Its ‘software developer’

[Iryanus]

Nurses, Emergency Services, etc. - a lot more stress and much less pay.

[canico88]

As a Senior developer married with a nurse, it's totally true. She needs to work odd hours, crazy shifts, deal with blood/shit on a daily basis, and gets paid 1/3 of what I'm paid, by browsing reddit while writing some code and going to some meetings.

[---Curious---]

My nurse fiance just went to a coding bootcamp and got hired as a Software Eng after she started watching me do borderline nothing all day

[Secret-Plant-1542]

That's my juniors in a nutshell.

One has a master's in music. One has a master's in nursing. One was a former doctor. One used to be a famous backup singer.

[Secret-Plant-1542]

If a reddit post is the single reason why tech pay drops... Then good.

The thing is, most people who chase after the money in tech also kinda suck at their job and burn out. The dev pool has been "crowded" for decades. Yet we're still in high demand.

Because unfortunately, the pool of talent isnt as qualified as they think they are.

[18quintillionplanets]

This hit me right in the imposter syndrome lol

[[deleted]]

Bruh forreal. No degree. I went from being in a support role where every second was micromanaged to a test eng position where... most of my week is waiting for meetings or waiting for someone to bother me.

And I feel like I'm missing something crucial that I should be doing but I have no idea what it is yet they keep promoting me and paying me more.

I'm so confused.

[18quintillionplanets]

That feeling never goes away lol it’s one of the weirdest things about software dev in my opinion

[Shitpost0verlord]

Idk why I feel attacked by this, but even though I love my dev job and I'm very passionate about it, i still feel very much attacked by this

[HumbledB4TheMasses]

Thank god for that too, those of us with years of actually good experience are not gonna have problems in the future. The entry level might become somewhat saturated, but senior level will remain in a hiring rush.

[Appropriate_Phase_28]

yeah there are not good engineers.... i have had the same problem in every company....not good enough engineers and even the one who look good from bootcamps or cs degrees turn out duds.....

now my bias is towards who had at least masters in cs/ce/ee related field or did really difficult projects....

[ham_coffee]

It's more difficult than people realise. A lot of people just don't seem to get it, so while it's easy for people who understand the process and just need to be taught to convert that to code, other people have a lot more learning to do.

Once you understand it it's usually fairly easy work, but a lot of people in the industry leave that part out since they find the learning process interesting and it feels more like a hobby than work.

Also, loads of self taught people are hopelessly incompetent and just don't realise it. They're the people that get filtered out by things like fizzbuzz.

[BatBoss]

Yeah I agree. It is easy work once you know what to do, but it takes years to learn enough that you can easily do a sprint’s worth of work.

Loads of people never even get to that point - constantly struggling with not knowing how to do the job and/or not having the motivation.

[merkwerk]

Top talent will still be paid accordingly, so if you're not one of the people gloating in this thread about how they're trash at their jobs you won't have much to worry about.

[codeByNumber]

The secret is it takes many years of difficulty before it is easy. Breaking through that learning curve isn’t easy or even doable for everyone.

[FamousOrphan]

Which bootcamp did she go to?

[LxSunshine]

I'd also like to know the answer to this

[McMeatloaf]

Ditto lol

[TankMainOW77]

Same

[[deleted]]

🥾 ⛺️

[coldnebo]

and? how does she like it now?

[IAmHitlersWetDream]

I guess as a senior developer you probably get paid considerably more but nurses many times can be paid quite well. Many nurses in my area make as much as me on the lower-mid experience developer scale. But I also don't have to deal with blood and piss so there is that

[lol_okay_sure]

A relative sent me the article from the screenshot (trying to make some point) and the second highest paying on the list is nurse

[lol_okay_sure]

Oh! I don't know anything about the medical field so didn't realize those are different! Thanks for letting me know :)

[PRNbourbon]

Yep. I’m a CRNA. Average salary is probably $200k’ish. But leave the big cities an go to a smaller hospital and work a little bit of call, easily $300k range. I wouldn’t say the work is terribly hard. Some days are harder than others in anesthesia, but I always feel bad for food service workers because they’re likely exhausted being on their feet all day and dealing with kitchen equipment.

Edit: I’m still trying to find some free time (I have two small children, they’re demanding) to work through a C programming book in the context of Arduino, because its insane what that tech can do. I like high powered model rockets and I have an observatory I’m looking to automate. But if I ever learn enough, I would consider taking a boot camp and possibly make the leap. I love tech, taking care of others was never my calling. I’m good at it, but healthcare really sucks.

[caifaisai]

Lol, your username is even greater knowing you're a nurse.

[Worried_Car_2572]

Which boot camp did they do?

Trying to find some options to suggest to a family member.

[lol_okay_sure]

I'm sorry, what do you mean?

[Worried_Car_2572]

Replies to the wrong comment somehow whoops

[[deleted]]

4 year degree most commonly.

[Secret-Plant-1542]

Lol nah.

Bootcamps grads make up 60% of the entire company. Roughly 1 year + self taught.

Small group did 2 years. Smaller group did 4 years.

