Common programmer as in, you for a firm with a team of folks, like in a bank........and you have to do projects every so often or maintain some software...how is life like and are you happy?
Can anyone give me their firsthand views about the life of a working programmer?
- Thread starter jinduy
- Start date
virtuamike
Diamond Member
- Oct 13, 2000
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Yes. A programmer's life is very much like Office Space. I have a huge desire to go ape$H17 on some of our printers and servers. We also don't get out much, don't expect to see much sun. Or hot girls (but that's why we have ATOT). But the pay is good, it's not a very physical job, and the people you meet there are always interesting (that's PC for a little off aka weird). Bah, I'm a geek, I love being a programmer.
don't listen to those people. I've been a programmer for about 5 years now and while I loved Office Space, my life is nowhere near that. It's all you make your life out to be. I have a life outside of my job as a programmer.
My day usually begins with reading a couple news sites like /. and Ars Technica. Then I catch up on local and national news. Pour my first cup of coffee, and then begin work. I'm a java programmer working on a banks online banking webportal. We have meetings twice a week to assess problems that have surfaced during the week and discuss future enhancements to the portal. Then the higher ups make the decisions on our direction and the developers get assigned projects to work on. These projects can take anywhere from a day to months to complete. Since I'm a PC programmer, I have to schedule meetings with the mainframe programmers to get data from them. If I knew COBOL, I'd do it myself, but they don't teach that anymore in school.
Once in a while I have a project that isn't related to the webportal and have to design from scratch the whole thing. Depending on the complexity, I will usually write a couple spec papers and some psuedocode before I actually sit down to write the software. Then I do a little testing and send the code off to QA. Once it passes there, it gets scheduled to be put into production.
Usually I'm on call every other week for after hours support. Thats in case our offsite monitoring folks detect a problem that doesn't clear itself up. I will get called in and will have to fix it. I can usually do it from home though since I have VPN access.
That's about it.
My day usually begins with reading a couple news sites like /. and Ars Technica. Then I catch up on local and national news. Pour my first cup of coffee, and then begin work. I'm a java programmer working on a banks online banking webportal. We have meetings twice a week to assess problems that have surfaced during the week and discuss future enhancements to the portal. Then the higher ups make the decisions on our direction and the developers get assigned projects to work on. These projects can take anywhere from a day to months to complete. Since I'm a PC programmer, I have to schedule meetings with the mainframe programmers to get data from them. If I knew COBOL, I'd do it myself, but they don't teach that anymore in school.
Once in a while I have a project that isn't related to the webportal and have to design from scratch the whole thing. Depending on the complexity, I will usually write a couple spec papers and some psuedocode before I actually sit down to write the software. Then I do a little testing and send the code off to QA. Once it passes there, it gets scheduled to be put into production.
Usually I'm on call every other week for after hours support. Thats in case our offsite monitoring folks detect a problem that doesn't clear itself up. I will get called in and will have to fix it. I can usually do it from home though since I have VPN access.
That's about it.
Heh, just a note on your statement that they don't teach COBOL in school any more. My College has a course for COBOL and, I believe, FORTRAN 
Ditto...watch Office Space.
My brother says his professor says (that sounds weird) that it is really like that.
"Well, I woudn't say I was MISSING it, Bob."
My brother says his professor says (that sounds weird) that it is really like that.
"Well, I woudn't say I was MISSING it, Bob."
I love being a programmer. I started out in June last year, had five weeks training, then started right in. My day sound a lot like AmigaMan's day, except I don't drink coffee I am working now on an automated gateway application that connects a transfer agent to a stock broker in order to trade shares that have been executed as stock options. Another guy and I built the whole thing from the ground up. It is sort of a test project to see if java is going to be the wave of the future for our company. The day is slightly boring, but I manage to survive. Outside of being a programmer, your life is whatever you make it. I play guitar in my church praise band, have bible studies, and play airsoft every weekend. It's nice to have a job where you can afford to do nice things but still have the time to do them if you wish. I would definitely recommend it.
I am working now on an automated gateway application that connects a transfer agent to a stock broker in order to trade shares that have been executed as stock options. Another guy and I built the whole thing from the ground up. It is sort of a test project to see if java is going to be the wave of the future for our company. The day is slightly boring, but I manage to survive. Outside of being a programmer, your life is whatever you make it. I play guitar in my church praise band, have bible studies, and play airsoft every weekend. It's nice to have a job where you can afford to do nice things but still have the time to do them if you wish. I would definitely recommend it.oh can you guys also tell us how your job differs from what school taught you and the projects you did in college? how do they compare? i heard it's much much harder so how do you adjust?
I'll give you my experience with it, but I haven't had the typical career. The first job I had, I was the only Windows programmer out of about 6 mainframe programmers. They wanted to convert from the mainframe to the Windows world. I worked hard for awhile, then the project stalled, so I'd go in and surf the net for 8 hours. The company was real messed up and the management wasted so much money that I didn't feel bad about it. Even if I wanted to work on the product, there was no one to answer my questions. I emailed my boss with about 10 questions I needed answered before I could go further, and the only response I got was an e-mail saying "Thank You" three days later. These weren't programming questions, they were business questions.
Then I got a job at a bank. They had some real crappy programs they'd run to load spreadsheets into the mainframe. They wanted me to fix up the programs. The process worked but took about 6 hours. Would have taken maybe 15 minutes if the original programmer knew anything. Anyways, the bank was in its busy season, so no one had time to work with me, so I just fooled around and surfed the net for 8 hours a day. I was on a contract for a couple months, then 1 week after they hired me full-time I got another offer for 20 percent more money, so I took that offer.
This next job was also a joke. The company had just been acquired by a large corporation so they had a budget to hire more programmers. They hired me and I wrote a few programs and fixed up anotherr program they had. Then the big company changed their mind about my company. The web programmers had a lot to do, but the three Windows programmers had nothing, so the three of us wasted time. I did this for maybe 4 months.
People may flame me for taking money and not working, but in my opinion its up to my superiors to give me work.
Then I quit to go into business with my mother, who is a former CEO of a software company. I work out of home doing all the programming for our company. I just finsihed a product which we hopefully will be able to resell to other clients. I always hated it because the programs I did write for companies were always sold for huge profits that never translated into more money for me. This was I get to keep a share of the profits, even though there is more risk.
Then I got a job at a bank. They had some real crappy programs they'd run to load spreadsheets into the mainframe. They wanted me to fix up the programs. The process worked but took about 6 hours. Would have taken maybe 15 minutes if the original programmer knew anything. Anyways, the bank was in its busy season, so no one had time to work with me, so I just fooled around and surfed the net for 8 hours a day. I was on a contract for a couple months, then 1 week after they hired me full-time I got another offer for 20 percent more money, so I took that offer.
This next job was also a joke. The company had just been acquired by a large corporation so they had a budget to hire more programmers. They hired me and I wrote a few programs and fixed up anotherr program they had. Then the big company changed their mind about my company. The web programmers had a lot to do, but the three Windows programmers had nothing, so the three of us wasted time. I did this for maybe 4 months.
People may flame me for taking money and not working, but in my opinion its up to my superiors to give me work.
Then I quit to go into business with my mother, who is a former CEO of a software company. I work out of home doing all the programming for our company. I just finsihed a product which we hopefully will be able to resell to other clients. I always hated it because the programs I did write for companies were always sold for huge profits that never translated into more money for me. This was I get to keep a share of the profits, even though there is more risk.
wow pretty crazy, i cant imagine myself with that type of skill yet , maybe jr year everything will fall into place and i will see "it"
, maybe jr year everything will fall into place and i will see "it"TRENDING THREADS
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