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I'm working a job that pays $100k a year, and I'm miserable. I've never had more fun working a job in my life than when I was working in a PA-esque environment

I'm working a job that pays $100k a year, and I'm miserable. I've never had more fun working a job in my life than when I was working in a PA-esque environment (as far as I can tell, it was a very anti-PC office) making $60k a year. Money isn't everything, and there's something to be said about waking up every morning excited to go to work. Also, how many software developers do you know that'd be doing what we do even if it paid $30k a year? Because I sure as hell would. Lebron might even be ballin' for $50 a year, if he loves it enough. And that's kind of the whole point of the job posting: if you're in it for the money then PA doesn't want ya, and you probably don't want PA.

res0nat0r 13y ago
You won't be excited to go to work when you were woken up for the 3rd time this week at a page at 4:30 in the AM because your db replication took a dump again, or one of the ten other single points of failure in your architecture dies for the 5th time this month. I did oncall work for large pharma for 7 years, then also for AWS. It is terrible. I can guarantee you everyone there for the most part hates oncall. Everyone has to plan their lives around it, pre-plan trying to swap weeks out which overlaps family time and basically being tied to your pager and a computer / internet location for a week at a time is the worst thing in the world. The type of job posting above sounds like you will be doing all of the crap work just keeping the lights on and never have any time to sit down and convince people how to reasonably re-architect all of the crap you are up all night working on...because you have no time to do anything but fight fires. Being up all night and shifting your work schedule to 11AM - 7PM for the week just because you know you will be up in the wee hours of the morning every time you are on call is something I never want to go back to. What's that you say? I'm the only person on the oncall rotation? Well unless off hours pages are few and far between, don't expect me to be picking up trouble tickets every night or weekend because I am actually going to be out drinking at the bar, or doing other things. If your oncall load is this high, you better be hiring additional peers because there is no way I'm going to be expected to be tied to my computer every day of the year.
danenania 13y ago
You're creating a false dichotomy. There are certainly more important factors than money, but a developer at the level of PA's listing doesn't have to settle for low pay or a crappy work environment. You should be excited to go to work and be adequately compensated for the extremely valuable work you do. You may not be in it for the money, but any for-profit venture certainly is. Imo, if you're going to work for below market pay, you should do it for a non-profit that really is trying to make the world better with limited resources, not a company that is capable of paying what you're worth, but would rather make a slightly higher margin off your hard work.
- SheepSlapper 13y ago
  And you're making quite the assumption. You assume that working at PA would be "settling for low pay", when in reality nobody knows what the position pays. Maybe it's low for Seattle? Or just lower than PA would pay if money weren't an issue? Hard to say, since they don't get into details in the posting. Or maybe lower than a job in corporate office, where you're stuck in a cubicle all day? Again, the point is that there is more to job compensation than money (at least for me). If it doesn't pay enough, and the perks aren't worth it, then don't apply. Or apply, and then say "no thanks". Nobody is forcing a job on you, and there are quite a few people who would enjoy working for PA at some unknown % of market value. And don't conflate non-monetary compensation with doing good in the world, they can be two different things. Hell, in the case I made before they are two different things. Speaking of non-profits, you know they run Child's Play[1], right? Raised $17M+ over 10 years. I wonder who's doing all the tech support, web dev, etc for that? Smart money is on whoever holds the advertised position. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child's_Play_(charity)#Annual_totals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child's_Play_(charity)#Annual_t...

res0nat0r 13y ago

You won't be excited to go to work when you were woken up for the 3rd time this week at a page at 4:30 in the AM because your db replication took a dump again, or one of the ten other single points of failure in your architecture dies for the 5th time this month. I did oncall work for large pharma for 7 years, then also for AWS. It is terrible. I can guarantee you everyone there for the most part hates oncall. Everyone has to plan their lives around it, pre-plan trying to swap weeks out which overlaps family time and basically being tied to your pager and a computer / internet location for a week at a time is the worst thing in the world. The type of job posting above sounds like you will be doing all of the crap work just keeping the lights on and never have any time to sit down and convince people how to reasonably re-architect all of the crap you are up all night working on...because you have no time to do anything but fight fires. Being up all night and shifting your work schedule to 11AM - 7PM for the week just because you know you will be up in the wee hours of the morning every time you are on call is something I never want to go back to. What's that you say? I'm the only person on the oncall rotation? Well unless off hours pages are few and far between, don't expect me to be picking up trouble tickets every night or weekend because I am actually going to be out drinking at the bar, or doing other things. If your oncall load is this high, you better be hiring additional peers because there is no way I'm going to be expected to be tied to my computer every day of the year.

danenania 13y ago

You're creating a false dichotomy. There are certainly more important factors than money, but a developer at the level of PA's listing doesn't have to settle for low pay or a crappy work environment. You should be excited to go to work and be adequately compensated for the extremely valuable work you do. You may not be in it for the money, but any for-profit venture certainly is. Imo, if you're going to work for below market pay, you should do it for a non-profit that really is trying to make the world better with limited resources, not a company that is capable of paying what you're worth, but would rather make a slightly higher margin off your hard work.

SheepSlapper 13y ago
And you're making quite the assumption. You assume that working at PA would be "settling for low pay", when in reality nobody knows what the position pays. Maybe it's low for Seattle? Or just lower than PA would pay if money weren't an issue? Hard to say, since they don't get into details in the posting. Or maybe lower than a job in corporate office, where you're stuck in a cubicle all day? Again, the point is that there is more to job compensation than money (at least for me). If it doesn't pay enough, and the perks aren't worth it, then don't apply. Or apply, and then say "no thanks". Nobody is forcing a job on you, and there are quite a few people who would enjoy working for PA at some unknown % of market value. And don't conflate non-monetary compensation with doing good in the world, they can be two different things. Hell, in the case I made before they are two different things. Speaking of non-profits, you know they run Child's Play[1], right? Raised $17M+ over 10 years. I wonder who's doing all the tech support, web dev, etc for that? Smart money is on whoever holds the advertised position. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child's_Play_(charity)#Annual_totals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child's_Play_(charity)#Annual_t...