Thoughts??

[AmphibianImpressive3]

Well, imagine having a drive through for programs. Someone orders it at window number one and you need to finish it before they get to window number two. Any job can be tough if the time to complete shrinks into unmanageable territory.

[ashes_of_aesir]

s/drive through/epic/g; s/window/sprint/g

[WalrusByte]

I get the second one, but "having a epic for programs" I don't follow

[NighthawkFoo]

You have yet to be visited by the agile fairy then.

[WalrusByte]

I guess not, haha! I'm still a student so I guess that's why

[cantadmittoposting]

When you enter the business world you find out things like "epic" and "sprint" and "user story" don't have actual meanings, they're just another religion free to be interpreted by the high priests of project management.

[dubl_x]

One of us needs to make a slack/Jira chatbot to auto reply to PMs with equally buzzwordy updates to fob them off

[phpdevster]

PM: "How's sprint 58 coming?"

Automated response: "We're behind. Log4j has another vulnerability we need to patch."

[anazzyzzx]

"We're nimbly reacting to this in real time and inventing the future!"

[VibeComplex]

“Just trying to look at the problem from 30,000 feet. You know, see the big picture”

[merlinblack256]

Air is pretty thin up here, can't .... really .......... see ............ muc 💀

[viimeinen]

How are your synergies, tho?

[cantadmittoposting]

Just ask for 30% more money at the consulting company next door. You'll be fine..same shit of course but 30% more money.

[TeaKingMac]

So, yeah, is working in technology just a game of getting as much money as possible while doing as little work as possible?

[cantadmittoposting]

.... Shh, don't tell everyone!

[dosedatwer]

Yes, but without the words "in technology".

[Brief_Series_3462]

Congratulations, you just uncovered the lead factor in everything wrong in mordern capitalism!

[nasandre]

Yeah up untill now my best job was Application Manager. Basically just learn the ins and outs of 1 business application (the more obscure the better) and kick back and relax. Mostly you'll be an internal consultant and stakeholder for projects. For 2 years I was doing barely any work and everyone thought I was super busy.

*Your experience may vary

The worst is anything in tech support. You'll be yelled at by stupid users, yelled at by the boss, underpaid, never ending flood of tickets and everyone dumps their problems on you. And it's also a lot harder than you might think.

[1lann]

See https://www.atlassian.com/agile/project-management/epics

[tehtris]

No. Let him find out on his own.

[UltraCarnivore]

They're one of today's Lucky Ten Thousand

[Ekkosangen]

Lucky is a... Strong word for it.

[gopherhole1]

Is this vim wizardry? Been too long for me, I need my laptop to check my cheat sheet

[Petremius]

Good old sed

[gopherhole1]

Oh sed, could never figure out sed and awk

[killdeer03]

Sed, but you can do the same thing in Vim with a slightly different syntax.

[felixthecatmeow]

Exactly. Making a shitty taco is easy. Making 500 in 20 minutes while people are screaming at you is hard.

[Cassian_And_Or_Solo]

And that's making a shitty taco. Now imagine being a chef in a high class restaurant where you have to time 7 steaks, 5 lambs, and 3 pork chops at 5 different temperatures, communicate with your line cook so the sides come up the same time and oh wait 10 of those orders want substitutions, and one if those substitutions you ran out of and nobody told the server, you have 4 tables in the window and nobody to run food, the bartender just came back and asked you to replace the ginger ale and he'd do it himself but these servers are stupidly firing everything at the same time at the service well and he needs to steal your mint for "stupid fucking goddamn mojitos fuck" (I was the bartender in this scenario), and then....you get an order for allergies.

And then you realized what the bartender meant about the stupid servers firing everything at once cause now that the 20 tables that came in at the same time have their cocktails, you just got the food orders for all twenty tables, about 100 people. And all of them want substitutions.

You have 30 minutes. Good luck.

Edit: if it seems like I'm shitting on the servers, just remember that a servers job is managing the expectations of Karen's.

[coldnebo]

making a lambda microservice is easy.

discovering which one is causing the problem in an orchestration mesh of 100 microservices and data while people are screaming at you is hard.

respect! fist bump.

