Working as a programmer

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The gifted class of chosen ones analyses and the code monkey writes, that simple huh? If everything could be outsourced to Bangalore, why does Citigroup hire more programmers than Microsoft? In the financial services industry where the ground is fast changing and complex, there is no space for the “brains and creativity” that you speak of. Analysis, design and coding all occur together and are almost always done by the same person if the deadlines are to be met. It is a culture of cold sweat and bad sitting postures brought on by extreme stress.

Interesting. I've only been out of the software world for a few years, and it's already massively different than it was then. To be honest, I'm not sorry I'm out of it. I made damn good money and had lots of fun, but from what I'm hearing (in this forum and elsewhere), those days are gone. Oh well. Nothing lasts forever.

In the heady days of Y2K, if you could spell C++, you could sit back and take your pick of jobs/projects. Rarely did a week go by that I didn't get unsolicited calls from recruiters. And if memory serves, the best hourly rate I ever got in those days was $60/hour. Out of curiosity, how does that compare now?

It appears to me that the nature of the work is different now, too. It's more specialized now, more compartmentalized. In my day, we could put together a team of two or three guys and have at it. It worked then, but probably wouldn't now.

Eh, you folks don't want to hear me reminiscing, I'm sure. It's just interesting how this profession changed so much, so fast.

Circa 2000, $100-110 an hour was fairly routine. $50-60 is more common these days, but 100-110 is still achievable if you're really good, really specialized, or experienced in management.

The work I'm currently doing is absolutely all over the map of software engineering and coding. It's still possible.

Well, I don't know where you worked, but I never knew anyone who got $100/hour.

If you are sitting on top of 100 Indian programmers, $100 an hour is achievable. But it comes at the expense of other local programmers. It makes sense to pay a few top people exorbitantly because someone is always needed to coordinate the work and you want the best brains that money can buy. But what about the people who are not number one at what they do? You know, grunts who just want to make a decent living. There does not seem to be any more space for everyday folks in the IT industry anymore.

I knew all kinds of contractors on both coasts who cleared 100-110ish. I made almost that and I only had a few yrs. experience. As an employee, not so much.

Perhaps looking for a job "as a programmer" is not necessarily the right way to do it.

If you get a job in IT in a small, flexible company and you are a skilled and enthusiastic programmer then you will end up doing more and more programming and less and less of your original job.

In my last job (a food distributor with a large fleet and a small Head Office) I interviewed as a Data Analyst, and ended up writing a full-scale Fleet Management application in VB and TSQL.

In my current job (small company selling and supporting telephone systems) I was taken on as Technical Support Engineer and yesterday my job title was changed to Developer.

Hell, even before either of those I was an Administrator and wrote truck-loads of VBA.

I don't earn a lot yet - I'm more interested in learning. But I'm racking up the experience and when I decide I want to go for it, I think I could earn a lot. At the moment I'm staying put because my job is varied and fun.

And please don't worry about knowing lots of vocabulary. Google, Google, Google. You don't even have to pretend - companies expect you to do it. In a single day I might use Perl, PHP, Bash and Asterisk's own weird nameless language, as well as debugging C programs. You think I always remember where to put which sort of brackets??

anomie, good luck, sounds like you're on the right track to get good experience