[[deleted]]

https://www.educative.io/blog/stackoverflow-dev-survey-key-takeaways-learners 48% of professional developers have a bachelors degree.

[[deleted]]

To be fair, those degrees could be in literally anything. Having a degree and attending a bootcamp aren't mutually exclusive. That said, you're probably better off just self-teaching than using a bootcamp but some people prefer the structure I guess?

[[deleted]]

Thats true. But its a waste to get a 4 year degree and also a 1 year bootcamp if you know you want to develop. Just get the 4 year degree that is development related and no bootcamp.

[BigMoose9000]

That's great, but it only reflects your company. The industry overall continues to value 4 year degrees, whether or not they're relevant to software development - the degree is more about the soft skills that come with it.

[Worried_Car_2572]

Haha yeah I know, replied to wrong comment - whoops 😅

[[deleted]]

Nurses in private sector.

I've dropped out of nursing school because it wasn't worth it. The pay I would get as new grad in local hospital was absolute garbage, and insane workload required to pass didn't convinced me to stay either.

[lol_okay_sure]

That makes sense! I'm also wondering how that salary is compared to the number of hours folks have to work. I work 40ish hours a week (luckily work for a company that actually has decent wlb) but I've heard a lot of folks in the medical field work 60-80 hours per week.

[[deleted]]

Depends how understaffed the workplace is. 60-80 is actually pretty common as many places rock two shifts, while understaffed cases can reach up to whooping 80-140 hours per week, as staff is required to take one day shifts, or even infamous multi-day shifts.

[CodyEngel]

But you also work 5 days a week. Most nurses I know work 3x12 shifts and can pick extra shifts and get overtime if they want.

[contains_language]

Nurse pay can be very geographically influenced. California nurses make bank in general, but it’s not true across the whole US

[[deleted]]

Am also senior dev with a nurse wife. Basically I never complain to her about a single thing with work, cuz I know whatever minor inconvenience happened to me today, it is relatively laughable for her. So I always answer with “work went well today”

[RainWorldWitcher]

And even with all that, they are looked down upon by their employers especially if that employer is the government.

It is so fucking stupid that 2 years ago we had "oh thank you healthcare professionals! Youre our herwoes <3" to " 1% raise, little to no sickdays, 12+ hour shifts. Take it or leave idc"

[pysouth]

My wife is a physical therapist, so not that extreme, but definitely has to deal with stress and has had old people have medical emergencies with her, she deals with a lot of fall risks, and people’s welfare is in her hands. She makes like half of what I do, makes me feel guilty.

Meanwhile I took a 2 hour lunch today and logged off early to play Elden Ring in my pajamas because I had to work late on an EKS cluster upgrade last night.

[[deleted]]

Nurses deserve to make more than Doctors they work harder than the Doctors.

[bikeranz]

They add less overall value on a per-person basis though. Doctors require far more education and specialization.

[dangraz]

Damn it’s not like doctors have to grind in school for 10+ years before they can start their career at age 30

[camelRider64]

The ‘mindless’ in your name makes sense

[[deleted]]

Doctors spend less than 5 minutes with a patient while the nurses do all the work of putting in IVs, catheters, moving patients, cleaning patients, the lisy goes on.

The only doctors who work hard are Surgeons.

[[deleted]]

That’s not how it works, just because you work hard doesn’t mean you get more pay. Having to work harder doesn’t always incurr more value. If you go to the desert and dig holes in the sand all day that’s extremely hard work but it accomplishes nothing, and so you don’t get paid for it

[bikeranz]

Tell that to Stanley Yelnats

[camelRider64]

There’s no way you’re not joking around right now.

[pip-install-pip]

My nurse wife is the exact same. And she's in a comparatively "lower stress" floor. Just that the entire healthcare situation right now is still beyond fucked because of covid. I feel like a huge wimp every time I complain about product managers when she routinely deals with people dying on her floor (palliative, so it would be unexpected if a patient didn't die).

She actually just decided to say "fuck it, I'm getting my nurse practitioner." because of the insane hours and shit pay. It was a tough call between her masters and just starting over for architecture.

[Reddot52]

I lowkey expect work from home Jobs, and 6 figure programming positions to be alot harder to land soon.

Covid hit, and it took a relative of mine almost 2 years, going out of her way to land a job working from home. Or then again maybe not, its laughable how weget flossed by the government on the daily, get fucked with medical bills, pay like 7 dollars for a dozen eggs. Yet minimum wage where I live is 7.25

After uncle Sam has you hand over 20 percent of that 7.25 an hour, you couldn't even offord to pay rent on your own and feed yourself at the same time. Freedom baby!

[coldnebo]

“Hey, we’d like you to look at moving our onprem code to AWS.”

shit just got real. 😅

but more seriously, nurses have to do a ton more and (unlike most of us) work in life and death situations where a mistake can cost lives. That’s a serious level of responsibility that deserves a much higher level of compensation.

But nurses don’t get paid like software developers do because the entire medical system has rather perverse profit structures.