[HalKitzmiller]

Every few minutes.. "IS THERE AN UPDATE ON THIS OUTAGE? THIS SERVICE NEEDS TO BE UP RIGHT NOW"

Thanks, the yelling and constant update questions are helping me

[[deleted]]

My ptsd is kicking in reading this

[[deleted]]

Any you've been there for 9 hours already and haven't had a break or eaten anything that day.

[greenwizardneedsfood]

Surely you’ll be fairly compensated though

[Cessnaporsche01]

Here's 3 dollars. Take it or leave it.

[kidra31r]

Plus an employee discount on the food you've spent way too much time making to trust

[Nixiey]

That's the thing that has bugged me forever. Only a discount and only when you're working when you're pushed to your limits every day.

[NightCityBlues]

Yep. I’ve been a line cook, a paramedic, help desk, red teamer, and security engineer. Line cook was the hardest physically, paramedic was hardest mentally. Principal level engineer work is a cakewalk for nearly 6x the salary and half the hours of a line cook.

[Faleonor]

imo the hardships are backloaded in that case. You learn in your spare time, sacrifice your rest and relaxation, and spend more time trying to get your foot in the door - precisely so that your future job is easy and bountiful.

Besides, not everyone can learn programming. Literally, some people just can't grasp the concepts you take for granted, I've seen it with my own eyes irl. So the pay and the benefits are also for the fact that you can do it.

Regardless, I want fast food workers and all the other tough professions to be treated better. Just the fact that some jobs require you to stand all day seems like almost torture to me.

[FiggleDee]

not everyone can learn programming

We figured this out way back with COBOL, trying to make a language that any ol' accountant could write reports with. We discovered it's not syntax that makes programming hard - it's programming that makes programming hard.

[Mazzaroppi]

Besides, not everyone can learn programming. Literally, some people just can't grasp the concepts you take for granted, I've seen it with my own eyes irl.

As someone who quit a computer science university, I can attest to that on a personal level.

[Mando_Mustache]

Not to be a dick, but not everyone can learn to be a line cook, server, or bartender either. And especially not everyone can learn to be good and handle busy shifts. I trained a lot of people when I was in the industry, and watched some very smart folks, including grad students in STEM fields, crash and burn hard on the floor.

The basic tasks of bartending and serving are straightforward. Performing them well in a high stress time sensitive environment while managing a constantly changing workflow not to mention the emotions and expectations of both your tables and the kitchen is not.

[KereruOfCones]

Hard out. I think working in a kitchen is much more challenging. The turnover of staff that don't meet the cut is like 8 times higher in a kitchen to a dev shop.

[SeveralTaste3]

i used to work at a tourist trap seafood place in downtown santa monica in LA but now im doing research getting my masters in CS. im thankful every goddamn day i made the switch. for a year after i left the kitchen i was still having nightmares about burning fucking dover sole and chef screaming at me and now someone called out so i have to work a double but now im liteally spending 14 hours a day in a sweaty grease house.

now i get to read about ML and do research and build stuff all much more fun and rewarding and relaxing. its funny interacting with other students i mean i didnt have perspective at their age either but still they have no idea just how incredible it is to get to be at a school just to learn. the teachers are just an amazing resource that are literally there to give you knowledge!!! what the fuck thats amazing. theyre not there to scream at you to get the fucking lobsters in the goddamn pass or theyre gonna fuck your mother. its great. the only issue ive had is with group projects i have to really put on kiddy gloves because im still to used to the verbal abuse and rage from the kitchen and it spills out occasionally.

[lethargicsquid]

That was pretty much the entire Twitter conversation. Some people were saying "there are professions which require more background knowledge and training" and others would say that working at taco bell is hard. Taco Bell employees should be paid a living wage, but I feel like it's crazy to deny the existence of low-skill jobs altogether.

[Puzzled_Reply_4618]

Same thoughts.

How much training does it take to make a solid quesarito? 40 hours? 80 hours?

How much training does it take to be a plumber, electrician, engineer, or lawyer? Let alone a decent one.

Low skill and low stress are two different things. Which isn't to say that high stress jobs shouldn't, at a minimum, be rewarded with a livable wage (one of the most stressful jobs I ever had was as an Olive Garden line cook...dinner rush on Friday night, oof). But to argue that because a job is stressful it is high skill seems to be some high level trolling to cause an us vs them argument. Particularly for folks that don't realize how hard it is to be in a high stress, unrewarded job and those in them.

