The April 17, 2006 New Yorker magazine carries an interview with Maurice Sendak, author and illustrator of Where the Wild Things Are, whose protagonist is a young boy named Max.
“My God, Max would be what now, forty-eight? He’s still unmarried, he’s living in Brooklyn. He’s a computer maven. He’s totally ungifted. He wears a wolf suit when he’s at home with his mother!”
[Note: “Computer maven” is New York-speak for “programmer” or “computer expert”.]
There is an extensive and interesting discussion of what might be termed maven-ness in Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point.
Philip, you now have an extensive collection of picks on how the life of average Joe programmer cubicle slave sucks 🙂 Now what about writing an article “a career change plan for Joe programmer who wants to get out of programming and not be such a sucker”? Or is it only limited to going to law/medical or becoming a millionaire like yourself? 🙂 Seriously, what do you think is a good job alternative for a programmer?
Joe: This posting was more about how the average programmer is perceived by outsiders than about the actual life of the average programmer (it seems doubtful that Maurice Sendak would have spent much time with computer programmers over the years). But it is certainly unarguable that the life of a cubicle slave is not very fulfilling for most people. And the programmer cubicle slave doesn’t earn enough to retire after 10 years the way an investment banker cubicle slave would. Being surrounded by college and graduate students as I am here in Cambridge, I’ve been asked more for advice from people who have yet to choose a career.
Given how long people live and work these days, I’m not sure that the choices available to the average 35-year-old are that different from those available to a 22-year-old. We must rule out a handful of age-limited careers, such as military officer or air traffic controller, but otherwise the full range of stuff that a college graduate could choose is available to the programmer who no longer loves to program. Some of my friends who are highly skilled in engineering have gone back for a master’s in public health (much easier and less time-consuming than an MD). With their quantitative and tech skills, they are able to be leaders among their peers whenever some sort of health care IT challenge arises.
“Given how long people live and work these days, I’m not sure that the choices available to the average 35-year-old are that different from those available to a 22-year-old…”
I think Phil’s spot on with this – what career advice would you give a 35 year old programmer? Well, the same advice you’d give a 22 year old who hasn’t had a career at all. Suppose that advances in health care mean that people can work until they are 70 instead of 65 (this is probably a very conservative estimate). So a 35 year old programmer has 35 productive years ahead of him, whereas the 22 year old has another 48. Another way to look at it: if they both decide to become lawyers, the 22 year old is spending about 6% of his remaining years in grad school, whereas the 35 year old is spending over 8%. That’s pretty trivial, especially if your prospects as a programmer are starting to look poor. Both can easily justify the investment, especially when some of these fields pay a complete novice better than a seasoned programmer anyway (your typical harvard law grad who goes for the money starts at $125-150K, even more if he/she can do IP work).
The downside: the 35 year old is more likely to have a family, a mortgate, a programming job that pays $80-100K, and a wife who’d rather he didn’t rock the boat. Law school won’t be as much fun, because most of his peers will be a decade younger, and while they *just might* get over the age difference if he’s single, they definitely won’t want to drink and party with a married man who has children (nor would he with them, I suppose).
By the way, I spent a semester in law school (at Columbia) before dropping out and entering a Ph.D program in engineering. Go ahead and rake me over the coals for that one – just keep in mind that I was a young lad in a country that was fretting about how japan has 100 engineers to every lawyer, and the US has 20,000 lawyers for every engineer, and isn’t this trouble, and wouldn’t we approve of a patriotic young engineer blah blah blah. Our elders (I’m 34 – can I refer to them as elders?) still do this now, but I think young Americans have grown a bit wiser over the last 10 years, and they don’t bite. By the way – from someone who has done (some of) both, law school is much easier than an elite engineering Ph.D. Lawyers talk about how hard law school is, but nobody, and I mean nobody, fails out of an elite law school. 99.7 percent of the class passes. I got B’s in everything on a few hours of reading a day, followed by lots of partying and drinking (those aren’t great grades, but they’re perfectly adequate out of a top 5 school). My Ph.D program in engineering was searingly difficult by comparison, many of my fellow students failed comps, quals, left for other programs, or just took MS degrees and bailed (that was my route). The drop out rate for Ph.D programs is extemely high, the barriers to entry are substantial (you have to suffer as an undergradate to get the pre-reqs done), the work is intensely difficult, the path is perilous, and the rewards are really pretty paltry.
Not a bad rant, eh?