One of the common misconception that I always come against is that Programming is a soft job. You have flexible timing, which means you go to office when you want and then spend time inside an air conditioned room and then go home to enjoy the big salary that you are getting. So when someone fresh out of college gets a software job, this is what he/she expects.
In reality, there is no free lunch. Developing software is very hard work indeed. Though there is not much physical work involved (this is another problem, leading to many physical problems for people in this profession), developing software involves a lot of brain work. Take it from me, you can be physically drained after a hard day of coding. Also sometimes debugging can be so frustrating that you feel as if you just want to go home…J
And software is one of those rare jobs where you are expected to do overtime without extra pay. If your delivery date is near, you will find that most of the teams work all nights even sometimes. I have worked two continuous days before a particularly important delivery. Even though you officially are required to work around 8 hours in any company, you usually end up working more than 10 everyday anyway. And with most of your customers in different time zones, working at night is near inevitable.
Rule 2: It is not a easy and soft job
Where in the world are you now? its been loong time since we spoke, i tried reaching you.
Posted by: Ajay | June 08, 2006 at 04:39 AM