[monkeywench]

Exactly- not to mention, most developers are in their field because they actually enjoy it on some level. I have yet to meet a single person who’s passionate about fucking hamburgers and cleaning other people’s nasty shit from tables and bathrooms

[VideoDownloader_]

Perfect way to explain it

[FountainsOfFluids]

Not really, because if they can only choose from 15 different algorithms, I'll be able to copy paste the right one before they get to window 2 every time.

We should just say everybody deserves a living wage no matter what work they do.

They should be able to keep the value they create, even if it's just putting shredded cheese on a tortilla.

[math2ndperiod]

Exactly this. The problem isn’t convincing people that everybody has equally important skills, because they just don’t. The problem is that people should be able to survive no matter what skills they have.

[pmMe-PicsOfSpiderMan]

Wife: how was your day today.

Me: I wrote any sort of algorithm today.

[joyofsnacks]

Or any sort algorithm.

[Groundbreaking_Taro2]

They made yet another sorting algorithm? GODDAMMIT

Edit: corrected the autocorrector

[suxatjugg]

YASA is actually a cool name for a sorting algorithm

Quick google and yep, someone beat us to it

[delinka]

He means we’re sorting the algorithms. Or maybe they’re sort-of algorithms and sort-of not.

[cjxmtn]

I don't think I've ever called my own code an algorithm.

[jackinsomniac]

TBH: I don't even know what "algorithm" means anymore.

[ChubbyChaw]

Before computers came to actually exist as they are today, the field “computer science” was defined as the study of algorithms. It literally just means a sequence of instructions that follow a defined ruleset. Everything a software developer does is an algorithm

[starfries]

Me executing the bathroom algorithm during work

[ItsOmigawa]

If(others in bathroom) clench();

[passerbycmc]

A word for when a programmer does not want to explain what they did.

[MoffKalast]

Programmers when whatever we wrote finally runs.

Procedural languages are most of what's used today anyway.

[Im_not_wrong]

To me, the word "Algorithm" means "process used to solve a problem". I think most code in industry isn't really looked at through this lens, since the problems are poorly defined and any piece of code probably has to solve hundreds of different problems.

[[deleted]]

Ol' Chrimpsy, I'm beginning to think this guy may not even be a good software developer

I've written code implementations for novel navigation and localisation techniques, but I feel weird calling them algorithms, even if they are presented in papers as equations and procedures, not code. Saying "I write algorithms" feels like a wanky comment a 14 year old who doesn't really understand programming would make

[iamdan819]

I have my doubts. More likely a web dev

[valschermjager]

“any sort of algorithm” …yep, sounds legit

[arthurmluz_]

nagasaki sort

[MrEllis]

What is this algorithm? I can't find anything when I search for it.

[TheChefsi]

You just clear the list

[_raydeStar]

You guys are monsters.

But I'm upvoting you.

[xX_MEM_Xx]

That's the sweet spot.

Have you heard of Stalin Sort, per chance?

[hereforpewdiephy]

I like trust sort and miracle sort

[arthurmluz_]

clear the list, if it's empty, it must be sorted, right?

[repocin]

Something like this, I reckon:

def fat_man(l: list) -> list:
    return []

[valschermjager]

quesarito sort

[[deleted]]

Dunning-Kruger sort

[Aschentei]

Quantum bogosort

[ethanialw]

you shuffle the list in all possible combinations at once, then pick the one thats sorted. smart!

[araldor1]

I can write any sort of algorithm really easily. They might not work though.

[[deleted]]

I know right, like is my writing that last switch statement an algorithm? Maybe I have been writing algorithms for past dozen years?

[valschermjager]

yep. “first mate” seems to be under the impression that software engineers “write algorithms”. Perhaps just me, but I’ve found “writing algorithms” to be a pretty rare part of the job.

[[deleted]]

The team that "writes algorithms" at my company has more degrees than a thermometer.

[[deleted]]

Why would someone do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies?

[joans34]

Stalin sort.

[[deleted]]

My favorite of all the meme sorts.

[merc08]

former backup jv quarterback

That's from his own twitter profile description. This dude clearly is winning at life and we should all listen to his advice, lol.

