe it to ourselves to do this properly. No more people in suits ranting about deadlines, no more shitty coffee, no more PowerPoint. We'll do it better, we'll do it cleverer and you will feel so much the lighter for it. To the door!"<p>But they'd just stare at me in horror.
> <i>How quaint.</i><p>Perhaps the best way to describe the condescending startup hiring culture where aspirational devs are encouraged to give up their dreams to work for yet another VC funded rocket ship that is "changing the world."<p>Another recent article with this attitude:<p><a href="http://pandodaily.com/2013/01/01/your-2013-resolution-come-to-terms-with-being-only-an-engineer/" rel="nofollow">http://pandodaily.com/2013/01/01/your-2013-resolution-come-t...</a><p>My guess is developers are starting to see through this BS and realize that they very well <i>can</i> run their own companies.
Kinda true BUT....<p>Maybe you'd be surprised how many programmers there are out there who don't care if anyone uses what they do, don't want to interact with users and aren't really bothered who it affects, and would rather be left alone with the purity of "here is a task, go, be a programmer".<p>I'm not like that <i>now</i>, but I used to be, and I know a lot of people that still are. All that messy stuff like business decisions, market research/development, customer support, requirements capture... all that is so much more soft and ill defined than me, my DE, a defined goal (that I may or may not have helped set) and a paycheck at the end of it. Then I don't have to think about anything but the code.
Where exactly are the programmers of which this article alludes? I recently received seed funding for my next startup (<a href="http://www.podaris.com/jobs.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.podaris.com/jobs.php</a>), and am finding hiring developers to be extremely difficult. Yes, the work will be extremely diverse, you'll get to interact directly with customers, and you'll get to shape and take significant equity a product which can genuinely change the world -- but most developers out there don't seem to be looking for that. So far, 99% of the developers I've encountered have fit into one of two categories:<p>1.) Freelancers, who are committing to remaining so because of the lifestyle perks -- they want to be able to bugger off to that Australian walkabout more or less whenever they feel like it -- and the level of commitment which a startup requires just isn't appealing to them.<p>2.) 9-to-5ers, who want the safety and security of job with a large corporation or agency, and really don't mind dealing with the world through a dashboard.<p>I can understand where both types of people are coming from, and can't fault them for it. What I <i>haven't</i> found is an abundance of developers who have the appetite for the high-commitment, high-uncertainty life which a startup entails.
Entrepreneurship fluff. These posts seem to forget the reality of life. What about health care? House payments? The cost of raising children? The social network job will allow for those. The business? Good luck with that. Oh, but you might get some funding, you say? Try explaining to a VC how you are using <i>their</i> money to pay for <i>your</i> children. Many of them don't even want you to have base salary.
> I'm also a person. Programming is just one thing I do.<p>This is not universally true. Yes, we're all people, but some people don't want to serve as tech support, marketing, etc, themselves. Some people just want to show up and work in a specific, technical problem.<p>HN isn't filled with that type, I don't think, but they certainly do exist. And I'd guess they're the majority, too.
You can affect people's lives even if working at Big Corp X.<p>Often, you can ask to do more things than programming at Big Corp X, if you show interest and are valued as an employee.<p>Not every Big Corp X. deals with social networks for alien life forms on earth : there are big corps X developing medical devices, airplanes and space vehicles, public infrastructure, or researching new, game changing technology.<p>A lot of people working at Big (or Medium/Small) Corp X. are passionate about their work.<p>I agree that by doing your own thing you have a much more direct impact on the result, but I don't think there is such a manichean and romantic division.
I work at Coursera now, and we have tens of thousands of users in each class. Like the post author, I really like to feel connected to users, to feel that individual connection, so I go out of my way to get that by wandering around the support forums and monitoring Twitter mentions. Every once in a while, I run into people I know too, and the world feels that much smaller. :-)
So, yes, it's easy to feel disconnected from people when you work on a product with many users, but if you want to, I think there's often a way to find them.