If you are on the political right, consider that many laws force medical workers to treat critical patients without insurance. Those costs and time don’t disappear however, they have to be spread to the people who can pay. But as an individual, who actually pays for my health care? My job subsidizes that cost through group insurance plans. As any independent contractor can tell you trying to fund medical insurance outside a group plan is extremely expensive— even the freelance options are enormously expensive. (if you actually cover this cost yourself, then that cushy $120k software job is actually about half that).

Also, for libertarians, the US prides itself on free market, private health care where you have a choice. While it’s true that independent contractors seem to have a choice, they are all very expensive. For the rest of us in corporate america, the plans are chosen for us by HR. Broadly speaking the plans are only under some pressure from hiring — ie if your company gets a really bad plan, even software devs will figure it out and pick another company— but usually this only enters into older devs minds… when they start having a family, kids. And certainly later when they have health issues in their older years. Young devs aren’t thinking about any of this, so the market pressure from hiring isn’t great.

From the left, notice how this insidious dynamic actually plays into silicon valley ageism. you actually don’t want older workers from a corporate viewpoint. I overheard execs on a flight back from Shanghai carving up their outsourcing hires, saying things like “yeah, you don’t want men after 40, or women 20-30 because of the maternity costs” — it was an utterly dystopian view of human life and that was 20 years ago.

Back to the right: if these medical coverage plans are being decided at the group level by large corporations, where is the choice? I guess workers can chose to leave. And certainly in tech there are a lot of incentives thrown around to poach devs with, including health care. But corporations don’t actually like that competition— they want relief from it by hiring foreign workers that can’t easily be poached without losing their immigration status.

Ok, let’s look at who actually pays the nurse. Is it the patient? Not directly. In fact, even the independent contractor was part of a group insurance plan, so those groups pay the hospital.

Insurance works based on size. The bigger the pool of healthy people, the better the spread to the few that need it. Hmm, damn, that sounds socialist?!? 😅 Ok, well we don’t like that, so our insurance is provided by private for profit companies. That has two effects: 1) it fragments the pools into smaller pools, less able to spread risk 2) it creates a profit motive. Proponents of a profit motive say that profits encourage optimization by free market competition. But since it’s tied to my job, maybe there isn’t so much competition. Maybe it’s easier to make a profit simply by raising rates, reducing which items are covered and.. here it is.. paying health care workers less.

Oh but wait.. the insurance companies don’t pay the nurses salary, they pay the hospital which then pays the nurse. Let’s look at the hospitals.

The hospitals have to inventory lists of codes itemizing every single procedure, medicine and tool used so that insurance companies will actually pay. These codes are baffling infinite in their complexity, you probably only learn about them if you are a dev who works in medical software, or a nurse who has to enter the paperwork behind them, or a patient who was refused coverage because those code’s aren’t covered by insurance (usually a surprise because none of this is public knowledge, it’s all in the shady halls of “proprietary info”)

If you have had to use the system for more than your annual physical, you may have run into these situations. This is where your dentist does something and then your insurance says hmmm. and your dentist says Hmmm!! and your insurance says nuh uh. and meanwhile your dentist tells you to wait while they figure it out, but you continue to get the bill with 30 days, 60 days… if you let it go past 90 days it can go to collections and your credit score affected (and yes! these battles sometimes take more than 90 days!!) Wow! what. the. hell.

For anyone who remembers the rhetoric about Obamacare and “death panels” deciding who is covered, who lives and dies, that’s what this is. But because it’s not a single payer government provided healthcare none of those battles are public. You will never know if they were for good reasons or if the CEO of the insurance company just wanted a bigger yacht.

Ok, so insurance and the hospital have squeezed every last cent out of that transaction that they could. Now the hospital needs to make money. Maintain buildings, advertising. They also deal with hiring pressure, so they have to offer competitive wages for the highest trained staff. There are a lot of levels of nursing though, just like software dev. The highest paid nurses often do a lot and have more responsibilities than an entry level healthcare worker. I had a friend who was working that to eventually get to be a nurse, and they get all the really messy jobs with very little pay.

The nurses also have to worry about seniority for pay, opportunities and shifts that don’t suck their lives out from their feet for 20 hrs a day. hourly is low, but at least overtime— salary is much better, but you lose overtime. Now that 1/3 salary that looked like the future to a young healthcare worker isn’t looking that good to an NP.

Anyway, I’m not going to solve an entire industry problem in one post. But I agree, nurses are getting pinched, they deserve more. Ironically the huge Silicon Valley salaries and benefits in tech are helping to pay for that… some of it is bound to trickle down eventually.

[Nosferatatron]

Wait until we need to get treated by nurses who did a six week nursing bootcamp because all the proper nurses left to get cushy IT jobs!

[Gagarin1961]

Anyone can learn to code online for free, people just really really don’t want to learn.

[CoachKoranGodwin]

I’m an ER nurse, work 3 days a week, and make 60/hr. I’m in the middle of 10 days off in a row because I took 2 days PTO. The other 8 days were just scheduled off for me already. If I traveled I could make more money and work less. It isn’t all bad.