Ask HN: How happy are you working as a programmer?
6&#x2F;10. I&#x27;m less than 3 years into my career, but I think I&#x27;ve worked for some of the best companies with great pay, benefits, environments, etc, including a tech giant and two startups. End of the day though, work is boring. Its always work. Your time and effort is going towards making someone else rich and their priorities are more important than your own.<p>The only things I really look forward to are vacations and events outside of work. Learning things is always exciting and sometimes its extremely rewarding getting a project (or even a feature) off the ground and seeing a company rise and beat projections. But then a few weeks later, its just back to work and nothings really different. Its a temporary victory at best, then expectations just get higher and more grind.<p>The best you can possibly hope for is enjoying the people you work with and getting a couple good exits. I&#x27;m never married to my work and I would be incredibly depressed if I allowed it to define me as a person. It pays the bills, and generally pretty well.<p>Even compensation wise, it peaks very early and probably won&#x27;t get most rich without a ton of luck. Its depressing to make comparisons, but 99.9% of developers will never make half of what a specialized MD or successful lawyer or someone in finance might make. Granted, the barrier to entry is much lower in CS (sometimes nearly nonexistent depending on the line of work).<p>edit: Reading some of the other comments made me realize how dissatisfied I am with this line of work. On average, the people really are incredibly boring, especially at large companies. It is true that it is dominated by men and many are socially awkward. Its even worse that I think being on a computer for so many hours a day for years at a time makes everyone a little less socially adept, at least compared to the sales folks who spend most of their days on the phone. I&#x27;m literally spending my weekends looking for the most reckless and dangerous things I can do (lately its been surfing 2-3x head high waves, before it was motorcycling through snow&#x2F;ice storms) to compensate and its completely unhealthy.