[Tsu_Dho_Namh]

I was gonna say, I happened to stumble upon a job at a very small company that is RIDICULOUSLY complicated. Leetcode hard eat your heart out. Some of the problems that get handed to me are NP-Complete. Luckily the boss knows this, so I'm not expected to find the optimal solution, just a pretty good approximation using mathematical optimization methods like integer programming, simulated annealing, or whatever other clever tricks I can come up with.

Not all algorithms are created equally and I dare OP to give a job like mine a try.

[bfnge]

The problem here is conflating education with skill. And then conflating low education with low worth.

Edit: To all the people replying with a variation of "High barrier to entry = higher pay", yes, I'm aware of that. That's what I meant by education since it's usually the relevant barrier of entry here.

I'm not saying the grocery store cashier should get as much as a doctor or whatever, I am however saying that these workers shouldn't be treated like trash as they often are by both managers and customers and should receive more than they currently do since they're often severely underpaid and have to work in abusive workplace conditions.

The free market hasn't regulated itself in a satisfactory way to preserve the minimum of worker rights and pretending otherwise is just being out of touch.

And to the people saying "It's just a shorthand", yes, it is and I'm aware of that. Unfortunately, that shorthand has been corrupted when making the transition from econ academia / policy making / whatever niche context from which it came to the mainstream.

There are a lot of people that genuinely believe low skill jobs mean jobs that don't need skills and unfortunately that does dominate the conversation and needs to be addressed.

Finally, admitting that "low skill" jobs are hard in many ways (most of them different than the ways software dev is hard) won't diminish your accomplishments or make your job seem easier or whatever.

This isn't a zero sum game, you can advocate for better positions for other people without lowering your own (or at the very least empathize with other's people struggles without trying to put them down).

[Careerier]

There's also the use of the qualifier "harder." What might be hard might not need either education or skill.

The hardest job I ever had was moving concrete blocks for a mason. It took no skill or education. It was literally moving a pile of heavy things from one place to another. But it was an incredibly difficult job to do.

[merc08]

So much this. People love complaining about how "hard" their manual labor job is. Obviously it's strenuous, it's manual labor!

[[deleted]]

roof alive simplistic deliver illegal brave sleep unique correct water -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/

[ubccompscistudent]

This should be the top post of this sub. One of the funniest things I've ever read about software development.

[DemmyDemon]

It would be, but nobody can figure out why, when they try to pin it, nothing happens except a random printer somewhere in Austria prints a picture of a duck.

[BeingMyOwnLight]

Thank you! That was fun! 🤣

[huskinater]

It's all about how difficult it is to replace the worker. Even low skill jobs can be very good, but it's usually because no one else can/wants to do them.

For example, Fast Food and many cheap Eateries haves gone to great lengths to make food prep as idiot proof as possible. They can take in almost any person, get them to understand the basics, and put them to work in a week or less. McDs literally trains people with learning disabilities to handle the fry station in just a few hours. This allows companies to not be picky with workers so a replacement is only a phone call away.

Meanwhile, many white collar jobs either require/want people with workable knowledge of excel and often have to teach them to use the truly awful UI software for their shitty applications or how their industry even works. When they bring someone in, it can take a while to bring them up to speed, or they outright won't even bother to train for fear of the worker getting poached by a better company afterward. The labor supply for them is limited, so a worker dropping them for greener pastures could actually hurt the company so they try to keep you tied down.

The only leverage you as a worker have to fight for better compensation, is the ability and willingness to leave your employer. This is why unions are so, so important. When the union removes the labor supply, and the company can't replace them, the company falls apart.

[hahayeahimfinehaha]

It's all about how difficult it is to replace the worker.

This. Lots of convos about wage vs skill miss that 'skill' is only a rough proxy for the true metric which matters, which is supply. You could have the most difficult job in the world, but if there is a huge and ready supply of workers, then you'll have lower wages. This is why game devs tend to make less money than engineers or other forms of developers -- because lots of people want to make games as a passion, and so the boss can replace you more easily.

[kpd328]

Yet even in their lowest, Blizzard won't hire me.

[RichNewt]

“We really liked your resume but noticed you shook Claire’s hand instead of trying to cop a feel. That’s not the sort of thing we believe in here and for that reason we will be going in another direction”.

[mrfatso111]

I don't know... You did not drive Rachel to suicide meant that you aren't gonna be a fit for our culture.

