Do you accept candidates from Brazil ? 
because all the money in the world isnât going to help you get over the fact that you just retired from 30 years in a job where you accomplished NOTHING of any substantial personal value because you only wanted your paycheck
I have lived to this principle until now (I am closing in 40 years old). My family has grown and the financial requirements are such that I am considering ditching my âwork for passionâ principle in favor of a career driven one.
I have been managing people and I know this is what pays and would allow me to afford the 5 bedrooms house we need, and one that is not 1h30 commute away from work.
Even if abandoning programming seems the most rationale choice for me, this is tough as this is what I have been living for since I am 11 
Whatâs the odds of Vertigo importing a developer from South Africa?
We work cheap 
If only it werenât a Microsoft shop, eh?
Amen. I have never enjoyed my work so much as I do at Apple. The career paths for software engineers and managers are equally rich.
Oh, sure. Come to the dark side. It will be fun.
After a quarter century of jobs, I can say I enjoyed it, but I question if any of it had all that much value. Most of the software I wrote or helped to write is on the trash pile. I admit to some bitterness over putting a lot of time and passion into a product ten years ago, only to see it dumped because it didnât fit the new management âvisionâ. I became a 9-5er and invested my time in my family. I still donât see the point in putting 70-80 weeks into something that will be outdated in a year or two. Even companies my relatives put huge amounts of time building into big names are gone.
Enjoy what you do, but donât live to work, work to live.
Vertigo looks like a great place to work. If you ever would consider switching, Tam Tam is great place to work at in the Netherlands
http://www.paulvanbrenk.com/blog/2007/10/16/HaveFunAtWork.aspx
Iâve had a number of jobs that I enjoy but something usually happens and I leave. I think it is the politics of business that does me in. By this time Iâve learned the political posturing of my fellow employees and especially the managers. I just donât want to play their game. I just do what I see is the right thing to do and trust that it will be recognized. This strategy is probably not the best, but itâs all my temperament can handle. I will not get into battles over nothing I consider important. Itâs really upper management that wonât see what is going on and rewards it.
For 8 years I coded delightly and endlessly, applications always growing up, reaching the sky, and one fine day, somebody came into the office and suddenly told: âWhat? This software is coded with an obsolete language!â (language was C++).
My boss, a dentist, looked at me, and his glance froze my heart. I started to say: âObsolete? Of course not! Let me explainâŚ!â But it was late. As in Dilbert comics, he had just made a decision. A team of programmers was hired and came to pull down 8 years of hard work, plus countless afterhours working. They earned more money than me in all my life.
Of course, I helped the team to pull it down, but something was also pulling down into my mind with the process, and after that I was âpromotedâ to something like âproject managementâ: phoning over there, and telling others to hurry up. Did you hear about Peter Principle? Thatâs it. I leaved myself the company after 3 years of self destroyng my own applications, painful migrations, and endless phoning.
Now Iâm not working, I live assuming my incompetence and, what is worst, I (almost) hate programmingâŚ
Sorry about the sad history, but the existence of failure is like starvation in other parts of the world: we prefer turning aside and only talk about good news.
Someone had to say it.
Remember, This Stuff Is Supposed To Be Fun
Ok, I grasp it. Bye bye
agree, I like to think of if as, everyone has a gift, something that they are good at and they enjoy it, but (no data to prove anything) that over 90% of the people go throughout life without ever knowing what was their gift, what the wouldâve enjoyed; work takes about 30% of your time, itâd be nice if you truly enjoyed what you did
I think those of us who have found their gift are very lucky
âI have been working in this field for 16 years, and have recently come to the conclusion that in order to really enjoy doing this kind of work, Iâm probably going to have to start something on my own.â
Halleluiah Kelly!
In fact, that was the motivation for me as well. Been there done that, and even then there are issues:
http://softwareindustrialization.com/BridgewerxProductSuccessBusinessFailure.aspx
The only thing I know in the end, at 48 years of age, and if you are married, âhappy wife, happy life
Have a good day and carpe diem maaaannnn!
Hi Jeff,
well said,
I worked for just over a year at a great .Net dev shop where they really treated developers well (pool table, open bar fridge, coffee always hot and exotic, zero stress, zero deadline - one of the 4 directors was also a passionate coder), but quit to persue a position that would allow me to work from home for fewer days a week and more pay, working in ruby.
Now Iâve just resigned from the work at home position in order to begin thecodingcollective, basically taking the best of the distributed work model and finding the best people who are working independently. Your post is inspiring, I certainly do like getting my code boots on and it makes sense to invest your time into your own company (or at least one where you have a decent say in things).
My Parachute hasnât opened up yet! When it does Iâll let you know what color it is. Still I enjoy my job and look forward to working with great people. Sometimes itâs not the work but the people you work with.
Damn, i get depressed every time i read what is required for a nice job - i hope i get nice startup job after i finish uni where i can catch up on all the technology you need to survive out there but donât learn in school
So Jeff, should I quit Vertigo and go do what I love more than anything else, even though it is unrealistic, and I may go broke, but Iâd be happy as a clam ; )
Although humanity should try to enjoy life, life itself is only temporary. I know youâre thinking, how depressing but truthfully if you think about it deep enough, nothing matters. No matter how bad you think you may have it, ponder the thought that what youâve done, are doing, or will do makes no difference ultimately. This doesnât mean give up and do what you want as there are laws to live by but itâs still a fact. This realization once fully understood, can change your view on whatâs miserable vs acceptable.
Scott Adams on Multimonitor lifestyle:
a href="http://dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20071016.html"http://dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20071016.html/a
a href="http://dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/images/dilbert2002444471017.gif"http://dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/images/dilbert2002444471017.gif/a
If you get paid for what you love to do, it is a big luxury.
At points in time itâs a luxury to see your wife and kids well provided for and happy, and if your job isnât too bad then life is pretty good.
I have been in this business for 25 years, and I think my favorite job will be opening up a juice bar, with healthy, tasty food, run by 18 year old nubile young women, while I fiddle around on my laptop at the corner tableâŚ
Graduate. Get hired. Grow according too your employerâs needs. Drift away until you are no longer needed and passion turns into a remote dream. How can you expect to find your parachute when youâve been free falling for so long?
Iâve reach the point where I open up great books like âthe pragmatic programmerâ and canât help but wonder if theyâre into some sort of cult. When I peruse over a good technical blog, I canât fail but wonder at all the time and passion that was sacrifed on the altar of technology. To what costs? I ask myself, do these crazy people come to afford to call everyone else âmediocreâ and âaverage at bestsâ?
Thereâs always a cost.
I wished that professional satisfacton would come with balance. I could place faith in a place that would take on perfectly mediocre individuals and, within that 40 hours constraint, invest in their potential. Forty hours is a lot of time to be doing a single thing. Fanatism may not be required if professional growth happens while you are working, which is pretty rare.
So, how extraordinary do we have to be in order to be happy at work?