Although I recognize it may be provocative, this is a genuine question.
What brought you into programming?
Is it something you always imagined yourself doing, and you would do that anyway, no matter how low the salary would be?
Or is it something you had to do (because you needed money)? Or just a career choice?
Since the current juniors market is flooded (and later mid/senior will also be - that's inevitable), and getting a job will be even harder than it is now, salaries have already started to drop - what are you going to do?
Will you continue because you love the job, or will you try to switch to something else?
If you want to stay anonymous, I started a poll on Reddit (can't open polls here): https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/189cvy6/money_or_passion/
Top comments (47)
Slightly different take.
It is not programming, or development, that I am in love with; it is solving problems. It just so happens that code is quite often a significant contributor to solving these problems. Problems will always need solving and the vast majority of the population don't know how to think about problems to go about solving them in any meaningful way. Even the growth of low-code platforms and AI generated code does not make the issue go away, it just makes those of us who know how to solve problems move faster by not having to set up the boilerplate each time.
Money 😂 If I had lot's of money for sure I wouldn't write code. would be more of a gamer and stressing about quests instead of bugs. But after coding for a long time it's now like a passion, i have fun building projects, learning new things and teaching others.
I'd say both.
I think I ultimately chose this path above some others I thought about because it was a more pragmatic career, but I do have a passion for technology that is a driver for the things I considered.
I wouldn't work in a field I had no passion for, but I have other passions I strayed from in order to pursue a more financially-secure career.
I'm not sure it's either, for me.
It's more like, "this is the only thing I'm any good at"!
That’s defo the good third reason, can relate 😄
It's a passion for making things for me. For most of my career that has meant risking money rather than entering the profession to earn more of it.
The lifelong learning drives me on still, I'm more than 120,000 hours in now and I still know next to nothing. Wanting to make things has created businesses that have sales measured in billions (not per annum sadly) and have employed thousands of people. Wanting to make things has let me live in 6 countries and visit more than 80. I could probably have earned more actual money doing other things, but being a programmer has given me a career with daily challenges, strategic challenges, hopes and dreams. That's a pretty incredible wage in itself.
Thanks for the answer. I don't think the programming will be obsolete either.
So many people think about farming. :D I must confess sometimes I really want to buy a few goats (I heard they are easiest to start the farm with) and see what it's like.
I had few positions in different areas of the tech world. After few years of trying different things I just understood that programming is something I would enjoy for longer period of time (other positions got me bored in a few months). I wouldn't call it a passion, but money wasn't part of the decision.
Passion all day. I have no desire to work for money. Follow your passion and the money will come, and if it doesn't at least you are doing what you love.
The passion is non-rational.
Both.
Money without passion a never ending ending game. You will get tired sooner or later. Passion without money hits you from Day 1 with no life left to make your soul stay in the game of life.
You need to balance both, chase passion and make sure you have enough money to feed that monster.
I have been in startups with just passion with lot of financial burdens, I have walked out many times empty handed and frustration than anything else.
Reasonable amount of money and passion for what we do is always essential. There is no this or that in this scenario.
Both! I've done programming all my life, here and there, when I needed a custom app, or just for fun, if an idea struck me. When I was very young I sold cassette copies of a haunted house game I wrote for the ZX81. My first job as a teen was designing a database for the forestry department here at OSU & I loved it. But nobody ever told me it could be, like, a career! It seems dumb to me now to have missed it. But recently I needed a change for financial reasons, and poking around, I discovered that yeah, this is a great way to make a living. So I'm giving it a shot. How do you like my timing? I started on this path and just a few weeks later, layoffs hit the headlines. Well, even as salaries fall, if I can find a position, I'll be better off than I ever have been, money-wise, doing something I really enjoy. Hopefully the slump will be temporary.
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