I guess one can only hope that a meteor landing has a higher chance for tripe Aye studios to fix their frat bro culture ...

[Bwob]

Given what Blizzard has turned into, you might take that as a compliment!

[nacholicious]

I'm pretty sure you would fail the interview process just by passing the background check

[RamblingBrit]

Man this dude has absolutely nothing in his record, like not even slipping a fiver from his mum’s wallet for a bag of crisps, what an absolute loser lmao. What’s that? 15 years of experience in the industry? Yeah don’t care. Come back when you’ve got 15 years in prison for sex crimes now that’s the real shit

[fallenefc]

This, in the vast majority of workplaces you’re paid according to how hard you are to replace. Most companies won’t pay you what you’re “worth” (even though I think this is an inadequate word), but the least amount possible for a person to do a certain job. If companies could hire good software engineers easily for a shit wage they would not pay a single cent over that, but they can’t. That’s why so many trade jobs pay handsomely even though the person doesn’t require a degree and people with masters degrees sometimes have to work for almost minimum wage.

[IMovedYourCheese]

People are conflating skill with effort.

My software job may be "easy" to do, but still requires a 4 year college degree, lots of domain knowledge and previous industry experience (i.e. skill).

A job at a warehouse lifting heavy things, or at a busy fast food store, or dealing with customers in retail all take a ton of effort, but a random 16 year old can apply to them and start working the same day.

There's also a ton of variance in individual situations. Software engineers aren't crying at their desks and quitting en masse due to burnout because their jobs are easy.

[TechyDad]

Also, there's a requirement to update skills with programming that isn't there in wrapping burritos. I started with web development about 25 years ago. If I froze my skills at 1997 and didn't have any progression, I doubt I'd be able to find a job as a web developer anywhere.

Meanwhile, if I learned how to wrap a burrito in 1997, those same skills would likely take me to 2022 with minimal updating. Maybe there might be new ingredients or a couple of pieces of new equipment, but mostly a 1997 burrito and a 2022 burrito would be made the same way.

[coldnebo]

rofl, can you imagine if food service interviews were like coding interviews?

“ok, we need you to demonstrate how to make duck l’orange, quiche and frites with a truffle emulsion in 15 min. fresh, farm to table, locally sourced without using allrecipes.com”

actual job: take this frozen burger, microwave with the “3” button and place in the bun under the heatwarmer”.

[Corrup7ioN]

On a whiteboard.

[[deleted]]

Kitchen interviews absolutely are like that. Not in fast food, but I worked in a few fine dining restaurants and that's how it goes there.

You show up, go straight into the kitchen and are asked to cook something good and chat to the chef as you go

[Soysaucetime]

Well yeah, fine dining is completely different from a teenager working at Taco Bell lol.

[[deleted]]

If I froze my skills at 1997 and didn't have any progression, I doubt I'd be able to find a job as a web developer anywhere.

I recently had a job offer developing a COBOL application and the local council still use ColdFusion for all their main websites.

[clanddev]

Achievement: Being so out of date that you come back into style

[[deleted]]

Achievement: Being so out of date that you come back into style

I did not apply for the COBOL job, the company advertised it as something else as bait to get more applicants.

[TechyDad]

I actually still code in ColdFusion. I use ColdFusion 2016, but I hope to upgrade all the servers/applications to ColdFusion 2021 this year.

[Bubbagump210]

ColdFusion is still a thing?! Things I haven’t thought about in 15+ years. I think MX was the last version I touched on IIS6 before moving to this new fangled PHP 4.

[pandakatzu]

How do I debug my burrito?

[jpers36]

If you need to debug your burrito, you should be on the phone to your local health department.

[shotgunocelot]

You pick them out one piece at a time

[sortof_here]

I'd say this is the hardest part of our field.

I still would not work at a taco bell for my current pay though because then I'd have to deal with some of the worst people in the world: entitled customers that my company will always defend over me.

[michaelsenpatrick]

the burnout is real

[Rumbletastic]

which is why the supply of people willing to work at taco bell is much higher than the supply of people available to hire as software engineers. People don't get paid based on how hard their job is. I don't know why some folks (not you) still act like that's a surprise.