I've worked in very large companies, small companies and I'm now in a 4-man startup. At the end of the day it's about the environment and challenges you enjoy, and the ways in which you want to grow. Some people get a kick out of being a tiny cog in a huge, complex and influential machine, and others would rather that their tiny cog be the <i>only</i> (and therefore largest, and most important) cog. You can use a fish/pond based analogy if you prefer.
Why on Earth is this linking to some shortener rather than to the actual page, <a href="http://edu.mkrecny.com/thoughts/programmer-come-work-for-us" rel="nofollow">http://edu.mkrecny.com/thoughts/programmer-come-work-for-us</a> ?
Yay! Everyone start their own company! I mean why not? Who needs salaried work? It's just so easy and risk-free if you already know how to program!<p>Come on now, start a company when you've identified a problem that really needs a fix, and that has a huge potential of profit. A great way to find that problem is in a paid position. Starting a company for the sake of starting a company won't get you anywhere.
I couldn't agree with this more. Unfortunately, for every "I am a person" developer out there, there are 2-3 "all I care about is code" developer. It's depressing.
This shit comes from the fact the industry consider tech-savvy people like inhuman monsters. Nerds and geeks and otakus and such, are considered like a plague, while in fact there were pioneers.<p>Computing is still considered like magic, and it will stay like that for a long time.
I love the ending! "I'm also a person. Programming is just one thing I do."<p>I'm a programmer, but creating a product of their own is difficult and I commend those that do so. I've learned while doing my projects that aside from programming, I need to be...<p>An Investor...investing money into hardware, but MOST importantly, time. Time to code, to learn, and time from work and for family.<p>My Own Boss...doesn't mean I don't answer to anyone, it means I need to be harder on myself to get *ish done, because there is no team to offload work on.<p>Open-minded...even though working a 9-5 would allow me to specialize in a specific area and a lovely paycheck bi-weekly, my projects/businesses required that I learn so many new things that it's continually frustrating and irritating. Ex: filing articles of incorporation, learning photoshop (I was strictly a coder), micromanaging lists of tasks, formulate a way to pay the bills while donating time to my projects (emphasis on donating).<p>Side Note: Even though at times I may get jealous of my peers that I know that work at Google and the state...there's a fire inside me burning, just knowing that I will be something big, and I am my only true investor...programming IS just one of the things I do.
I'm young (in the scheme of life).<p>But I think the quicker you learn what's truly important to you, you start to spend more time on those projects/with those people/in that place/etc and you feel more fulfilled, and that you're making more of an impact, than you ever did before.
This is how I see myself, too.<p>I will just continue reading and doing things by my own will until somebody finally realises that domain dependent thinking is rarely innovative and that they might be able to get a competitive advantage from utilising the broad-range of expertise I am trying to grow.<p>Everybody is different; some of us require variety to focus; and some of us get-off on bridging gaps in between disparate domains.
This has been my experience with recruiters but once you get past the wall of pleasantries and fake attitudes, they usually talk with more sense.<p>Edit: Sibling comments are talking a lot about the author's personal motivating factors but are ignoring the bigger message of poor hiring tactics like repeating talking points and marginalizing personal goals. I got you, though, op.
Haha. This would be great compared to emails headhunters like to send.<p>"Come work for a company we won't mention here.
You will need all of these skills:
...<p>Interested?"
It's an interesting interpretation of the fields of marketing and customer service to lead one to believe it would be desirable to do more work in those roles and less work in software engineering. To each, their own.
This is why I pushed to have my company fly me across the country to an client event we're doing. I've been working here for a year but I've never met a single person who uses the code I write on a daily basis.
> At times, new code that you write will correlate with a statistically significant change in one of the numbers on that dashboard. You will then know that you have affected billions of beings.<p>Correlation == ...causation?
So. wait. I can't actually write software for alien beings? Tease.<p>Anyway, agree with the sentiments personally, but not sure that's true of those who identify strongly with the moniker "programmer".
The mooninites (<a href="http://aqua-teen-hunger-force.wikia.com/wiki/The_Mooninites" rel="nofollow">http://aqua-teen-hunger-force.wikia.com/wiki/The_Mooninites</a>) are the perfect voice for that persuading.