Interesting thoughts. As a professional software engineer (~7 years working) I disagree on a few points.
> Nobody cares that you work at a prestigious tech company that gives you ~cool benefits~.
If you're taking a job to impress other people, you're doing it wrong. The only people that really care about where you've worked are future employers.
> These projects were frighteningly representative of what work-life is.
Fairly true, except in the workplace you can count on other people to be marginally competent. In some cases the code is great, and in some cases it's awful. But in the vast majority of cases what counts is not whether it's "good" or not, but whether it works.
> There is little intellectual satisfaction to be had from contorting bytes.
Maybe you're referring to something else, but I find the process of constructing something functional to be immensely satisfying.
> Learning new programming languages is extremely fun at first but exasperating and repetitive after a while.
Never gets old for me. There's always something new and unique in each language.
> but it seems to be having very little impact on my life.
The more money I make, the more I can save, which means the faster I can become financially independent. Although I do enjoy my job, I wouldn't do it for free. I want to spread my time out across all my hobbies rather than tying 40 hours a week to one job in particular.
> If you get into a deep discussion about programming and you're surprised by how many things you know that you don't care about, really consider what that means.
Good point. It probably means you don't really care about programming in general. I love the fact that I know the quirks of python generators, or C++ keywords. I just love understanding systems in their entirely, from top to bottom.
> Find something you're actually passionate about and use programming to do cool things in that area.
Couldn't have said it better.
> Entitlement, lack of compassion, materialism, and (surprisingly) anti-intellectualism is the norm.
I haven't found this to be true at all. Intellectual pursuits are very commonplace in my tech workplace.
> Nobody cares that you work at a prestigious tech company that gives you ~cool benefits~.
If you're taking a job to impress other people, you're doing it wrong. The only people that really care about where you've worked are future employers.
> These projects were frighteningly representative of what work-life is.
Fairly true, except in the workplace you can count on other people to be marginally competent. In some cases the code is great, and in some cases it's awful. But in the vast majority of cases what counts is not whether it's "good" or not, but whether it works.
> There is little intellectual satisfaction to be had from contorting bytes.
Maybe you're referring to something else, but I find the process of constructing something functional to be immensely satisfying.
> Learning new programming languages is extremely fun at first but exasperating and repetitive after a while.
Never gets old for me. There's always something new and unique in each language.
> but it seems to be having very little impact on my life.
The more money I make, the more I can save, which means the faster I can become financially independent. Although I do enjoy my job, I wouldn't do it for free. I want to spread my time out across all my hobbies rather than tying 40 hours a week to one job in particular.
> If you get into a deep discussion about programming and you're surprised by how many things you know that you don't care about, really consider what that means.
Good point. It probably means you don't really care about programming in general. I love the fact that I know the quirks of python generators, or C++ keywords. I just love understanding systems in their entirely, from top to bottom.
> Find something you're actually passionate about and use programming to do cool things in that area.
Couldn't have said it better.
> Entitlement, lack of compassion, materialism, and (surprisingly) anti-intellectualism is the norm.
I haven't found this to be true at all. Intellectual pursuits are very commonplace in my tech workplace.