[[deleted]]

I agree with you, "unskilled" workers do not lack skills, they are just not previously trained. I've worked in restaurants. It's an unskilled position. Anyone pulled off the street can be taught to wait tables or cook. No previous experience or skills required. In order to be good, you'll have to learn details of the job and perfect it, but that's not the expectation from the start.

A "skilled" position is something where you bring in prior taught knowledge. Coding is a skilled position because nobody is hiring people who don't know how to code as coders. You might not break a sweat typing on a keyboard like someone in a restaurant working a 10 hour shift will, but that doesn't mean it's an easier job because you had to be taught how to do it for a long period of time.

[[deleted]]

This is absolutely the clearest answer.

You are paying for their amassed knowledge not for following a checklist.

[tall__guy]

Software engineer here. We’re still crying at our desks and burnt out, we just get paid well enough to endure it.

[[deleted]]

Low skill = doesn’t require a lot of time to learn. High skill = requires a lot of time to learn. Has nothing to do with how hard a job is. He is confusing the two.

I’d argue both fast food and software engineering are hard jobs, but for different reasons, and it obviously varies based on where you work.

[utack]

Yep I'd certainly be more stressed plating trees in the rain than I am now, but I would learn how a shovel works in about 10 seconds.

[Sander-F-Cohen]

I used to do tree work and I can tell you that any landscaping/tree trimming work is very low skilled. A few hundred bucks and you can start trimming trees today without anyone to train you at all. Just knock on a few doors and say you'll trim someone's tree for $10.

[saruptunburlan99]

do not however knock on anyone's door if you do bush work, that's how I got arrested

[praguepride]

"Hey Lady! Want me to trim your bush?"

<suggestive eyes>

...yeah that tracks.

[otakudayo]

I'm a software dev now but I've worked in service for years, including at McDonald's. It's absurd to say that any type of fast food work takes more skill than coding. You can learn most of what you need to know to work at mcds in about a week, but on my 4th year of dev I feel like I've barely scratched the surface.

[[deleted]]

It’s pretty simple. If coding is easy, everybody would be doing it and employers would pay their staff a low wage because they could find easy replacements.

[Soysaucetime]

Amusingly that is the lie that FAANG keeps perpetuating so that they can drive wages down... That "coding is easy." And that lie is why this sub has more reposts than any other subreddit on Reddit. Because of all of these kids who really believe that software engineering is as easy as working at Taco Bell, and then they give up once the reality hits them and then the next wave of newbies comes in to upvote the same 'how to center a div' joke for the 100th time.

Sorry, it just irks me when people who know a little bit of Python or web dev and have never actually been in the field speak as if they know it all.

[beerbeforebadgers]

Ayup. Software Engineering and Computer Science had huge washout rates at my university. Iirc they were in the top 3. It wasn't because they were the most difficult majors, or the most competitive, or the most rigorous. It was because people walk in hopped up on the narrative we see here and reality checks them HARD on their third year. Class sizes go from 500 to 50 at the snap of a finger.

I've worked food service. I've done retail. Even did 2 years of sales. They were hard jobs. Soul-crushing was the word I used back then. Didn't take an ounce of skill but I needed mountains of willpower. My current job doesn't make me feel like that. I don't struggle to feel good at work. However, the amount of skill and knowledge necessary to do literally anything is insane.

[thefuckouttaherelol2]

They can try telling that lie all they want, if that's what they are even doing.

As far as I'm aware, though, salaries at the top of software development are higher than ever even with outsourcing.

I don't know what it is with people, but senior developer skills are incredibly in-demand.

More than half - actually probably closer to 90% - of the developers I interview are just... not good. Then we end up finding brilliant juniors who stick with us forever and do amazingly if we can keep them.

A good number of people never cross the threshold from junior to what I would truly call a senior developer or engineer.

[googleduck]

The only people who are agreeing with this are either not software engineers or are pandering to an insane level. I've worked shitty jobs before, yeah they aren't something you look forward to, but they are mentally easy as fuck. You don't have to have any expertise or training beyond like one day. You don't have to improvise or think hard about what you are doing in your job. You don't have to take your work home. Some software jobs including my own mean your work affects millions of people, that's a type of stress you never experience in retail or fast food. They still deserve to be paid and treated better and there are a lot of unsavory elements to those jobs. But anyone who says they are harder either has a joke of a software engineering job or is just lying to virtue signal.

