Definitely not true for everyone, but it’s especially true for highly demand folks like programmers who have the luxury of choosing work that’s aligned with their interests.
This sounds overly optimistic to me (am a programmer). I wonder what fraction of programmers would stay at their jobs if they had “fuck-you money”.
Maybe this is a consequence of me not living in Silicon Valley, but the job market for programmers seems… weird. On one hand, every company is complaining about how difficult it is to hire programmers. On the other hand, most companies keep doing things that many programmers hate: “agile” micromanagement, open spaces, no working from home (pre-COVID), etc. I would naively assume that given the amount of complaining, the companies would compete harder at being attractive places to work at. Somehow, they do not. Most programmers I know are complaining about their jobs. This may be a coincidence, or a selection effect on my side; but that’s how I see it.
In my experience the american programmer market is vastly more skewed towards benefitting programmers than anywhere else in the world. I have many friends in Germany working in programming, and starting salaries easily tend to be 2-3x what they are in Germany if you include stock compensation, with much greater benefits and flexibility.
So if you are somewhere else than the U.S., the programmer market is very different and more comparable to other industries, in my experience.
Oh interesting. I am In the Bay Area bubble and working as a programmer which is why I felt like this was an exception to be called out. Here, if you hate your job enough and you’re legibly good, you can always just go start a company instead.
Looking at your points, I think a lot of the things you bring up are different from alignment. Like, I might put up with shitty working conditions to get a job that is aligned with my values and so maybe won’t feel so bad about the tradeoffs I’m making. Sure, you might say, work 60 hours a week, but at least it’s 60 hours doing something you think matters. Traditional work life balance matters more when you have a job producing something you don’t care about, like say a job in manufacturing making a commodity product that you know someone else could make just as well if you didn’t.
In the Bay Area for better or worse not knowing how to start, let alone run, a successful company is not a blocker. If you have a good enough idea and enough desire, you can either get assistance or get enough money to learn by trying. Of course you do have to pass some minimum bar of social skills to be able to interact with others and convince them to work with you.
If you don’t like doing all the non-programming work that running your own company entails, you might prefer a annoying job that still only requires programming over starting your own company.
Here, if you hate your job enough and you’re legibly good, you can always just go start a company instead.
It sounds good. I have no idea how high bar is “legibly good”, e.g. whether I would have a chance to pass it. (This is not just about me, but generally, what percent of programmers this actually applies to.)
Working 60 hours a week on something truly aligned to my values doesn’t feel so bad. Still, it would compete for time with everything else, such as social life, family, taking care of health.
It also seems to me like a harmful meme, on a society level. With imbalance of power, you get preference falsification. You get people who are not aligned with their jobs, but need to pay their bills, and sometimes the condition for getting the job is pretending that you are super passionate about it. Then the employers can use this meme to push them to work 60 hours a week. In such case, “work/life balance” is the socially acceptable excuse you can use when you are not allowed to express your true preferences.
This sounds overly optimistic to me (am a programmer). I wonder what fraction of programmers would stay at their jobs if they had “fuck-you money”.
Maybe this is a consequence of me not living in Silicon Valley, but the job market for programmers seems… weird. On one hand, every company is complaining about how difficult it is to hire programmers. On the other hand, most companies keep doing things that many programmers hate: “agile” micromanagement, open spaces, no working from home (pre-COVID), etc. I would naively assume that given the amount of complaining, the companies would compete harder at being attractive places to work at. Somehow, they do not. Most programmers I know are complaining about their jobs. This may be a coincidence, or a selection effect on my side; but that’s how I see it.
In my experience the american programmer market is vastly more skewed towards benefitting programmers than anywhere else in the world. I have many friends in Germany working in programming, and starting salaries easily tend to be 2-3x what they are in Germany if you include stock compensation, with much greater benefits and flexibility.
So if you are somewhere else than the U.S., the programmer market is very different and more comparable to other industries, in my experience.
Oh interesting. I am In the Bay Area bubble and working as a programmer which is why I felt like this was an exception to be called out. Here, if you hate your job enough and you’re legibly good, you can always just go start a company instead.
Looking at your points, I think a lot of the things you bring up are different from alignment. Like, I might put up with shitty working conditions to get a job that is aligned with my values and so maybe won’t feel so bad about the tradeoffs I’m making. Sure, you might say, work 60 hours a week, but at least it’s 60 hours doing something you think matters. Traditional work life balance matters more when you have a job producing something you don’t care about, like say a job in manufacturing making a commodity product that you know someone else could make just as well if you didn’t.
Starting a company takes skills that go beyond being a good programmer.
In the Bay Area for better or worse not knowing how to start, let alone run, a successful company is not a blocker. If you have a good enough idea and enough desire, you can either get assistance or get enough money to learn by trying. Of course you do have to pass some minimum bar of social skills to be able to interact with others and convince them to work with you.
If you don’t like doing all the non-programming work that running your own company entails, you might prefer a annoying job that still only requires programming over starting your own company.
It sounds good. I have no idea how high bar is “legibly good”, e.g. whether I would have a chance to pass it. (This is not just about me, but generally, what percent of programmers this actually applies to.)
Working 60 hours a week on something truly aligned to my values doesn’t feel so bad. Still, it would compete for time with everything else, such as social life, family, taking care of health.
It also seems to me like a harmful meme, on a society level. With imbalance of power, you get preference falsification. You get people who are not aligned with their jobs, but need to pay their bills, and sometimes the condition for getting the job is pretending that you are super passionate about it. Then the employers can use this meme to push them to work 60 hours a week. In such case, “work/life balance” is the socially acceptable excuse you can use when you are not allowed to express your true preferences.