Or both. And BTW I’d rather be a farmer than code for living 
and drown in manure, stick hand in cow’s ass, spray stuff with pesticides? thanks… I’ll pass
1 Like
Still better than drowning in code. There are many alternatives 
2 Likes
Please name.
Small time farming could be rewarding like any other physical work, but it ain’t gonna buy your kids iphones. And industrial scale farming is capital intensive, with 23K in your pocket you could barely afford a single tractor. Also heavily policatical, AFAIK swiss farmers farm more money out of government subsidies than land
There’s not many other high pay industries as attractive as software IMHO. Investment banking and hedge funds pay very well but insanely stressful (especially IB) and long work hours. Doctors - insane entry barriers due to education requirements and low pay guaranteed for a good chunk of your early career. Entrepreneurship isn’t everyone’s cup of tea
2 Likes
Don’t take my farming comment too seriously. It was a hyperbole.
You could be an astronaut for what I care. Out of all personal development routes, software is a long but a pretty narrow path IMO. I cannot honestly say I’ve met one software nerd whose lifestyle I’d envy.
@NKRB sorry for derailing your thread a bit here
3 Likes
I feel like the jobs that you can really envy are hard to find. Most of the time it just looks cool on the surface. Whereas coding is the opposite. It seems boring and repetitive, but you know, people do crosswords and sudoku for entertainment, and you are paid for solving mathematical puzzles in your comfy office, with little stress. There are few jobs that beat programming with regards to work comfort.
2 Likes
Well I have been working in Software Development for 14 years now. I can say the work is indeed hard to beat in terms of opportunities to make money as well as working conditions.
My wife would have way less difficulty finding part time work or any work if she had some kind of IT knowledge.
Its not for everyone though. Even I am struggeling these days to keep up with new technologies. There are just so many new things you have to learn and it feels like everyday there is a new one released.
3 Likes
I’m a hardware developer, work side by side software developers. I wouldn’t switch seats. It just seems to me that a software developer’s job is never finished. Updates and fixes just keep on rolling. I do my stuff and move on to another thing and have the added satisfaction of touching my creations ;-).
1 Like
Yes, it bothers me too. in my twenties I was eager to learn stuff after work as a hobby, now I’m just too tired and too little motivated. I would like to know how to code a small machine learning program, but my job currently doesn’t require me to learn such cutting edge stuff. What calms my anxiety is FIRE and mustachianism. Thanks to it I only need a 5-10 year perspective, not 25.
I know what you mean. I also experience this. The thing I build constantly needs an update or a fix. I think many programmers/consultants deal with this by constantly switching projects. They work on something, then before they see it in action, they go to another company. This way you can forget about the past, about all the pending stuff. I don’t know much about hardware development, have no clue actually.
2 Likes
Yes, it bothers me too. in my twenties I was eager to learn stuff after work as a hobby, now I’m just too tired and too little motivated. I would like to know how to code a small machine learning program, but my job currently doesn’t require me to learn such cutting edge stuff. What calms my anxiety is FIRE and mustachianism. Thanks to it I only need a 5-10 year perspective, not 25.
As I wrote in another thread I am currently in the process of starting my own company. Doing this I had to learn a lot of the new cutting edge stuff, especially Cloud providers, web frameworks as well as new types of CMS … luckily it is a lot of fun. But I still feel overwhelmed at times. Here I am, making 140k CHF in a super senior position and still feel like total garbage at programming a simple website. It grounds you 
2 Likes
Welcome to developers anonymous :D. This is exactly why I joined this community. I don’t see myself working until 65 and stay on the edge of it. Soft skills are key to long term career and satisfaction.
3 Likes
I’d join something like that. I’m constantly anxious about my work and career. I feel miserable after 7 years doing the same crap over and over with just better and better tools. Everywhere I read that to be happy with one’s job, one needs to strive for a meaningful work. I have no clue how to find it and what does it even mean.
Freeing time for my family and hobbies is my main motivation for seeking FI, but second is that I’ll somehow find more meaningful job and do more diverse things. Narrow technical specialization brings well-paid and flexible jobs, but at the cost of soul sucking, depressingly tedious, uninspiring and uncreative, infinitely repetitive, unfulfilling and boring work. At least that’s how I feel about it.
PS. I’m not interested in farming, but I read somewhere the florists on average are much happier than engineers, financiers and all sorts of managers.
2 Likes
And as usual, such a remark should always come with a clause that “correlation doesn’t mean causation”. Maybe people who end up in high paying positions are people who are never satisfied, always want more? Whereas if you’re just take what life gives you, you may end up being a florist. This doesn’t mean that if you suddenly become a florist then you will become as happy as a florist
3 Likes
You might be right - it’s not my job that is broken, it’s me.
Interesting topic. I find my job quiet interesting. I am officially a data scientist which is kind of the hype thing right now. In reality, however, 50% of my time is just software engineering. In terms of income, I think most other engineers make a comparable salary to a computer scientist at least at the beginning of the career. As for keeping up to date with new stuff, it’s actually the thing that kind of makes me worried. I think that in 15-20 years we might lose a lot of the job security we have now, which is one of the reasons to try to achieve FIRE.
As for the farming thing, I would love to do it in my garden. Once I don’t need to work I plan to move to the beautiful nature in Valais, where you can get a house with a nice garden for a reasonable price. 
1 Like
Well, you can, teamblind.com, it’s as close as it can be to that, “anonymous” and practically all SWEs there
1 Like
That’s a pretty depressive conclusion. Any job has ups and downs. If yours is mostly downs, perhaps it’s time for a change.
jeez, just the front page topics made me cringe so hard …
hey think about what you enjoy about your job or when was the last time you actually enjoyed doing what you do. then compare what you did then to what you do now
holy shit these salaries man.
1 Like