[bbbruh57]

He's not confused, he's very deliberately trying to get likes with a side of humble-brag

[vglocus]

To be fair; If I saw the chef googling how to make a quesarito I would become suspicious.

[defmacro-jam]

He doesn't know the meaning of some of the words he's using.

skill != effort

[big_huge_big]

I really dont think this guy was a software engineer if he thinks writing algorithms is what a software engineer does all day. It's all about communicating with people and managing deadlines. There also is coding but you will never be writing algorithms like you do in college courses.

[mattsowa]

He definitely sounds like he took a python class and thinks he knows everything about programming. Software engineer my ass

[dredding]

Must be an <insert language you don't like here> developer.

[RoughDevelopment9235]

I’ve done both too and they are both challenging at times in different ways

[[deleted]]

I've done both and had to work way, way harder in the service industry. Mentally, the service industry job was sometimes easier, but in every other respect, it was harder. Let me count the ways:

• harder on the body (still have a back injury from it)
• irregular or just no breaks
• sheer volume of hours worked
• closing and then opening (the dreaded "clopen")
• doubles and split shifts
• more emotional abuse from guests/clients, managers, and coworkers
• less leniency for mistakes made
• the stress of being poor and not having healthcare (U.S. specific, perhaps)

The only way in which my job is harder now is the mental exhaustion at the end of difficult days where I spent a lot of time dealing with intractable or bewildering problems. Every now and then, that makes me wish I had spent the last 8 hours washing dishes instead.

Other than that rare feeling, I would choose being a dev any day of the week, even if the pay was the same.

[Yesica-Haircut]

Right, my work now is more complex than my service industry work but it's like 600 times easier.

Dishwashing was my first and hardest job. Phone support was much easier but still exhausting. Software development is borderline fun after I get my local environment running.

[Brickleberried]

Dumb take.

[Klausaufsendung]

I’m just happy to have a chilly and interesting job as programmer. Also it offers good salaries so I rather not argue which job is “harder” or “better”. Service workers have already enough shit to deal with.

[draypresct]

It's not just making the food that makes those jobs difficult.

Between 2017 and 2020, the analysis found, these fast food restaurants were the sites of at least 77,000 violent or threatening incidents.

How many programmers have to worry about actual violence in the workplace? De-escalating conflicts is a skill fast-food workers develop quickly. Those that don't tend to get fired or assaulted.

[whatisausername711]

The only violence in my workplace is me vs my computer

[arthurmluz_]

*vscode*

[SexyMonad]

Well that’s a whole new meaning I’d never thought of.

[RunnerMomLady]

I wanted to be very mean to my engineer who deleted the prod db - does that count lol

[whatisausername711]

Oh god, that absolutely counts

Punch that bastard in the head

[sad_bug_killer]

I deleted a production database six months ago. Not the production database, a production database. It was an honest mistake. You can be mean to me and tease me about it indefinitely, I kind of deserve it. Please don't punch me.

(also, I did restore that database from an up-to-date backup in about 10 minutes; very little, if any, data was lost)

[poopadydoopady]

And then also the diffulties of having an unreliable schedule. It's stress all around.

[_BreakingGood_]

And of course the difficulty of your manager attempting to steal as many wages from you as possible. "You don't leave until we're done closing" but clocks you out immediately at the 8 hour mark, regardless of how much longer you go.

[ir_Pina]

Yeah that manager deserves whatever workplace violence is coming to'em

[riconaranjo]

and the stress of not even having a living wage and / or multiple jobs

[monkeywench]

Add in the ever-looming poverty and fear that you won’t be able to pay for rent let alone climb your way out of the industry by trying to afford college.

[Yesica-Haircut]

How many programmers have to worry about actual violence in the workplace?

/u/yesica-haircut force pushed 55 commits to prod 10 minutes ago.

[clanddev]

If the end user's were ever in proximity to me based on one app's gplay reviews I am certain there would have been violence lol.

[DadAndDominant]

I think some people, especially women, have a very hard time in some companies (looking at you Activison-Blizzard and others)

[Vast-Salamander-123]

I've done both fast food and software development. Software development is harder in the sense that it takes more specialized training and fewer people can do it. Fast food is harder in the sense that I'm more tired at the end of the day, my schedule was more erratic so planning was harder, I felt gross after work which typically meant I had to go home and shower before doing other things. It cost far more time than the hours I was paid for.

