Money is just a means of exchange. But basic human rights such as housing now being monetized and rented out and/or used as an investment means the endless pursuit of money is now mandatory to survive.
Money is an abstraction and that is where humans interpretation starts to diverge. I think that may be this problem in a nutshell: abstractions are always leaky, and they leak in different places for different people.
Now? How did you think housing work for millennia? It not being monetized before is a cold comfort when your labor and agricultural products are taxed directly instead.
Taxation has always been around in one form or another. But property ownership being out of reach of the masses is a relatively new thing.
Not that long ago, a blue collar family could afford to save enough to buy a family home in under a decade. Nowadays most blue-collar people (and in some countries such as the UK, even white collars) have no option but to rent perpetually.
And that's just property, not even taking into account inflation of everything else. Cars (which are necessities in many parts of the world) have also exploded in price, with entry-level models now approaching what high-end executive cars were just 15 years ago.
Absolutely not! I think if I focused on maybe, one language I could see adopting basic proficiency and fluency by the US State Dept's rubric in like... 44-ish weeks, some languages 66+.
What is helping is that this is training my ear and tongue, it's becoming more comfortable to transition between grammars and pronunciations.
This post shows why programming as a career overall sucks. Sure it’s great if you really enjoy programming. However, staying relevant to earn a decent living your entire life is difficult.
I would argue this post (and the majority of resultant comments) have demonstrated that programmers staying relevant isn't as difficult as it seems. They were curious about how to pivot, had a forum in which they could ask, and in minutes started getting a wealth of practical, actionable advice from folks who have done the same or similar. The theme so far is that those programming skills aren't obsolete just because you want to change the vertical you work in and learning materials to help you achieve that goal are abundant.
Some people like learning new things. If you go into tech you should know that it's a career where you basically have to retrain every 5 years. But in return for that, you get high wages and low barriers to entry. If you're someone who enjoys learning new skills, this is a profession tailor made for you.
I prefer the framing of "the intersection of things you enjoy doing, things you're good at, and things that other people find useful". There are unhappy failure modes if any of the above are missing. The high-flying corporate lawyer who's a miserable divorced alcoholic is what you get when you're good at something others find valuable that you don't enjoy. The underperformer who gets fired from every job they like is when you enjoy doing a job others find useful but aren't very good at it. The broke Millennial guitarist who followed their musical passions is what you get when you enjoy doing something you're good at but nobody else finds it useful.
If you follow your interests, though, it at least guarantees you'll be interested in what you're doing.
At least in the U.S it's been one of the greatest careers possible imo in most objective measures - money, comfort, working conditions etc etc.
I'm saying has been because job security plummetted in the last year or two and I'm not sure if its even going back to what it as befoer.
Maybe in what we think of as traditional tech, but there is enormous job security working as a developer in government or government adjacent organizations. You obviously take a pay hit, but also don’t have to live in an area with a huge cost of living relative to CA, NYC, etc.
Ignoring industries built on regulatory capture / credentialism gatekeeping like law and medicine [by the way, even those both have continuing education requirements], are there actually exceptions to this?
Plenty of careers just go away. Might as well pick one where you can stay relevant by picking up incremental/adjacent skills continuously.
Electrician and plumbers have it pretty good in this regard. I don't see that being replaced anytime soon and there's not all that much to learn and a lot less changing on you.
Not as sure about electricians, but plumbers at least pay for it with their body. Even though PPE can reduce the strain, there's still a reason why these trades haven't just shot through the roof. Bad knees, bad backs, respiratory dangers, etc.
Trades in general are fraught with physical perils for the unaware.
Very true, though, those jobs also present significant occupational hazards, unlike software where the biggest threat you face is a sedentary lifestyle.
I’m a 15-year SWE. If I sat at a desk or in an office/cube all day I’d lose my marbles.
The software I write and ship also requires me to be able to grab a socket set, take panels off things, fish out DB9 connectors, run wiring, etc. testing also happens in heavy snow in the winter and high heat in the summer. Oh, lots of travel as well.
I’ve been interested in finding a different job, I’m just worried I would get very bored very quickly, tying together api calls or stitching together libraries.
i personally love the expectation of constant learning, growth and innovation in our field
but yes, anecdotally, compared to all of my friends and family, i don't know any profession with those same expectations. to name a few - market researchers, psychologists, primary school teachers.
I think it's the opposite, there is a growing bubble of interest in hiring for AI stuff. In 5 years time your RAG pipeline model training career is going to pop and become my new `brew install ai-thing`. If I need image recognition/generation or LLMs, I'll call openai APIs the way one might call stripe or Spotify APIs. Don't trust them? Claude. Don't trust anyone? Self-hosted with RAG will be good enough without model training and easy to use by then.
I am a web dev and I think I’ll stay relevant to earn a decent living as a web dev until I retire (it’s hard to predict 20 years ahead, but definitely the next 5-10 years at least).
It seems the author just want to change their career, not necessarily because of they won’t be able to earn money if they don’t.
I enjoy letter-writing. So should I go on writing physical letters to everyone today? Moving with technology is essential, not just for developers, but for public as well. The trap is that we have to do it even if we don't want to. E.g: your neighbor country has nukes and you don't.
The fundamentals of how computers work are essentially unchanged since the 60s or 70s. If you have a strong foundation (typically a CS or CE degree), picking up new stuff shouldn't be particularly difficult.
I mean, I just had a PR merged in a language I had literally never used before. It took me five minutes to pick up the basics. Sure it would take much longer to be fully productive, but it would be a comfortable transition.
Then practice rounding out your skills. Read as much code as you can. You can really only get paid more by transitioning jobs. I don't want to start a whole thread about getting paid more at the same company, it is possible, but not probable. Level up, take on incremental more responsibility and then boost yourself into a new higher paying role somewhere else.
There are advantages at the individual level to understand and communicate with multiple cultures. I would argue it’s more than an increase/decrease in IQ points. Did the individual increase in their free time and income is the only valid output worth measuring in bilingual advantages.
Devout member of this church my entire life. 2 years ago during covid I finally read most of the history of Joseph Smith. Found out it’s a fraud and left.
For having Jesus Christ in its name, I have a hard time believing Jesus is running the board of this corporation and is suggesting billions be spent in investments instead of billions feeding, clothing, housing, and providing healthcare for those in need.
And don’t tell me about their humanitarian efforts. A fraction of their wealth is used on such endeavors.
End of the day, all their leadership cares about is wanting the whole world to volunteer their free time to the local congregation, pay tithing, and do temple ceremonies. Next time you meet a Mormon, ask them to clearly draw a line to what they do in the temple regularly and why that’s what Jesus wants them to do. You’ll see them hit the cognitive dissonance wall.