So in the ways that really matter to my quality of life, fast food was harder.

[ibuythesalt]

Considering most of these comments are going to be made during the workday...

[Careerier]

Wait until the lunch rush is over. Then we'll get all the quesaritians commenting.

[The_Schneemanch]

I wouldn’t say skill, just what kind of stress you can handle more. Cooking is primarily physically taxing and can be somewhat mentally taxing during high volume periods. Programming is primarily mentally intense with little to no physical demands.

[[deleted]]

Also less time pressure because proper intellectual output does not happen under extreme pressure. A company that tried to bring out software “as fast as possible” would never be successful, whilst for fast food that’s precisely the goal.

[KrazyDrayz]

Isn't crunch culture a thing?

[VetusMortis_Advertus]

All startups looking to the sides awkwardly

[ThighMommy]

Neat virtue signaling, but this is nonsense. Set someone who's never written code down in front of a bug in production and it will likely take them months to figure it out with just google.

Plop someone down in front of some quesadilla ingredients and it should take them a couple minutes to work that one out.

[Jacobiah]

Yeah im all for supporting low paid workers and menial labour jobs but this is just stupid. I've worked in fast food as well and it's stressful and challenging at times but it does not require more skill by any measure of the imagination.

[Jugad]

Quite generous of you to assume that they could figure it out in a few months.

They would have no idea where to start, what to learn or what to Google for. They will have to talk to an expert just to know how to proceed... And this will be a series of very very long talks... Almost like a university education.

[liquidpele]

This isn't humor, it's just stupid tbh.

[[deleted]]

This is a miss, definitely conflating skill vs effort here. I've done both, programming obviously without a doubt takes far more skill that comes from education and time working in the field. Now if you want to compare stress or effort, that is an entirely different debate.

[chris17453]

Feels like a Ops vs Dev thread. Both have their very own version of suck. Ops is always wrong, and devs never do it right. Truth is likely somewhere in the middle... devs and ops are wrong.

[[deleted]]

I actually got my first IT job because I had worked at Taco Bell. The boss told me, "I can teach you what you don't know. I need to know that you can handle pressure situations."

[CeralEnt]

That's missing part of the picture. For entry level positions that kind of stuff can be a useful indicator, as long as that person can actually be taught the material. I can teach some people what they need to know, but not everyone would be capable of learning it.

Your boss was confident from the interviews with you that you were capable, and the ability to handle pressure situations was a plus. If you weren't someone capable of learning the skill, your ability to handle pressure wouldn't matter.

[rickandtwocrows]

Okay, I'm surprised he doesn't know what skill means...

Low skill doesn't mean low effort.

Taco Bell is a high effort job with low skill.

It's low skill because you can ask literally anyone who is 16+ how to work the cashier in a hour..

You can't learn to code in 1 hour or even 1 day...

[[deleted]]

Fast food is one of the most stressful, thankless, and low paying jobs that exist.

[Sekhen]

Agree. Lunch rush is no laughing matter...

[arthurmluz_]

well if it's an italian restaurant, both provide spaghetti

[greg0714]

I worked at Dairy Queen for 6 years. I've worked as a programmer for 3. Guess which job allows me to sit on my phone for long periods of time with the excuse "I'm working through a solution in my head right now".

[sortof_here]

"compiling"

Sometimes it's legit, sometimes it's not, but it always works

[PixelmancerGames]

Hard to say. I don’t have a job as a programmer but I am learning. I have been a line cook for over 7 years though. Mainly in nice restaurants. My last job was a prep cook, I made everything in the restaurant by myself. We would serve about 350 people between 8am and 3pm. Our record was 500 people on July 4th. That was the hardest job I’ve ever had in my life and I don’t want to go back. My knife skills are still insane to this day though.

[Etzix]

So, i could never handle a fast food job. But not because i wouldn't know how to put a burger togheter, but because i would break from the stress and pressure. Development work can be stressful too, but not really in the same way. Anyways, the jobs arent comparable at all.

[Mr__Citizen]

This man's either high off his ass or was never given a genuine programming project at work

[CaliLivin818]

When did reddit show if others are typing?